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The student exchange programs are venues for learning opportunities by offering multicultural contexts. This study reports on the experiences of ten prospective English language teachers in a virtual student exchange program to investigate likely skill development in a multicultural and open and distance learning setting. This descriptive study used the qualitative method. The textual data were elicited through eighty reflective essays written by the participants. Virtual classroom observations and WhatsApp chat data ensured data triangulation. The results revealed the themes as developed learning and life skills and enhanced internal gains. It was found that internal outcomes, such as self-confidence, empathy, and self-reliance, were enhanced rather than external gains. One of the limitations of this study was the brevity of the exchange program, which lasted only eight days. Additionally, the current study is a small-scale study, which limits the generalizability of the results. Last but not least, only two participants placed in the researcher's class were observed. The study poses a few implications for education policymakers, curriculum developers, and teachers. In light of the results, it is posed that adding a multicultural aspect to the teacher training curriculum is imperative for teacher empowerment. Though the literature on student exchange reports findings on the gains and challenges, there is a scarcity of studies delving into what skills students develop and how with vivid examples. In this respect, this study adds to the relevant literature.

Developments in information and communication technologies, especially with the increase in internet use, have caused some important changes in the tourism industry, as in all sectors. Marketing strategies in the tourism sector have also undergone a transformation affected by these changes. As information and communication technologies develop, not only there is a decrease in communication costs, but also the regional borders of marketing activities have expanded and global studies have emerged. Transition to the digital world with the Internet; sharing information that will affect consumers' purchasing decisions, from destinations to tourism businesses and the diversity of services in tourism, has become one of the important variables of tourism marketing. The widespread use of information and communication technologies in the tourism sector has significantly changed the strategies and activities in tourism marketing, and especially the widespread use of social media has led to radical changes in the structure of promotional activities in tourism. In this study, which compares the social media usage of 5-star chain hotels, which are tourism businesses operating in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the Greek Administration of Southern Cyprus, the Republic of Turkey and France, it is aimed to evaluate the effects of developments in information and communication technologies on tourism business marketing and the consumer-educational role of social media used in tourism marketing. Study; in addition to the advantageous and disadvantageous effects of technology and social media on tourism marketing, it also reveals the dimensions of the educational aspect.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of Duolingo's game-based methodology in improving speaking proficiency within mobile language learning, while also examining the specific attributes and strategies contributing to its success and exploring implications for language education and learner optimization. Given the growing prevalence of mobile language learning platforms, the research meticulously scrutinizes the specific attributes and strategies employed by Duolingo that contribute to the refinement of oral fluency. This study employs a mixed methods design, integrating phenomenological and experimental approaches through a pre, post and attainment speaking tests with a control group design supported with metaphorical perceptions. The findings underscore the pivotal role of assimilating technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches within language education to expedite effective intercultural communication across multifarious linguistic landscapes. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of continuously adapting language learning methodologies to leverage emerging technologies and gamification strategies in order to foster effective communication skills in diverse linguistic contexts. The implications for prospective inquiries advocate for longitudinal investigations delving into the enduring implications of mobile game-based language learning on comprehensive linguistic acquisition, necessitating comparative inquiries to ascertain the comparative efficacy of diverse mobile applications in fostering distinct language proficiencies. Additionally, probing the influence of individual learner attributes and predilections in optimizing the utilization of mobile language learning applications could yield valuable insights for tailoring language acquisition paradigms.

Integrating internationalized songs into English language teaching has emerged as a dynamic strategy to ignite students' interest and enhance their language proficiency. This article comprehensively explores internationalized songs' significance in language education. A central focus lies on a detailed case study that demonstrates how the expertise of a Turkish musician was leveraged to select and that of field experts to translate and refine a local children's song for educational purposes. The study meticulously details the collaborative efforts among educators to tailor the song's content to meet language learning objectives, highlighting the transformative potential of such initiatives in the English language classroom. By immersing themselves in this practical example, educators can gain invaluable insights into the versatility of internationalized songs as effective tools for language instruction, thereby enhancing their teaching practices. Furthermore, the article underscores the importance of incorporating cultural elements into language teaching materials to foster intercultural competence among students. Educators can create immersive learning experiences that promote linguistic proficiency, cultural awareness, and appreciation by integrating internationalised songs.

The goal of the current study was to ascertain pre-service English language teachers' impressions of the impact of thematic speaking tasks on the development of their intercultural competence in an online Spoken English course. Moreover, the effect of certain demographic variables on pre-service teachers' cultural intelligence (CQ) was also investigated. The findings revealed a significant difference between the CQ of students with and without overseas experience. Pre-service teachers who could speak languages other than their mother tongue and English had significantly higher CQ scores than students who could not speak other languages. However, there was not a significant difference between males' and females' overall CQ. The results showed an increase in CQ scores when the pre- and post-questionnaire averages were compared, but it was not statistically significant. Semi-structured interviews revealed speaking tasks were effective in exposing pre-service teachers to various cultural perspectives, practices, and products.

