Intercultural contact (IC), affording interactions between individuals from different cultures, should be an accessible goal in promoting intercultural (communicative) competence (ICC) in additional language learning context. IC happened either directly through in-person interaction or indirectly through exposure to cultural elements such as media. This study explored ways of direct and indirect IC, the levels of ICC, and their dynamic association. Data were collected from 425 participants at a Chinese university with an IC-ICC survey. Results revealed limited availability of direct in-person intercultural contact and a moderate level of ICC, with indirect IC being the primary means. The interplay between IC and ICC were reciprocal. Based on Byram’s (2021) model of ICC components, in the present study direct contact through intercultural activities within the home country and online written exchange on social media predicted the variance of knowledge of self and others, as well as skills of discovery. Indirect contact through personal connections and media, influenced intercultural attitudes and awareness, as well as skills of interaction and interpretation. Indirect contact through reading only enhanced knowledge of other cultures, while general English and cultural courses demonstrated no significant effects on ICC. Conversely, higher ICC facilitated IC, with knowledge of other cultures emerging as a particularly influential predictor of both direct and indirect IC, while intercultural attitudes mainly had an impact on indirect IC. The findings of this study highlighted the importance of indirect intercultural contact in the development of intercultural competence and the virtuous cycle of IC and ICC development.

This article focuses on one example of intercultural musicking (IcM) - when mostly non-Jewish music students experience unfamiliar methods to learn to perform klezmer which for most of them is an unfamiliar music culture - and the value later attached to this experience. We briefly introduce klezmer as a music culture and our teaching of it. We then describe the combination of visual and narrative methods - also unfamiliar to participants - which we used to explore former students’ experience of performing klezmer. We discuss illustrative data from these ensemble alumni. We review our learning from this alumni-based practice-evaluation study regarding student development of transmusicality and intercultural personhood. We conclude with our insights into the use of visual and narrative methods in exploring the value of intercultural music education.

With the intensification of globalisation and international exchange, intercultural communicative ability has become a focal point in English as a foreign language education in Chinese secondary schools. However, recent studies have indicated that the developmental construct of intercultural awareness is sometimes conflated with intercultural communicative competence. This leads to ambiguity in defining appropriate learning objectives. Using a sequential explanatory research design, this study surveyed 200 learners, followed by an interview with three learners. Questionnaire data were summarised using descriptive statistics, and thematic coding was used for analysing the interview transcripts. The results indicate that learners have positive attitudes towards cultural diversity (mean = 4.12) but fairly poor cultural knowledge (mean = 2.73) and low behavioural engagement (mean = 2.45). The thematic analysis highlights three barriers: a persistent grammar–translation orientation reinforced by exam pressure, fragmented “culture bites” offering little communicative value and showcase lessons disconnected from daily practice. The results highlight a disconnect between what the national curriculum aspires to achieve and what actually happens in classrooms. The material should include dialogue and recommendation-based materials and need to be supplemented with reflective journals and performance-based tasks to enable reflection and to promote aspects of authentic cultural interaction. Thus, it can enhance the development of intercultural awareness and provide some practical implications for promoting intercultural learning in Chinese secondary education.

In the context of globalisation, classrooms have become meeting places for learners from an increasing variety of backgrounds. Intercultural education, anchored in many national curricula, is considered a key approach to doing justice to this growing plurality among students. In relation to fostering learners’ intercultural (communicative) competence, language education plays a particularly important role. As textbooks determine much of the current teaching practice, it is vital to examine what kind of intercultural student engagement they can promote. While existing research has largely focused on cultural representations, less is known about how language activities support intercultural learning. This paper reports on a study that examined 897 activities included in the three most widely used Austrian English as foreign language (EFL) textbooks, based on a specifically developed 21-item criteria catalogue. Dichotomous coding was applied, allowing for individual and overall conclusions about the textbooks’ potential for intercultural learning. The findings indicate that, beyond frequent references to regional studies and occasional prompts for self-reflection, implementation remains limited and tends to be superficial. Unexpectedly, the oldest textbook in the sample demonstrated the strongest integration of intercultural learning. However, the consistently rare engagement with difference, prejudice, and ethnocentricity across all three textbooks underscores the urgent need for a more future-oriented and equity-focused revision of EFL materials.

