Learning from and negotiating with cultural ‘others’

This chapter examines the ways in which language-learner travellers engage with host communities. It focuses on in-class and homestay experiences of engaging and negotiating identities with cultural ‘others’. In-class ‘culture’ teaching and learning are examined first. This includes instances of misunderstandings attributable to differences in ‘cultural’ knowledge and also teachers’ overt attempts to ‘teach culture’, conceptualized variously as part of teaching Spanish. From there, I consider the way the Spanish language and learners’ cultural otherness positions them socially, as well as the impacts on learners’ perceptions of their own identities and efficacy in the contexts. Building from this discussion, I consider a key component of intercultural competence that I revisit in Chapter 8: (how) can we be ourselves in settings that we perceive as culturally ‘other’? To this end, I examine learners’ experiences of intercultural encounters in informal settings, including homestay experiences and transactional public encounters such as getting around on public buses. Not discussed here, but the topic of Chapter 7, are the various ‘voluntourism’ experiences in which some Spanish learners engage. These clearly inform, and are informed by, the ways in which participants interact in settings within and beyond the classroom.