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This research explores the issues of applying bilingual education in China Panorama Curriculum, with purpose to enhance cross-cultural adaptability of ASEAN students in higher education. Employing questionnaires and interviews with a longitudinal analysis based on factors like age, gender, nationality, and time in China, to investigate the cross-cultural adaptability of ASEAN students in China, focusing on psychological and learning environment adaptation. The research uncovers challenges in adapting to the Chinese cultural landscape and proposes solutions. Cultural disparities between China and ASEAN nations are identified, with the bilingual education approach proving beneficial in fostering classroom participation and cultural exchange. However, psychological challenges persist, impacting mental well-being and academic performance. The research reveals the limited social life of ASEAN students in China, confined to campus interactions, suggesting improvements in English proficiency among teachers and encouraging active student participation in social activities. While bilingual education holds promise, the research emphasizes the need for comprehensive strategies, including teacher training and addressing socioeconomic disparities. The findings offer insights into cross-cultural adaptation complexities, highlighting the potential of bilingual education within the Panorama Curriculum. Caution is advised when generalizing beyond ASEAN students in Guangxi, China, considering potential variations in cultural, social, and educational contexts internationally.

In the field of applied linguistics, Diane Larsen-Freeman is widely recognized, among her numerous contributions, as the originator of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). Over the years since her seminal publication (Larsen-Freeman, 1997), CDST has evolved into a meta-theory that guides the field's thinking on a variety of developmental phenomena, not least the study of second language acquisition. As its theoretical potency rises, so does the need to achieve a tangible understanding of CDST's core constructs. In this paper, we empirically examine one such construct, co-adaptation, in the context of asynchronous dyadic interaction. A data corpus of 39 emails sent between two college students in China and the United States over the course of seven weeks is analyzed using NVivo 12. Co-adaptation is observed at the pragmatic, discourse, and linguistic levels. True to the spirit of CDST, we describe, and discuss the nuances of, our findings. Considering the novelty of our approach to data analysis, we end by reflecting on the limitations specific to our study, as well as worthwhile directions for future pursuits.

Recent evidence suggests that not many studies on technology-supported cross-cultural learning considered creating authentic, immersive learning environments and addressing the language barrier in communication among representatives of different cultures which are very critical matters in the field. The present study attempted to address this gap. To this end, we designed the cross-cultural learning activity supported by 360-degree video technology and artificial intelligence-based translation tool. Eleven students from China and thirteen students from Russia participated in the activity. They used 360-degree video technology to create virtual reality (VR) cultural content which enabled authentic, immersive cross-cultural learning experiences. They also used AI-based translation technology to bridge the language barrier when communicating and exchanging culture-related information with each other in their native language. With such learning activity, we aimed to facilitate cross-cultural knowledge and attitudes of the participants. We used the convergent mixed methods design, i.e. both qualitative and quantitative data were collected, related and interpreted in response to the research questions. Personal meaning maps (PMMs) were used to measure knowledge of the students in three aspects (i.e. categories of cross-cultural knowledge, number of related and unrelated concepts, and emerged concepts) before and after the activity. We compared PMM outcomes obtained before the learning activity with those obtained after the activity using a statistical method in order to explore cross-cultural knowledge development. In addition, development in cross-cultural knowledge of the students after participating in the learning activity was explored based on the qualitative data. That is, content of 360-degree videos was analyzed and such qualitative findings were used to support the results of the statistical test. Next, cross-cultural attitudes development was explored in four aspects (i.e. interest, curiosity, openness, and respect) using interviews. Finally, participants' perceptions of the technological support were also researched. The results showed that the cross-cultural learning activity supported by technologies were beneficial for knowledge and attitudes development. More specifically, the activity helped the students acquire cross-cultural knowledge in eight categories. The number of related concepts significantly increased whereas the number of unrelated concepts significantly decreased because of the activity. The students were able to identify, compare and contrast cultural differences, and they maintained an open and respectful attitude toward the culture of their partners after the study; they lacked such knowledge and abilities prior to the study. Finally, the participants positively perceived the technological support. Based on the results, it is suggested that educators and researchers employ 360-degree video and translation technologies in their design of learning activities when focusing on cross-cultural knowledge and attitudes development. Such approach was found to be beneficial to facilitate learning outcomes as authentic and immersive cross-cultural learning environments were created and the language barrier was addressed. The study makes the following contributions: (1) we designed the learning activity supported by 360-degree video and translation technologies to create authentic and immersive cross-cultural learning environments in which the language barrier was addressed, (2) we tested the feasibility of the learning activity supported by technology to facilitate cross-cultural knowledge and attitudes of the participants, and (3) we explored the accuracy rate of translation technology and perceptions of students regarding the learning activity supported by technology. The authenticity of the present study lies in the creation of the technology-supported cross-cultural learning environment in which the students had authentic and immersive learning experiences and were able to communicate with each other without any language barriers.

China has actively internationalized its doctoral education by funding students to study abroad via the China Scholarship Council. Nevertheless, little is known about the scholarship recipients' perceptions of their study sojourn, especially those on short-term exchange programs. Based on 100 visiting doctoral students' study reports, the study employed a sentiment analysis and was guided by the ecological system theory to untangle how this cohort affectively evaluated academic and non-academic dimensions of the study sojourn as a multi-layered ecological system. Via a computer-based SKEP analysis, the study contributes new objective insights regarding the perceived nature of an overseas sojourn, which is predominantly positive. In particular, it reveals positive perceptions regarding the funder and institutional prestige, indicating that the recipients' increasing national pride may be harnessed as a soft pulling force for nation-building. This paper ends by offering implications that may potentially benefit doctoral education in China and other countries.

