Category: Challenging & Preserving: Culture, Inter/Multiculturalism & Language
Preparing for Intercultural Sojourns: Understanding the Impact of Undergraduate-level Intercultural Education on Chinese Postgraduate Students in the UK
Intercultural language education that seeks to cultivate learners’ intercultural communicative competence has been an integral part of TESOL over the past few decades, but little is known about the extent to which undergraduate-level intercultural education delivered by Chinese universities is perceived as useful and valuable assets that Chinese postgraduate students can draw upon in their …
To What Extent Lebanese University Students Consider Themselves as Intercultural Communicators
Globalization has removed all constrained borders and distances among countries, governments, and business corporations. With this fundamental change, there has been an increasing demand for intercultural competent communicators to secure success in the 21st century marketplace. However, some universities in Lebanon, if not all, seem not to have IC as a part of their curricula, …
Supporting Your Child in Sexuality Education: Negotiating the School/Immigrant Family Boundary
Many studies have documented an asymmetrical and hierarchical relationship between schools and immigrant families (Charette, 2019; Périer, 2017). The research project Sexuality Education in a Multi-Ethnic School Context: Perceptions of Two Major Stakeholder Groups aims to examine the manifestations of this relationship in the specific and particular context of sexuality education (SE). In fact, a …
Oral History Projects: Practicing a Foreign Language and Exploring Culture While Serving Local Immigrant Communities
This paper offers a pedagogical framework for a community engagement project that can be used by instructors of any language. Over the past twelve years, students in Professor Maria Grazia De Angelis’ Italian classes have interviewed Italian immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area. To develop their language skills, they conduct videotaped interviews in …
Paragraph Writing Instruction for University Students
As the emphasis is placed on students’ practical abilities in English, the communicative approach, which focuses on students’ “productive abilities”, has been encouraged in Japan. However, this approach has resulted in poor basic writing skills, which are often associated with insufficient vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. Considering the current practices of writing instruction in junior high …
Integrated Culture in Language Teaching
For years, scholars have searched remedies to the inadequate treatment of the role of Culture in Foreign Language Education. On one hand, course book and syllabus designers treated language and culture tasks separately. Some go as far as to place culture at the “core” of language instruction, whereby the ultimate goal is cultural awareness and …
Maltese as a Foreign Language Teachers’ Intercultural Competence
This study sought to understand how teachers of Maltese as a foreign language (MFL) develop intercultural competence by exploring the importance of intercultural competence (IC) to MFL teachers, the characteristics of interculturally competent MFL educators, and the ways in which educators develop IC. The study adopted the interpretivist paradigm and a case study research design …
Capitalizing on Community Capital: An Analysis of Initiators’ Perceptions of the Purposes of Community Education
Community education is a versatile way for minoritized communities to organize education in support of their youth. The variety of community education initiatives meets different needs of different minoritized communities. To understand the workings of such spaces we need to look closely at the purposes they seek to meet. By interviewing initiators from a variety …
Immigrant Literacies: A Cultural Model Approach to Home-school Discontinuities
The relationship between the home/ community and school for language acquisition and learning is significant. Researchers have shown that a rift between the home and school holds serious implications for children’s literacy development. For literacy then, it is important that the home/ community and school coalesce at some point. Generally, what is valued by the …
Communities’ Cultural Capital for Sustainable Community Tourism Development: A Case Study of Charoen Krung Road
This research aims to study the knowledge factors and sustainable community tourism development in the area along the Chao Phraya River from Charoen Krung Road to Yaowarat Road, the charming old district and a multicultural society in Bangkok, Thailand. Primary data were collected from interviews of stakeholders or the people in the community in depth …
The Urban Gorontalese Language Choice and Language Attitudes, and Implications for Language Maintenance in the Region of Gorontalo Province
In a multilingual society like Indonesia, people often utilize multiple languages, each for different purposes. Their language choice might indicate their attitudes towards each language (Romaine, 1995). This study investigates language choice and language attitudes among the Gorontalese who reside in the Gorontalo province of Indonesia. The urban Gorontalese (n:331) from a variety of age …
Developing Future International Hospitality Employees’ Cultural Intelligence and Intercultural Competence
In response to the international trend in hospitality industry, hospitality groups in the world are actively expanding global markets. There is a need of international talents with intercultural competence when local companies attempt to develop new markets in other countries as well as when foreign companies would like to enter a new territory. College students …
Behaviours – Silent Conflicts at High Schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
In recent years, foreign investment has immigrated into Vietnam, particularly big cities like Ho Chi Minh city; which has drawn to the challenging changes to the national educational system. These changes focus on both students’ in-class and outside-class knowledge. This study explores the impact of foreign and traditional cultural values on students and teachers’ in-high …
How Do Middle Eastern Students See the World? A Study of Relational Versus Categorical Encoding
Evidence exists that the human mind can process information from the surrounding world (Kagan, Moss, & Sigel, 1963) in two distinct ways: individualists (Westerners) rely on categorical processing, using similarities to group objects, people, and events, whereas collectivists (East Asians) process objects, people, and events by emphasizing functional relationships (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). However, the …
Whose Culture? Exploring Multiculturalism Through Ministry-approved Children’s Literature in the Republic of Croatia
This research aims to explore how the mandatory children’s literature, prescribed by the Ministry of Science and Education and covered within the school subject ”Croatian Language,” depicts Croatian cultural heterogeneity and global cultural diversity and whether it offers examples of vocabulary that would assist elementary school students in engaging in critical analyses about human-rights topics …
The Reproduction of Japanese and Foreigners as Separate Categories – An Ethnographic Study on English Summer Camps in Japan
Internationalization (or kokusaika, the “continuation of the practice of being open to the outside world while protecting and promoting the national culture” (Hagermann: 2009)) remains a pre-eminent, long-term goal of the Japanese Ministry of Education. As interaction between Japanese and non-Japanese is still limited in Japan, the Japanese government puts a great emphasis on creating …
Doing Multicultural Education in Times of Trouble: A Case of PBL in Bilingual Arab-Jewish School in Israel
Israeli society, like many contemporary societies, consists of various cultures and sub-cultures. This diversity finds expression in Israel’s education system, albeit through segregation, since the system is divided into culturally-based educational sectors, most prominently among Jews and Arabs. This segregation strengthens mutual cultural alienation rather than intercultural dialogue. Against this tendency, a few bilingual-bicultural Arab-Jewish …
Maloya: Performing Reunionese Identity
Maloya is a vernacular style of dance and music, born in the former French colony of La Réunion at the time of slavery. Slaves from Madagascar, Africa, indentured labourers and workers from India, China and France brought by the French colonisers to the sugarcane plantations led to a diverse mix of ethnicities, languages, customs and …
Gathering of ‘Tacit Knowledge’ through Oral History
The University of Malaya is the oldest campus in the country. Over the years, many of its scholars including professors and staff have retired; many who are distinguished and reputable experts in their fields. Hence, there is a need to gather tacit knowledge from these individuals rapidly before the information are vanished forever, particularly non-quantifiable …
Differences in Achievement Gap in Nepal: Analysis of Teacher-student Ethnic Match
The current study investigated the differences in achievement gap among the eighth-grade students in science, mathematics, social studies and the Nepali language subjects based on teacher-student ethnic match. Using the convenient sampling procedure, records of ten schools in Nepal were used for data collection. Using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test, an alternate to the independent …