Long term effects of intercultural competence development training for study-abroad adjustment and global communication

Abstract

This study investigates the long term contribution of intercultural competence development training for global communication and adjustment given to Turkish study-abroad students prior to their sojourns to English L1 countries, indicating their views on how they benefited from the instruction after their arrival in the host country, to what extent the instruction contributed to their adjustment process, and what suggestions they would make for the improvement of the program they had undertaken. Being the last of the three consecutive studies, it is based on e-mail interview responses of eight graduate sojourners whose opinions on the program prior to their departure were reported earlier. The study focuses on the participants’ views on the significance of intercultural competence training and awareness of the nature of English as a means of global communication, and demonstrates the long-terms gains that could be attributed to study-abroad students through an intercultural development course that could best serve for their communication and adjustment needs in the host country.

Keywords

• intercultural competence; English as a lingua franca (ELF); intercultural sensitivity; global citizenship

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