Browsing by Subject "international"
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Item Intercultural Competence and its Assessment: A Critical Contextualization(2017-01-01) Hernandez-Moreno, Beatriz; Field, Thomas; Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication; Intercultural CommunicationAs globalization shifts towards an increasingly more interconnected conception of the world, many nations, cultures and people find themselves in intercultural situations with an unprecedented regularity. When these intercultural encounters take place, an individual needs to apply what has come to be called "intercultural competence" in order to act and communicate "effectively and appropriately." Both public and private institutions, as well as scholars, have taken an interest in this new concept, and assessment tools to measure the degree that an individual may attain in such competence are now being used in a wide array of contexts. Assessing a concept whose meaning and implications are still being debated makes the task challenging, yet different fields are navigating these mostly-uncharted waters in search of the key that will enable intercultural competence to be taught, developed and assessed successfully in different situations. A critical mind, however, must ask some uncomfortable questions. What do labels like "effective," "appropriate" or "successful" imply when applied to intercultural exchanges and how do they impact our modern conception of intercultural competence? Which philosophical currents and ideas inform the requirements for an individual to qualify as interculturally competent, and how do these ideas fit into the current globalized era we live in? Is it possible to frame the contextualization of intercultural competence and its assessment by determining the gaps, flaws and limitations that its practical application possesses, and what does this mean for its future theoretical, conceptual and practical development? None of these questions has an easy answer. This paper hopes to shed some light on what lies behind intercultural competence and its assessment, at a philosophical, historical and practical level. After all, although the concept seems to be widely considered acceptable, positive and worth of encouragement, what is often overlooked is the fact that it was created within a specific system and born of a specific philosophy of mind, and thus fulfils a specific purpose in the delicate, imbalanced dynamics that exist between cultures and nations nowadays.Item Online Translanguaging Practices Among Hispanic International Students in the United States(2022-01-01) Reguera Gomez, Cristina; Yoon, Kyung-Eun; Language, Literacy & Culture; Intercultural CommunicationThe purpose of this research is to examine the translanguaging practices on social networks of Hispanic international students in American universities, with a focus on how they translanguage and what social functions their translanguaging practices have. To answer these questions, this study examines the posts and messages of five participants through critical and multilingual discourse analysis. The results show that participants translanguage within the lexical, at the lexical, and at the sentential level, while evidencing a high level of creativity. The type of translanguage and its frequency is closely linked to the audience and the social network used: participants translanguage more frequently and in more diverse ways when communicating with fellow SpanishEnglish bilingual international students, while expressing different identities and different emotions. The present study suggests that translanguaging is more complex product than a mixture of two languages and its presence is highly reliant on the audience.Item The Roles of Education and Literacy in the Digital Divide Among Middle-Aged Adults: Cross-National Evidence from the United States, Japan, and South Korea(ProLiteracy, 2024) Yamashita, Takashi; Kim, Giyeon; Liou, Chih-Ling; Ando, Takatoshi; Bardo, Anthony R.; Liu, DarrenInternationally representative data of middle-aged adults 45 – 65 years old [n(United States) = 2,150; n(Japan) = 2,318; n(South Korea) = 2,800] from the 2012 Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies were analyzed to examine the roles of education and literacy in relation to the digital divide. Results from survey-weighted binary logistic regressions showed that both educational attainment and literacy were positively associated with all four measures of information and communication technology (use of the computer, email, online information and transaction) use in all three countries. The middle-aged adults in the United States benefited more from the educational attainment than those in Japan, in terms of email and online information use. The middle-aged adults with lower education and basic skills (i.e., literacy) may benefit from the educational intervention and additional information and communication technology training, and in turn, improve the digital divide in later life, regardless of differences in culture and economy.