This study involved qualitative research in the form of a case study to examine the intercultural sensitivity of Turkish language teachers. In the study, criterion sampling was selected and an interview form consisting of seven open-ended questions was applied to 20 Turkish language teachers. Participants working in secondary schools, which are basic education institutions affiliated to the Ministry of National Education, and in units related to assignment in different provinces of Turkey. The research questions were prepared by considering the five following dimensions of the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale developed by Chen and Starosta (2000): interaction engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction self- confidence, interaction enjoyment, and interaction attentiveness. Content analysis, a qualitative data analysis method, was used. As a result of the study, it was seen that most of the participants exhibited a generally appropriate attitude in terms of having intercultural sensitivity. Some of these participants who exhibited an appropriate attitude had deficiencies in terms of some dimensions of intercultural sensitivity. On the other hand, a significant portion of the participants did not exhibit an appropriate attitude in terms of having intercultural sensitivity in general. At the rest of the paper, some suggestions are made in order to improve teachers' intercultural sensitivity and to overcome their deficiencies.

This study examined the perceptions of foreign language teachers in Turkey regarding their role as conveyers of culture in foreign language teaching. To that end, I utilised a descriptive model, one of the quantitative research designs, in the research. The study group consisted of 441 English teachers working in the English preparatory programs of various universities in Turkey in 2020-2021 academic year. The survey focused on teachers' perceptions of their purposes in foreign language teaching, their views on culture teaching in the context of foreign language teaching, their cultural teaching practices, their familiarity with the country, culture, and individuals in which the language they teach, the time they allocate to culture and language teaching in their practices, and their views on the cultural content of the materials they use. The answers of the participants are summarized as arithmetic mean and standard deviation, frequency and percentage. I used one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) so as to determine whether the data on the participants differed significantly according to the variables and preferred Tukey, one of the post- hoc multiple comparison technique, to verify the source of the significant difference as a result of the ANOVA analysis. The results of the study showed that the teachers are aware of the importance of integrating the target culture in foreign language teaching. The majority of the participants pay attention to conveying the culture of the target language within the framework of the curriculum and materials they use. However, it was concluded that foreign language teachers in Turkey needed support programs and travels in order to increase their level of familiarity with the culture of the language they teach.

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.

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.

Recent research suggests that learners should be provided with opportunities to negotiate meanings with other cultures and critically evaluate and reflect on their own culture. Texts have a great potential to provide such opportunities, especially in contexts where learners do not have the chance to experience other cultures through real-time observations. This case study investigates what the readers-as-text-ethnographers approach (RaTE) offers to promote intercultural awareness (ICA) in higher education. To this end, seven texts were selected following certain criteria, and a 15-week implementation was designed. Data were collected through learners' written productions, classroom video recordings, a postimplementation survey, and key informant interviews. Findings revealed that studying texts with the RaTE approach helped the learners develop their ICA in understanding the complexity of culture, otherness, and self. Furthermore, findings also showed that the learners had difficulties in certain areas, such as reading between the lines and textual analysis during the implementation.

The present study primarily aims at comparing the ELT curricula of Turkey and Greece concerning primary-level education. With this aim, a large number of articles, educational websites, theses, and dissertations, along with The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports and Ministry of National Education (MoNE) reports of Turkey and Greece were inspected. Data were analyzed qualitatively by using the document analysis technique. As a result of the analysis, some similarities and differences were detected in the design, development, and the implementation of two curricula. Starting the teaching of English at earlier grades, adopting student-centered and action- oriented teaching approach, promoting the development of listening and speaking abilities, targeting communicative, authentic, comfortable, and enjoyable learning environment, focusing on alternative and process-oriented assessment techniques, and aiming to develop intercultural communicative competence of the learners are among the similarities of two curricula. On the other hand, discrepancies were also revealed regarding the designing, developing, piloting, and implementation processes, testing of instructional activities and materials, training of the teachers, material infrastructure, class hours, and internal and external evaluation of the two curricula. By explaining the similarities and differences between ELT curricula of Turkey and Greece at the primary level, this study endeavors to provide information for English language teachers, researchers, curriculum developers, and policy-makers.

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.

This study aims to determine the place of mediation skills in teaching Turkish as a foreign language in accordance with the opinions of the instructors. The research is a content analysis study made with the interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods. The study group for the research consists of 14 instructors who worked in Turkish Teaching Research and Application Centers. The data for the study were obtained from the Teaching Staff Interview Form on Mediation Skills in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language, which was created by the researchers and contains structured and semi-structured questions. At the end of the research, it was concluded that the instructors included mediation skills in the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language, but there was no standard and systematic teaching of mediation skills.

Global competence is a comprehensive term referring to the interconnectedness of various constructs ranging from knowledge to values required to communicate, cooperate, and work towards the well-being of not only the local but also the global community. Teacher education has an important role in preparing teachers equipped with global competences. Therefore, having tools which can validly and reliably measure if and to what extent pre-service teachers are globally competent is a requisite. Hence, this study aimed at adapting and validating the Global Competence scale developed by Liu et al. (2020) to Turkish to measure pre-service English language teachers' global competences and to obtain evidence regarding the psychometric properties of the scale to measure global competences in teaching and teacher education. The data collected from pre-service English language teachers (N=351) studying at various universities in Türkiye was divided into two equal halves. The first part of it was used to perform exploratory factor analysis which revealed an eight-factor 29-item structure. The second half which was used for confirmatory factor analysis yielded a good fit of a 25-item, eight-factor structure scale. The Cronbach's Alpha coefficient ([alpha] = 0.88) and McDonald's Omega ([omega] = 0.89) which indicated good internal consistency in the CFA dataset revealed excellent internal consistency ([alpha] = 0.90, [omega] = 0.91) in another independent dataset. Thus, the study revealed that the Global Competence scale has a good level of psychometric properties and reliability to measure pre-service English language teachers' global competences in the Turkish context.

