Intercultural Communicative Competence

The aim of this article is to examine the case of adoption of characteristic features of the interlocutor’s ‘voice’ in mental health care admission interviews at a public hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We observed ethnographically that ‘speaking with the Other’s voice’ is a strategy adopted by psychoanalysts to achieve clinical goals, though they overlook its wider implications and contradictions as it involves both professionals and patients. We will argue that patients adopt bureaucratic and psychiatric terms in order to decrease asymmetry and reorient the activity conducted between the professional and the client. On the other hand, professionals tend to consider social class, age, ethnicity or religion when adopting the patient’s voice in an attempt to decrease social distance. These strategies are employed to accomplish different goals during the interview: to the patient, it is a way to show competence in the activity of medical consultation, indexing the highly valued voices of state institutions and psychiatric knowledge; to the professional, it is a strategy to achieve clinical goals by decreasing social distance and enhancing transference. Analysis will show the unequal distribution of voicing options for participants: while patients
attempt to reduce asymmetry despite social distance, psychotherapists try to decrease social distance but maintain asymmetry. In conclusion, wider implications will be discussed for intergroup communication between professionals and clients.

Dancing with Difference debates issues surrounding the teaching of culturally diverse dances in formal education in New Zealand. The global vicissitudes of migration and migrant diasporas are contingent with increased cultural diversity in classrooms, making this book timely, a leader in its field.  As part of a growing body of literature from New Zealand, it is also ground breaking providing in-depth, possibly controversial, and yet accessible coverage of a topic less widely covered internationally for far too long in comparison to the more widely practiced western aesthetic of dance improvisation, choreography and various techniques.
My extensive theoretical and practical background in western contemporary dance and education is the seed of this book. In confronting the parameters of the dance that I was trained in, the story that this book tells is unleashed.  This topic arose through doctoral research that took place in New Zealand, from an ethnographic investigation in New Zealand from 2004 to 2006. The voices of teachers, dance educators and dance specialists are at the heart of the book. The dilemmas, challenges and opportunities that they talk about may well sound familiar to an international readership, and can be seen to overlap with those faced by the larger dance and more general arts communities.
The debate, however, intersects with other fields including anthropology, ethnography, educational philosophy and socio-cultural theory as relevant to dance and dance in education. Attention is drawn to concerns and issues surrounding notions of tradition, appropriation, authenticity and acculturation and matters of social justice.

Enhancing the development of intercultural communicative competence in business and study environments explores the development of intercultural communicative competence in English language teacher training and management. The author asks how establishing effective and appropriate behaviour within intercultural communication can promote effective communication in teacher training programmes and in management training. To answer this question, the article explores how the concept of intercultural sensitivity is integrated into intercultural communicative competence in training programmes and how it can facilitate the development of overall sensitivity. In doing so, it identifies some of the enabling and hindering features that shape the development of intercultural communicative competences in English language and culture in training courses in management or university.

Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. This paper intended to provide arguments in favour of teaching and learning foreign languages through an intercultural learning approach. The acknowledgement of the fact that all learning is placed in a social context has multiple implications both in the way teaching and learning sequences are planned and in the way assessment is conducted. The assessment of the intercultural communicative competence is challenging because culture is perceived in a subjective manner. The first part of this paper intended to provide arguments in favour of teaching and learning foreign languages through an intercultural learning approach. A new competence has been coined-the intercultural communicative competence (ICC)-which incorporates certain skills, knowledge and attitudes that individuals need to develop in order to use language in socially and culturally appropriate ways in the globalized world.

