Researching intercultural communication, 2013

The Language Pedagogy Doctoral Programme of ELTE, Budapest,

supported by the TÁMOP (Social Renewal Operational Programme) Project 4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0030.   

organised and hosted

 An intensive course for PhD an MA students

 Researching intercultural communication

The course was be taught by:   

Professor Mike Byram, University of Durham (UK)

Professor Karen Risager, Roskilde Universitet (Denmark)

Dr. María del Carmen Méndez García Universidad de Jaén (Spain)

The course was held in two parts: February 6-8 and April 8-10, 2013.

Course description
In the course of the last 30 years there has been a 'cultural turn' in foreign language education - as in many other areas of the social sciences. Although there is a long history of a cultural dimension in language teaching, this new development has brought new theory and practice responding to new social conditions in which education - including language education - takes place. Keywords such as 'internationalisation', 'globalisation', 'identity', 'cross-cultural communication' and 'intercultural competence' capture some of the change. Language teaching/learning and research on language teaching/learning needs to respond in a systematic way to the changes and in this course we provided a basis for developing research projects at Master or Doctoral level.

In the first half of the course (6-8, February 2013) the first stage focussed on presenting the key issues and the needs and opportunities for research - the 'gaps' in our knowledge. The second focus was on finding appropriate research designs and methods with illustrations from previous research. This led to preliminary proposals from students and discussion of their feasibility. In the second half of the course (8-10, April 2013), the main focus was on developing students' research proposals. this was done with further presentations from the tutors where necessary, on matters of substance or on matters of research methods, and through presentations to the group and individual supervisions.