Cultural Awareness as a Main Approach to Teaching a Course of Web Customization for Effective Cross-Cultural Communication

Abstract

Website customization is an important part of cross-cultural communication.  Its goal is to make an existing website culturally, linguistically, graphically, technically, and rhetorically adapted (customized) to the target audience so that they can read and use it for a practical purpose as if it were originally created for their own use. Web customization places two tasks on cross-cultural communicators: to have a good understanding of the culture of the target country and a good command of its language conventions. They are the guarantee for making a source website well customized and accepted by the target audience. This article explores important cultural elements involved through secondary research or text analysis and worked out guidelines for teaching a course on Website Customization for effective cross-cultural communication. Important findings include that the effectiveness or success of customized websites is directly influenced by the impacts of cultural understanding and awareness. These impacts infiltrate every aspect of communication. The significance of the research is that it points out the aspects where problems easily pop up in web customization and has worked out guidelines for solving these problems, which is a contribution to successful cross-cultural communication.