Culture constitutes an inseparable part of the language teaching and learning process. Using the framework advocated by Cortazzi and Jin (1999) and Yuen (2011), this study aims to scrutinize the potential use of a vocational high school textbook to facilitate students’ intercultural communicative competence indicated by the coverage of the types of cultures comprising the source culture, target culture, and international target culture and the 4Ps elements of cultures comprising products, practices, perspectives, and persons represented in the textbook. A descriptive study by utilizing a set of checklists and interviews was employed to garner the data. Moreover, two English teachers at a school where the selected textbook was used were involved to construe their voices concerning the intercultural communicative competence learning and instruction process conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, some systematic procedures comprising initial coding, axial coding, and selective coding were employed leading to the findings, conclusions, and implications. The findings reveal all the types and elements of the cultures were found in textbooks even though with different proportions in each unit. The study reached a conclusion that the textbook was considered to have some potential for developing students’ intercultural communicative competence for it has balance cultures in terms of the source cultures, target cultures, and international target cultures. Meanwhile, internet access and students’ English proficiency were the common issues as the teachers developed the materials, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, target culture was believed by the teachers to have more benefits for students’ learning.

Belli et al. (2018) explain that the myth of the Tower of Babel, described in the Holy Bible, alludes to the intercultural relations in today’s world, because the Tower was located in a major economic and cultural center of the ancient world. Telecollaboration, defined as the use of online technologies in the area of language teaching and learning between students who are geographically distant (O’DOWD, 2013a), plays an important role in promoting intercultural interactions in the Internationalization at Home (O’DOWD, 2019) context. The latter stands for a more inclusive internationalization, achieved by domestic activities, and not only by international academic mobility (CROWTHER et al., 2000). For Luna (2018b), the process of Internationalization of the Curriculum occurs in the light of the intercultural approach (KRAMSCH, 2014), whereas Gil (2016) argues that such approach should be conceptualized based on the interaction between language and culture. This study aims at discussing how the interaction between language and culture related to the intercultural approach can lead students “to go down the Tower of Babel” through telecollaborative activities in the context of Internationalization at Home. With respect to the results, two telecollaborative domestic actions, under the author’s coordination, appear to indicate that there have been opportunities towards the process of “going down the tower”, since many concerns related to the current world, e.g. cultural differences, stereotypes and the environment, where students can take both an insider and an outsider’s perspective (KRAMSCH, 2011), are at the heart of the discussions.

l volume ha l’obiettivo di fornire degli strumenti teorici e pratici ai docenti per insegnare la cultura e la civiltà nei corsi di italiano L2/LS. La prima parte del volume affronta i punti chiave della didattica dell’italiano in prospettiva interculturale. Le riflessioni teoriche sono alla portata dei non specialisti, collegate alle esperienze quotidiane e alla realtà della classe. La seconda e la terza parte, di immediata utilità per i docenti, raccolgono delle unità di apprendimento dal livello B1 al livello C2, centrate sull’insegnamento della cultura/civiltà. I vari capitoli del volume sono costituiti dalle migliori relazioni finali del Master in Didattica dell’italiano lingua non materna dell’Università per Stranieri di Perugia degli anni accademici 2016/17, 2017/18 e 2018/19, riviste e adattate per la pubblicazione.

