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1 – 10 of 67The purpose of this study is to theorize that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be integrated in English language learning with a focus on cultural learning of both…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to theorize that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be integrated in English language learning with a focus on cultural learning of both home and target language.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study used a systematic methodology to conceive the language and home-culture integrated online learning (LHIOL) curriculum design based on relevant conceptual frameworks and gather qualitative data from focused group interviews of 30 teachers and 3,000 students’ open-ended questionnaires, along with learning artifacts to identify major themes.
Findings
CALL, used as cultural and linguistic material, helps students embrace their cultural identities, especially ethnic minorities, capitalize on their distinctive values, and appreciate and empathize with other languages and cultures. The instructors advocate for localizing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) educational content into Vietnamese culture, using real multimedia resources. However, the LHIOL curriculum faced systemic constraints regarding competitions between linguistic and cultural instruction, teachers’ refusal to recognize ICC’s importance and recognition of an explicit link between virtual cultural learning and their lives.
Originality/value
LHIOL is a preliminary practical effort to suggest how a cultural education from one’s native tongue can be integrated into a culture-focused English/Western language environment. By incorporating fundamental concepts that underpin the integration of language and culture as well as CALL, improving ICC offers a framework that can be applied to elucidate cultural learning.
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Baburhan Uzum, Bedrettin Yazan, Sedat Akayoglu and Ufuk Keles
This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.
Design/methodology/approach
Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.
Findings
The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.
Research limitations/implications
When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.
Practical implications
Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.
Social implications
Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.
Originality/value
This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.
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Tiare Gonzalez-Vidal and Paul Moore
The professional experiences of teachers of languages and cultures, along with the learning experiences of their students, are embedded in educational contexts, which themselves…
Abstract
Purpose
The professional experiences of teachers of languages and cultures, along with the learning experiences of their students, are embedded in educational contexts, which themselves are informed, and constrained, by national language policies. This study aims to explore 51 English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) secondary teachers’ perceptions of Web-based technology use to enhance students’ cultural awareness in Chile. Specifically, the study investigated teachers’ use of Web-based resources for cultural awareness, culture content and technology-based tasks, as well as perceived challenges in implementing technology-enhanced language and culture learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a mixed-method research design combining online questionnaires and interviews as data collection tools. Results were analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics and content analysis.
Findings
The teachers in this study emphasized reflection in their classrooms but did not take a critical approach. Their approach to culture was limited to a “country-specific” view, and technology-enhanced activities accentuated differences rather than promoting meaningful intercultural exchange. Challenges to the successful implementation of technology-enhanced language and culture learning included a somewhat out-of-date theoretical approach to intercultural learning in the national curriculum, a nationwide approach to professional development that lacks a focus on critical reflection and inadequate support for effective use of technologies in schools.
Practical implications
The study highlights the importance of periodically revising a country’s EFL language policies, communication methods, support mechanisms and implementation factors to ensure classroom integration of language, culture and technology education.
Originality/value
This paper explores the tension between macro-level national policy and teachers’ perspectives on their classroom practice, including the contextualized limitations of implementing national policy at the micro level.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral education. Pandemics throughout history have generated new educational theories and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral education. Pandemics throughout history have generated new educational theories and practices, accelerated some trends and signalled the abrupt end of others. The unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have particularly impacted upon First Nations and transcultural communities and People of Colour throughout the globe. A second significant recent global trend that occurred at the height of the pandemic was the reignited #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) protest campaign. This campaign drew attention to the vast inequities faced by black, transcultural (migrant, refugee, culturally diverse and international) and Indigenous peoples and triggered rapid action in higher education institutions against racism and unconscious bias.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper draws upon postcolonial/decolonial theory to demonstrate how the COVID pandemic and #BLM movement prompts us to revitalise doctoral education.
Findings
These two issues have created renewed urgency around the need to decolonise higher education and a desire to transform the “business-as-usual” geopolitical power dynamics that continue to privilege Northern knowledge over culturally diverse knowledge systems from First Nations and transcultural contexts. A key site where special opportunities exist to effect this transformation lies in doctoral education. Doctoral education is a significant location of new knowledge creation and the development of the world’s future researchers.
Research limitations/implications
Applying post/decolonial theory enables one to rethink how doctoral education should be changed to work towards greater decolonisation.
Originality/value
This study applies Santos’ ideas about “the sociologies of emergence” in the global South to think about how doctoral education should be reconstructed as a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice.
