AbstractThis chapter considers points of contact and departure between intercultural language education
and cross-cultural competence training in medicine. Educators in the fields of language
education and medical communication have developed frameworks of intercultural
competence that characterize the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that learners can draw
on. While competence-based frameworks can guide curricula and audit programs, we argue
that a language pedagogy also requires a process-oriented approach, a method of teaching
and learning that sees the learner as a situated individual and an increasingly skilled practitioner.
Medical students have the opportunity to become active and reflective practitioners
in two complementary contexts: problem-based learning and the medical humanities.
Additionally, medical students studying in a second or other language have the opportunity
to use a variety of resources to explore how language is used in a wide range of health care
contexts. Exploration of “authentic” instances of intercultural language encounters as well
as online corpora of general and specific English provide an evidence base for the use of
language in professional contexts and convey the everyday experience of being a patient, a
caregiver, or an advocate.
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