Despite the rising awareness that mobile technologies can be used as viable options for additional support for intercultural learning, few studies have been conducted to explore the feasibility of using mobile apps to develop intercultural competence (IC) from the perspectives of learners' acceptance and user experiences. This study applied a mixed-method approach to investigate factors affecting university students' acceptance of using mobile apps to develop their IC. Quantitative survey data were collected from 671 Chinese university students using measures developed based on the extended technology acceptance model. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that students' perceived usefulness (PU) of mobile apps supporting IC development positively influenced their mobile application efficacy, subjective norms, and perceived enjoyment. Additionally, their perceived ease of use (PEU) concerning the apps was positively associated with their mobile application efficacy, perceived enjoyment, and previous experiences, while being negatively associated with mobile application anxiety. PU and PEU were also found to be positively related to students' attitudes towards and behavioral intention to use apps for intercultural learning. Qualitative interviews were subsequently conducted with six students to investigate the underlying reasons for the predictors identified quantitatively following their actual use of three recommended apps over three consecutive weeks. The results of content analysis uncovered a range of categories that provided further insights into the statistical findings. Implications of the findings were discussed in the context of technology-enhancing intercultural education.

Despite a clarion call to cultivate EFL teachers' intercultural competence (IC) in supporting their classroom practice, there is a lack of empirical research on how pre-service EFL teachers develop their IC. To fill the gap, the study examined two pre-service EFL teachers' IC development during a service-learning programme in China. Drawing on data from interviews, reflective journals, and researchers' field notes, the findings revealed two IC development patterns derived from the Chinese notion of harmony, i.e., "prioritising harmony" and "seeking harmony in diversity," shaped by the participants' motivations, personality traits, and contextual influences. Implications are provided to facilitate pre-service teachers' IC development in culturally diverse contexts.

As a public compulsory course for Non-English majors in colleges and universities, College Public English should not only develop students' language and cross-cultural communication skills, but also cultivate their correct outlook on life, values, world and native land emotion, which is consistent with the ideological-political goals of the course. English textbook is the guarantee for the smooth progress of English teaching, and more importantly, it is an important carrier to practice Chinese teaching ideas. This paper mainly focuses on how to integrate ideological-political elements into English teaching from textbook perspective. It discusses the measures of integrating ideological-political education into College English courses from four aspects: teaching objectives, unit themes, and knowledge points, grammatical structure and word explanation. It is finally pointed out that exploring and integrating ideological-political elements in textbooks is the key link to realize ideological-political education in College Public English courses.

This study used a qualitative research methodology to classify and examine the large amount of information which was collected through field research. The research objective was to (1) An investigation of Hua'er song development in Gansu and Ningxia, China; and (2) Examine the characteristics of Hua'er song in Gansu and Ningxia, China. The research designed the interview and observation forms related to the interviews and observations. The interviews were divided into 3 groups: expert informant, inheritance, and the masses. The study's findings are as follows: (1) Gansu Hezheng and Ningxia Haiyuan are both ethnic minority enclaves containing more than fifty percent of the Hui ethnicity. All faith is isism. Share similar ethnic taboos. Due to the geographical and cultural differences between the two places, the transmission of Hua'er song has changed; and (2) The Hui nationality performs a crucial, irreplaceable function in the process of Hua'er's spread, which cannot be played by any other ethnicity. Directly linked with the material interactions and activities of humanity. Not only does the Hui spirit penetrate the transmission process of Hua'er song, but it also permeates the literature of Hua'er song.

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented educational challenges. In order to ensure the continuity of formal education and to compensate for interruptions, emergency remote teaching practices were initiated worldwide. Like all other courses, foreign language teaching applied internet technologies as a teaching-learning media during the pandemic. Internet-based intercultural exchange between institutions of different cultural / national origin was already a widespread phenomenon before the pandemic. These intercultural activities have the potential of enhancing foreign language learning during emergency conditions such as pandemics as they provide opportunities for communication for real purposes in distance learning contexts. In order to gather in depth data, this study adopted a phenomenological design of a qualitative research model. The study explored the perceptions of Chinese and Turkish EFL learners based on their first-hand experience regarding an online intercultural exchange activity. When the qualitative data obtained from the individual interviews with volunteer participants were analyzed, it was concluded that the participants valued the activity and believed it contributed to their foreign language learning process and intercultural communicative competence. Findings were discussed in the scope of implementing mobile learning in the form of an intercultural exchange activity in online language teaching and learning process. Findings of this study could shed light on the applicability of online intercultural exchange activities for emergency remote foreign language teaching.

This study investigates the complex dynamics of semantic change and cultural adaptation of metaphor in multilingual communication. The research uses cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics to develop a model that explains the fundamental mechanisms of metaphorical expression and comprehension across languages and cultures. Using qualitative analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with senior-level academicians with experience in industry and academia, this study examines the interplay between semantic transformation, cultural adaptation, metaphor comprehension, cognitive processes, and contextual variables. The results demonstrate that as a metaphor is transmitted and adapted across languages and cultural contexts, it undergoes a complex semantic modification process. Cultural influences significantly affect the adaptation and interpretation of metaphors, highlighting the significance of sociocultural context in the production of metaphorical expressions. In addition, cognitive processes mediate metaphor comprehension and adaptation, emphasizing the significance of cognitive mechanisms in international communication. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of metaphor in multilingual communication by illuminating the cognitive and social mechanisms that influence metaphorical discourse. The findings have implications for language instruction, translation, and communication in environments with linguistic diversity. The comprehensive approach of this study provides valuable guidelines for metaphorical expression and comprehension in various linguistic and cultural contexts.

