The presentation outlines a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for intercultural learning, oriented towards intercultural citizenship and Global Englishes. In a context of reduced student mobility, the presentation aims to provide an example of intercultural learning for home contexts. A pedagogical framing of the independent e-learning MOOC, hosted on Moodle, is outlined before an overview of the 10 units: defining culture; intercultural communication; stereotyping; individuals and cultures; exploring own cultures; working with others; global English; English in Japan; English diversity; and, intercultural citizenship. Free access is available for teachers to use the MOOC in their own contexts. Analysis of student reflective writing data on the MOOC will lead to the development of an illustrative example model for intercultural education in home contexts, drawing on related research as part of a Kakenhi-funded project. The aims of the MOOC and subsequent analysis of intercultural learning are outlined in the presentation.

Meaning-making, logic and culture are intimately intertwined. Often when ESL teachers are faced with student essays and reports which seem illogical and incoherent, it is attributed to lack of linguistic abilities. However, meaning is jointly constructed through shared reality; language becomes communication only through implicit agreement of what is real or not.

This presentation will use the theoretical paradigm proposed by Dr. John Conlon for abstract, declarative culture versus concrete, procedural culture, which is based on Edward T. Hall’s foundational paradigm of “cultural dimensions”. These paradigms will be used as a basis to consider what is considered “real” or not “real”, and how this leads to cultural preferences for deductive or inductive logic styles. Derived from 30 years of experience working in cross-cultural academic and business contexts in Japan, examples of Western cultural preference for deductive logic style and Japanese preference for inductive style will be used to illustrate this cultural orientation.

The International Summer Design Workshop has been held annually since 2008. Usually ranging between seven to ten days each time, university students from up to five countries in the Asia-Pacific region work together in intercultural groups of seven to nine. Using English as the lingua franca, each group must be able to handle communication challenges and cultural differences to collaboratively design a product within a specified time period. Until 2019, the location of each workshop rotated among the participating countries. Since the Covid-19 situation began in 2020, the workshop has been held online, relying upon collaborative communication technologies to facilitate the design process. The presenters will describe their experience preparing for and managing this workshop, and the use of technology in both the face-to-face and online environments. Student feedback from previous workshops will also be provided. This project is supported by a Japanese government Kaken grant (21K12564).

Classroom silence is a commonly-misunderstood aspect of English language teaching in Japan. Teachers who use communicative approaches can be frustrated and confused by students’ unwillingness to participate, respond, or communicate. Coming to recognize the deep-seated cultural origins of classroom silence can alleviate the confusion greatly (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010), but such an awareness raises questions about how to respond; do we adapt to student reticence, or is it in students’ best interests that teachers defy expectations and simply insist upon greater communicability and interactivity during classes? (Banks, 2016, Harumi, 2011)

This presentation will describe a pre-emptive approach to classroom silence that has resulted in students coming to participate comfortably in direct teacher-student communication. By raising students’ consciousness to intercultural differences in expectations around communicability, and carefully casting reticence in a negative light, the presenter came to have confidence that his students would respond to his questions without the anxiety and reluctance so familiar in Japanese classrooms.