Developing Intercultural Competence at UK Universities: the Effectiveness of the Course Transcultural Communication

The UK is now the second most popular country in the world for international studies. In this context, intercultural communicative competence (ICC)—the ability to interact with people from different backgrounds appropriately and effectively—is of particular importance. This research is intended to explore the effectiveness of an intercultural training course Transcultural Communication, currently run at one university in the North of England. Adopting the relational model of ICC (Imahori & Lanigan, 1989), the focus is on both sojourner (international students) and host national (home students). Firstly, through interviews the results show that the general difficulties for international students are the language barrier, communication difficulties and educational adaptation. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses have been performed on interview and video data to evaluate the effectiveness of the course. The results indicate that after the course the participants’ intercultural competence has been developed in four aspects—motivation, knowledge, skills and awareness. By comparing the performance of home students with and without such training, the results indicate the trained group were more interculturally competent than the untrained. This research also addresses the gap in the current literature in terms of the so-called “native speakers’ problem”, it is proposed that research needs to be focused not only on international students but also on home students in the field of intercultural communication

The effect of repeated freeze-thaw cycles on the meat quality of rabbit

[EN] We investigated the effect of repeated freeze-thaw cycles on the quality of rabbit meat. Twenty-five Hyla rabbits were slaughtered using standard commercial procedures. A freeze-thaw procedure—i.e., seven days frozen at –18°C followed by thawing at 4°C for 12h— was repeated 5 times, and 9 Longissimus thoracis et lumborum muscles were randomly selected at pre-set cycles (0, 1, 2, 3, and 5). The Longissimus lumborum muscles were used to determine meat quality parameters, while the Longissimus thoracis muscles were used for chemical analysis. During the repeated freeze-thaw process, muscle pH, redness, hardness, and water holding capacity gradually decreased, whereas meat lightness and yellowness gradually increased. The amount of total volatile basic nitrogen significantly increased (P<0.05) and exceeded the threshold value for frozen meat after 5 repeated freeze-thaw cycles. The metmyoglobin proportion, thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) and protein carbonyl content in rabbit meat samples increased with a higher number of freeze-thaw cycles (P<0.05), and the proportions of these compounds were positively correlated. During the repeated freeze-thaw process, extractable haeme iron levels significantly decreased (P<0.05), and non-haeme iron levels markedly increased (P<0.05). An sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis indicated that the degradation of both water- and salt-soluble proteins was more prevalent in samples subjected to higher numbers of freeze-thaw cycles. Additionally, a principal component analysis identified good correlations between physicochemical properties (TBARS, protein carbonyl levels and metmyoglobin content) and quality parameters (thawing loss, redness, lightness and hardness). Taken together, we conclude that the repeated freeze-thaw process can strongly affect rabbit meat quality as well as its physicochemical properties.The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (31671787), the National Rabbit Industry Technology System Programme (Grant No. CARS-43-E-1), and the Chongqing Herbivorous Livestock Industry Technology System (Y201706).Wang, Z.; He, Z.; Gan, X.; Li, H. (2018). The effect of repeated freeze-thaw cycles on the meat quality of rabbit. World Rabbit Science. 26(2):165-177. https://doi.org/10.4995/wrs.2018.8616SWORD165177262Ali S., Rajput N., Li C.B., Zhang W., Zhou G.H. 2016. Effect of freeze-thaw cycles on lipid oxidation and myowater in broiler chickens. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Avícola, 18: 35-40.https://doi.org/10.1590/1516-635x1801035-040Ali S., Zhang W., Rajput N., Khan M.A., Li C.B., Zhou G.H. 2015. 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