The International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) has been connecting students across multiple countries through asynchronous forums on a large scale since 2015. However, considering the variety of virtual exchange methods and the advantages they bring to the field of foreign language learning, there is an increased need to explore the pedagogical possibilities of combining asynchronous and synchronous modalities, particularly across multiple institutions and countries. This short article reports on a pedagogical innovation which involved adding synchronous sessions conducted over Zoom to the asynchronous IVEProject forums. The authors arranged eight weekly Zoom meetings in which students from China, India, Japan, Jordan, Palestine, Türkiye and Syria participated in May-July, 2021. After the final session, a survey was administered to participating students and their teachers to explore their experiences. The results show that the majority of students appreciated and benefitted from the opportunity to communicate synchronously with peers from other countries. The paper also reflects on the benefits and challenges of combining synchronous sessions alongside the asynchronous IVEProject forums, aiming to derive lessons learned from this project in the hope that this will aid future EFL instructors in creating engaging virtual exchange projects which involve participants from multiple cultures and countries.

Critical thinking represents one of the most absolutely vital talents for every individual, both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Critical thinking has become a primary concern for all educational institution students in recent decades, particularly Chinese undergraduates. The intention of this study was to investigate the needs analysis of Chinese international college undergraduates' perceptions of critical thinking skills incorporated into a cross-cultural communication course, as well as their expectations of critical thinking skills instructional coursework throughout the cross-cultural communication context. Throughout this mixed-methods investigation, 78 Chinese international college students volunteered to complete a critical thinking disposition inventory (CTDI) as the primary research instrument, in addition to a semi-structured interview. The research uncovered that Chinese international undergraduates exhibited unclear notions of critical thinking abilities. As a byproduct of China's education system, the majority of Chinese international college undergraduates were flooded with dismissive attitudes toward critical thinking abilities. In order to control their academic advancement in a more critical and analytical fashion, Chinese students expressed a pressing need for critical thinking skills to be included in their cross-cultural communication course.

Virtual exchange (VE) has gained prominence as a means to improve students' intercultural competence and foreign language abilities through forums and other supplemental activities. This study examines a supplemental activity referred to as the student-generated survey (SGS) implemented in the IVEProject, a large-scale VE with, at the time of this research, over 3000 contributing EFL students per exchange. Stemming from a sociocultural perspective with an aim to promote student agency, curiosity and discussion, the SGS allows students to participate in a survey composed of questions generated by themselves and/or their peers. Aiming to investigate how the SGS affects IVEProject participants' intercultural competence, this cross-sectional study focuses on data collected from 768 participants from 10 countries during the May-July 2021 exchange. Quantitative analysis of nine six-point Likert scale items showed that students who took the SGS and discussed its results had statistically significant increases in multiple items related to components of Deardorff's Pyramid Model of IC compared with students who did not. Furthermore, these gains were more noticeable among students who additionally took part in the question-generation process of the SGS. Thematic analysis of an open-ended question found 96% of student comments to be positive, falling under the themes 'intercultural development' and 'enjoyment and contentment.' The findings from quantitative and qualitative data shed light on the positive effect of the SGS on IC development, offering a beneficial reference point for international VE contexts.

Due to the impact of COVID-19, collaborative online international learning (COIL) increasingly plays an important role in the internationalization of higher education. Based on a participatory case study of a COIL program given at Shanghai University (SHU), this paper explores how students, foreign professors, and professors in China prepare, understand, and experience online teaching, learning, and assessment in a COIL program. Three findings include 1). Organizing COIL Programs with a Global Perspective; 2). Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Intercultural Communication; and 3). The Barriers of COIL in Chinese Universities. Taking insiders' perspectives, we argue that a cultural gap regarding teaching and learning styles can affect COIL programs in Chinese universities, posing challenges for both students and teachers. We suggest that program organizers should focus on the cultural gaps affecting these programs, and provide additional opportunities for intercultural communication to address the cultural gaps.

Intercultural competence (IC) is considered as an essential soft skill for successful functioning in the globalized society in the 21st century. However, there is still a lack of culturally appropriate framework and instrument to understand and assess Chinese university students' IC development. The purpose of this study was to design a valid and reliable scale for assessing Chinese students' IC. Based on the AAA (Approach-Analyze-Act)-Chinese framework, a 30-item Intercultural Competence Scale-Chinese Version (ICS-CHN) was developed and validated with confirmatory factor analysis. Subsequent multigroup confirmatory factor analysis model further proved the measurement invariance of ICS-CHN in different gender groups. Together with its adequate reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, it is reasonable to conclude that ICS-CHN is a reliable and valid scale, corroborating that IC is a combination of affective/attitudinal, cognitive and behavioral skills and characteristics applied in intercultural encounters.

