The role of culture and intercultural awareness in the language classroom is not a new area of research in ESL/EFL, and its relative importance has shifted in different approaches and methods of ...foreign language teaching. Today, the goal of some English textbooks has transcended a pure linguistic and language training orientation as text developers have moved towards also teaching intercultural awareness. The development of intercultural awareness was presented as a key component in ensuring the success of the latest Colombian National Bilingual Programme 2015-2025 (NBP), and the textbook series English, Please! was promoted as a breakthrough in this context. This article presents the research analysis and findings of an exploratory study based on the ambitious task set forth in the NBP policy on English textbooks. We examine the theoretical constructs adopted by the National Ministry of Education and by using, both quantitative and qualitative, analysis we explore the intercultural awareness activities presented in the series. At the end, we suggest that although the series is an important addition to existing materials in the area, it presents an overly reductionist and instrumentalist use of the concept of intercultural awareness.
A great deal of research has recognized the necessity of receiving proper predeparture training for being able to truly benefit from international internship experiences. However, few researchers ...have taken the next step by exploring how domestic programs could pedagogically and psychologically prepare students for their professional experiences abroad. This study examines the role that a language-for-specific-purposes course plays in the process of preparing students for their upcoming internship experiences in the target culture, with a focus on intercultural negotiation. The findings suggest the students were able to successfully develop the cultural awareness and communicative skills necessary to engage in the negotiation of cultural boundaries. Furthermore, the study discusses how the introduction of a role model, in-depth workplace scenarios, and creating a holistic view of one's learning experiences are the three pedagogical elements that contribute to the construction of a professional L2 self.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
În acest articol ne-am propus să abordăm exigența și necesitatea cultivării competențelor comunicative interculturale în cadrul cursurilor de limbă engleză pentru scopuri specifice, fapt ce va ...facilita evoluția studentului într-un profesionist competent, capabil să interacționeze eficient cu persoane din medii culturale diverse. Încercăm efectuarea unei descrieri adecvate a competenței comunicării interculturale într-un context globalizat al locului de muncă, incluzând o revizuire a elementelor interculturale și proporția lor în cursurile ESS pentru diverse discipline. Ținem să analizăm adoptarea și adaptarea diverselor abordări de predare interculturală și activități de clasă ghidate de profesorii de ESS care preiau rolul de mediator în procesul de predare-învățare, folosind instrumente de evaluare pentru a măsura eficacitatea predării și evaluarea competenței de comunicare interculturală a studenților.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH
FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES COURSESThis article aims to address the difficulty and need for nurturing intercultural communication skills in the English for specific purposes courses, which will facilitate the students’ evolution into competent professionals able to interact effectively with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. We try to make an adequate description of the intercultural communicative competence in a global workplace context, including a review of intercultural elements and their proportion in the ESP courses for various disciplines. We want to analyze the adoption and adaptation of different intercultural teaching approaches and classroom activities guided by the ESP teachers who take on the role of mediator in teaching and learning; by using assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of teaching and evaluating the students’ intercultural communicative competence.
The Challenge
What inspires a man to study 65 languages? Hyperpolyglots are mysteries, but do they hold insights for our understanding and practice of second language education? A veteran, US ...intelligence officer, and now an adjunct instructor, Garfield has seemingly done it all with the language skills he acquired. His story of resilience will inspire learners and instructors.
Garfield is an exceptional language learner and US polyglot. This oral history project explores his trajectory from a childhood coma to knowing 15 languages. It examines his investment in his second language acquisition (SLA), a concept comprising identity, ideology, and capital (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Qualitative content analyses of 10 h of recorded, transcribed audio data produced themes for each component. It was found that Garfield's principal identities were those involving his “passion languages” and his perceived need to prove himself. Important ideologies were a service orientation, a “living languages” SLA approach, and deference to serendipity. Factors impacting Garfield's access to capital were trajectory‐changing individuals, bureaucratic obstacles, and the scarcity of available encounters with the foreign. Pedagogical implications include a reappraisal of polyglots, a recognition of learners' subjective experiences and emerging identities during SLA, and an emphasis on developing learners' willingness to communicate alongside intercultural and global competences.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Students wishing to pursue careers in international business, notably in the developing world, must be prepared for complex, unpredictable, uncomfortable, and messy realities, and to collaborate with ...others very different from themselves. Mainstream business school learning environments are generally highly structured, cognitively oriented, predictable and hence not particularly conducive to orchestrating the disruptive experiences that can develop such abilities. In this article, we show how a field-based course in an East African country can support such learning. Based on data gathered from students over several iterations of the field course, we draw on experiential learning theory (ELT) in showing how the top-down orchestration of the course constituted a learning space that produced three main types of disruption to students’ taken-for-granted habits and assumptions, namely: intense sensory impressions and sensations, loss of predictability and control, and learning interdependency on others. Students had to “bottom-up” manage these disruptions while conducting a group assignment with local students, to a tight deadline, producing “dissonances”—feelings of discomfort—that triggered the ELT cycle. Our findings show that such disruptions can foster learning of the abovementioned abilities; and we suggest ways in which such learning spaces might be created closer to home than East Africa.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The focus of this paper is telecollaboration as a remote-learning environment and a way of transcending the distance between two or more groups of learners from different cultures/nations, who use ...English as a lingua franca (ELF), via computer-mediated-communication (CMC). It is regarded in the light of the qualitative content analysis of numerous theoretical and empirical research, according to which: 1) basic notions concerning ELF and its pedagogical implications, including the issues of culture and identity, are provided; 2) then, telecollaboration in foreign language learning is introduced through a theoretical framework and its general principles; 3) mainstream features of the such virtual educational environment are considered from the global aspect; 4) moreover, the way telecollaboration could be applied for practising the use of ELF is presented, and, finally, 5) its benefits for becoming a competent ELF user are emphasized, as well as possible limitations and suggestions for further researches. Accordingly, the main point of this brief overview is twofold: 1) to promote the possibilities of telecollaboration as a contemporary educational way of virtual information exchange within the ELF paradigm and English language teaching (ELT) field in general, and, 2) to arouse the interest of other researchers in keeping the pace with the similar future educational trends.