This paper presents research on the potential of classroom dialogues to facilitate greater intercultural communication between undergraduate home students in the UK studying Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) and Master’s level students from China. The project put both cohorts together to discuss culture-related topics in Mandarin Chinese. Nine CFL students and 18 international students from China participated in the study. Five meetings were arranged, with the discussions being led by the students. The data collection includes videos of the group discussions and recordings of individual student reflections obtained after each discussion. Byram’s intercultural competence framework was used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that social interaction enables the participants to demonstrate intercultural competence in several dimensions (attitudes, knowledge and skills of discovery and interaction), with skills of interpreting and relating and critical cultural awareness being more limited. The reflections also showed that the participants expressed varying degrees of anxiety about the discussion. CFL students reported their foreign language anxiety, and Chinese students were mainly concerned about potential prejudice against China. Intracultural competence was also discussed in this study.

Intercultural dialogue is an essential component of intercultural citizenship, i.e., students’ ability to address complex societal issues. With more interconnected problems comes an increased need for students to communicate and collaborate with people from differing backgrounds. This preliminary study combined the framework of Intercultural Citizenship (ICit) and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) with Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Exchange (VE) to investigate the students’ development of ICit. Fifteen learners of German, consisting of university students of German in the United States and students studying at a German university, met in dyads or triads in VR over six weeks and worked on their independent projects in which they each addressed a societal environmental problem of their choice. Analyses of the data (pre-project and post-project surveys, weekly journal entries, project presentations) revealed that participants developed their intercultural competence and enhanced their critical language awareness. Some students showed a shift of emphasis: While at the beginning they were more concerned with linguistic elements of the German language toward the end of the project they were focused on the topic of their project. Finally, participants appreciated the VR setting for building relationships, communicating, and developing intercultural competence in an authentic setting. This study underscores the potential of advancing ICit and intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through a VR-VE format, emphasizing VR-VE’s potential in fostering relationships-building between students. It also offers students practical experience in navigating and appreciating the complexities of intercultural communication.

Review of Schultz, A. & Blom, M. (Eds.) (2023). Global Citizenship Education in Praxis: Pathways for Schools. Multilingual Matters.

The process of developing intercultural competence requires students to decenter from their existing frames of interpretation. Dissonance creates opportunities to question assumptions by challenging the primacy of perspectives, fostering skills to grapple with new knowledge and the ability to think more dialectically about the world. The present study examines how reflecting on dissonance engages skills and dispositions that support the development of cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between emic and etic perspectives. In an advanced French course focused on marketing and communication, embodiments of economic patriotism in advertising and marketing practices in France aimed to disrupt and destabilize assumptions about the impact and role of globalization on local product consumption and consumer behavior. The analysis of students’ self-reflections collected in two sections of the course shows that dissonance acted as a sensitizing device, signaling to students the limits of their own perspectives. The juxtaposition of multiple perspectives through the angle of marketing prompted reinterpretation, questioning, and awareness of the subjectivities of interpretation, fostering dialectical thinking skills. Imagination, interest, and curiosity were key in sustaining the decentering process and developing a readiness for cognitive flexibility.

Although virtual exchange has been widely discussed during the (post-)pandemic era, how students do (self-)reflexivity in this context has yet to be fully explored. This study examines interviews with Chinese and Finnish university students about how they reflect on their virtual exchanges by presenting them with videoclips of their encounters. Grounded in Foucault’s (1988) technologies of the self and Clark & Author 2’s (20xx) multidimensions of (self-)reflexivity, the study examines how (self-)reflexivity is co-constructed by individuals, the media and researchers (e.g., ways of doing (self-)reflexivity adopted by students). Further, we investigate how they conceptualize interculturality based on their own (self-)reflexivity. Recommendations for (online) intercultural education are given based on the findings, inviting scholars and researchers to rethink and unthink the notion of (self-)reflexivity in intercultural education.