This study investigated the intercultural inclusion of international students in Saudi universities, especially the language and culture barriers while interacting with local peers within and beyond classroom settings. Qualitative data gathered through interviews with 12 international students revealed that the Arabic language, shared human…

The paper investigates Chinese university EFL teachers' beliefs about culture teaching and their instructional practices in classrooms. A qualitative approach, combining interviews and classroom observations, was conducted with a group of 38 university EFL teachers in Shanghai, China. The findings reveal that culture teaching is perceived mainly…

This ethnographic study reports four teenage Chinese EAL students' learning journey in a UK independent school. Due to linguistic barriers, they encountered significant challenges in their social lives and academic studies. The school arranged EAL lessons to improve students' English proficiency. However, participants were concerned that the EAL…

Western-centric perceptions of knowledge, behaviors and communication are more dominant and often obscure underrepresented non-western communities. This renders the mission of intercultural communication education (ICE) necessarily encompassing the reconsideration of these hierarchies and differentialisms. This article argues that by…

With rising nationalism across the world, and increased tension between East and West, internationalisation of tertiary education is arguably more important than ever before. This paper reports on a study of international and local students' experiences of intercultural encounters in two Hong Kong universities. More than 100 students from all over…

Using intergroup contact and stigma management communication theories, this work examines the effect of cultural teaching and learning in Spanish language classes on cultural stigma, social distance, and ethnocentrism. Additionally, this study examines how individuals respond to positive and negative messages about foreigners. Survey results…

The issue of representation has polarised public discourse and in recent years the decolonisation of research methodologies has entered the field of interculturality. However, universalistic discourses of dialogue and tolerance can be harnessed to silence certain voices by construing them as 'other'. With this paper I confront this conceptual knot…

In this paper, we explore intercultural communication as dialogue occurring in a third space. Through seven students' reflective essays on group-based intercultural learning, we analyse the ever-shifting communicative space that interlocutors produce through negotiating the meanings of difference and power and their dialogic relations with the…

Intercultural teaching often emphasizes exposure to and understanding of cultural differences. Although it acknowledges the importance of cultural self-awareness, little research has been done to explore how such a goal is achieved. This article adopts collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to explore the creation, development, and use of variations…

This study examines the acculturation characteristics of Chinese students in the context of a multicultural classroom. The Chinese yin-yang philosophy is used to provide another dimension of interpretation and analysis in addition to Berry's acculturation strategy framework. Qualitative data over a five-year period reveal their changing…

This study seeks to analyze book group discussions on translated fiction in terms of micro public spheres. The paper explores the potentials of this perspective based on ethnographic data collected through participant observation with reading groups located across Britain. The discussion demonstrates the public sphere in operation beyond the…

This paper will carry out a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the ways in which the 'discourse of thirdness' is constituted within the field of intercultural studies. It will firstly critically review the autochthonous conceptualisations of the Third Space and other metaphors of 'thirdness' in language education. It will then use corpus…

This paper evaluates the potential of intercultural contacts portrayed in the content and tasks of a Tunisian EFL textbook for third-year secondary school students to develop the model of the intercultural speaker. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the elements of intercultural contacts reveal that this portrayal is imbalanced in terms…

This paper investigates the role of interpreters in addressing cultural differences in the context of a cross-cultural collaborative teacher professional development project. Based on positioning theory, this study employed interpreter-mediated interactions and interviews to reveal the complex roles that interpreters played when interpreting…

This article is an investigation into the characteristics of intercultural competence in a face-to-face tandem language learning context between English and Chinese postgraduate students. It examines idiomatic meaning exchanges through the adoption of a conversation analytical perspective. It is a contribution to the existing body of knowledge on…