The ability to adapt and thrive in an unfamiliar cultural context is incrementally becoming vital. Therefore, universities aim to create an environment to enhance students' cultural intelligence (CQ). This study aimed to detect English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' CQ in a state university in Turkey and discern their strengths and weaknesses in intercultural communication. The study employed the CQ scale to detect learners' CQ, and open-ended questions to unearth strengths and weaknesses. SPSS was run for quantitative analysis, whereas MAXQDA was tapped for qualitative data analysis. The results indicated high values for students' metacognitive, motivational, and behavioural CQ, albeit learners' cognitive CQ was moderate. There was no significant difference between the CQ of male and female students. Moreover, the overseas experience did not have a significant influence on their CQ. However, there was a significant difference in the cognitive CQ of students at different proficiency levels. Qualitative analysis revealed learners' strengths, such as communication and adaptation skills, and an interest in diverse cultures. However, learners' scant knowledge of different cultures and low language proficiency were significant problems impeding learners' intercultural communication. The implications of the study might provide insight for stakeholders to raise students' CQ in educational spheres.

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.

Among the vast and diverse discussions and research on international students, the intercultural status of university students holds a special place in terms of integration and academic success. One of the discussions is the intercultural competencies of the students in higher education. In this respect, this study aims to compare the intercultural effectiveness of international and domestic students, as well as examine their intercultural effectiveness status in terms of different background characteristics. The data were collected from a public university in Turkey using the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale developed by Portalla and Chen. The findings revealed that international students compared with domestic counterparts show a higher level of intercultural effectiveness. Additionally, some background characteristics are significant predictors of the intercultural effectiveness of university students: grade level, parent's nationality, being and living in a foreign country, and having a close friend(s) from a different culture. Some research and policy recommendations are provided.

The hegemony of technology and its dominance over education caused the necessity to make changes in the philosophy of language teaching. With the introduction of technology and extensive use of distance education thanks to pandemic, this philosophy change has increased the importance of students' out-of-class language learning activities. Therefore, in this mixed method research, which is conducted at an English Preparatory department of a state university situated in Turkey, it is aimed to investigate students' resources and strategies that they use for English outside the class (EOC) activities. For this purpose, a 34-question five-point Likert type scale was conducted to 242 students, and both focus group interviews with seven students and individual semi-structured interviews with five students were conducted in order to obtain the EOC strategies and sources. According to the results, it is revealed that the students mostly employ EOC activities for their listening skill, and least for speaking skill, and using EOC activities has a significant relationship with academic achievement, gender, and section. Also, students started to use many different technological social media websites, online applications, and techniques. As a result, with the changing educational philosophy and spending time more outside the school, all stakeholders should be aware of the massive transformation in language education and plan their instruction accordingly.

In the present study, the issue under scrutiny is the meaning and current policies of the internationalization of higher education (HEI) in Turkey. This research is a descriptive case study and the data were collected through document analysis. The documents analyzed within the scope of the study are as follows: "Internationalization Strategy Document in Higher Education 2018-2022 (CoHE, 2017)"; "Research Project Report on Making Turkish Universities an Attraction Center for International Students in the Framework of Internationalization of Higher Education (Kadioglu & Özer, 2015)"; "Growth, Quality, Internationalization: A Roadmap for Higher Education in Turkey (Çetinsaya, 2014)", "10th Development Plan 2014-2018 (T.R. Ministry of Development, 2013)" and "11th Development Plan 2019-2023 (T.R. Presidential Strategy and Budget Department, 2019)". The content analysis method was used to analyze the data. The available evidence seems to suggest that the internationalization of higher education in Turkey has academic meanings in the sub-dimensions of education/training, institutional quality, research/publication, and human resources; cultural meanings in the sub-dimensions of cultural ambassador, diversity, and integration; political meanings in foreign policy, soft power, political closeness sub-dimensions and, finally, economic meanings in the sub-dimensions of human resources, growth, global competition, and economic mobility. There is overwhelming evidence corroborating the notion that the policies of recognition and visibility, mobility, internationalization, strategic planning, and student opportunities have been applied to the internationalization of higher education in Turkey. Overall, this study strengthens the need for the Internationalization of Higher Education Working Committee, which comprises all the stakeholders under one roof. The current data highlight the importance of continuous efforts to make the faculty members, students, and administrative staff competent in foreign languages.

Interculturality and intercultural communicative competence were accepted as significant concepts in second/foreign language learning. In particular, intercultural sensitivity (IS) has been regarded as a precondition for intercultural communicative competence and interculturality. Due to the increased interest in intercultural sensitivity and globalization through technology, more research was needed to explore the concept in different educational contexts with sound, reliable and valid instruments for different participant profiles. In this regard, this study merged two studies to provide two reliable and valid instruments for different research purposes. The objective of Study 1 was to translate and validate the IS scale in the Turkish EFL context, while the objective of Study 2 was to adapt and validate the Turkish version of the IS scale to be used for young English language learners in the Turkish EFL context. Study 1 included 122 language learners, while Study 2 included 95 young learners for the first round and 115 young learners for the second round. The findings revealed that both the Turkish version and the simplified version of the IS scale retained highly significant levels of reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the Turkish version represented a better model fit in the analysis and the simplified version represented a better model fit compared to the English version in the analysis. Hence, the study is significant with its contribution to the field through both the Turkish version of IS and IS scale for young learners, which can be used in cross-cultural research contexts.