Saat ini pariswisata Indonesia berkembang pesat terbukti dengan banyaknya wisatawan domestik dan mancanegara menikmati sektor pariwisata di Indonesia. Untuk memperkenalkan pariwisata ke kancah internasional dibutuhkan pengetahuan yang luas tentang pariwisata di Indonesia dan kemampuan berbahasa asing untuk bisa berkomunikasi dengan wistawan asing. Makalah ini fokus pada pengembangan kemampuan bahasa asing bagi mahasiswa jurusan pariwisata. Dalam mempelajari bahasa asing, pembelajar bahasa asing dituntut menguasai kompetensi linguistik agar komunikasi yang dibangun dapat menjadi komunikasi yang bermakna, meliputi kompetensi fonologis (bunyi), morfologis dan sintaksis (kata dan pembetukan kalimat) dan pragmatis (penggunaan bahasa). Dengan menguasai ketiga kompetensi tersebut, pembelajar akan langsung dapat mendengar-berbicara-membaca-menulis dalam bahasa asing dan membangun komunikasi yang sempurna dalam bahasa asing. Pada faktanya, proses komunikasi tidaklah sesederhana yang dibayangkan. Dalam komunikasi, terutama yang berkaitan dengan komunikasi lintas budaya (cross-culture), dibutuhkan penguasaan kompetensi lain yang meliputi kompetensi komunikatif (communicative competence). Tidak hanya aspek linguistik tetapi juga aspek komunikatif bahasa asing yang perlu dikuasai oleh pembelajar bahasa asing untuk pariwisata. Makalah ini akan mendiskusikan kompetensi komunikatif yang harus dikuasai oleh pembelajar bahasa asing untuk pariwisata (ESP Tourism), yang meliputi kompetensi sosiolinguistik, kompetensi wacana, dan kompetensi strategis. Selain itu, makalah ini juga mendiskusikan pentingnya kompetensi komunikatif bagi komunikasi lintas budaya. Dengan menguasai kompetensi komunikatif ini, penguasaan bahasa asing akan menjadi lebih berarti (meaningful) dan komunikatif. Kata kunci: kompetensi komunikatif, komunikasi lintas budaya, bahasa asing

This is an article on the fact and fiction of modern day Ireland. It was commissioned by a German journal but the editors asked me to remove or adjust the first and last paragraphs because it would sound too negative to the ears of their readers (teachers). The two paragraphs reflected a personal observation of homelessness and poor hospital care in Ireland. The stats that were in the core text backed this observation up. So,  of course, I refused to even negotiate with the journal on this point.  So here is the draft article.  Perhaps the Irish government has done a little face-saving now with the exemplary care of older people during this Covid-19 crisis (but the article predates this).

This article investigates the intercultural competence and identities of under-graduate heritage language learners (HLLs) studying abroad under the auspices of the U.S. Flagship Program. Based on survey responses and interviews with HLLs from Flagship Programs across the country, the article aims to assess the preparation of HLLs for study abroad and provides recommendations on the advisability of adopting an IC Level 3 standard that HLLs must meet prior to departure. We argue HLLs in study abroad programs require a specialized approach to achieve intercultural competence, with attention to cultural differentiation, development of an intercultural identity, and appreciation of the culturally-specific nature of language use.

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become a central aim of foreign language (FL) education. Government policy in Japan advocates the integration of intercultural education into FL study, but there is a lack of literature documenting effective pedagogies for ICC development in Japanese context. Seeking to address this deficit, the researcher conducted an action research study that explored ways to facilitate the development of ICC in an academic English program at a Japanese university. Taking an approach suggested by Richards, Heather, Conway, Roskvist and Harvey (2011) in their Intercultural Language Learning (IcLL) Framework, she implemented an opportunity-oriented module which emphasized self-discovery rather than explicitly "teaching culture." This poster outlines the module content and pedagogy, and applies the data collected via student self-evaluations and interviews to examine the efficacy of the approach. broad recommendations for education practitioners seeking to cultivate ICC in FL learners are included.

La enseñanza universitaria del árabe como lengua extranjera (EALE) en los grados adaptados al EEES de lenguas modernas está condicionada por su carácter secundario y la escasa dedicación en los planes de estudios. Como consecuencia, la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa intercultural se ve mermada, por lo que resulta útil aplicar el enfoque de la enseñanza intercultural a métodos de aprendizaje autónomo en contexto móvil y ubicuo. En este trabajo se muestra el desarrollo de objetos didácticos sonoros y SCORM creados con software libre, para el aprendizaje de lengua y cultura árabes (nivel A1). Como resultado se han producido diferentes objetos que responden a tres estrategias: adaptación de adivinanzas de la cultura popular, introducción de elementos culturalmente compatibles con el entorno socio-cultural de los países arabófonos, e inclusión de retroalimentación bilingüe para favorecer la arabización del aula y el autoaprendizaje en niveles iniciales. Del estudio se concluye que el tipo de interacción desarrollada en los objetos de aprendizaje móvil y ubicuo no es el óptimo para la mejora de la competencia comunicativa intercultural, pero puede facilitar la toma de conciencia y compromiso con una postura intermedia y descentrada culturalmente, activando las asociaciones simbólicas necesarias para el aprendizaje intercultural.

