The internationalisation of Portuguese higher education implies multicultural challenges arising from the Portuguese language variation. Nevertheless, the perceptions of lecturers about their students are rarely analysed, though influencing learning. This will be the focus of our article, using focus groups. Findings show that lecturers experience…

Guided by a theoretical discussion on the effect of internationalisation at home (IaH) practices on students' acquisition of intercultural competence, we used reflexive journals and semi-structured interviews to examine 10 international and 20 domestic students' goals, progress, and challenges in their engagement in an IaH intercultural programme.…

This study investigated more than 3600 online comments responding to an incident in 2019 where a controversial memo was sent to instruct Chinese graduate students at a US university not to speak Chinese in the department. A text analysis based on Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software showed that these comments included more negative-emotion…

Adopting the notions of "identity," "investment" and "translocal scale," this study explores how international students negotiate language choices with multilingual others and construct new sociolinguistic spaces. Interview data with 12 international students at a Chinese university revealed tensions between language…

Like many institutions around the world, Chinese universities have established systems of 'local student buddies' to ensure international students' smooth transition to university life in China. This paper examines this underexplored form of internationalization-at-home by focusing on the experiences of Chinese buddies, who host international…

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…

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…

This study develops an intercultural and intergenerational model for teaching Mandarin as a second language, aimed at enhancing international students' intercultural communicative competence. Three native Mandarin-speaking kindergarten children in Taiwan, with no English knowledge, participated in a university Mandarin class with international…

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…

This paper examines the roles of different language ideologies--sets of common-sense beliefs about language and its speakers--in students' identity construction and negotiation in the context of internationalizing higher education. Along with the increasing diversity of students as English speakers, language ideologies have been critically…

Studies of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in higher education institutions have focused on students' learning outcomes and intelligibility in ELF, but little attention has been given to local students' resistance to the use of ELF. Utilising the concept of language ideology and interactive regimes, I demonstrate the tensions and dilemma arising…

This paper explores the role of a series of intercultural dialogues deployed as an intercultural intervention in scaffolding the development of interculturality of Chinese international students and Belgian undergraduates. The data highlight the fundamentally dynamic dialogic nature and process of intercultural engagement whereby the individuals…

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 article focuses on a case study of English language teachers, who are asked to teach intercultural communication to mixed classes of local and international students in Chinese Higher Education, although they do not specialize in this complex field. They were interviewed to find out about their experiences and perceptions of this 'improvised'…

In this paper, we problematise a competence-oriented reflective approach to intercultural education by drawing on four students' reflective essays about their experiential learning experiences on an "Intercultural Competence" (IC) module. Their reflections sometimes evidence much-vaunted IC attributes such as "tolerance" and…