Developing proficiency and intercultural competence are goals promoted by the Modern Language Association and widely shared by postsecondary second language programs across the United States. Although the development of proficiency has been studied extensively in this context, comparatively little is known about how intercultural competence…

Background/purpose: This study aims to analyze the need for local wisdom-based Indonesian as a Foreign Language (BIPA) evaluation materials for Thai students and propose a design to enhance language proficiency and cultural awareness. The growing interest in learning Indonesian stems from diverse purposes, including business, academics, and…

Study abroad provides international students with diverse linguistic and cultural exposure. However, there are limited accounts of graduate students' international mobility from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Therefore, this study explored the experiences, challenges, and strategies of English use among ASEAN doctoral…

The study reported in this article examined the dynamics of plurilingualism, ethnicity, and effectiveness in intercultural encounters among a sample of 221 participants from Chinese universities via an online questionnaire and a situational judgement test comprised of three scenarios involving plurilingual and intercultural encounters. It employed…

For more than three decades, there has been a paradigm shift in approaches to the teaching of world languages in the classroom. The shift has been influenced heavily by the literature on second language acquisition and teaching as well as the development and implementation of the national standards for teaching and learning. The purpose of this…

Qualities of effective teachers matter because teachers are the number one school-related factor that impacts on student achievement. Although researchers in the United States have studied frameworks for evaluating teacher effectiveness, these frameworks are not focused on teachers working in international schools. Thus, they may not reflect the…

Many definitions and models of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) have emerged over the years, predominantly influenced by Euro-American perspectives. To explore this concept within diverse cultural contexts, this study delves into ICC in the Chinese setting using a qualitative approach. Byram's ICC model served as the theoretical…

International students frequently encounter cultural and language barriers abroad, which can disrupt their integration and negatively impact their academic performance, social well-being, and increase feelings of loneliness and anxiety. In an effort to explore the intricate dynamics between cultural intelligence, linguistic confidence,…

Language difficulties can be a problem for foreign students studying in Hungary: they see as Hungarians do not speak foreign languages, which hinders the well-being of foreigners. At the same time, students studying at Hungarian universities also have different cultural expectations: it is important for them to gain cultural experiences, expand…

Amid the abundance of studies on translation errors in Thailand, a scarcity remains especially within the multi-linguacultural context of Thailand's Deep South. To address this gap, this study aims to examine Thai-English and English-Thai translation errors encountered by 232 Thai EFL university students studying English in three universities…

Spanish and French majors at our small, private, Southern U.S. liberal arts institution must study abroad for an entire semester, yet students embark and return with widely disparate levels of language and intercultural learning. To more fully foster learning-laden semester-long study abroad experiences we changed the curriculum and now majors…

In the Yoruba community, proverbs are regarded as Yoruba philosophy repository, with wisdom, brevity, criticality, and stored experience that are believed to be a viable tool of acquiring the language. Hinging on reversing language shift model theory, the study investigated: (a) whether Yoruba proverbs are effective in the acquisition of Yoruba…

This literature review explores the impact of music on tonal language learning, with a focus on Mandarin Chinese. Utilising searches across major databases such as ERIC (EBSCO), ProQuest Central, Google Scholar, and Web of Science from 2005 to 2024, we selected relevant peer-reviewed English-language articles examining music's role in aiding tone…

This article examines how Japanese university educators understand the role of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in higher education. Data were collected by means of questionnaires and responsive interviews with 22 educators, then analyzed with the use of grounded theory and the constant comparative method. Four notions of GCE emerged from the…

Intercultural Competence Assessment (ICA) has recently become a central issue in applied linguistics in general, and language testing and assessment in particular. The present paper aims to investigate the difference between native and non-native assessment experts' beliefs about incorporating ICA in the Language Proficiency Assessment (LPA).…