Business English students’ multifaceted and contradictory perceptions of intercultural communication education (ICE) at a Chinese University

Abstract

Intercultural communication education (ICE) is occurring in different departments and faculties of higher education globally. Yet, there is a lack of research on how this complex field is perceived by both teachers and students. The same goes for the perceptions of the ideal teacher of the subject. This article proposes to fill these gaps by problematizing current discussions about ICE. First, the article presents an overview of the field and shows how polysemic, ideologically and politically oriented ICE is. Based on focus groups with Chinese students of Business English at a Chinese university, this case study examines how they discuss, construct and perceive, on the one hand, the idea of intercultural communication as a subject, and on the other, those who teach it. ICE is multifaceted in Chinese higher education and we do not claim to generalize for the field as a whole in this paper. Based on a dialogical approach to students' discourses, the results show that they do not seem to have a uniform and coherent way of representing intercultural communication. As far as teachers of the subject are concerned, native/non-native and Chinese/non-Chinese dichotomies seem to dominate. Implications are discussed for the future of ICE in higher education.

Building Intercultural Communication Competence in Translator Training: A Metacognitive Approach

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Language for International Communication: Linking Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Language for Specific Purposes in the Era of Multilingualism and Technologies. Volume 4

“…There is a large amount of research demonstrating students' perceptions of various English language courses, language skills abilities, teaching methods or evaluations of the teaching reality experience in general (Kung and Chuo, 2002;Sung and Yeh, 2012;AbuSa'aleek, 2015;Jiménez, 2018;Romadhon, Hikmah and Hellystia, 2018;Kamugisha, 2021). As it can be seen in the resources, the biggest country that acknowledges the importance of business-related knowledge and launches BE undergraduate programs in universities is China, which is additionally highly perceptive of introducing specialized programs as part of the BE programs goals, such as intercultural communication education (Guiyu and Yang, 2016;Simpson, Dervin and Tao, 2022). Recently, there has been a range of specialized studies that have examined students' perceptions of the following: English language needs (Ghenghes, Hamed and Abdelffath, 2011), BE curriculum setting including students' expectations and satisfaction with BE courses (Zhengguo and Wenzbong, 2016), teaching strategies and BE materials implemented in classes (Abduh and Sofyan, 2019), the influence of language skills on academic, professional and personal development (Hariharasudan, Nawaz and Panakaje, 2021), blog-based BE vocabulary acquisition (Ching, 2011), BE writing ability (Wand and Shen, 2019).…”

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“…As an emerging independent research field, business discourse research extends its influence across many other interdisciplinary applications in extensive research. It is apparent that #4 higher education and #7 knowledge are related to pedagogical research, including but not limited to intercultural/cross-cultural communication education (Simpson et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2022), workplace communication (Chan, 2019), technology-enhanced communication (Zhao et al, 2022), and leadership communication (Doshi et al, 2021). These studies reveal the application of business discourse in higher education and the construction of knowledge systems that have practical significance for cultivating students in the digital era.…”