German-American relations and cross-cultural experiences from the perspective of high school students' host families in the USA

Jonas Heidger

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenber...

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: Cross-cultural exchanges serve the purpose of contributing to a cultural understanding, broadening the horizon and more. This leads to the understanding that two individuals with respective cultures encounter each other and explain their cultural peculiarities, meaning they will therefore benefit from the experience. This however presents a rather static understanding of culture, as it implies that each exchange is successful and goes without a problem. A successful exchange for hosts and exchange students relies on various factors such as tolerance, interest and adjustment on both sides, as two different cultures meet. The diversity of cultural theories has resulted from these factors, which have to be considered in order to resolve cultural misunderstandings and establish a relationship. In this paper, the focus will be on German-American relations through the lens of student exchanges in a High School setting and focus on the culture exchange and development of a relationship between the exchange students and their host families. The majority of the literature found as regard student exchanges concentrates on the students' perspective as to sharing their experiences and gain throughout this experience. Equally, previous interviews with host families focused on the exchange students' gain and their learning process. To enable a deeper understanding of the way in which an exchange student and his culture are being perceived by the host family, it is necessary to change the perspective in order to reflect the host families' experiences. To implement this project, it is necessary to respond to the culture term and its elements regarding student exchanges. Interviews with four former host families have been conducted to realize this. Those findings are going to build the foundation of my study. Throughout the interview, the focus was on how the families perceived their students and what roles were assigned to them. As both parties bring different perceptions of their counterparts' origin to the table, there will be an accumulation of multifaceted expectations as regards each member of this adventure and, of course, misunderstandings.