Strong neighbor relations between Georgia and Turkey have allowed for many interactions to be intensely experienced and maintained in language and culture just as in many areas. The effective communication that both countries established with each other during the historical process has reflected on their vocabulary and enabled thousands of common words to take place in both languages. This interaction continuing between the two communities has become even stronger today and the demand to learn Turkish and Georgian has extremely increased. To this end, in this study it is aimed to determine the words used commonly in Turkish and Georgian in order to enable either Turkish learners or Georgian learners to be better motivated in language acquisition and take the researches for the field a step further. By means of document analysis method many sources were reviewed and thereby a lot of words used commonly in both languages were found. Besides, the study also comprises the changes in the Georgian dialect, which is used in the Adjarian region, an autonomous republic of Georgia, but not used in official Georgian and some field researches to determine this have also partly been done. Accordingly, thousands of common words are found between Turkish and Georgian, but most of these are of Adjarian dialect of Georgian. In this context, just as the dimensions of the reflection of differences such as language, culture, geography, etc. among the regions specific to Georgia on language are understood, the power of the relationship between Turkish and Georgia is also presented with this study.

The present paper describes the development and validation of a new instrument designed to explore English language teaching (ELT) student teachers' beliefs about Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in an expanding-circle context, Turkey. The process of instrument development and validation is described along with a concise literature review of ICC. Forty-eight items were prepared based on a comprehensive review of literature. 34-item instrument was developed following two phases: First, an exploratory factor analysis of the responses of a large sample (N=399) of ELT student teachers, and then a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis with another large but different sample (N=378) were performed. The Kaiser-Meyer Olkin (KMO) coefficient was found as 0.90 and the Bartlett test result (Chi- Square 3613.58; p<0.01) was found significant. The results of the analysis indicated that the inventory has a perfect reliability value with 0.925, resulting in 34 items. The four factors that emerged from the exploratory factor analysis are attitudes, knowledge, awareness and skills. The result of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that GFI = 0.93, AGFI = 0.73, CFI = 0.77, NNFI = 0.93, RMSEA (90% CI) = 0.076 (0.041-0.086) and SRMR = 0.046. Based on these findings, the study provides suggestions with regard to the potential uses of the Beliefs about Intercultural Communicative Competence Inventory (BICCI) in second language teacher education.

This paper is based on the reflections from a telecollaboration project between English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Turkey and native or non-native speakers of English in the USA. The main purpose of the project was to help the participants to develop their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) via online (a)synchronous communication tools. Therefore, the participants were engaged in tasks, by which they could share their thoughts about cultural issues and expand their (inter)cultural knowledge. The findings showed that telecollaboration projects are potentially key to developing language users' ICC, helping them acquire and improve essential skills and attitudes. However, the study also showed that all the positive effects of the telecollaboration projects cannot be given to the project itself. The efficiency of such projects relies on certain dos and don'ts with which whoever will perform such projects in the future requires to be careful. This paper intends to provide precise guidance about designing telecollaboration projects together with an understanding of its constraints.

For agentive and influential involvement in online communities, language learners and teachers need to develop critical digital literacy (CDL), conceptualized by Darvin (2017) as an awareness of "how meanings are represented in ways that maintain and reproduce relations of power" (p. 5) and thus privilege some and marginalize others online. Virtual exchange (VE) provides an ideal socio-cultural and socio-semiotic context for fostering CDL (Hauck, 2019) as it is an educational intervention that is--by default--digitally mediated. In this contribution, we examine the employment of semiotic practices for multimodal representation and how they "shape power relations with others" (Bezemer & Jewitt, 2009, p. 1), thereby drawing on a social semiotic approach (Bezemer & Kress, 2016) to CDL (Bilki et al., 2023). Our insights stem from a six-week VE between two higher education institutions in Turkey and the UK, which brought together 48 future English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. The task-based exchanges yielded a rich dataset which allows us to illustrate how CDL is materially achieved through transformative processes observed in multicultural, multilingual, and multimodal interactions. Our findings speak to Kern's (2014, 2015) appeal for a relational pedagogy and highlight the need to promote CDL in EFL teaching and teacher education to foster critical reflection on meaning-making conventions while exercising agency to establish powerful online relations with others.

Providing people to acquire some skills and concepts, social studies lessons interact with various branches of science. One of them is citizenship education. When citizenship education is examined, it is seen that effective citizenship education comes to the forefront in present democracies. Concepts and issues such as respect for differences, empathy, globalization, cooperation, solidarity, identity, unity, and the feeling of togetherness are important considering immigrant students' acquiring citizenship awareness via intercultural interaction. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of social studies lessons on citizenship perceptions of 7th grade Syrian immigrant students. For this purpose, opinions of 14 Syrian immigrant students, who attended 7th grade in three different secondary schools in Hatay in 2019, were asked. The research was designed in qualitative design and phenomenology model. Purposive sampling method was used to determine Syrian immigrant students participating in the research. A semi-structured student interview form was used to collect data. It was found that, immigrant students in the study group of the research know their rights and responsibilities, respect the rights of others, feel responsible and have patriotism. They stated that citizenship education they received in social studies lessons contributed greatly to their acquisition of these values. Considering these findings, it was concluded that social studies lesson has an important effect on the formation of citizenship perceptions of Syrian immigrant students; enabling them to be connected with the environment they live in with a sense of belonging, while enabling them to become more sensitive and responsible citizens towards their environment.