La enseñanza universitaria del árabe como lengua extranjera (EALE) en los grados adaptados al EEES orientados a las lenguas modernas está condicionada por su carácter secundario y el escaso número de créditos dedicados en los planes de estudios. En esta elección lingüística minoritaria, los resultados en la competencia comunicativa intercultural se ven dificultados por la necesidad de afianzar unos mínimos conocimientos básicos en poco tiempo. Para esta problemática se ha recurrido a los métodos de aprendizaje móvil y ubicuo, que brindan la oportunidad de realizar actividades de trabajo autónomo del alumno. El objetivo de esta investigación es comprobar la eficacia de las actividades diseñadas para el refuerzo de la adquisición de esta competencia. Para ello se ha experimentado con dos tipos de objetos didácticos (archivos sonoros y objetos SCORM) que integran contenidos lingüísticos y culturales en un nivel A1. Como resultado se han producido diferentes objetos de aprendizaje, disponibles en un entorno Moodle, que responden a estos requerimientos con la asociación de producciones orales a imágenes reales o culturalmente compatibles con el entorno socio-cultural de los países árabes, la utilización de elementos de la cultura popular, y la inclusión de retroalimentación bilingüe en el diseño de objetos didácticos culturales.

Proficient can be defined as “performing in a particular art, skill or branch of knowledge with expert correctness and facility. It also passes through the series of training” (Morris, 1978). Omaggio (Omaggio, 1986) also stated that proficiency is a slightly idealized level of competence and performance, attainable by experts through extensive instruction. In addition, Chomsky (Chomsky, 1965) describes further details about the term competence and performance, while the former is referring to knowledge of the system of the language, including grammatical rules, vocabulary, and how linguistics elements can be combined to form acceptable sentences. Meanwhile the latter talks about actual production and comprehension of specific linguistic events.

One focus of teaching English as an international Language (EIL) is the development in learners of the requisite knowledge and skills to address cultural difference as it appears in both its local and global contexts (McKay SL, Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and approaches. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002; Holliday A, The struggle to teach English as an international language. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, 2005). Little attention, however, has been paid to the perspectives of Korean teachers of English regarding EIL pedagogy in the Korean context. This chapter addresses a gap in the literature by providing a contextualized account of the thinking behind curricular revisions to a culture course aimed at teaching teachers to teach EIL in Korea at the turn of the millennium. In order to measure the overall effectiveness of the course, a model of Intercultural Communicative Competence, listing a set of ideal attitudes for encounters of cultural difference, is referenced to examine the appropriate knowledge and skills for interviewing culturally-different speakers of English. The themes gleaned from the teachers’ written reflections of the intercultural interviews provide a few theoretical insights upon how EIL pedagogy can better promote intercultural communicative competence in this and other contexts.

In today’s world, exposure to other cultures has become a symbol of increasing globalization processes. Many people leave their home area to embark on a voyage of discovery and learning that affects their original cultural identity.

This study explores the life experience of independent transcultural sojourners, i.e. people who freely decide to relocate to different cultural contexts after their formative years. The inquiry covers three major themes of their intercultural experience: Multicultural identity, processes of intercultural adaptation, and change and transformation ensuing from multiple intercultural relocations. The aim of this study is to show the effects of multiple intercultural experiences on the identity of transcultural sojourners, and how they dealt with relevant emerging processes of intercultural adaptation.

Following a format suggested by Seidman (1996), five respondents were asked to recount and reflect on their transcultural experience in three separate, asynchronous interviews that covered three dimensions of their intercultural experience: past, present, and reflections. The ensuing text comprised about 16,000 words and was analyzed using both a narrative and a thematic approach using a mixed typology of categories and sub-themes made up of indigenous typology stemming from relevant scholarly literature and researcher-constructed typology suggested by the researcher and the respondents.

