A Mixed Methods Case Study: Japanese Sojourners’ Intercultural Awareness

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.