In this study, in which the levels of ethnocentrism of those who teach Turkish as a foreign language were examined in line with various variables, the general survey model within the scope of descriptive research was implemented. The research was carried out with 185 instructors who teach Turkish as a foreign language in various state or private institutions in the 2020-2021 academic year. In order to assess the ethnocentrism level of teachers, a 5-item Likert-type Ethnocentrism Scale, comprised of 20 questions, developed by Neuliep and McCroskey (1997) and which was later adapted to Turkish by Üstün (2011) was used. In the study, it was found that the levels of ethnocentrism of those who teach Turkish as a foreign language differ significantly according to such variables as gender, age, their holding a Turkish teaching certificate for foreigners and to the MA program they graduated from, yet it was also concluded that there was no significant difference according to the other variables as the institution they work for, the department they studied in, whether they know a foreign language, where they teach Turkish, and their intercultural communication competence.

Teaching culture is an indispensable part of language teaching as language and culture are intertwined. Awareness of one's own culture and the target culture is necessary to be able to communicate efficiently. To raise intercultural awareness among EFL learners, literary sources can be a great source as they are authentic and reflect cultural elements. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of short stories on intercultural awareness. In this quasi-experimental study, an experimental and a control group were chosen among B1 level of EFL students. The research was carried out in the School of Foreign Languages at a university in the Western part of Turkey. In a six-week implementation period, the experimental group (18 students) read short stories with cultural themes from different cultures. On the other hand, the control group (19 students) read nonliterary texts again with cultural themes in them. In the study, quantitative data was collected through the Intercultural Awareness Questionnaire prepared by Zorba (2019), and the questionnaire was implemented as a pretest and posttest to gather data. The findings of the study showed that there was no meaningful change in the intercultural awareness of the study group before and after the implementation in terms of intercultural awareness. Furthermore, no significant difference was observed between the experimental and control groups. In the study, it was also concluded that gender and international experience did not lead to a difference in terms of intercultural awareness of participants. The overall conclusion that can be made from this study is that intercultural awareness focus in language teaching may ameliorate the language competence of learners, but it might take time to increase awareness among learners, so institutions should prioritize increasing awareness of EFL learners with various activities.

This study focused on the levels of intercultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence demonstrated by pre-service Social Studies teachers' and sought to explore the relationship between the two variables. The study used a correlational survey research design. The sample consisted of 274 pre-service Social Studies teachers who were in different years of study. The data were collected using the "Intercultural Sensitivity Scale", "Emotional Intelligence Scale", and a "Personal Information Form". The data were analyzed using the independent samples T-test and one-way Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA). The correlation co-efficient was also computed to identify the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence. The analysis results showed that the intercultural sensitivity of preservice Social Studies teachers' differed significantly according to gender and them having friends from different countries or cultures; while their emotional intelligence differed significantly according to having friends from different countries or cultures. A significant moderate positive correlation was found between intercultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence. Further research may contribute to the literature by studying emotional intelligence and intercultural sensitivity in sample groups from different areas orwith different characteristics.

The need to address culture in the language learning process has been emphasized as a means to promote both intercultural awareness and communicative language curricula. In countries such as Turkey, this has been an ongoing concern in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) education. Thus, attempts have been made to enhance the cultural aspect of EFL learning in Turkey with the current English language curricula for elementary and high schools. To determine whether these curricula truly address culture in ways that support intercultural awareness, the researcher conducted a content analysis of the learning outcomes and objectives for each grade level, focusing on the curricula developed in 2013 and 2014 respectively for elementary and high school, as well as the program updates introduced in 2017 and 2018. The culture-related objectives and outcomes including products, practices, perspectives and persons relating to native Englishspeaking and international cultures were identified, and the total numbers of culture-oriented outcomes and objectives were recorded and analyzed. The findings indicate that culture-related outcomes and objectives were highly limited in number; and they mainly addressed superficial aspects of culture such as names of countries/languages, foods and traditional costumes. Abstract and complex topics such as pragmatics, beliefs, and worldviews were largely ignored. Moreover, while the updated programs of 2017 and 2018 were intended to improve on the 2013 and 2014 versions, little was accomplished in this regard. As such, the findings suggest that current EFL curricula are unlikely to support the development of intercultural awareness in language learners. Some recommendations for addressing this issue are offered.

The use of interactional metadiscourse markers in opinion paragraphs written by A2-level English learners was investigated in this research. Although metadiscourse is commonly studied in discourse analysis, pragmatics, and language teaching, there has been limited attention given to the writing of beginner-level language learners. Metadiscourse is typically associated with advanced English learners' writing behavior. However, this study recognizes that English learners at lower proficiency levels can also employ interactional metadiscourse markers, such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, and engagement markers. The study scrutinized the opinion paragraphs of 20 university students at A2-level during the period of emergency remote teaching caused by the pandemic. The analysis of metadiscourse was carried out using Hyland's model for academic texts. The paragraphs of 10 students who attended online writing classes and 10 who did not were compared. The results showed that students who attended online classes attempted to use the metadiscourse markers they had learned in their writing lessons. On the other hand, students who did not attend online classes tended to use fewer interactional metadiscourse markers. The study proposes that students' writing and communication with their readers can be considerably impacted by teachers' attitudes, lesson materials, and sample paragraphs. Therefore, metadiscourse analysis can assist teachers and material developers in selecting appropriate materials for writing instruction.

