daronloo

Arasaratnam and Doerfel's (2005) study on defining intercultural communicative competence (ICC) may be dated, but I believe their discussions are very relevant to the current situation of ICC.  Their study aimed to define ICC from a grounded exploratory approach.  Their reasoning behind this is because of the subjective understanding of what intercultural is, and what competence is.  Communication, from an intercultural perspective, is typified as spoken discourse. To come to a definition of ICC, the study interviewed a group of international and local students studying in an American university.  The students were asked what they thought ICC is, and what they thought are key components of a person who is interculturally competent.  Though responses were diverse, a common thread was induced. But would this common thread still be applicable to different cultural contexts?  Probably from a qualitative perspective it would be, but perhaps not if viewed wit...

Recently, I wrote a response  to an article urging English teachers in Malaysia to teach only in English.  Aside from my response there were at least one other who wrote a very well thought-through  piece .   An English-only approach was a common sentiment you would find in language pedagogic textbooks and manuals published decades ago.  With the expansion of applied linguistics, the current community of language educators and scholars acknowledge that the language learning process involves more than just picking up new language knowledge and abilities through immersion.  Gone are the days when language is just considered a cognitive exercise.  These days, we have other affective variables to consider such as anxiety, stress, motivation, and the list goes on.  This was the idea that I had hoped my write-up would convey.  How wrong I was.  Not only did nobody understand what I wrote, I got a few interesting comments as well.  I do...

This morning my supervisor emailed me asking me if I would be interested to participate in our Faculty's conference later this week.  I was feeling like an opportunist today, so I said yes. I only got to work on the poster this evening and spent about an hour working on it.  I was not quite sure how I am supposed to design the poster, but I would imagine something with important catch phrases and keywords with minimal texts.  That's what I did.  As I was creating this poster, I got to thinking, am I on the right track?  My train of thought while making the poster was quite direct, with very little interruption.  It felt like I had a direction to go.  This encourages me but at the same time scares me.  How would I know that the direction I'm taking is not too simplistic?  Is it so uncritical that I am able to go from point A to point B without much interference? I reckon that despite having a seemingly simple research design, the depth of ...