Social and cultural connectedness amongst international students during their studies abroad have been recognized to enhance such students’ overall experience. A less explored relationship, ...connectedness to their place of study, may also improve international student wellbeing. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a pilot study taking a novel, collaborative approach to engagement with international students in Melbourne. A group of thirteen students used the mobile app LinguaSnapp—developed for Linguistic Landscape research—to engage with their surroundings and each other by capturing and translating signs in different languages in the city. Results from interviews following the study show that participants reported an increased familiarity with the city, a stronger awareness of multilingualism and multiculturalism in Melbourne, and a deeper engagement with the urban space around them. In addition, they formed friendships with other participants and gained a sense of value through the contribution of linguistic knowledge and technological expertise to a broader Linguistic Landscape research project. This pilot study confirms the feasibility of a larger scale study to evaluate in greater detail how a mobile app, such as LinguaSnapp, can potentially foster stronger links between international students’ connectedness to place and wellbeing.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose
The study was to evaluate the intercultural awareness, communication, and empathy skills of midwives and nurses (n = 479)
Design and Methods
The descriptive study data were collected using ...the Communication‐Skills‐Scale (CSS), the Basic‐Empathy‐Scale (BES), and the Intercultural‐Awareness‐Scale (IAS).
Findings
The total average scores of the CSS, BES, and IAS were found to be 100.07 ± 13.03, 70.70 ± 13.99, and 83.51 ± 14.24, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference between age, education, position, experience and the BES and IAS; gender, providing care for Syrian patients and the CSS and BES; marital status and the BES (P %3C .05).
Practice Implications
Nurses and midwives have important responsibilities in terms of protecting and improving the health of migrant women.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
This study aims to validate Fantini’s intercultural competence scale in a sample of foreign students in a Central European context, and to figure out the pathways which are critical in improving the ...intercultural competence of foreign students. To achieve that, the study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to construct the structural equation model (SEM). The results indicate that the scale is reliable and valid for assessing foreign students’ intercultural competence. In addition, using the first-order CFA as a baseline model, the SEM indicates that each intercultural knowledge, attitude, and skills are essential in predicting the intercultural awareness of the students. On the other hand, enhanced awareness plays an important role in promoting the development of these factors. Based on that, the study provides university decision-makers with valuable information which can be helpful in formulating related policies and rules aiming to enhance the integration and intercultural contact between foreign and Hungarian students at the university environment.
Purpose
Considering the potential of Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) for cross-boundaries interacting and collaborating effectively, this study aims to explore the intercultural ...awareness of pre-service language teachers after participating in a COIL project.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a quantitative research approach and an exploratory cross-sectional method, the authors administered a 13-item questionnaire to unveil the perceptions of 64 future language teachers from Spain after their online experience with counterparts from the USA.
Findings
Participants consider that COIL may have enhanced their intercultural and global awareness and equipped them with valuable skills and knowledge for the future, being women more positive than men. Moreover, the results also suggest that those participants who have not traveled abroad consider COIL to be a good opportunity to compensate for the lack of knowledge or experience with other cultures resulting from not having had the opportunity to visit other countries.
Practical implications
COIL needs to be seen as a powerful tool to promote global learning, intercultural understanding and the development of skills among students that will be vital for success in today’s interconnected world. Nevertheless, universities and teacher training centers need to rethink the preparation of future teachers for the increasing demands to prepare students for the requirements of the global world, and to do so, they need to consider that COIL may offer them significant benefits.
Originality/value
This work offers an interesting exploration of teachers’ attitudes toward COIL, providing insights into the potential of online collaboration for developing intercultural awareness.
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