This conference was organized by Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), co-organized by Confucius Institute at the University of Arizona (CIUA), and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program (SLAT), and co-sponsored by Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), and Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Arizona.
Conference Theme: Aiming for "The Third Place" Intercultural Competence through Foreign Language Teaching and Learning.
Globalization, having brought individuals in contact with one another at an unprecedented scale, has also brought forth a general challenge to traditionally recognized boundaries of nation, language, race, gender, and class. The challenge moves in two directions simultaneously: on the one hand, distinctions that were unnoticeable before have been rendered visible, and in the opposite direction, similarities across traditional boundaries have been recognized. The end result in both cases is that boundaries of social practice are being re-negotiated, re-assessed, and re-considered. For those living within this rapidly changing social landscape, intercultural competence--as defined by Michael Byram above--is a necessary skill, and the cultivation of such intercultural individuals falls on the shoulders of today’s educators. They should provide students with opportunities to help them define and design for themselves their "third place" or "third culture," a sphere of interculturality that enables language students to take an insider's view as well as an outsider's view on both their first and second cultures. It is this ability to find/establish/adopt this third place that is at the very core of intercultural competence.
The conference aims to bring researchers and practitioners across languages, levels and settings to discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and foster meaningful professional dialogue on issues related to Intercultural Competence teaching and learning.