The analysis indicates that personal factors like mindfulness, motivation, resourcefulness, and intercultural awareness strongly influence processes of Intercultural communication competence and Multicultural identity development. Contextual factors are also relevant, as they include issues of avowed and ascribed identity. The analysis also shows no specific, generalizable link between the presence of intercultural stimuli in the original cultural milieus and the decision to relocate across cultural boundaries. Furthermore, it points to a strong relation between Piagetian constructivist learning theories and the development of ICC competence. The study also indicates that independent transcultural sojourners are in a position to negotiate the level of their integration and marginality, which in turn affects the spectrum of their Intercultural communication competence.

Finally, this study indicates the limited applicability of traditional functionalist approaches to understanding and conceptualizing processes of intercultural adaptation and multicultural identity building. It also suggests the need for a shift towards a dialogical perspective informed by systems-thinking and Chaos theory.

This study looks into Norwegian journalism curricula and how and to what degree they focus on intercultural issues. The web pages to six different schools are analyzed to see how the objectives are formulated, and how the curricula are composed. The six schools are Oslo University College, Volda University  College, Bodø University College, University of Stavanger, Gimlekollen Schoolof Journalism and Communication and University of Bergen. The findings suggest that the schools emphasize educating for practical journalistic skills on behalf of in-depth analysis of contemporary society. Oslo University College and Gimlekollen School of Journalism and Communication focus on intercultural communication and global issues to a larger extent than the others. Based on the results, the study discussed some perspectives that might be needed to equip Norwegian future journalists for a global reality, where there are no longer given and fixed skills for a journalist. Keywords: journalism educat...

En el presente artículo se analiza cómo y por qué se produjeron episodios de “comunicación fallida” entre estudiantes de Japón y de España en un proyecto de intercambio intercultural en línea, basado en el modelo Cultura, desarrollado por dos instituciones educativas de ambos países. Para ello, se compara la participación, las estrategias de interacción, y los contenidos de las interacciones entre los estudiantes, en los foros de discusión en Internet del proyecto de los grupos que han presentado mayor y menor “comunicación fallida”, y se discuten las causas de esas diferencias y de las diferencias entre individuos.

This article evaluates Prospect series (1, 2, 3) and Vision 1, the newly developed local textbooks used for teaching English as a foreign language in the Iranian junior and senior secondary schools. Liddicoat’s (2002) metacultural and Byram’s (1997, 2009) intercultural communicative competence models were adopted as the theoretical framework guiding the study. First, the textbooks were subjectively analyzed according to the above-mentioned models to see how metacultural and intercultural knowledge are included. Then, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 (male and female) teachers of the books to obtain a better understanding of the issue. The data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and subjected to content analysis. The accuracy and internal validity of the interviews were ensured using member checking (Bazeley, 2013; Flick, 2014b). The results revealed that some local aspects of the Iranian culture were incorporated in the books, but the major focus was still on grammar and teaching functions. The books, however, were found not to sufficiently deal with metacultural and intercultural knowledge development. Considering teachers’ accounts, two major themes were identified in the interview data: disassociation of culture from language and Iranianization of the discourse and contents of the textbooks. The article argues that these shortcomings can result in loss of allegiance to the principles of “active and self-reliant communicative approach” as the foundation of the textbook. The article concludes with some suggestions for revisions of the forthcoming editions of the textbooks.

