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A Mixed Methods Case Study: Japanese Sojourners’ Intercultural Awareness

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Advances in Physical, Social & Occupational Ergonomics (AHFE 2020)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1215))

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Abstract

Ministry of Education in Japan is promoting Japanese students to develop English communication competence and intercultural communication competence. One way that they do this is by encouraging students to study abroad. English communication skills have been reported to improve during study abroad, as short as even one-month study abroad. However, intercultural communication competence is under researched, and intercultural competence has not been reported to develop during short-term study abroad, nor medium-term study abroad. In addition, there has not been any report of clear relationship between English proficiency and intercultural communication competence. This study focuses on investigating the cases of Japanese students studying abroad for one month in Canada. The purpose of this study is to describe cultural learning. The participants of this study are 29 students. Two research questions were generated: Q1) What cultural awareness took place during study abroad? Q2) Did sojourners’ cultural awareness differ depending on the proficiency levels? This case study is a mixed methods case study, in which cases for qualitative analysis are identified by the quantitative study, which was previously reported.

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Acknowledgments

This study is a part of a bigger research project, which compares and contrasts the short-term SA programs in both traditional SA destination and non-English speaking SA context, and the research project is funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Research (C), Grant number: 16K02984.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Intercultural Communication, Gakushuin Women’s College, 3-20-1 Toyama, Shinjyuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan

    Chihiro Tajima

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  1. Chihiro Tajima
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Correspondence to Chihiro Tajima .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Engineering and Management System, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Waldemar Karwowski

  2. Department IELM, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Ravindra S. Goonetilleke

  3. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea (Republic of)

    Shuping Xiong

  4. Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Richard H. M. Goossens

  5. Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

    Atsuo Murata

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Tajima, C. (2020). A Mixed Methods Case Study: Japanese Sojourners’ Intercultural Awareness. In: Karwowski, W., Goonetilleke, R., Xiong, S., Goossens, R., Murata, A. (eds) Advances in Physical, Social & Occupational Ergonomics. AHFE 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1215. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51549-2_68

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51549-2_68

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-51548-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-51549-2

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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