Although virtual exchange has been widely discussed during the (post-)pandemic era, how students do reflexivity in this context has yet to be fully explored. This study invites students from Chinese and Finnish universities to think aloud and reflect on their virtual exchanges by presenting them with video clips of their online intercultural encounters. This is referred to as "think-aloud reflexivity" in this study. Grounded in Foucault's (1988) "technologies of the self" and Clark and Dervin's (2014) "multidimensions of reflexivity," the study 1) identifies and analyses moments of think-aloud reflexivity as triggered by the video clips presented to students; and 2) examines how students' reflexivity is constructed. Research findings, based on an analysis of students' speech acts (Austin, 1962), reveal three ways of constructing reflexivity: "evaluating," "clarifying" and "reviewing." Three themes also emerge while doing reflexivity in the study: "self-criticality," "empathizing with others," and "reconceptualizing doing interculturality." Recommendations for international telecollaboration are given based on the findings, inviting scholars and researchers to un-re-think the notion of reflexivity in intercultural communication education.

The evolving nature of intercultural education necessitates a shift from static to reflective pedagogies among teachers. This case study investigates the efficacy of a collaborative lesson study (LS) approach in enhancing Chinese university instructors' proficiency in participatory, non-essentialist intercultural teaching. Six English as a Foreign Language instructors at a Chinese university engaged in three iterative LS cycles over one month, integrating new intercultural communication materials into their classes. Data were collected through lesson documents, observations, discussions, and interviews. The immersive LS process significantly expanded instructors' understanding of key intercultural communication concepts, encouraged the adoption of more student-centered methodologies, and prompted critical reflection on prior cultural assumptions. The collaborative engagement facilitated a deeper theoretical grasp and practical application of non-essentialist principles. Challenges included time constraints due to teaching workloads, discomfort in peer feedback exchange, and a broader lack of coordinated intercultural teacher training. Despite these challenges, this study underscores the potential of LS as a robust model for advancing intercultural teaching capacity through collaborative inquiry. It hints at the promise of LS in bridging the theory-practice divide in intercultural education, paving the way for more nuanced, non-essentialist instruction.

Quantitative research on the linguistic acculturation of sojourners in non-Western and multilingual social contexts remains scarce. Revising the Framework of Acculturation Variables (FAV), we propose a parsimonious model exploring the effect of acculturation conditions (trilingual language usage and perceived discrimination), orientations (social connectedness to mainstream and minority community), and outcome (psychological well-being). In particular, we examined the alternative paths enabled by non-local languages in the acculturation process, revealing the complexity of multidimensionality in trilingual linguistic acculturation. The findings highlight the crucial mediating role of acculturation orientation in the acculturation process. The effects of Cantonese, Mandarin, and English usage on the acculturation process of Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong (N = 798) were examined.

Given the widened access to Chinese higher education, a large proportion of students studying at Chinese colleges come from rural lower-class families and encounter different challenges in English language learning. By using Bourdieu's social theoretical lenses, this case study explores how the interplay of capital, habitus and social fields affected ten rural lower-class college students' English language learning. This study finds that these students inhabited difficult and inferior positions because they lacked different forms of capital needed for accessing language and cultural learning resources, solidifying their English language foundation, and developing intercultural understanding and competence. Their narrow, test-oriented focus, and the lack of confidence and initiative in English language learning stemmed from their habitus formed in their situated socio-cultural and educational fields. Through reflecting on these complexities and conditions in English language learning, teachers and rural lower-class college students may move from a deficit lens in terms of their knowledge foundation and learning styles, which leads to the lack of confidence in teaching and learning; instead, they might collaboratively explore appropriate strategies and resources that cultivate students' comprehensive English language competence and intercultural competence.

Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners with different language levels. 24 participants were paired with native Chinese speakers and required to complete three-stage activities with the integration of WeChat. This study adopted a mix-method approach. Data were collected through questionnaires, two rounds of semi-structured interviews, chat logs, and WeChat moments. It is found that most learners were positive toward the activities and WeChat provided learners with opportunities for interaction and collaboration, for resource sharing, for knowledge internalization and construction, and for sustainable learning and friendship maintaining. The affordance of knowledge internalization and construction was mentioned with the highest frequency in the interview. The findings that distinguish this study from previous ones are: (1) the affordance for sustainable learning, and (2) differences between high-level (HL) and low-level (LL) learners. In comparison, the activities won more supports from HL learners, and HL learners' frequency in leveraging the affordance for resource sharing and sustainable learning was also higher. Pedagogical implications and research recommendations were provided respectively in discussion and conclusion parts.

This study reports on the results of a semester-long Chinese-American telecollaborative exchange via WeChat, in which students from China and the U.S. shared thematically similar songs in their respective languages and discussed relevant cultural topics that were suggested by the students. Various types of qualitative data collected from the exchange (i.e. WeChat group discussion transcripts, videoconferencing audio recordings, final reflection journals, and end-of-semester interviews) showed that the students participated actively in the program and were able to engage in in-depth conversations on various topics with their partners through WeChat group discussion and one-on-one videoconferencing. Many students attributed their positive experience to the intrinsic ability of music to engage college students. In order to evaluate the students' intercultural learning, Byram's intercultural competence assessment model was adopted to guide the data analysis. Results showed that the students demonstrated evidence of developing four types of intercultural competences during the exchange: interest in knowing other people's way of life and introducing one's own culture to others, knowledge about one's own and others' culture for intercultural communication, ability to change perspective, and knowledge about the intercultural communication process, with particularly overwhelming evidence indicating the prominence of the first two types.