The New Zealand school curriculum was last revised in 2007, at which time a new emphasis was placed on culture in language teaching. The practice of intercultural language teaching is implicit in the curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 2007) and explicit in the curriculum guide (Ministry of Education, 2013), which features a set of principles for intercultural communicative language teaching (iCLT) (Newton, Yates, Shearn, & Nowitzki, 2010). This paper presents a study on the extent to which New Zealand language teachers’ beliefs and practices are aligned with intercultural language teaching (ILT). A questionnaire administered to New Zealand language teachers included a number of items used in a seminal seven-nation comparative study conducted by Lies Sercu and her colleagues (Sercu et al., 2005), as well as other items developed from relevant literature. Expanding on previous studies’ use of item-by-item analyses, multi-item scales to measure alignment of New Zealand teacher’s beliefs and practices with ILT were developed, which yielded good internal reliabilities. The findings revealed an apparent mismatch between beliefs and practices—as was the case in Sercu et al. (2005)—with teachers being favourably disposed towards ILT but not practising the approach in their classrooms. Interpretation of the data using concepts from teacher cognition research suggested the differences represented tensions between teachers’ abstract, theoretical beliefs and their concrete, practical beliefs. We argue that supporting teachers’ applied knowledge of developing ICC will allow them to recognise that those beliefs need not be discordant.

Language acquisition is the process whereby child being exposed to hearing how language is employed within its environment. (Vygotsky, 1986). Nino and Snow (1988) stated that the prominent aspect for communicative speech is when the individual has particular purposes of conducting various social communicative act which speaker performs through verbal means. This study aims to give description on the types of the speech acts. To this end, the corpus data is taken from kholosi child. The family was living in village, Kholos is located in kookherd district of Bastak region in the western part of Hormozgan province, southern Iran. This research was single cases study, when he was between 25 and 26 months. The researcher selected case study method due to achieve in-depth understanding of single aspect of the subject under investigation, because the aims of an investigation are understanding, extension of experience and rise the knowledge regarding the research (Stake, 1978). Data was collected with method of observation and note taking. The researcher tried to gather the data through the stimulating technique. Data gathering was done for 1 month from June-July 2017. Data collecting processes carried out regularly that is every day. The analysis of data indicates that the child had verbalized 34 speech acts when he was between the ages of 25-26 months. Moreover, the child verbalized two languages of Kholosi and Bastaki either singly or as mixed utterances. The classification of the 9 speech acts represents that of child's 34 speech acts recorded when he was between 25-26 months, the child mainly employed the speech acts for the purpose of request, imitation, naming referent, complaints, rejection, identification of place or position, question, claim and drawing attention.

From early in their learning experience, foreign language (FL) learners at American universities explore socio-cultural connotations that, it is argued, are signified by FL words. Textbook authors and teachers follow an implicit canon of difference, a list of iconic words that over time—and without the benefit of empirical evidence—have come to represent essential differences in outlook between their native and the FL culture (Kubota, 2004). Despite the fast progression of the theory of teaching culture in FL learning (Kramsch, 2015; Risager, 2015), large empirical gaps remain. To-date, there is little evidence that native speakers (NSs) of the FL perceive their cultural practices, including the cultural contexts in which language is used, homogenously enough to warrant their status as cultural traits. Using the example of expressions of affection, this exploratory study drew on qualitative and quantitative questionnaire data to investigate whether German NSs’ (N=52) accounts of their own and of most fellow Germans’ language behavior converged enough to derive a comprehensive and reliable cultural norm. Results indicated a lack of consensus among German NSs’ self-reported views, eluding the assumption of a pertinent community-specific norm. Implications for FL teaching and learning, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

This study reports on the findings of a PhD study investigating the implications of the division between language and content in Modern Language degrees on students’ development of intercultural competence and criticality across four universities, two in the US and two in the UK. It draws upon the theoretical frameworks of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and Criticality, which informed both the theoretical framework and data analysis of the investigation. In particular, the study seeks to define and contextualise two new competencies, namely communicative criticality and savoir se reconnaître (awareness of otherness within self), which emerged from the analysis of the interview data.

