Summer Study-Abroad Program as Experiential Learning: Examining Similarities and Differences in International Communication

Abstract

This paper examines how the study-abroad experience enhances intercultural communication competence. This study used Bennett’s (1986, 1993) model of ethnorelative typology of acceptance, adaptation, and integration to explore intercultural communication competency. Central to intercultural communication competency is intercultural sensitivity and modified perceptions of cultural differences. A pre-test/post-test open-ended questionnaire design was utilized to uncover what was learned by students while participating in a four-week summer study-abroad program in Paris and Brussels. Based on 110 participants over 16 years, results indicated that both sensitivity to and understanding of cultural differences are heightened as a result of the study-abroad experience. Further, these findings provided support for outcomes showing attainment of intercultural communication competency learning objectives.

An Essay about Intercultural Sensitivity and Competence in Higher Education

“…It was noticeable that the authors did not discuss the validity or reliability of the student's reflections. This limitation was also found in the research method by Levine and Garland (2015) who reported higher levels of U.S. students' intercultural sensitivity through a qualitative study. The authors stated that these U.S. students provided longer answers to open questions about intercultural issues after studying abroad compared to their answers in the pre-test.…”

Choosing to learn outside the classroom: Rural South African students’ motivation for and benefits of participating in voluntary international virtual exchanges

“…We also acknowledge the difficulty of imparting global competency in a traditional classroom where students are not exposed to real-world application of intercultural theories. Influenced by the theory of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), many educators have turned to Study Abroad programmes in which students spend extended periods of time in a foreign country and are immersed in a different culture to provide this real-world experience (e.g., Boateng & Thompson, 2013;Levine & Garland, 2015;Earnest, Rosenbusch, Wallace-Williams, & Keim, 2016;Wilson, Brain, Brown, Gaind, Radan, & Redmond, 2016). Studying abroad is considered a good example of experiential learning because students learn about cultural differences and similarities and build intercultural competencies through hands-on experience with different cultures (Levine & Garland, 2015).…”

Integration of Intercultural Communicative Competence: A case of English Language Teachers in Higher Education

“…An extensive number of these qualitative -case studies investigated the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) based strategies and tools such as tele-collaboration projects (Hsu & Beasley, 2019;Lázár, 2014), social networking sites (Álvarez & Fernández, 2018;Chen, 2016;Jin, 2015) and blogging sites (Lee, 2011). Besides CMC, other studies also investigated the impact of language (Mai, 2018), literature (Lwin, 2016;Nault, 2006), films (Chao, 2013;Truong & Tran, 2013), and study-abroad program (Fang & Baker, 2017;Levine, 2015) to the ICC development of students. Common to these studies is the finding that all the innovative and creative pedagogical strategies used significantly contributed to the enhancement of ICC of the participants.…”