On the one hand, studies of African international students in China document their instrumental role in "telling China's story and spreading China's voice" while, on the other hand, this research indicates how their lived experiences are shaped by racialisation and exclusionary practices in social life. However, there remains surprisingly little scholarship exploring ways of reducing inter-group stereotypes and racial divides so as to further Sino-African diplomatic relations over the long term. Drawing primarily upon an in-depth interview with Alex - a 23-year-old Burundian international student in China, this paper employs Freire's central concepts of dialogic practices and critical consciousness to examine how he established dialogues with villagers in rural areas in an effort to alter relations between two ethnic groups. The case study of Alex and his daily racial encounters highlights how African students are agentic in disrupting racial discourses. We further argue that dialogue, as a method to read the world in a Freirean sense, can contribute to increased tolerance and understanding.

Within the scope of this presented study, the authors aimed to investigate the peculiarities of intercultural communication and cultural exchange based on musical knowledge, considering the exploration of the Chinese music education experience in other countries. The scholars find that the strongest relationships of Chinese musical education are with American, European, Korean, and Japanese musical cultures. The research found that intercultural learning motivated students from European universities (202 respondents) and universities of Chinese (200 respondents) to pay special attention to American music (23%), reflecting modern approaches to performance. Western European (21%) music has a strong relationship with Chinese music. The research finds that Chinese music is popular among 20% of students who value national traditions. The research found that the benefits of intercultural learning involve learning mobility (an attitude of students reflected by rating index: 3.01), the development of worldview (an attitude of students reflected by rating index: 2.73), melodic skills development (an attitude of students reflected by rating index: 2.52), and the uniqueness of musical composition performance (an attitude of students reflected by rating index: 2.85). The scholars identified that for 86% of students, intercultural learning had a positive value and promoted musical knowledge development.

Power relations and change have become two of the most important foci of intercultural communication education and research. This paper contributes to these two elements by problematising and operating an analytical framework from outside the "West," the Chinese notion of Zhongyong (the "Golden Mean"). Based on a dialogical analysis of focus groups collected during an art course, the paper shows that Zhongyong can expand and complexify our understanding of interculturality, looking into how e.g. the students balance otherness with otherness (or not), as well as make use of reflectivity and criticality (or not) to implement potential change when cooperating.

To facilitate intercultural communicative competence, language learners are invited into the triadic capacity of Thirdness, where the social and critical interpretations of intercultural dialogue are explored. Little is known of the specific pedagogical stages to create such a terrain for the development of students' sustainable intercultural competence. Situated within a tertiary-level English classroom in China, this study reveals how teachers can employ five pedagogical stages and humanised pedagogy to decentre cultural imperialism and promote plural values, behaviours and ways of knowing, and how students relativise their own beliefs to those of the target language culture.

The spread of English and its increasing importance in intercultural encounters have challenged essentialist perspectives of culture in English language teaching. In addition to using English as a means of communication, students are expected to develop intercultural awareness, which allows them to analyse and reflect on their intercultural encounters and to participate in social activities. Such a need draws great attention to language teachers' perceptions of and engagement in intercultural teaching. As a narrative inquiry, this paper examines the reflections of English language practitioners who have returned from an overseas study experience and have become English language teachers in China. It focuses on their study abroad experiences, encompassing both their achievements and challenges in the context of intercultural learning, and examines how these experiences have influenced their current involvement in intercultural teaching. The findings help shed light on the shifts in teachers' perceptions of intercultural encounters and how the processes of making sense of intercultural experiences inform their orientation towards intercultural learning. The paper considers the importance of helping teachers use their experiential understanding of language and culture to generate a critical pedagogical stance to promote intercultural education.

The largest group of international students pursuing their overseas higher education in the UK come from China; and yet, little qualitative research has explored the experiences of Chinese students who have recently made this transition, with even less focusing on the experiences of both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The present article set out to explore the unique perspective of a small sample of first-year undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students (N = 18), on their experience of transitioning to a higher education institution in the UK. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and thematic analysis was used to explore their experiences in greater depth. Two superordinate themes are reported here: "Education Dialogues and Scholarship" and "Intercultural Relations and Notions of Difference." The findings suggest that despite advances in institutional practices to support international students' transition to higher education in the UK, more work needs to be done to redress the sociocultural (and other) challenges that continue to exist for international Chinese students.

This study aims to explore the panorama of international education development in China from a retrospective policy mapping perspective. In China, international education is closely linked with educational internationalization and opening to the outside world. The internationalization of education in China refers to the cross-border communication, cooperation, and integration of educational undertakings of different countries to realize the understanding and respect of multicultural society. In general, the international education policy in China includes four stages: From 1949 to 1976, the international education policy is the exploratory stage, from 1976 to 2000, the steady development stage of the international education policy in the reform and opening up period, from 2000 to 2012, the comprehensive development stage of the international education policy in the new century, and from 2012 to now, the new international education policy under the background of 'One Belt and One Road' and the new policy challenges under the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the conclusion and implication are offered in the last.

This study examines the content strategies of 12 Chinese universities' international websites. Going beyond the Hofstede--Hall model, we explore a novel mixed-method study using both content strategy analysis and user research to investigate intercultural web-based communication strategies. Our study identifies the impacts of Chinese cultural and socio-political values on web content and the mismatch between such values and the information needs of globally distributed prospective students. We conclude that universities' web content strategies should fully understand target audiences' needs. Designers benefit from doing stakeholder interviews and competitor analysis to provide relevant, accurate, and accessible information to users from different cultures.

