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Article published In: Language and Intercultural Communication Pedagogies in Australian Higher Education
Edited by Paul J. Moore and Adriana Díaz
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 42:2] 2019
► pp. 146–170

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Linguistic landscapes

An experiential learning project for developing intercultural competence

 | University of New South Wales
Published online: 15 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.00022.hat
Abstract
Some of the key challenges in teaching intercultural communication (IC) are to engage learners in activities which develop their critical intercultural awareness and to prepare them for communication in superdiverse (Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024–1054. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) contexts. This paper discusses linguistic landscapes (LL) as an innovative method for teaching intercultural competence. Undergraduate linguistics students conducted a LL project to explore linguistic diversity in their chosen suburb of Sydney and reflected on their own intercultural learning experience. Student reflections revealed that the project had a strong impact on their perceptions of diversity and their attitudes towards other languages and cultures. Students increased their critical awareness of how identity, ideology and attitudes influence language choices and intercultural interactions. The experiential learning project also made them reflect on their own identity as intercultural citizens. The findings of this study highlight the usefulness of the project in developing intercultural competence (ICC). The paper discusses methodological implications for teaching IC in the context of increasingly multilingual and multicultural learning communities.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic Landscapes – a concept and method
  • 3.Opportunities of IC teaching in the Australian context
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Research aims
    • 4.2The LL Project as an experiential learning task
    • 4.3The study
    • 4.4Student participants’ background and language abilities
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Research question I: How does engagement in the Linguistic Landscape project enhance students’ ICC? Which aspects of ICC are developed?
    • 5.2Language attitudes and ideologies
    • 5.3Research question II: What impact does working in culturally and linguistically diverse teams have on students’ ICC? What is the nature of intercultural learning?
      • 5.3.1The impact of experiential learning in multicultural teams
      • 5.3.2The nature of intercultural learning
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • References
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