Activity: Presentation and Rhetorical Analysis of Texts across Cultures
I. 15 Minutes
Getting to Know Teams in a Cross-Cultural Context
Location: Small group rooms (designated by letter) at http://switchboard.stanford.edu
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Activity 1: Introduce yourselves by name, age, course of study, place of origin. Briefly describe the class you’re taking and what your university’s like to the members of the group from the other country.
Activity 2: Watch the Australia Tourism ad at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQGMuxJ0vCc (also linked through the workshop page). Marratech does not support video, so you will need to watch through an internet browser (Explorer, Firefox, Safari). Don’t close Marratech while you watch, but mute your microphone.
This ad was directed at an American audience. Perform a rhetorical analysis of the ad, touching on the following questions:
 What rhetorical strategies and appeals do you see at work in the ad?
 How does the ad define Australia and Australians? How does it define America and Americans?
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Do these definitions seem at all problematic?
Is it an effective tourism ad? To what extent is it an example of effective cross-cultural rhetoric?
II. 30 minutes
Presentation and Group Rhetorical Analysis of Political Cartoons and Texts
Take turns giving a 2 minute presentation, and then receiving feedback on your presentations. Be sure to limit yourselves to 5 minutes of discussion per presentation to ensure that each group member has a chance to present and to receive feedback. The presenter should receive feedback from all members of his/her group, not just the members of the group from the other university.
Consider the following while responding to the presentations:
 As a member of the audience for the presentation, what more did you want to know about the analysis of the image or about the research topic? What questions do you have about the topic or analysis?
 What aspects of the delivery were particularly effective? Word choice? Style? Structure? Voice intonation or emphasis? Pacing?
 What are some ideas for helping the speaker to tailor his/her analysis and project/presentation to be effective to cross-cultural audiences?
Tech Tip: If you have a saved copy of your image on your computer, you can use the “Open > Image” command under the file menu in Marratech to open the image on the whiteboard so that everyone in your group can see it.
III. 5 minutes
Collaborative Reflection
Together (both Stanford and Sydney), talk about the following:
 What did you learn about intercultural communication and/or cross-cultural rhetoric from this video conference session?
 What was the most interesting/memorable/surprising moment from your conversation?
Select one person to post your group’s reflections as a comment to the blog post at http://crossculturalrhetoric.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/sydney-stanford-video-conferences-reflections/. For fun, you might want to give your group a name or a mascot or a slogan to distinguish your reflection from the other comments on the blog.