Abstract
This study investigated Model United Nations (Model UN), a simulation of the United Nations that is adapted for academic purposes and includes elements of discussion, negotiation, presentation, and engagement with global issues and international affairs. When students participate in Model UN, they are referred to as country delegates and represent different countries on different committees. As delegates, they join in discussions on global issues related to such topics as world conflict, international security, human rights, and education. In Model UN, student participants from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, collaborate and interact in a common language (English) spoken differently among participants to deepen their understanding of current world issues. By so doing, they reflect on their intercultural communicative competence summarized as the ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language. Following a Model UN semester course at a Japanese university and a Model UN conference held in Japan, interview sessions with Model UN student participants were moderated and recorded to understand their learning attitudes and experiences of studying in the Model UN context. The interview data were used to generate themes for thematic analysis. The study concluded that Japanese Model UN student participants’ interactions with other learners of English from different cultural backgrounds allowed them to reflect on their intercultural communicative competence and, thus, be able to develop tolerance towards language-related misunderstandings.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction: the variety of realities of language learning and teaching in Higher Education throughout the world. A step forward to keep on sharing ideas
- Research Articles
- Model United Nations: a thematic analysis of Japanese EFL students’ reflections on intercultural communicative competence
- Japanese tertiary students’ perceptions of group work with explicit scaffolding
- A critical literacy class: beyond English learning and teaching in Higher Education
- Predictors of English Medium Instruction academic success in Vietnamese Higher Education
- University English-medium instruction in Türkiye – what instructors say
- Testing English for Medical Purposes: the effects of traditional and distance education on learning outcomes
- Using corpora in teaching vocabulary to advanced EFL learners in a higher education context
- Digital multimodal PechaKucha presentations in ESP: insights from students’ learning experiences
- From face-to-face tuition to online classes: ‘Re-styling’ a course of English for academic purposes
- Turning the tables on online exam cheating via language mediation tasks
- Attitudes to Spanish language variation. A study on Portuguese students of Spanish as a Foreign Language
- “Mur de paroles” – ou tentative de promotion de l’expression orale en langue française
- Activity Reports
- « Being plurilingual is a gift we make to ourselves. » : amener les étudiants à valoriser et développer leurs compétences plurilingues et pluriculturelles
- International collaborative tasks in language courses for engineers integrated in a multidimensional teaching format
- Training citizens as users of languages and digital technology. Real-world tasks to tame the digital wilds
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction: the variety of realities of language learning and teaching in Higher Education throughout the world. A step forward to keep on sharing ideas
- Research Articles
- Model United Nations: a thematic analysis of Japanese EFL students’ reflections on intercultural communicative competence
- Japanese tertiary students’ perceptions of group work with explicit scaffolding
- A critical literacy class: beyond English learning and teaching in Higher Education
- Predictors of English Medium Instruction academic success in Vietnamese Higher Education
- University English-medium instruction in Türkiye – what instructors say
- Testing English for Medical Purposes: the effects of traditional and distance education on learning outcomes
- Using corpora in teaching vocabulary to advanced EFL learners in a higher education context
- Digital multimodal PechaKucha presentations in ESP: insights from students’ learning experiences
- From face-to-face tuition to online classes: ‘Re-styling’ a course of English for academic purposes
- Turning the tables on online exam cheating via language mediation tasks
- Attitudes to Spanish language variation. A study on Portuguese students of Spanish as a Foreign Language
- “Mur de paroles” – ou tentative de promotion de l’expression orale en langue française
- Activity Reports
- « Being plurilingual is a gift we make to ourselves. » : amener les étudiants à valoriser et développer leurs compétences plurilingues et pluriculturelles
- International collaborative tasks in language courses for engineers integrated in a multidimensional teaching format
- Training citizens as users of languages and digital technology. Real-world tasks to tame the digital wilds