5.2.5. Focusing on social skills

A special group of social situations are the ones which you find particularly stressful or anxiety-provoking. This may include situations in which you have gotten into conflicts, or experienced unpleasant friction on one or more occasions, or situations in which you have felt especially awkward or embarrassed. Furnham and Bochner (1986) trace the experience of culture-shock to such situations. They suggest that culture-stress or culture-shock results from the fact that the culture traveler is lacking in specific social skills. Working with your LRP or friends, you can go over such situations in detail. A useful technique is to have two friends role-play that they are in the situation that causes you stress. Tape-record (or video-record) them. Listen to the tape a number of times. Then do the role-play yourself with your LRP or a friend. We have moved back into the area of more specific communicative needs, but in the context of discussing social situations, it is important that we highlight this special variety.