This paper reports findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that explored the ethnographic learning processes of 10 modern languages students who spent one full academic year abroad, having first completed successfully an "Introduction to Ethnography" course in the UK. It begins from the argument that although significant attempts…

This study discusses the impact of spatial, temporal and virtual mobility on how mobile individuals talk about language in their world, and how they use language offline and online to communicate over time and across space. We introduce the notion of "chronotopic translanguaging" to highlight the significance of merging time and place in…

In this article, the idea of the 'colonial signature' is advanced as a potentially pivotal response to triggers that deepen or act as barriers to intercultural learning. From a postcolonial positioning, empirical data is then examined to consider the responses to intercultural-learning triggers of 14 UK-based student teachers on a study visit to…

While research exists on the effectiveness of pedagogical methods in relation to the development of Chinese students' critical thinking (CT), there has been little research on Chinese students' experiences around CT in relation to their own contexts. This paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated the experiences of the use of CT…

Educational sojourns abroad are not only increasingly popular; it is also believed that they have many positive outcomes for students. The transformative potential of a study sojourn abroad has been claimed in linguistic and broader intercultural terms (e.g. Brown [2009] "The Transformative Power of the International Sojourn: An Ethnographic…

In this article, I describe the ways in which two British university students negotiated their identity as second language learners during a year abroad in Italy and the extent to which their struggles helped them to "fit in" into the new social and cultural contexts. Building upon the lived experiences of the two participants, I follow…

This article reports on an ethnographic case study that explored how Chinese learners' national identities were displayed and reconstructed through their English language-learning journeys in Britain. Drawing on a variety of sources (ethnographic observations, informal conversations, diaries, and narrative interviews), the analysis focuses on the…

While it is generally accepted that literature fosters (inter)cultural learning, few qualitative studies have sought to understand in what ways interculturality is developed. This article investigates the development of Spanish L2 students' intercultural awareness through the reading of a short story entitled "Norma y Ester" by Argentine…

Suggests an evaluation framework for language teachers' inservice courses regarding the degree to which they offer participants the opportunity to become more open to "otherness." The article describes training courses in five European countries and examines how they typically bring participants into contact with natives of another…