Leveraging Empathy and Compassion Through Language and Culture Instruction: Practical Principles of Dialog Across Difference

Abstract

Language competencies, coupled with empathic and compassionate character and citizenship development still justify inclusion of languages in Higher Ed curricula. The nature and telos of language courses build compassion between students who unite in common purpose, minimize stresses of skill growth, hold self and classmates in patience even while immersed in discomfort and unfamiliarity, and invest energy as a community of confidence-growers by sharing relationships of trust as they gain skills together through the practice of communicating. They also build empathy between students and the future cultural others they envision directly connecting with, staying aware of differences and appropriate ways to navigate them through the integration of cultural instruction which models and promotes openness to other ways of thinking and being. Integrative methods for cultural instruction offer experiential practice in empathy as a skill through descriptivism, and are applicable to disciplines beyond languages, and to communities in which other differences are at play.