Intercultural Competence Past, Present and Future

This book explores the benefits of teaching reflection upon one's own culture to develop intercultural competence and looks into the relationship between the proficiency level of the second language and the target culture. It introduces new debates on the concept of 'critical cultural awareness' in intercultural learning and teaching, for example the indiscriminate use of terminologies related to the idea of 'intercultural encounters'. Also, it provides insight into the relationship between language and culture using a new tool such as the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media. The presentation of different approaches, tools, barriers, educational and cultural realities, online intercultural exchange projects and concepts such as motivation, attitudes, stereotyping, otherization, and critical cultural awareness makes this book an excellent instrument not only for teachers but also for researchers, policy-makers and private and public institutions that want to explore culture and interculturality and to promote an intercultural competence and global citizenship among its learners / users / clients and / or an interculturally-oriented language education.

Introduction and Overview.- Part 1: Respecting the past and problems in the present.- 1. Language learning motivation and interculturality of Australian community/heritage language learners.- 2. Intermittent second-language intensification in the host culture: an ethnographic case study of a heritage speaker in a study-abroad program.- 3. Problems for teachers of culturally diverse classes: investigating strategies and activities to embed intercultural metalanguage in an Australian "internationalized" university context.- 4. Exploring the relationship between teacher confirmation and student motivation: the United States and Finland.- 5. Intercultural barriers to feedback in study abroad settings.- 6. Intercultural language teaching: on reflection.- Part 2: Forging the future.- 7. Attitudes towards English as a lingua franca amongst prospective EFL teachers in Spain.- 8. How critical has intercultural learning and teaching become? A diachronic and synchronic view of "critical culturalawareness" in language Education.- 9. Building an online community to contest stereotyping and otherization during study abroad.- 10. Promoting intercultural and visual media competence in the foreign language classroom with the autobiography of intercultural encounters through visual media.- 11. Intercultural competence and parsnip: voices from teachers of English in Australia.