Aiming for “The Third Place:”
Intercultural Competence through Foreign Language Teaching and Learning
Second International Conference on the Development and Assessment of
Intercultural Competence

The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
January 29-31, 2010

Keynote Speaker
Claire Kramsch, Ph.D. – University of California, Berkeley
Professor of German and Foreign Language Acquisition; Founding
Director of the Berkeley Language Center

Globalization, having brought individuals in contact with one another
at an unprecedented scale, has also brought forth a general challenge
to traditionally recognized boundaries of nation, language, race,
gender, and class. For those living within this rapidly changing
social landscape, intercultural competence is a necessary skill, and
the cultivation of such intercultural individuals falls on the
shoulders of today’s educators. They should provide students with
opportunities to help them define and design for themselves their
"third place" or "third culture," a sphere of interculturality that
enables language students to take an insider's view as well as an
outsider's view on both their first and second cultures. It is this
ability to find/establish/adopt this third place that is at the very
core of intercultural competence. The conference aims to bring
researchers and practitioners across languages, levels and settings to
discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and foster
meaningful professional dialogue on issues related to Intercultural
Competence teaching and learning.

This conference is organized by the Center for Educational Resources
in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) and co-sponsored by the
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) Program and Center for
Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at the University of Arizona

Complete Conference details: http://cercll.arizona.edu/icc_2010.php

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