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Yan Chen, Kendall Hartley, P.G. Schrader and Chenghui Zhang
The purpose of this study is to examine relevant demographic and socio-economic factors as they relate to progress towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine relevant demographic and socio-economic factors as they relate to progress towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and intercultural sensitivity for ethnic-minority Latinx middle school English learners (ELs) using a mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge-featured writing practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Through the theoretical lens of funds of knowledge, this three-year study implemented a survey-based quasi-experimental design centered on the Latinx ELs’ ICC development with the implementation of an intercultural sensitivity questionnaire (Chen and Starosta, 2000). The authors first investigated the relationship between ELs’ intercultural sensitivity and associated demographic and socio-economic factors. The authors then examined the changes of ELs’ intercultural sensitivity. Over ten weeks, the intervention group completed five funds-of-knowledge-featured narrative essays using pen and paper and mobile-based writing tools alternatively.
Findings
Findings indicated that ELs’ intercultural sensitivity increased as they advanced to a higher-level grade from sixth to eighth. The embedded mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge writing practice as intervention promoted ELs’ intercultural sensitivity in interaction engagement, respect of cultural differences, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. Among the variables, interaction enjoyment was portrayed the most. ELs who reported not speaking English at home were statistically significant in this experiment.
Originality/value
This study acknowledges the robust and variance of funds of knowledge as a niche to address the interculturality and hybridity of ELs’ cultural practices accumulated through Latinx ELs’ family socialization and social development using mobile-assisted writing practice. This study could provide implications for optimizing inclusive experience to promote computer-assisted language learning in a contemporary, postcolonial global world.
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Yuan Chen, Ziyue Yang, Bingsheng Liu, Dan Wang, Yan Xiao and Anmin Wang
This study aims to investigate the influence mechanism of expatriates' cultural intelligence (CQ) on expatriate effectiveness (task performance and premature return intention)…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the influence mechanism of expatriates' cultural intelligence (CQ) on expatriate effectiveness (task performance and premature return intention), identifying work engagement as a mediator and cultural distance as a boundary condition.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the conservation of resource theory and the person–environment fit (P–E fit) theory, a moderated mediation model is built. Working with a sample of 303 international construction expatriates collected by snowball sampling, the hypotheses are tested by using the structural equation model analysis.
Findings
Work engagement partially mediates the relationship between expatriates' CQ and task performance, as well as fully mediates the relationship between expatriates' CQ and premature return intention. Cultural distance moderates the positive relationship between CQ and work engagement, as well as moderates the mediating effects of work engagement.
Research limitations/implications
The impacts of potential moderators (e.g. work–family conflict and organizational culture) on the relationship between CQ and expatriate effectiveness have not been considered in this study.
Practical implications
This study is useful for international construction firms to optimize the allocation of human resources.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the expatriate literature by adding empirical evidence to explain the influence mechanism of expatriates' CQ on expatriate effectiveness.
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Kateřina Berková, Dagmar Frendlovská, Martina Kuncová, Robert Füreder and Margarethe Überwimmer
Currently, owing to the influence of rapid globalisation, the issue of international and cross-cultural implementation of cross-cultural relationships is being widely discussed…
Abstract
Purpose
Currently, owing to the influence of rapid globalisation, the issue of international and cross-cultural implementation of cross-cultural relationships is being widely discussed. This is also related to the readiness of graduates for international cooperation. The objective of this qualitative study is to identify and compare the requirements of company representatives from the Czech Republic – the Vysocina Region and Austria (Region Upper Austria) regarding the readiness of graduates to entering the workforce and the intercultural differences between the relevant regions.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 20 Czech and Austrian companies from the relevant regions participated in the research. The results were obtained through in-depth guided interviews and a comparative method.
Findings
The qualitative study has theoretical implications in the context of new findings in the field of research. It contributes to the knowledge relating to the preparation of graduates for entering the workforce, and in the context of intercultural development, it extends this knowledge with the identified weaknesses of the mentioned preparation at the level of Czech or Austrian education.
Originality/value
The most effective and probable approach to enhance the development of cross-cultural competences in particular appears to be the integration of new techniques and content of education in the form of new subjects in cooperation with academics and practitioners from the particular country. Collaboration with these experts can build students' knowledge and skills from an intercultural environment to the highest degree possible.
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This study provides a meta-review of global virtual team (GVT)–related reviews, creating a resource that highlights dominant themes, research trends and shifts in topics over time…
Abstract
Purpose
This study provides a meta-review of global virtual team (GVT)–related reviews, creating a resource that highlights dominant themes, research trends and shifts in topics over time culminating in a summary of opportunities for future research. By analyzing and grouping the evidence presented in previous research, this meta-review provides key insights toward future research and managerial implications.
