This essay shows how one professor teaching "Introduction to Buddhism" sought to counteract his students' view that Chinese and Tibetan forms of Buddhism represented a deviation from a "pure" Indian Buddhism rather than worthwhile forms of creativity and religiosity in themselves. A simple comparative assignment that asked a…

The paper focuses on the communication of three bilingual couples, each speaking a different lingua franca (LF). Positioning theory offers a methodological framework to explain language choice in interactive positioning within personal contacts. A comparative view of the couples' storylines benefits from the differences between them. The analysis…

This article presents a model of intercultural learning that may be used in the planning and implementation of citizenship education in foreign/second/world language teaching. The Cycle model of intercultural learning aims at the development of global citizenship and comprises four phases: noticing, comparing, reflecting and interaction. Among the…

In this conversation, two U.S.-trained German language and culture educators discuss their approaches to intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Working in different educational settings -- in a German and Global Studies program at a public university in the U.S., and at the Institute for Intercultural Communication of a German university…

With the rise of so-called fake news as a global phenomenon, interest in propaganda analysis has advanced along with the recognition of the fundamentally social process of interpretation. In this essay, we explore the use of cross-national dialogue among German and American undergraduate students who are seeking to better understand how media…

This paper draws draw on conceptualisations of language as heteroglossic to examine whether and how multilingual practices and plurilingual pedagogies are enacted as instructional strategies in two multilingual English-medium universities in western Canada. Multilingual educational contexts have the potential to comprise 'translanguaging spaces'…

As stated by Valero-Garcés (2006, p. 38), the new scenario including public service providers and users who are not fluent in the language used by the former has opened up new ways of linguistic and cultural mediation in current multicultural and multilingual societies. As a consequence, there is an ever increasing need for translators and…

The assumption that each culture has its own distinctive identity has been generally accepted in the discussion of cultural identities. Quite often identity formation is not perceived as a dynamic and interactive ongoing process that engages other cultures and involves change in its responses to different challenges at different times. I will…

The vexed question of the relationship between "language" and "culture" will be the starting point. I do not propose to "resolve" the question but to consider some ways in which relationships between cultural awareness and language awareness might be conceptualised and then have some impact on language education. By…

Despite research showing the broad impact that the study of foreign languages has on the cognitive development of young people, and despite the importance of language expertise for America's economic and geopolitical interests in the twenty-first century, the teaching of world languages has been marginalized within the American educational system…

In 2005 the BBC reported that in reply to a survey conducted by the European Commission, 66% of English respondents indicated that they spoke no language other than their mother tongue. This proportion was far higher than in any other European Union nation taking part but compares fairly favorably with the United States, where one-fourth of adults…

This paper, drawing upon multidisciplinary studies such as critical and cultural studies, literary criticism, intercultural communication and second language acquisition, suggests a specific literary genre--"migratory literature"--to support intercultural competence for learners of Chinese. We begin by elucidating key…

This article describes the logical and rhetorical grounds for a multicultural pedagogy that teaches students the knowledge and skills needed to interact creatively in the public realm betwixt and between cultures. I begin by discussing the notion of incommensurability. I contend that this hypothesis was intended to perform a particular rhetorical…

In 2006, a secondary English and feminist studies teacher created a course and designed a study around a reading exchange for eighth-grade girls from two vastly different communities. Girls from a school in a northeastern state read young adult novels and wrote about their reading and related topics with girls from Washington, DC on a wikispace…

The game SO LONG SUCKER was designed in the United States in 1964 with the aim of showing how potentially unethical behavior necessary for winning was inherent in the game's incentive structure. Sessions with East Asian participants, however, led to very different game dynamics in which collaborative rather than antagonistic behaviors occurred.…