It has never been more important for schools and instructors to consider best practices and strategies to appropriately design effective English language courses. Teaching English successfully to diverse audiences requires an understanding of how to communicate with students based on their individual needs and backgrounds. In order to ensure schools provide the best English language education possible, they must examine and apply innovative research in the field. Intercultural Communication and Ubiquitous Learning in Multimodal English Language Education reviews and reports the current research methods and theoretical advances in English language learning linked to applied technologies and action research. The book considers the most innovative approaches to English language education from an intercultural and communicative perspective that covers key concepts such as collaborative ubiquitous learning and multimodal communication. Covering topics such as social networks, virtual environments, and intercultural awareness, this reference work is crucial for academicians, researchers, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This book provides a contemporary and critical examination of the theoretical and pedagogical impact of Michael Byram’s pioneering work on intercultural communicative competence and intercultural citizenship within the field of language education and beyond. The chapters address important theoretical and empirical work on the teaching, learning, and assessment of intercultural learning, and highlight how individual language educators and communities of practice enact intercultural learning in locally appropriate ways. The book offers comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible knowledge for researchers, teachers, teacher-trainers and students.

Providing an overview of how online technology is being used for foreign language learning, this title assesses three different models of telecollaboration and covers theoretical approaches to online intercultural exchange as well as practical aspects.

The research and development described in this volume is intended to contribute to the integration of intercultural communication training in teacher education programmes.

Eva Alcón Soler Maria Pilar Safont Jordà Universitat Jaume I, Spain The main purpose of the present book is to broaden the scope of research on the development of intercultural communicative competence. Bearing this purpose in mind, English learners are considered as intercultural speakers who share their interest for engaging in real life communication. According to Byram and Fleming (1998), the intercultural speaker is someone with knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and who enjoys discovering and maintaining relationships with people from other cultural backgrounds, although s/he has not been formally trained for that purpose. Besides, possessing knowledge of at least two cultures is the case of many learners in bilingual or multilingual communities. In these contexts, the objective of language learning should then focus on developing intercultural competence, which in turn may involve promoting language diversity while encouraging English as both a means and an end of instruction (see Alcón, this volume). This is the idea underlying the volume, which further sustains Kramsch’s argument (1998) against the native/ non-native dichotomy. Following that author, we also believe that in a multilingual world where learners may belong to more than one speech community, their main goal is not to become a native speaker of English, but to use this language as a tool for interaction among many other languages and cultures.

Through case studies on multicultural and multilingual education in contemporary Europe, this book aims to identify common problems with different approaches and solutions. The editors propose measures useful in policy formulation.

This book examines the relationships between online visual interfaces and language use in educational contexts and the features that underpin them to explore the complex nature of online communication and its implications for educational practice. Adopting a case study approach featuring a global range of examples, the volume uniquely focuses on multimodal intercultural interactions, with a particular interest in videoconferencing, to look at how they project and reflect particular cultural values and tendencies concerning language use and how they elucidate the complex cultural identifications and affiliations inherent in intercultural encounters. The book employs a diverse range of theoretical and research frameworks to highlight the dynamic connections between digital technology, social life, and language use, and the ways in which they can inform language education, making this an ideal resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, communication studies, media studies, information studies, and education.