Prue Holmes

Negotiating Differences in Learning and Intercultural Communication Ethnic Chinese Students in a New Zealand University

Research on ethnic Chinese students studying in a Western (New Zealand) learning environment exposed differences in communication and learning between their first culture and the host culture. Thirteen ethnic Chinese students in a New Zealand university business school participated in an 18-month ethnographic study. The findings indicate that these students were not prepared for the dialogic nature of classroom communication, which created difficulties in listening, understanding, and interacting. Written assignments embodied different expectations of writing styles, and understandings of critical analysis and plagiarism. The findings raise challenges for teachers in responding to difference rather than deficit approaches to teaching and learning, for ethnic Chinese students to be better prepared for the new learning environment, and for host institutions and local students to find ways of developing diversity awareness and appreciation.

Positioning Intercultural Dialogue—Theories, Pragmatics, and an Agenda

In recent years, the term intercultural dialogue has gained considerable currency in both scholarly as well as policy-making contexts. The European Union declared 2008 to be the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, and the Council of Europe (2008) published a white paper on the subject, offering a blueprint for how people in the expanded European community might live together across diversity and difference. The increased public visibility and circulation of the term has also prompted academic discussion in multiple venues, including a 2009 National Communication Association summer conference in Istanbul, Turkey, and a preconference in Singapore in 2010, as part of the International Communication Association’s annual convention. In this special issue we aim to consolidate emerging interest in intercultural dialogue and inaugurate a productive exchange between scholarship on dialogue and intercultural communication studies, thereby setting an agenda for studies of intercultural dialogue. Extant studies of intercultural dialogue tend to reflect the perspective taken by the European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, which formulated a working definition for the term:

Critical Reflexive Practice in Teaching Management Communication

CRITICAL THEORY has been a distinguishing feature of the communication research program at the Waikato Management School, but significant reflection is required to translate the theory into meaningful classroom experiences. The need for reflection comes from two key tensions in teaching management communication: One is the tension between teaching practical, career-focused skills versus critical and/or interpretive analysis; the second is the multicultural classroom environment where students, educated in a monocultural context, are exposed to other interpretations and critiques of their own cultural predispositions and values. In addition, there is no clearly defined notion of a management communication student in a graduate or MBA program. The how and what of graduate management communication programs are constantly in question as we prepare these graduates for an increasingly complex, ambiguous, and multicultural workplace (Mintzberg, 2004). Therefore, reflecting critically on our practices as educators is essential (Cunliffe, 2004; Grey, 2004). This article briefly describes the context of teaching management communication at the Waikato Management School and the key tensions experienced in that context. We then explain the concept of critical reflexive practice and its implications for teaching. Finally, we illustrate the framework through several critical incidents in the classroom.

Developing intercultural understanding for study abroad: students’ and teachers’ perspectives on pre-departure intercultural learning

This study reports on students’ and teachers’ perspectives on a programme designed to develop Erasmus students’ intercultural understanding prior to going abroad. We aimed to understand how students and their teachers perceived pre-departure materials in promoting their awareness of key concepts related to interculturality (e.g., essentialism, stereotyping, otherising) during an intercultural education course for mobile students. Twenty pre-departure Erasmus undergraduate students from an Italian university, four teachers and one observer participated in the study. Seven hours of audio/video recordings of classroom discussions and teachers’ retrospective narratives were analysed thematically. Although students initially subverted the goals of one of the tasks, they demonstrated foundations of intercultural thinking; followed by movement from self-interest to intercultural awareness of the other; and finally, developing intercultural awareness, supported through opportunities to express emotions/feelings and discussion and application of key concepts of interculturality. Teachers’/observer’s perspectives confirmed the quality and flexibility of the materials in developing students’ intercultural awareness. The findings suggest that pre-departure materials can help students to recognise variety and complexity in self and others in intercultural encounters. But students’ primary needs for practical information should first be satisfied; interactive spaces for expressing emotion and feelings are important for understanding self and others; and scaffolding activities help students to understand intercultural concepts.

Intercultural communicative competence in foreign language education: questions of theory, practice and research

Language teaching and learning has undergone a ‘cultural turn’ since the emergence of ‘the Communicative Approach’ and ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ in the 1970s. The earlier study of language, which involved the study of literary and other texts, had neglected the need for ‘communicative competence’— the ability to use language in socially appropriate ways, often operationalised as ‘politeness’. However, perhaps as a consequence of globalisation, new technologies, and mass economic and refugee migration, it has become clear that communicative language teaching too, with its focus on sociolinguistic appropriateness and politeness, is inadequate to the task of teaching for communication. This new social context requires consideration of the ways in which people of different languages — including language learners themselves — think and act, and how this might impact on successful communication and interaction. The ‘cultural turn’ – the introduction of ‘intercultural competence’ to complement ‘communicative competence’ – has further refined the notion of what it is to be competent for communication with speakers of different languages. Teachers and learners now need to be ‘aware’ of other people’s ‘cultures’ as well as their own, and therefore, the term ‘intercultural (communicative) competence’ has emerged, along with other terms such as ‘cultural awareness’ and ‘transnational competence’.

