Fostering Intercultural Competence Through an Italian-Japanese Business Language Course

Abstract

Developing intercultural competence is an important goal of world language courses. One of the curriculum designs to foster intercultural competence includes collaborative online international learning (COIL). Although the benefits of COIL have been documented, finding international partners can be a challenge. The present study addresses this issue by partnering students of two different languages, Italian and Japanese, at Emory University. We developed a business language course consisting of learners of Italian and Japanese to enhance students’ intercultural competence through collaborative work. The class met twice a week, once together in English to discover the business culture of Italy and Japan, and another time separately to learn business language skills in Italian or Japanese. Language lessons employed a task-based language teaching (TBLT) pedagogical approach and community-engaged activities so that students could work on real-life tasks. Tasks in our course were centered around Business Night preparation and execution. Business Night is an event in which students engage with representatives from Italian and Japanese companies in the local community. Seven students of Italian and nine students of Japanese participated in the study. Students’ learning reflective essays were the main data source which were analyzed qualitatively to identify emerging themes. Results showed that students gained intercultural competence through collaboration with students of the other language. Furthermore, students gained intercultural competence through observation of two faculty of different cultural backgrounds collaboratively teaching a course.

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Author Information
Mizuki Mazzotta, Emory University, United States
Simona Muratore, Emory University, United States