Design/methodology/approach
This meta-review identifies 35 existing GVT-related reviews across 32 publication outlets, providing a longitudinal and cross-disciplinary view of GVT research to date.
Findings
Results of the analysis reveal over time that there has been a largely adopted reconceptualization of the GVT paradigm toward a continuum of virtuality. There has been a shift in the view of the cross-cultural and global components of GVTs toward a recognition that a greater variance of dimensionality exists. Additionally, popular themes across the literature emerge, notably, virtuality, concepts of culture, trust, leadership and communication technology.
Originality/value
As a multidisciplinary GVT-focused meta-review, this study complements previous efforts by taking a tour across this wide topic and is dedicated to those who are researching, teaching, working and managing GVT-related strategies. The reviews selected represent work published across multiple literature streams, providing a comprehensive and forward thinking perspective.
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This research paper aimed to investigate the affordances of using virtual reality (VR) in teaching culture among in-service teachers of teaching Persian to speakers of other…
Abstract
Purpose
This research paper aimed to investigate the affordances of using virtual reality (VR) in teaching culture among in-service teachers of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages (TPSOL) in Iran.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative case study, conducted at two Iranian universities, used purposeful sampling to select 34 eligible in-service Persian teachers from a pool of 73. Data collection used an open-ended questionnaire and interviews.
Findings
Before the TPSOL in-service training workshop, teachers expressed their reservations regarding the use of VR to teach culture in TPSOL courses. The emerged themes were “skepticism toward effectiveness,” “practicality concerns,” “limited awareness of VR applications,” “technological apprehension” and “prevalence of traditional teaching paradigms.” During the post-workshop interview, it was discovered that the teachers’ perceptions of VR in teaching culture had undergone a positive shift. The workshop generated emergent themes that reflected positive perceptions and affordances for using VR to teach culture in TPSOL, including “enhanced cultural immersion,” “increased student engagement,” “simulation of authentic cultural experiences,” and “facilitation of interactive learning environments.”
Research limitations/implications
One primary limitation is the lack of prior experience with VR for teaching practices in real-world classrooms among the participants. While the study aimed to explore the potential of VR in enhancing pedagogical approaches, the absence of participants with prior exposure to VR in educational contexts may impact the generalizability of the findings to a broader population. Additionally, the study faced practical constraints, such as the unavailability of sufficient facilities in the workshop. As a result, the instructor had to project the VR cont7ent on a monitor, potentially diverging from the immersive nature of true VR experiences. These limitations offer opportunities for future research to refine methodologies and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of integrating VR into teaching practices.
Originality/value
Extensive research has been conducted on the effectiveness of VR in language education. However, there is a significant gap in research on TPSOL, which is considered a less commonly taught language. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the use of VR in the TPSOL through the lenses of in-service teachers. As part of a larger investigation, this qualitative inquiry focuses on the perceptions of in-service teachers about VR, with a particular emphasis on the cultural understanding of the Persian language.
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Pilar Rodríguez-Arancón, María Bobadilla-Pérez and Alberto Fernández-Costales
This study aims to delve into the interplay between didactic audiovisual translation (DAT) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL), exploring their combined impact on the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to delve into the interplay between didactic audiovisual translation (DAT) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL), exploring their combined impact on the development of intercultural competence (IC) among learners of English as a foreign language (EFL).
Design/methodology/approach
Using a quasi-experimental approach with a quantitative research design, the study analyses the outcomes of a questionnaire answered by 147 students across 15 language centres in Spanish Universities. These participants actively engaged in completing the lesson plans of the Traducción audiovisual como recurso didáctico en el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras project, a Spanish-Government funded research initiative aimed at assessing the effects of DAT on language learning.
Findings
The current study confirms the reliability of the instrument developed to measure students’ perceived improvement. Beyond validating the research tool, the findings of the current study confirm the significant improvement in intercultural learning achieved through DAT, effectively enhancing students’ motivation to engage in language learning.
Research limitations/implications
The current research solely examines students enrolled in higher education language centres. This paper closes with a CALL for additional research, including participants from other educational stages, such as primary or secondary education. In the broader context of CALL research, this study serves as a valuable contribution by exploring the potential of DAT in fostering IC in EFL settings.
Originality/value
This research confirms the potential of DAT and CALL to promote students’ learning process, as the combination of these approaches not only yields linguistic benefits but also intercultural learning.
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