This study aimed to investigate the development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' speaking skills and intercultural communication skills through three intercultural speaking tasks in the form of video blog recordings. EFL learners (N = 13) enrolled in the English preparatory class voluntarily participated in the study. The learners were clustered into six groups by drawing lots, and each group was given topics related to their course content, which required them to record a video blog at the end of each unit in a series of English course books. The study was designed as qualitative research. A structured written interview, classroom observation, and self-narratives were used to collect the data. Content analysis and thematic coding were utilized to analyze the obtained data from the research. The results revealed that intercultural speaking tasks are fruitful in lessening EFL learners' speaking anxiety and prejudice towards cultural differences. EFL learners developed empathy and tolerance towards cultural differences, deepening their cultural awareness in a positive way and accepting other cultures as they are while realizing their own cultural values and norms.

Increase in diversified teaching contexts has led researchers to investigate the potentials of telecollaboration in multicultural learning environments. While there are abundant telecollaboration studies, improving intercultural awareness through a theoretical model is usually under-investigated. Based on Byram's (1997) co-orientational and Bennett's (1993) developmental intercultural competence models, this study intends to raise critical intercultural competence among 50 pre-service English teachers through telecollaboration with five faculty members across European countries. Relying on data generated through (a)synchronous delivery modes in an eight-week intervention, participants' intercultural development was measured by quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings suggest that telecollaboration had a significant impact on learners' critical intercultural development. In particular, interaction with different cultural perspectives dismantled prejudices and stereotypes as evidenced by their (1) cognisance of diversity, (2) pragmatic cultural stance, (3) latent intercultural conflict and (4) oppressed gender inequality. This study reveals that telecollaboration is a viable venue for increasing pre-service teachers' critical cultural awareness and reducing biases in multicultural learning contexts.

Purpose: Telecollaboration has become a dynamic subfield of CALL studies with the increasing availability of multimodal platforms in language learning and teaching. Although current studies mostly have focused on bilingual and bicultural exchanges, affordances of multi-faceted teacher identity have not received considerable attention. To address this gap, 57 teacher candidates took part in an eight-week telecollaboration project with four instructors from European universities. Method: Drawing on [Deardorff, D. K. 2006. "Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization." "Journal of Studies in International Education" 10 (3): 241-266.] process orientation and [Bennett, M. J. 1993. "Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity." In "Education for the Intercultural Experience," edited by R. Michael Paige, 21-71. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press] developmental models, teacher candidates' identity negotiations were analysed through the data generated on (a)synchronous modes. Findings and Originality: Findings suggest that dynamics resulting from multicultural and multilingual identity contribute to higher intercultural communicative competence, and teacher candidates' intercultural development is manifested through their: (a) intercultural adjustment; (b) culture-specific identity orientations; (c) gender socialisation; and (d) culture and technology interplay. This study provides several implications for EFL practitioners to foster intercultural communicative competence in language classes and utilise telecollaboration as a valuable asset with concrete outcomes for upcoming studies.

In this study, we draw data from a tripartite telecollaborative project that involved 112 teacher candidates (TCs) from university-based teacher education programmes in France, Turkey, and the USA. Theoretically, we rely on Pantic's (2015. A model for study of teacher agency for social justice. "Teachers and Teaching" 21, no. 6: 759-778) model of teacher agency for social justice and use discourse analytic methods (Gee. 2018. "Introducing Discourse Analysis"; from Grammar to Society. Routledge) to examine how TCs negotiated their agency for social justice in small group discussions around the topics of social justice (e.g. conditions of refugees and immigrants, gender inequities, and LGBTQ+ rights) in their educational contexts. We found that when TCs used agentive positionings in their discussions, their discourse involved first person pronouns coupled with will + infinitive structure (e.g. I will teach …) followed by specific plans of action, as opposed to when agentive positioning was lacking with the use of generic pronouns and hypothetical structures (e.g. teachers/everyone would/could …). We also found that TCs used the discursive space of telecollaboration to negotiate their agencies and had variable success as they navigated tensions in their beliefs and positioned themselves as future social justice teachers in relation to the discussion topics. Their positionings demonstrated their level of engagement and their individual/collective efficacy. Our findings suggest that future research should continue to investigate the micro-level discourse involved in telecollaborative spaces.

Translation has been considered as a cross-cultural act comprising the transference of the cultural signs, rather than only finding the equivalence of linguistic patterns in the target text. As bridge-builders between different cultures, translators assume a very significant role in order to achieve the most appropriate cognitive, cultural, stylistic, and linguistic equivalence in the target system. This role becomes more challenging and problematic when the target audience are children. By emphasizing the difficulties in translating children's literature and the required strategies, the present study examines the Turkish translation of culturally-bound words and expressions in Tolkien's "Letters From Father Christmas." Within the framework of Lawrence Venuti's concepts of domestication and foreignization, and Klingberg's scheme of cultural context adaptation categories, this study analysed the translator's strategies and decisions and discussed whether the translator successfully conveys the same impression in the target audience in a context which is foreign to the Turkish culture and children in particular.

