This book calls for a change in the way interculturality is introduced in Chinese language education, while the demand for Chinese language teaching increases around the world. The concept of culture – as in the phrase ‘Chinese culture’ – has often been one of the main emphases of Chinese language education, providing students with facts about China and ‘recipes’ on how to meet Chinese people and how to behave like them. However, Chinese culture, like all cultures, does not constitute a closed system, but is constantly evolving and exchanging with other cultures. This unique volume comprises studies from around the world that promote intercultural awareness, dialogue, and encounters in Chinese language education. Written in a clear and readable style, this book will appeal to a diverse readership, from practising and training teachers of Chinese, to researchers interested in language and intercultural education.

As China and Chinese language learning moves centre stage economically and politically, questions of interculturality assume even greater significance. In this book interculturality draws attention to the processes involved in people engaging and exchanging with each other across languages, nationalities and ethnicities. The study, which adopts an ecological perspective, critically examines a range of issues and uses a variety of sources to conduct a multifaceted investigation. Data gathered from interviews with students of Mandarin sit alongside a critical discussion of a wide range of sources. Interculturality in Learning Mandarin Chinese in British Universities will be of interest to students and academics studying and researching Chinese language education, and academics working in the fields of language and intercultural communication, intercultural education and language education in general.

China is often seen as a monolith outside its borders. However, heterogeneity and interculturality have characterized the Middle Kingdom for centuries. Today, China’s take on diversity is too easily disparaged or perceived as ambiguous – as if China was not legitimate to take part in conversations about it. The authors wish to contribute to global discussions about interculturality in education, which have often been dominated by ‘Western’ voices, by problematizing a very specific Chinese perspective called Minzu (‘ethnic’) education. Minzu is presented as a potential companion to other forms of diversity education (multicultural, intercultural, transcultural, cross-cultural, global education). Without claiming that they have found a miraculous and one-size-fits all recipe, they argue that the lessons learnt from researching various aspects of Minzu in Chinese education can also help students, researchers, educators, and decision-makers unthink and rethink the central issue of interculturality. As such the book introduces the complexity, contradictions and benefits of Minzu while helping the reader consider how compatible and complementary it could be with discussions of interculturality in other parts of the world. The book also aims at making readers observe critically their own contexts. This book was written with an open mind and it should be read with the same.

International perspectives on intercultural learning are presented within a framework of cultures of learning related to education and language learning and use in academic contexts. Intercultural learning involves learners travelling to learn in a place where other cultures of learning are dominant and to which they are usually expected to adapt.

As the number of international students in Chinese higher education increases steadily, this volume is one of the first to focus on their many and varied experiences. With contributions focusing on such topics as intercultural adaptation, soft power and interculturality, language learning strategies and the intercultural, and transformations in perspective, this volume provides the reader with a broad overview of the latest advances in the field of interculturality and study abroad. While the book will appeal to a global audience of researchers, practitioners and students with an interest in Chinese higher education, it will also be of interest to all those who remain intrigued by conceptual and methodological issues of interculturality.

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.

This collection focuses on Chinese learners with original data sets using innovative research methods. It investigates Chinese learners' learning and language skills, perceptions and particularly the processes of reciprocal intercultural adaptations in a wide international context of Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK.

This wide-ranging survey of issues in intercultural language teaching and learning covers everything from core concepts to program evaluation, and advocates a fluid, responsive approach to teaching language that reflects its central role in fostering intercultural understanding. Includes coverage of theoretical issues defining language, culture, and communication, as well as practice-driven issues such as classroom interactions, technologies, programs, and language assessment Examines systematically the components of language teaching: language itself, meaning, culture, learning, communicating, and assessments, and puts them in social and cultural context Features numerous examples throughout, drawn from various languages, international contexts, and frameworks Incorporates a decade of in-depth research and detailed documentation from the authors’ collaborative work with practicing teachers Provides a much-needed addition to the sparse literature on intercultural aspects of language education

This book investigates the social, political and educational role of community language education in migratory contexts. It draws on an ethnographic study that investigates the significance of Mandarin-Chinese community schooling in Britain as an intercultural space for those involved. To understand the interrelation of ‘language’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’, the book adopts a ‘bricolage’ approach that brings together a range of theoretical perspectives. This book challenges homogenous and stereotypical constructions of Chinese language, culture and identity – such as the image of Chinese pupils as conformist and deferent learners – that are often repeated both in the media and in academic discussion.

This book reports the results of an ethnographic study, focusing primarily on the experiences of four teachers of the Chinese language in Australian secondary schools. The author creates an audience for their voices as they reflect on their own understandings of culture, language teaching, and culture in language teaching through semi-structured interviews, and compares these reflections with written stimulus dialogues designed to elicit 'culture-in-language' reflections, as well as curriculum and policy documents produced by the Australian government. The book's findings indicate that teachers of the Chinese language are diverse in their views on culture, language teaching, and the ways in which culture can or should inform language teaching, and the author argues that language teacher intercultural competence cannot be assessed through a synthesis of the current English-only research literature. This book will be of interest to teachers and teacher trainers of Chinese as a foreign language, as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics and language education more broadly.