An increasing number of studies have demonstrated how language textbooks serve as an arena for ideological reproduction. Following the theory of language ideology, this paper aims to examine the ideological representation of English in a textbook targeting Chinese university students in China. Data were subjected to content analysis and critical discourse analysis regarding their reference to the embodied identity options, images, case studies, cultural notes, exercises, dialogues, and reading passages in the textbook. Findings reveals that by highlighting the dominant position of English and simplifying the multilingual landscape, the textbook tends to place English at the center of prominence. The dominance of English is further entrenched by expressions of the values of speaking Standard English. It is argued that the representation of speaking Standard English ideology can be understood as the global penetration of linguistic imperialism. Furthermore, the textbook also reproduces biased gender and class representation of social characters, which might exacerbate learners? prejudice towards certain groups on the basis of their understandings of real-life power relations. It is hoped that the study can shed some lights on providing English language learners with a more diversified textbooks for cultivating their language awareness and intercultural competence.

In Chinese culture the concept of 'face' refers to the "dignity" or "prestige" of an individual that must be protected or saved, particularly in inter-cultural communication. This study aimed to examine how addressers inevitably save their own face in inter-cultural communication and what different strategies of 'face' saving have a bearing on their linguistic behaviors. A mixed method research design, in two stages was conducted wherein a questionnaire was utilized in the first stage (quantitative) and a semi-structured interview in the second stage (qualitative). The questionnaire examined the situations of saving the addresser's face while the interview examined the strategies of saving addresser's face. The sample comprised 120 business persons for the quantitative phase, and 15 randomly selected from the 120 respondents for the interview. The findings show that when addressers' face is hurt or threatened, such as when they report their mistakes and are refused, they will apply face saving strategies including apology, admitting, finding excuses and justification, and pretending nothing severe and showing they can handle the problem. It was also found that Chinese businesspersons can protect self-face when they report their mistakes and poor performance to their superiors, peers, and subordinates in intercultural communication. These findings can guide people from other countries to better understand Chinese businesspersons' communication processes and their smooth and effective intercultural communication.

The lack of exchange between international students and host nationals in Japan has long been a pressing issue, yet very little progress has been made to rectify this situation. In this study, we examined this issue by focusing on how international students in Japan perceive cultural contact with their host and home culture members during their sojourn. The study applied a qualitative approach based on grounded theory, collecting data through semi-structured interviews with 41 international students from China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. According to the social identity and anxiety/uncertainty management approach, we interpreted the findings on how international students manage uncertainty in the Japanese environment by identifying with the host and their own home cultures for their psychological well-being, which we distinguished as intercultural or intracultural contact orientation. International students demonstrated an intracultural rather than intercultural contact orientation due to the host nationals reacting to them as "foreigners."

English is often ideologically constructed as a global language to facilitate intercultural communication between people of diverse cultural backgrounds. However, it still remains unknown to what extent English learning can enhance English learners' awareness of global diversity. Given the dominant population of English learners in China, it is of great significance to investigate how English learning might facilitate Chinese learners' global vision and cultivate their intercultural competence. Seeing language textbooks as a key site of cultural and linguistic representation, this study scrutinizes the hidden ideologies discursively constructed in an English Intercultural Communication (EIC) textbook targeting Chinese English learners. Data are collected from dialogues, case studies, reading passages, cultural notes, exercises in the textbook. Informed by concepts of orientalism and banal nationalism, the study reveals that the distribution of characters is nation-based, essentialized, and even stigmatized. There is an inconsistency between the discursive construction of English as a global language and the actual representation of USA/UK-centered ideology. Chinese and other non-English learners are linguistically and culturally subjected to orientalist interpretation. The internal orientalist representation of Chinese speakers is also reproduced within the diverse backgrounds of Chinese population. Based on the findings, we argue that the simplified, unbalanced and unequal representations of cultural elements may hinder English learners' awareness of cultural diversity. The study suggests that a more diversified representation of cultural practices should be adopted in EIC textbooks to cultivate the global citizenship through English language education.

The process of internationalization requires people to have higher intercultural communicative competence, which refers to a person's ability to successfully communicate in different cultural environments. It consists of cognition, emotion, and behavior. The study of intercultural sensitivity actually focuses on the emotional factor in intercultural communication competence. Based on the concept of intercultural sensitivity and English teaching practice, this article intends to contribute a little to the intercultural communication teaching and relevant study by analyzing the current level of intercultural sensitivity of junior high school students and interviewing English teachers about the implementation of intercultural teaching strategies.

Red Culture is one of the symbols of Chinese national spirit in China. With the enhancement of China's international status, the world gets to know the Red Culture stage by stage. And yet, in the process of Red Culture's foreign publicity, the depth and breadth of cultural diffusion have been affected by different factors. This paper objectively analyzes the current situation of foreign publicity translation about Red Culture and then focuses on the Red tourism industry to explore the characteristics and advantages of foreign-oriented publicity translation under the intercultural communicative perspective. In the end, we are trying to come up with some methods to increase the accuracy of Red Culture publicity translation.

