Intercultural Challenges in Networked Learning: Hard Technologies Meet Soft Skills by Mackie Chase, Leah Macfadyen, Kenneth Reeder and Jörg Roche This paper gives an account of themes that emerged from a preliminary analysis of a large corpus of electronic communications in an online, mediated course for intercultural learners. The goals were to test assumptions that electronic communication is...

The proficiency in multiple foreign languages is a basic prerequisite for successful communication in the tourism industry, as well as for mutual understanding among students involved in the exchange programs with different universities, especially in foreign countries. In this regard, tourism and mobility play a significant role, while intercultural contacts contribute to the development of in...

With the emergence of Web 2.0, the incorporation of internet-based social networking tools is becoming increasingly popular in the foreign language classes of today. This form of social interaction provides students with the opportunity to express and share their views with their peers, and to create profiles as well as online communities of common interests. Furthermore, through their engageme...

This paper discusses what intercultural English learning/teaching (IELT) is in English as a world Englishes (WEes) and how IELT can contribute to the development of proficiency/competence among WEes and can be fitted into actual WEes classrooms. This is to claim that IELT be a pivotal contextual factor facilitating success in proficiency/competence among all varieties of Englishes in today’s gl...

Prior research has identified different dimensions of intercultural competence (IC). However, its focus remains inconsistent across different disciplines and contexts. Existing assessment tools do not focus on all dimensions of Intercultural Competence. Instead, each focuses only on a subset of the IC dimensions. To fill this gap, this study aims (1) to provide a review of currently available a...

In today’s age of globalization, cultural awareness has become a challenge for designers of tutoring systems to include the cultural dimension in the tutoring strategy and in the learning environment. Nevertheless, cultural awareness is also a domain to be learned by a student, and a competency that can be assessed. Research on cultural intelligence has provided a new perspective and presented ...

High-quality cross-ethnic interactions contribute to college students’ development, but knowledge is scant concerning campus settings and conditions that promote these interactions. This study indicates that distinct social practices in particular settings create such conditions. Phenomenological analysis of current and past members of a voluntary community service association (a pseudonym), ap...

In this article we analyse how interculturalism, intended as a new paradigm of immigrant integration policies, has been taking shape in an Italian city, i.e. Turin, in the context of the current economic crisis. We argue for the necessity of going beyond official statements on intercultural policy by undertaking a comparative analysis of policy practices in three Neighbourhood Houses (NHs, Case...

Although previous research has theorized about team interaction differences between the German and U.S. cultures, actual behavioral observations of such differences are sparse. This study explores team meetings as a context for examining intercultural differences. We analyzed a total of 5,188 meeting behaviors in German and U.S. student teams. All teams discussed the same task to consensus. Res...

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of culture and communication style (explicit versus implicit) on people’s reactions on recommendations in intercultural collaboration. The experimental results from three intercultural collaboration teams were studied: Chinese-American, Chinese-German, and Chinese-Korean. The results indicate that Chinese participants showed more positive...