Intercultural dialogue: challenges to theory, practice and research

This special issue showcases papers presented at the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) conference in Durham in December 2012. The conference, similarly entitled ‘Intercultural dialogue: Current challenges; future directions’, invited presenters to critically examine the concept of intercultural dialogue and its implications for researching and learning about intercultural communication in the increasingly intercultural communities in which people now live.

Interculturality and the Study Abroad Experience: Students' Learning from the IEREST Materials.

ABSTRACT This study investigated how a ‘while abroad’ (IEREST) intercultural experiential learning programme (i) encouraged mobile student sojourners to explore the concept of ‘interculturality’; (ii) promoted their intercultural engagement/communication during their stay abroad; and (iii) invited them to reflect on their own (developing) interculturality. As students demonstrated their intercultural learning and perspectives, how did they (re)interpret and (re)construct the IEREST learning materials? Data drew on questionnaires, reflective journals, and focus groups from two groups of mobile university students (in Italy and the UK). The findings illustrated how students’ initial expectations of the programme (meeting new people and improving language) were exceeded. Through reflection on experience and discussion with peer, tutors and members of the host community, students realised that ‘interculturality’ is multifaceted and complex; they expanded their small culture spheres to explore community cultures (gender, age, and locality); they acknowledged the effort, work, and time required in interpreting bilateral understandings of self and other, and the possibilities of such understandings for global/intercultural citizenship. The outcomes offer implications for intercultural learning and training in the study abroad context, materials development, and further research concerning student mobility and intercultural education in other contexts.

Guest Editorial: Second special issue on Intercultural Competence

This second special issue on intercultural competence continues the investigation of the cultural turn in language teaching. As described in the first special issue, the rationale for our focus highlights the importance, and imperative, of research illustrating teachers’ and learners’ developing awareness of other people’s ‘cultures’, as well as their own, as they engage and communicate with others in different languages or in a lingua franca. Curricula and policy documents have begun to highlight the need to develop learners who have intercultural competence, and the responsibility for this teaching and learning is often placed in the domain of the language teacher (Byram and Parmenter 2012). Yet, as the articles in the first special issue demonstrate, the theory and practice of developing intercultural competence is itself undergoing a ‘cultural turn’ as authors critically examine and contest the meaning and value of the language of this cultural turn. For example, the articles in the first special issue illustrated the complexity, and limitations, of terms such as ‘intercultural (communicative) competence’, ‘identity’, ‘the intercultural speaker’, and ‘cultural awareness’. In this second special issue, authors continue this exploration of the cultural turn in language teaching and learning, and the concepts that underpin it. They also continue to examine the interrelationship among models that illustrate and guide teacher practice, practice itself – the relationship between what teachers do, and how, where, and what learners learn – and empirical investigation through teacher-led research. In particular, they address three key themes: contexts of teacher education, descriptions of specific courses and textbooks, and the potential and possibilities engendered by new technologies. The first of these three themes – teacher education in developing learners’ interculturality – is as yet under-explored, and the two articles by Mónica Bastos and Helena de Araújo e Sá and Ana Sofia Pinho attend to the importance of developing teachers’ own intercultural understanding. Bastos and Araújo e Sá highlight the importance of training programmes that enable teachers to integrate the intercultural dimension into their professional practice. Their article draws on Portuguese secondary school teachers’ accounts of representations and experiences of intercultural communicative competence and how it develops. From this evidence they develop a heuristic model of professional training that includes the cognitive, praxeological and affective domains of teacher experiences of developing intercultural communicative competence. Their colleague, Ana Sofia Pinho, illustrates in her article the potential of intercomprehension as a portal for developing teachers’ intercultural sensitivity. Drawing on student teachers’ accounts, Pinho demonstrates how teachers’ growing intercultural sensitivity enabled them to build knowledge about intercomprehension, knowledge which is important in expanding teachers’ critical cultural awareness and which enables them to perform as intercultural and plurilingual educators. The second theme explores the place of courses and textbooks. Béatrice Cabau shows how an intercultural model, which recognises the multifaceted aspects of identity, languages and the learner’s profile, can be used in language education in the Hong Kong context. The approach merges two guiding pedagogic frameworks – the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and Content and Language Integrated Learning – to enhance learners’ motivation and interest by providing tools for reflection about one’s (social)

Education and migration: languages foregrounded

Introduction to a special issue of eight articles on the theme of Education and migration: Languages foregrounded

Intercultural communication: an advanced resource book

References Adolphs, S. (2006). Introducing electronic text analysis: A practical guide for language and literary studies. London and New York: Routledge. Baker, M. (1993). Corpus linguistics and translation studies implications and applications. In M. Baker, G. Francis, & E. Tognini-Bonelli (Eds.), Text and technology. In honour of John Sinclair (pp. 233 250). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Catford, J.C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation. An essay in applied linguistics. London: Oxford University Press. Laviosa, S. (2002). Corpus-based translation studies. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book. London and New York: Routledge. Olohan, M. (2004). Introducing corpora in translation studies. London and New York: Routledge.