“This topic was inconsiderate of our culture”: Jordanian students’ perceptions of intercultural clashes in IELTS writing tests
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Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh
und
Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer
Abstract
In this contribution, we analyse how students perceive and comment on potential instances of intercultural clashes in the writing component of the International English Language Testing System. Following student accounts, we argue that intercultural bias is indeed perceived, preventing test takers from fully positioning themselves regarding cultural practices in general, and religious beliefs more particularly, as well as from expressing their sociocultural identities. Analysing a corpus of interviews in Amman (Jordan) with Jordanian students who took the test, we uncover how student perceptions of elements that reflect the culture of the test creator negatively influenced their performance, or at least their perception of what constitutes a good performance, which they implicitly identify with like-mindedness and alignment with the test creator’s cultural expectations.
Appendix: Profile of the participants
| Pseudonym | Age | Gender | Years of English language learning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 A1 | 25 | M | 16 |
| 2 A2 | 28 | M | 17 |
| 3 A3 | 22 | M | 12 |
| 4 A4 | 27 | M | 16 |
| 5 A5 | 31 | M | 12 |
| 6 A6 | 25 | M | 15 |
| 7 A7 | 21 | M | 13 |
| 8 A8 | 25 | F | 13 |
| 9 A9 | 26 | F | 13 |
| 10 A10 | 23 | F | 12 |
| 11 A11 | 23 | F | 16 |
| 12 A12 | 24 | F | 12 |
| 13 A13 | 24 | F | 16 |
| 14 A14 | 30 | F | 17 |
| 15 A15 | 27 | F | 16 |
| 16 A16 | 28 | F | 15 |
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Communicating across educational boundaries: accommodation patterns in adolescents’ online interactions
- Tracking telecollaborative tasks through design, feedback, implementation, and reflection processes in pre-service language teacher education
- Individual versus pair work on L2 speech acts: production and cognitive processes
- Self-identity construction and pragmatic compensation in a Chinese DAT elder’s discourse
- Verbal and nonverbal disagreement in an ELF academic discussion task
- Relationships between struggling EFL writers’ motivation, self-regulated learning (SRL), and writing competence in Hong Kong primary schools
- Chinese university students’ self-regulated writing strategy use and EFL writing performance: influences of self-efficacy, gender, and major
- Does one size fit all? The scope and type of error in direct feedback effectiveness
- Immersing learners in English listening classroom: does self-regulated learning instruction make a difference?
- The pedagogical potential of speech-language therapy materials for the teaching of idiomatic expressions in a foreign language
- “This topic was inconsiderate of our culture”: Jordanian students’ perceptions of intercultural clashes in IELTS writing tests
- Positioning of female marriage immigrants in South Korea: a multimodal textbook analysis
- Hearing parents learning American Sign Language with their deaf children: a mixed-methods survey
- Teacher resilience and triple crises: Confucius Institute teachers’ lived experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Translanguaging in self-praise on Chinese social media
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Communicating across educational boundaries: accommodation patterns in adolescents’ online interactions
- Tracking telecollaborative tasks through design, feedback, implementation, and reflection processes in pre-service language teacher education
- Individual versus pair work on L2 speech acts: production and cognitive processes
- Self-identity construction and pragmatic compensation in a Chinese DAT elder’s discourse
- Verbal and nonverbal disagreement in an ELF academic discussion task
- Relationships between struggling EFL writers’ motivation, self-regulated learning (SRL), and writing competence in Hong Kong primary schools
- Chinese university students’ self-regulated writing strategy use and EFL writing performance: influences of self-efficacy, gender, and major
- Does one size fit all? The scope and type of error in direct feedback effectiveness
- Immersing learners in English listening classroom: does self-regulated learning instruction make a difference?
- The pedagogical potential of speech-language therapy materials for the teaching of idiomatic expressions in a foreign language
- “This topic was inconsiderate of our culture”: Jordanian students’ perceptions of intercultural clashes in IELTS writing tests
- Positioning of female marriage immigrants in South Korea: a multimodal textbook analysis
- Hearing parents learning American Sign Language with their deaf children: a mixed-methods survey
- Teacher resilience and triple crises: Confucius Institute teachers’ lived experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Translanguaging in self-praise on Chinese social media
