Cultivating cross-cultural communicative competence through intercultural language socialization

In view of the ongoing trend of international students coming to study in North American universities, together with the proliferation of international educational or professional training programs, research needs to be done to address issues on cross-cultural adaptation difficulties encountered by international students, what can be done to facilitate their academic and cultural adjustment, as well as what impact the international education can have on the students on their way to becoming functional members in the host/home society. To contribute to the understanding of such concerns, by situating the lens of research on the LF exchange MBA program, the study investigated a group of Chinese international students' discursive developmental process of acquiring intercultural communicative competence during their short sojourn in America. To contribute to the understanding of such concerns, by situating the lens of research on the LF MBA program, the present study investigates the Chinese international students' diverse developmental process of acquiring intercultural communicative competence during their short sojourn in America. The study poses the following research questions: (1) In a short-term exchange program like the LF MBA program, what are the salient language and sociocultural factors and how do they function to socialize (facilitate/impede) international students to communicate effectively in intercultural communication settings? (2) What educational implications can be drawn to facilitate short-term student sojourners' development in intercultural communicative competence?; To seek answers to the above questions, this study will: (1) integrate language socialization with several key concepts of poststructuralist theory and intercultural communication theory to form a theoretical framework of intercultural language socialization; (2) employ ethnography of communication as the methodological framework to capture the L2 learners' trajectories of developing intercultural communicative competence in an L2 context; and (3) draw educational implications for international education programs.