Intercultural Competence

Working with people from other cultures is a big part of what I do, and intercultural competence is what I need to do that! Here are some quantifiable indicators of my work in this area:

Courses

• Led the design of the course "Integrating Critical Thinking into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting." (World Learning contract with the Dept. of State/ECA program OPEN).

  • "...it was a shock for me to learn that I knew so little about people I had been teaching for several years. But diving into their culture, seeing how deep their thoughts are, was a pleasure for me." Read the full interview between trainer Zhenya Polosatova and a teacher who participated in this professional development course.

• Designed the course "Language and Thought" and taught it in Spanish at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Course included 4 sections: linguistic anthropology, psycholinguistics, the philosophy of language, and translation studies. (Saint Louis University)

• Spanish Sociolinguistics (Saint Louis University)

Publications

McBride, K. & Jingyung Gu (2015). Do the folk believe they can speak their way into interculturality? Perspectives on interculturality: The construction of meaning in relationships of difference. Palgrave Macmillan.

McBride, K. (2009). Podcasts and second language learning: Promoting listening comprehension and intercultural competence. In L. B. Abraham & L. Williams (Eds.), Electronic discourse in language learning and language teaching (pp. 153-167). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

McBride, K. (2008). English web page use in an EFL setting: A contrastive rhetoric view of the development of information literacy. In U. Connor, E. Nagelhout & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric (pp. 219–240). Philadelphia: Benjamins.

McBride, K., & Wildner-Bassett, M. E. (2008). Interpersonal and intercultural understanding in a blended second culture classroom. In S. S. Magnan (Ed.), Mediating discourse online (pp. 93-123). Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Presentations and Workshops

Teaching strategies and use of technology (Delivered in Spanish as ‘Estrategias didácticas y uso de herramientas tecnológicas’), University of Costa Rica. Co-facilitator, with Robert Elliott, for a 2 week-long training for 15 grade school teachers of multiple indigenous languages and cultures, San José, Costa Rica, April, 2018.

Team building across cultures, workshop done on behalf of Baobab People for Youth in Need, Saint Louis, USA, May 2015.

Positivos, seguros y dinámicos: Speak up! through the community organization Latinos en Axión (http://www.latinosenaxionstl.org). The sessions touched on motivation, intercultural skills, and speaking confidently in English as a second language, Sept. 2014.

McBride, K. & Gu, J., New language, new way of thinking: Enhancing motivation and retention, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), Orlando, FL, November 2013.

Invited panel speaker for Center for Intercultural Studies’ forum, Is intercultural dialogue possible? SLU, September 2013.

Do L2 learners’ beliefs about linguistic relativity affect their L2 development? poster presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference in Dallas, March 2013.

Do the folk believe that they can speak their way into interculturality? Perspectives on Interculturality, Center for Intercultural Studies at Saint Louis University, March 2013.

Women love a man with a foreign accent: The factors of sex and nativeness in the perception of L2 pronunciation, American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Boston, March 2012.

New language, new way of thinking? How believing so can enhance second language acquisition (delivered in Spanish as ‘¿Nuevo idioma, nueva forma de pensar? Estrategias y motivación en la adquisición de segundas lenguas’), invited talk at Centre d’Ensenyament Superior Alberta Giménez, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, June 2013.

Intercultural competence and foreign language education, invited talk for the Regional Collaboration in Languages and Culture Forum on Intercultural Competence, Saint Louis University, March 2011.

Reciprocity in service learning: Intercultural competence through SLA studies at the Second International Conference on the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence in Tucson, AZ, January 2010.

Comprehension, production and culture: Harvesting materials for oral language development, workshop, University of Sonora in Hermosillo, Mexico, November 2009.

McBride, K. & Tallant, R. Promoting critical awareness of language and history through file sharing at Missouri Modern Languages and Modern Technologies Conference, Columbia, MO, June 2009.

Culturally informed improvements for the foreign visiting English teacher at the Southern Cone IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) Conference in Curitiba, Brazil, July 2001.

Thought Leadership

• Co-chair of the Education for Development working group of the Society for International Development

  • Co-organizer, with Alisa Phillips, of "Linking Domestic and International Education: A Discussion on Anti-racist Practices for Racial Justice in Schools" for the Society of International Development, April 2021.

• Reader on Esther Hugues’s dissertation committee at the University of Sonora (Hermosillo, Mexico): English as a second language within digital culture: Young university students’ identities (written in Spanish as Inglés como Lengua Extranjera (ILE) en la cultura digital: identidad de jóvenes universitarios). 2020.

• Member, Executive Committee of the Center for Intercultural Studies at Saint Louis University, Spring 2012 – Spring 2015