At present, with the rapid development of the internet and the gradual promotion of online collaborative learning, the social regulation of learning is receiving increasing attention, which involves socially shared metacognition, one facet of social metacognition. To date, social regulation of learning or socially shared metacognition have been widely studied using qualitative approaches. Although a variety of scales have been developed to measure metacognition in traditional individual learning, little work has been done to develop a scale to measure social metacognition in collaborative learning contexts. This study originally developed a social metacognition inventory consisting of 24 indicators by referring to the literature for assessing beliefs of other persons (BOP), awareness of other persons' thinking (AOPT), judgment of other persons' emotions (JOPE), co-regulation of each other's thinking (CREOT), and evaluation of other persons' thinking (EOPT). After EFA using 218 undergraduates' questionnaires of social metacognition in collaborative argumentation on a social psychological issue from a Sino-Foreign Cooperative Educational Institution, 17 indicators showed good factorability and reliability. After CFA using another 300 questionnaires on social metacognition in collaborative argumentation about the pandemic received from undergraduates who come from 52 countries in the International College of Education, among the 17 indicators derived from the first sample's EFA, three indicators had high correlation with others. Finally, based on the reviews of three experts, these three indicators were deleted. The remaining 14 indicators formed good construct validity with acceptable convergent and discriminant validities. In addition, the multi-group invariance test demonstrated that the structural model of the Social Metacognition Inventory has better configural invariance, which indicates that it can be generalized to other online collaborative argumentation contexts. The Social Metacognition Inventory can be used to quantify social metacognition in online collaborative argumentation when administering a large-scale experiment.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of intercultural learning modules introduced to a faculty and staff study abroad program. Using data from 2014-2018 of Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) scores, this study compared control (2014-2015) and treatment (2016-2018) IDI mean score differences due to the new modules introduced in 2016. The results indicate that the introduction of five intercultural learning modules and individualized goal setting led to positive IDI growth in comparison with the control group. Despite program participants of all years taking part in daily journaling with program mentors, these results suggest that participating in intercultural learning modules before, during, and after travel and setting individualized intercultural goals were key to intercultural learning. In addition, this study provides evidence that best practices for student study abroad programs can also be applied to faculty and staff intercultural professional development.

Students' transition from high school to university is a journey from a simple world to a complex one, with academic, social, and ethnic cultural transitions simultaneously occurring. Intercultural competence (IC) plays a crucial role in facilitating these cultural transitions. The aim of the study is to explore how university students undergo academic, social, and ethnic cultural transitions, along with determining what IC dimensions university students develop to have smooth academic, social, and ethnic cultural transitions. We adopted the constructivist grounded theory approach to gather and code interview data from 55 undergraduate students. Moreover, we conceptualised the five dimensions of students' IC in managing the complex transition by combining a person-environmental interactive perspective. This was constructed with the widely acknowledged interpersonal communication perspective of IC. We found that students need to navigate multiple cultural transitions in different aspects and processes, and that IC plays an important role in easing them. The study results indicate that students should improve their IC from five aspects to facilitate their academic, social, and ethnic cultural transitions. Further, they must continuously introspect on themselves and the external world to nurture critical thinking in their academic and sociocultural life.

This study sheds light on the learning experiences of a group of in-service university teachers from China who attended a three-month, short-term continuing professional development program at a Canadian university. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Activity Theory was adopted as the framework. The findings revealed that language and translation barriers, course schedules, (ir)relevant training content, various individual interests, cultural differences, and requirements from the home university were the main factors that impacted the learning experiences of teacher-trainees. Based on the findings, this study discusses what constitutes a culturally appropriate methodology for cross-cultural professional training programme and offers insights into the interplay of factors that influence the perceived effectiveness of such a program. Suggestions for future program planning are also provided.

This study explores how students produce their own mini videos using the target language to share experiences and communicate with native speakers. Multimodality is used as a theoretical approach. Class observations and in-depth interviews were used for data collection, which was analysed by theme. The research results indicate that students deem it the agency of their own learning rather than completing the assignments given by the tutor; they gain more from the discussions among their peers and native speakers than from giving the presentations in class only; watching and making comments on their own videos is visually and mentally stimulating, which triggers more thoughts and expressions. Students appreciate the cooperation among themselves, while they also find it challenging to manage their publicity. This research provides empirical evidence on how to encourage students' initiative to improve language skills and enhance intercultural communication competence, which sheds light on reshaping language and intercultural communication education.

Within the field of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) teaching, there has been limited engagement with Global Citizenship Education (GCE). The politicisation of CFL education in today's diverse and multilingual Australian classroom remains a significant cause for concern as it endangers spaces of pedagogic possibility. Drawing upon data from an Australian primary CFL classroom we consider how pedagogic practices speak to Freire's conceptualisation of 'dialogic practice' and 'critical consciousness' and how such approaches open up pedagogical encounters and opportunities for disadvantaged students to become informed global citizens. We explore how students came to recognise themselves as culturally sensitive learners and aware of the future demands of global citizenship through dialogues with their Chinese peers via video conferencing and letters. Through focusing on these pedagogic vignettes of integrating GCE into CFL teaching practice, we present an argument for a more dynamic view of CFL education where pedagogic approaches foreground interconnectedness and diversity.

