This paper describes a project designed for college students unlikely to participate in international exchange programs but who, nonetheless, can learn much about intercultural communication through available resources in their own communities. The project involved a mentoring program between third and fourth year university students and first and second year ESL students at the same institution. The project was conducted over a 15-week semester-long course, and learning outcomes were documented through journal entries, written reflective statements, class discussions, oral presentations and instructor observations. A qualitative analysis of these data sources, framed through transformative learning theory, revealed outcomes leading to increased intercultural awareness. While engaging in face-to-face conversations, students transformed their prior knowledge about 'others' into a deeper understanding of themselves, their culture and their intercultural relationships.

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& When I was first learning French as a foreign language, memorizing grammar rules and decontextualized phrases was a central part of my experience. From time to time an authentic language sample (newspaper, magazine, or film) would make its way into the classroom, offering a glimpse into the mysterious world where people actually used French in their daily lives. Much has changed for today's language learners. The people, artifacts, and popular culture of a target language are often highly accessible to language learners and teachers, despite geographical barriers. This accessibility, of course, is possible through mass media and electronic forms of communication. In particular, the screens of movies, televisions, computers, billboard advertisements, and handheld devices saturate our lives with text and images that tell us stories about people, places, and events around the globe. What this means to language learning and teaching is that the once-mysterious worlds of target language cultures can be evoked with the mere touch of a button or screen. This is phenomenal. But with this unprecedented accessibility comes serious questions about the media we have at our disposal and about the role of media education in the TESOL profession.Not only do we need to pay attention to images of cultures as they are packaged by mass media, but we need to understand how media enters into our profession and consider how we want to respond to it. Several scholar-practitioners have initiated a critical response to dominant discourses in our profession by contesting representations

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