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with other cultures to negotiate meaning. A high level of ICC is required for a successful communication across numerous cultures. Since English has recently been accepted as the main intercultural communication language among different cultures, teaching/learning English has gained popularity. As long as learners master English and understand its cultural contexts, they are better at intercultural communication, which results from the ICC level. Hence, there is a relationship between the development of ICC and the development in the target language. Based on this idea, the current study aims to investigate the ICC levels of undergraduate English language teaching students to find out the effect of language competence on intercultural communicative competence, and also whether there is a change throughout the four-year teacher training program. A total of 238 first-year and fourth-year undergraduate ELT students were surveyed. The collected data revealed a high level of ICC regardless of study year. It also yielded a significant difference between first-year students' ICC and fourth-year students' ICC, which means mastering in English positively affects the ICC level. In accordance with the results, some implications were shared.

The aim of this study was to investigate and explore the level of Cultural Intelligence of students majoring at the English, German and French Departments at Samsun 19 Mayis University, Faculty of Education in 2018-2019 academic year. 200 students participated in the study. The study also aimed to determine whether their Cultural Intelligence was associated with their gender, age, and departments they attended. As data collection instruments, Cultural Intelligence Scale which was developed by Ang et al. in 2007 and Demographic Information Form which was developed by the researcher were used. Cultural Intelligence Scale was adapted to Turkish and assessed by Ilhan and Çetin in 2014. Collected data were analyzed and evaluated by SPSS 23 statistical package program. According to the results obtained from the research, it could be stated that there was a significant difference for some subcategories of Cultural Intelligence. In addition, it was observed that the students who participated in the study differed significantly in terms of the type of departments in which they studied and the high schools that they had graduated from. Regard with mean scores of the participants it was observed that mean scores of males were higher than females in terms of some variables. In the end of the paper, limitations and pedagogical dimensions of the study were discussed. Additionally, suggestions were given for future research in the light of the yielded results.

The goal of this research is to take a close look at the issue of immigration and education; views of 19 Turkish teachers who give education to Syrian refugee children in Turkey are analyzed for this purpose. It is attempted to determine the current problems in refugee education in Turkey and present solution suggestions. It is determined that the Turkish teachers didn't receive any kind of proper training during university education and they received a two-week training before starting the education process. On the other hand, it is observed that gender is a significant determiner in the relations between Turkish and Syrian teachers in the education environment. According to the data, most of the students have violent behavioral disorders (ex. Bullying) and psychological problems; it is determined that it is highly important to support the emotional needs of students, especially the ones who witnessed violence acts back in Syria.

The present study aimed to figure out whether Turkish EFL learners transfer their L1 Turkish pragmatic norms to their L2 English compliments and compliment responses. Six senior ELT students took part in the study, carried out at a state university in Turkey. An open role play adapted from Tran's study (2006) was used in English and Turkish to elicit the compliment and compliment response data in the given languages. The data analysis was carried out according to two different coding schemas. The compliment strategy framework, used to analyze compliment strategies, consisted of two macro levels as "direct compliments" and "indirect compliments" and subcategories. The second framework that was used to analyze responses to compliments yielded three main categories as "Accept" compliments, "Reject" compliments, "Deflect/Evade" compliments and their sub-categories. The results of the study implied that there was a sign of negative pragmatic transfer from L1 Turkish to L2 English in "Accompanied by Explanations" compliment strategy at the level of direct compliments and the results also suggested that Turkish EFL learners transferred the use of "Deflect/Evade" compliment response strategy especially in the sub-category of "Explanation" from their L1 to their L2 English.

Different communities assess social distance, social power, rights and obligations, and degree of imposition used in specific speech acts differently. As a result of this difference, foreign language learners are likely to make sociopragmatic failure. This kind of failure is harder to correct because of the learners' justifiable sensitivity in social (or political, religious, and moral) matters. Nevertheless, the research has proven the effectiveness of instruction on development of learners' awareness of sociopragmatic aspects of language use. However, there is almost no investigation on the representation of sociopragmatic variables in second or foreign language textbooks. Considering that textbooks are essential for providing input for the learners in development of their sociopragmatic competence, we compared EFL textbooks designed for and employed in public schools of Turkey with those designed for and employed in public schools of Azerbaijan, to evaluate how sociopragmatic and related variables have been addressed in dialogues present in these textbooks. The results of the investigation revealed that there are some significant differences between Turkish and Azerbaijani textbooks regarding representation of speech acts, vertical distance, and strength of socially defined rights and obligations. These differences, on the other hand, can be accounted for by the inadequate representation of speech situations. By this study, we aspired to draw textbook writers' attention to such inadequacies elimination of which may result in sociopragmatically more adequate textbooks, and attract second- or foreign language teachers and learners' attention on the significance of sociopragmatic competence for appropriate language use.