This article examines the influence of English language proficiency and intercultural competence on the English-medium instruction lecturer's classroom leadership. It analyzes self-reported data obtained by three measuring scales from 188 English-medium instruction lecturers of a Chinese university. The Pearson correlational analysis indicated that there were significant positive relationships between the English-medium instruction lecturer's classroom leadership and the two predicting factors. The multiple regression analysis suggested that both intercultural competence and English proficiency contribute much to the variance of the English-medium instruction lecturer's classroom leadership. It was found that the lecturer's language proficiency and intercultural communicative abilities could be two determining factors for the lecturer to deliver their disciplinary knowledge and command the class in an engaging and competent manner. The findings may provide implications for the strategic intervention of English-medium instruction educators in institutions of higher education.

The use of translation and interpreting (T&I) in the language learning classroom is commonplace, serving various pedagogical and assessment purposes. Previous utilization of T&I exercises is driven largely by their potential to enhance language learning, whereas the latest trend has begun to underscore T&I as a crucial skill to be acquired as part of transcultural competence for language learners and future language users. Despite their growing popularity and utility in the language learning classroom, assessing T&I is time-consuming, labor-intensive and cognitively taxing for human raters (e.g., language teachers), primarily because T&I assessment entails meticulous evaluation of informational equivalence between the source-language message and target-language renditions. One possible solution is to rely on automated quality metrics that are originally developed to evaluate machine translation (MT). In the current study, we investigated the viability of using four automated MT evaluation metrics, BLEU, NIST, METEOR and TER, to assess human interpretation. Essentially, we correlated the automated metric scores with the human-assigned scores (i.e., the criterion measure) from multiple assessment scenarios to examine the degree of "machine-human parity." Overall, we observed fairly strong metric-human correlations for BLEU (Pearson's r = 0.670), NIST (r = 0.673) and METEOR (r = 0.882), especially when the metric computation was conducted on the sentence level rather than the text level. We discussed these emerging findings and others in relation to the feasibility of operationalizing MT metrics to evaluate students' interpretation in the language learning classroom.

Adopting a learning ecology perspective, this study examined sojourners' formal classroom learning and the interactions between their learning in the classroom and their learning in the community. Data for the study were collected from semi-structured interviews and classroom observations involving 14 sojourners learning Chinese as a second language (CSL) at a Chinese higher education institution. The study found that the CSL sojourners made conscious efforts to create a reciprocal relationship between their second language (L2) interactions in the local community and their instructed learning in the programme, but in doing this they encountered a series of challenges. When these learners encountered challenges in attempting to use local interactions to support their instructed learning, they relied on communicative instruction in the classroom. While much of the in-class instruction that they received did not support their daily communication needs in the local community, several instructional activities involving the local community were identified to play a positive role in the process. These findings suggest that L2 study abroad programmes and classrooms should be reviewed/modified to more systematically encourage students to integrate their learning experiences across in-class and out-of-class contexts and supports from teacher education need to be in place as well.

Drawn on the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship (De Costa, P., Park, J. S., & Wee, L. (2016). Language learning as linguistic entrepreneurship: Implications for language education. "Asia-Pacific Education Research," 25(5-6), 695-702, De Costa, P., Park, J. S., & Wee, L. (2019). Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime: Organisations, audit culture, and second/foreign language education policy. "Language Policy," 18(3), 387-406, De Costa, P., Park, J. S., & Wee, L. (2021). Why linguistic entrepreneurship? "Multilingua"), this study extends the field of inquiry of neoliberal language learning by exploring Chinese as an international language. Based on a large-scale ethnography of Myanmar university students in China conducted between September 2013 and July 2017, this paper reports on a qualitative inquiry on how the neoliberal discourse permeates Myanmar students' language exploitation to enhance their worth and maximise their opportunities. Findings show that Chinese learning constitutes the formation of a neoliberal self through the valorisation of multilingual competence. However, the study demonstrates that the enactment of multilingual entrepreneurship only values certain languages, which aligns with the neoliberal logic of convertibility for the China-and-Myanmar communication market. The study also reveals that access to entrepreneurial ambitions through Chinese learning opportunities is largely constrained by citizenship status, socioeconomic conditions, and the fast-evolving demands of linguistic markets within and across national boundaries. The study concludes with some implications for language policy and language education.

A deeper understanding of how teachers bridge cultural differences in teacher-student relationships provides insights into the cultural, social and emotional capabilities needed in teachers. This phenomenographic study investigated the experiences and conceptions of Anglophonic Western trained teachers who worked in non-Western institutions with the aim of understanding how teachers working in cross-cultural contexts bridge cultural differences to engage students in learning. Findings show that teacher humility and compassion were antecedents to confidence in students. Further, findings reveal a need for systems administrators and teacher educators to make investments into teachers' and pre-service teachers' cultural, social and emotional capabilities for the sake of student confidence and engagement in learning. The study further revealed that student confidence is often evidence of a teacher's cultural capability.

This article seeks to explore intercultural communication among a group of students with diverse linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds in an English-medium transnational university in China, focusing on multilingual students' practices and perceptions of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Informed by an expanded understanding of translanguaging from a spatial perspective, this study explores multilingualism, multimodality, and spatiality in linguistic practices related to ELF in an international education context. Drawing upon multiple data sources including ethnographic observations, interviews facilitated by language portraits, recordings of interactions, and policy documents, findings of the study show that ELF communication was understood and practiced by multilingual students as a translanguaging act based on (partially) shared repertoires and beliefs about language and communication. It is also found that the monolithic and monolingual model of language policy in English-medium higher education ran counter to the students' daily communicative practices and language development needs. Implications are suggested for how international universities can account for translanguaging in fostering linguistic diversity and preparing students for the practical realities of a multilingual world.