Intercultural communication breakdowns that ELT students faced while being at a summer camp

"This project took part at a language department of a public university located in central Mexico. The participants were ELT students who had already finished their 5 target language courses and had the opportunity to participate in an American summer camp at least once. The instrument used to collect information was an interview. During the process two different interviews were created taking into account the research questions in order to get the specific information from participants; both of them were recorded to analyzed the data. The results showed that all students faced breakdowns the first time they were in another country. It was because of the nervousness and shyness they felt to speak the language with native people. They also felt afraid of not being understood by them. It is important to mention that at the beginning communication in English was difficult and frustrating for some participants because the pronunciation that a native speaker has is different from what they were accustomed to. More results are revealed within this thesis"