As teachers primarily rely on textbooks in the teaching of foreign languages, one way of helping and encouraging them to focus on intercultural competence (IC) is to provide them with the textbooks that facilitate intercultural language learning process. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the New Language Leader Pre-intermediate textbook from an intercultural perspective. This evaluation was primarily based on 132 students' and 15 instructors' perceptions of the textbook after they used it for two months in language classrooms at a preparatory school of a state university. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire adopted from a previous study. Data analysis was conducted with the help of SPSS 20.0. Descriptive Statistics was run to identify the frequencies and mean scores. Mann-Whitney U test was used to discover any possible significant difference in students' and instructors' perspectives. The results indicated that although most of the IC components such as knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and linguistic means existed in the textbook according to the participants, the extent of the representation of these in the textbook varied. Whereas the aims and goals of the textbook were thought to be in accordance with the conceptual framework of the students to a large extent, both students and instructors indicated that it did not provide much insight into learners' own culture. Considering the findings, the stakeholders might have necessary revisions on the textbook and instructors might adapt some resources to fulfil the needs of their learners in the development of IC in similar contexts.

As a popular social media application, WhatsApp has become an integral part of daily lives of many people on earth. Researchers have investigated the individual, social and pedagogical benefits of the tool. However, the possible contributions of WhatsApp as a platform for cultural interaction in the glocal sense has not been examined yet. To call attention to this dimension of the tool, this case study aims to investigate the role of WhatsApp in maintaining glocal linguistic, social and cultural interaction among a group of foreign learners of Turkish. The participants had a three-week summer school experience in Turkey where they formed a WhatsApp group for communication. After returning back to their home countries, these participants continued their interaction with their friends through the WhatsApp group. The data for this study were collected through open-ended questions. The results of the content analysis revealed that WhatsApp was an effective application to promote the maintenance of glocal cultural interaction among the participants with its personal, social and linguistic contributions. The participants could have the chance to exchange ideas and increase their perspectives and knowledge as global citizens while preserving their cultural and national identities as local citizens. Their interactional experiences through WhatsApp can be said to have helped the participants increase their awareness and expand their intercultural knowledge from the glocal stance.

Today, language learners can be linked with students in other countries to form international partnerships, which is often called telecollaboration. Some common goals of telecollaboration include cultural awareness, development of foreign language skills and intercultural communicative competence. This study intends to gain insights about the learners' experience following a 5-week telecollaboration activity between 100 English as a foreign language (EFL) students from Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics in China and Anadolu University in Turkey. The participation in the project was on voluntary basis for Turkish students. The telecollaboration activity included three different stages in which learners from both countries were expected to be able to communicate using different channels (text messaging, voice calls, video calls, emailing) synchronously and asynchronously, to analyse and compare their own and their peers' culture to build understanding of each other's identities and to collaborate together to produce a cultural piece of work. At the end of the activity Turkish EFL students were invited to answer a questionnaire that aimed to gain insights about their experience related to telecollaboration activity. Results revealed that the participants mostly enjoyed the activity. They also believed the activity contributed to their language learning process, motivation and intercultural communicative competence.

The purpose of this study is to describe the development of the Intercultural Communicative Competence Scale (ICCS). Two different groups from Turkey and Kazakhstan constituted the sample. The Turkish group (N=258) participated in the piloting process to develop the scale. The Kazakhstani group (N=314) was used to confirm the structure validity of the instrument. Based on review of literature, 76 items important for assessing ICC were generated. After expert revision for the face and content validity of the scale, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were applied. According to the results, the content validity index (CVI) for the ICC scale was found acceptable (CVI=0.7). EFA results found that the scale, consisting of 4 factors and 52 items, explained 50.78% of the total variance. The factor loadings showed that 21 items loaded fairly strongly on Component 1 (Skills), 13 items on Component 2 (Attitude), 12 items on Component 3 (Awareness), and 6 items on Component 4 (Knowledge). CFA results also confirmed the four factorial structure of the scale. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of four factors and a whole instrument were found 0.946; 0.906; 0.880; 0.806 and 0.958 respectively.

The study reports on a telecollaboration exchange between two teacher education classes in the United States and Turkey. In synchronous and asynchronous conversations, preservice teachers (PTs) engaged in social justice issues and made discourse choices that captured culture(s) and communities as diverse or essentialized. These choices were affected by PTs' positionings and impacted how PTs connected to individuals only and/or to broader society. PTs asked questions that created space for critical discussions and facilitated awareness of diversity, yet sometimes led to overgeneralizations. The study has implications for designing telecollaborations that promote language and practices to unpack the issues of social justice.

This study aims to reveal EFL lecturers' opinions about intercultural education and classroom practices including teaching materials, classroom activities, assessment, and teachers' role for developing intercultural awareness. To gain insights about the current situation in EFL classrooms at a university level in Turkey, lecturers' opinions and classroom practices have been examined through a questionnaire and an interview. This study, combining both quantitative and qualitative research, was designed according to the mixed method procedure and followed the sequential explanatory strategy. The study covered 172 EFL lecturers from preparatory schools of six state universities, and 12 EFL lecturers selected randomly joined the interview voluntarily. The participating institutions were Atatürk University, Cumhuriyet University, Erciyes University, Haci Bektas Veli University, Karabük University, and Karadeniz Technical University. The quantitative results show that although lecturers are aware of the importance of integrating both home and target culture into the classes, and developing learners' interactional skills, intercultural communicative competence and intercultural sensitivity, they are not sure about how to put intercultural learning into practice for EFL classroom tasks and activities. Accordingly, the results of the interview present the problems that prevent teaching about intercultural awareness and reveal that lecturers need guidance and training to practice confidently intercultural competence teaching in the classroom, especially in terms of assessment methods as they do not have a clear idea about the assessment and evaluation methods to apply with intercultural competence.