The article presents different viewpoints on the concept of communicative competence discussing its scope and meaning as well as the relationship between communicative competence and some close terms such as linguistic competence, language competence, discourse competence, socio-cultural competence and strategic competence. The author argues that communicative competence is a generic term and the other types of competence are its components.
Furthermore, the paper aims to show the importance of developing communicative
competence in the process of Bulgarian language teaching according to the new
Bulgarian normative basis, to reveal the existing definitions of the terms, to present the relationship between the concepts of communicative competence and key competence. The author puts the accent on the existing terminological vagueness and suggests a possible solution to it.
Keywords: Bulgarian language teaching; communicative competence; language
competence; speech competences

Resumo Tendo em conta a relevância da Internet ao nível do contacto intercultural e plurilingue, e definindo-se os espaços de comunicação como lugares de emergência e de negociação de imagens acerca do Outro, analisaremos um corpus constituído por interações plurilingues romanófonas em chat, com vista ao estudo da dinâmica das imagens e estereótipos nessa situação de comunicação. Tentaremos desocultar e analisar barreiras à comunicação intercultural, algumas utopias acerca dela (em particular, o recurso a uma língua franca como solução para os problemas comunicativos) e ainda facilidades propulsoras da interação, como a relação afetiva com as línguas, os locutores e a situação de comunicação. A discussão dos dados permitirá evidenciar como as imagens e os estereótipos cruzados de uns locutores em relação aos outros, às suas línguas e culturas emergem na interação, como estimulam e alimentam a conversação e como desencadeiam momentos "felizes" de comunicação plurilingue.

La enseñanza universitaria del árabe como lengua extranjera (EALE) en los grados adaptados al EEES orientados a las lenguas modernas está condicionada por su carácter secundario y el escaso número de créditos dedicados en los planes de estudios. En esta elección lingüística minoritaria, los resultados en la competencia comunicativa intercultural se ven dificultados por la necesidad de afianzar unos mínimos conocimientos básicos en poco tiempo. Para esta problemática se ha recurrido a los métodos de aprendizaje móvil y ubicuo, que brindan la oportunidad de realizar actividades de trabajo autónomo del alumno. El objetivo de esta investigación es comprobar la eficacia de las actividades diseñadas para el refuerzo de la adquisición de esta competencia. Para ello se ha experimentado con dos tipos de objetos didácticos (archivos sonoros y objetos SCORM) que integran contenidos lingüísticos y culturales en un nivel A1. Como resultado se han producido diferentes objetos de aprendizaje, disponibles en un entorno Moodle, que responden a estos requerimientos con la asociación de producciones orales a imágenes reales o culturalmente compatibles con el entorno socio-cultural de los países árabes, la utilización de elementos de la cultura popular y cotidiana, y la inclusión de retroalimentación bilingüe en el diseño de objetos didácticos culturales.

This article provides a discourse analysis of problematic communication in office hour interactions between international teaching assistants and American college students. The goal of the article is to explicate what is termed here as ‘understanding uncertainty’, something which has received little attention in existing studies. The data under consideration consist of a number of dyadic interactions that naturally occurred during office hours. The data analyses revealed that the type of understanding uncertainty as defined here was displayed and managed in six types of reformulations. The findings suggest that reformulation may be used as an interactive strategy to achieve mutual understanding across linguistic and sociocultural boundaries in educational contexts.

This paper aims to investigate intercultural interaction experiences of international students and local instructors in an institution
of higher learning in Malaysia, namely, Universiti Utara Malaysia. The interaction experiences focus on verbal communication
only. A qualitative approach was used to elicit information on verbal communication and the challenges faced by the participants
involved, which were the Arab students and Malay instructors. Data was collected in 2010/2011. The findings show that there are
challenges that both parties face when communicating verbally. The understanding of challenges faced by communicators in
intercultural encounters may provide useful pointers for developing intercultural communication competence.

This study explores the potential of teaching intercultural competence in foreign language courses through the example of a pedagogical experience.
The main purpose of this investigation is the increased understanding of my practice in order to reconceptualise it as one of a social justice educator.
The study incorporates insights from critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism, and intercultural competence theories and examines the ways in which the research process has influenced and reshaped my practice.