Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
Discussion Questions
Chapter 4: The Environmental Context
1. How does the information load of your classrooms change throughout the semester?
2. How does your perception of time (i.e., monochronic or polychronic) affect your daily life?
Your study schedule? Your free time?
3. How do you go about securing privacy when you need it? How does your culture facilitate or
hinder privacy?
ETHICS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
Below are some situations for your students to consider that take into account concepts from
Chapter Four.
1. Upon graduation, you’ve decided to spend a year in the Peace Corps. Your first assignment is
to southern provinces of Sri Lanka, where a flood has left thousands homeless. Upon your arrival
2. You’ve just finished a semester at college where your grades were not as good as you would
have liked. When you arrive home for break, you learn that your college has mailed your grades
3. You work for a nonprofit group that brings aid to underdeveloped countries across the world.
Presently, you are in South America helping a small tribe build a water works station to bring
much-needed fresh water to most of the townspeople. The station can be built at only one
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
4. There are far more desks in your classroom than there are students. On the first day of class, a
student whom you do not know, sits in the empty desk immediately to your left. Where will you
sit the next time class meets?