ISANA

Kazuhiro Kudo

Abstract: This paper presents critical examination of the perceptions of intercultural learning among a group of Japanese undergraduate students who participated in a one-mmonth English as second Language ESL) programme at an Australian university. In contrast to the previous studies that mainly focus on an individual student ’s development of language and intercultural competency, the present study looks at intercultural earning as a discursive practice, and aims to propose a power-minded perspective of intercultural learning that may help to eradicate chauvinistic therisation and promote further intercultural dialogues and harmony.

Toward this objective, the author conducted series of athnographic interviews with twenty-two students over the duration of the programme and analysed the collected data, using rounded theory and critical discourse analysis as research methodologies. The findings revealed the participant students could be conceived so: 1) subjects who expressed static and essentialist notions of culture while struggling hard to overcome interpersonal difficulties rising from language barriers and 2) subjects who strengthened their own national identity by constantly comparing Japan/JJ the foreign Other.

It was also revealed that the presence of essentialist discourses of culture in Australian ESL classrooms had significant impact on students ’ interpretive frames of intercultural earning, particularly with reference to emphasis on national boundaries. The author argues that, in order for this kind of study programme to be run free from the raps of essentialism and nationalism, educational interventions that reach both students and educators the danger of stereotypes, changeability and heterogeneity of culture, dynamics of power relations between cultures and community of cultural differences, are critically important throughout the implementation of the programme.

Key words: Japanese students, intercultural learning, ESL

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