This study considers cultural adaptation through tourism, focusing on language-travelers: hybrid education-tourism consumers whose voices remain relatively silent in tourism studies. Qualitative, ...semi-structured interviews were undertaken with students, teachers, and managers in Australian English language schools to understand what language-travelers expect from their Australian experiences and the implications for language schools. The findings propose that sojourners’ experiences are framed by pre-visit imaginaries of object authenticity, wherein the “object” is both Australian culture and the wider Anglophone “West.” Such imaginaries are found to be validated by language schools, which face pressure to balance letting students glimpse the “backstage” and staging out-group imagined “authenticities,” such as by hiring fun, approachable, and above all White teachers. We identify opportunities for language centers to understand their role within tourism as cultural mediators and suggest ways forward in promoting and inculcating critical intercultural competence among language-traveler sojourners.
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One of the important features of the Erasmus+ Programme is “Equity and Inclusion”. Equity and inclusion can be promoted by facilitating the access to transnational projects to learners with ...disadvantaged backgrounds (and, therefore, fewer opportunities compared to their peers). One of the personal difficulties or obstacles that limit or prevent these learners from taking part in transnational projects is cultural differences. Tertiary level students usually fall into this category because they face linguistic adaptation and cultural inclusion difficulties. If linguistic adaptation is an ongoing process due to the language courses undergraduates may or are compelled to attend, cultural inclusion remains an issue. Moreover, one of the aims of all Key Actions types (1, 2, and 3) is to improve the teaching and learning of languages and promote the EU’s broad linguistic diversity and intercultural awareness.
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The goal of the paper is to show that language can support social and intercultural competence of both students and teachers: one of the ways to do it is teaching cultural taboos and taboo language ...for intercultural awareness and understanding. The current state of the art in the field points to an increasing interest in the teaching of taboos. The material we analysed consisted in 238 offensive, vulgar and obscene English words that both students and teachers should know to attain social and intercultural competence. The method used is the descriptive one. The degree of novelty is rather high in our cultural area. Results show that there are 134 offensive (slang) words and expressions (referring to the country of origin or to an ethnic group, to sex and sex-related issues (sexual orientation), to race, etc.), 75 vulgar words and expressions (referring to sex and sex-related issues, to body parts, to people, etc.), and 29 obscene words and expressions (referring to body secretions, to sex and sex-related issues, to people, etc.). There seems to be no research limitations given the lexicographic sources that we used. The implications of teaching cultural taboos and taboo language at tertiary level concern both the students and teachers and the organisation they belong to. The paper is original and relevant given the process of globalisation.
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Cultural consumption provides numerous benefits for individuals, especially for younger generations. Imaginary travel narratives can shape people’s perceptions about other cultures thus are useful ...tools for developing intercultural competences. On the other hand, positive psychology provides an approach to understand different aspects of students/youngsters’ wellbeing. This study investigates the wellbeing associated with learning the meanings of being different and growing in emotional resilience, flexibility, and openness to other cultures through movies. The positive psychology approach was used to examine the benefits of movie consumption in order to investigate the activation of five domains of wellbeing: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA). The research methodology consisted of the experiment and questionnaire survey. The students’ scores on the wellbeing and intercultural competences were measured before and after the intervention. The intervention consisted of sessions of watching two example movies, Eat Pray Love and Hotel Transylvania 2, and subsequent group discussions about the movies’ respective messages. The participants’ group was formed by 236 university students from Brunei and Romania, ages between 18 and 49years old. The results showed an increase in students’ openness to other cultures and across some of the wellbeing PERMA dimensions. The study makes a theoretical contribution by connecting positive psychology and the intercultural competence constructs and the influences of movies.
This practice report describes an annual Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project between a content course taught in English at a university in Japan (JPU) and a Japanese-language ...course at a university in the U.S. (AMU). Shared learning objectives include practicing communicative skills in the target language and engaging in critical writing in the target language, reflecting on the discussions. There are two sets of activities: (1) JPU-centered, English-based activities and (2) AMU-centered, Japanese-based activities, which take place concurrently. Some activities are done individually (e.g., discussion posts, journals, and reflection papers), while online discussions are conducted in transpacific groups both in class and outside the class period. After six weeks of collaboration, each student writes a reflective, multi-draft essay in the target language. Running the two sets of activities can confuse students easily and requires careful preparations, clear instructions, and a high level of instructor involvement. Various modifications have been made for improvements since the initial implementation in 2019 to provide a learning environment that allows for a more in-depth and diverse exchange of perspectives (Nishio et al., 2020). Flexibility is key to success for educators to help maximize student learning in COIL.
The fluidity of communicative practices in current intercultural communication research raises difficult questions about how we understand core concepts in the field. Links between linguistic ...resources, other modes, and cultures are created in situ suggesting that relationships between 'named' languages and cultures cannot be taken for granted. We frequently see emergent cultural practices and references which are neither part of any one culture or, crucially, necessarily in-between cultures. Thus, the traditional metaphor of 'inter' for intercultural communication is no longer adequate and such communication is better approached as transcultural communication where borders are transcended, transgressed and in the process transformed.
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This paper discusses a teaching approach that can be used in Collaborative Online International Learning – Interdependent Intercultural Tasks (IIT). IIT are characterized by the following features: ...(1) they include culture-specific information that creates cognitive dissonance and motivates students to analyze information about another culture; (2) they provide instructions aimed at learning subjective information about individuals from another culture; and (3) they can only be performed through interaction between students from different countries. We expect two learning outcomes of implementing IIT in a Global Leadership course; an increase in (1) intercultural interaction when working on a collaborative project; and (2) awareness of general cultural differences and those related to a specific global problem. Preliminary findings suggest that employing IIT (i.e. having students discuss native and non-native country media articles describing culture-specific perspectives on a global problem) increases the frequency of student interactions outside the classroom and improves coordination between teammates.
This paper evaluates Voki, a digital platform for creating speaking avatars, in the context of Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT). It firstly outlines the benefits of using animated characters ...in online tools to personalize language lessons and engage students. As a web-based application, Voki offers various customization options, including different characters, backgrounds and speech voices in over 30 languages. The paper describes how Voki can support GELT pedagogy by exposing students to different English accents and dialects and enhancing their listening and speaking skills with reflections from a ‘Listening and Pronunciation’ course. It is concluded that despite certain technical difficulties and pedagogical limitations, Voki seems a valuable tool to support GELT pedagogy.
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