Teaching Intercultural Communicative Competence in the Foreign Language Classroom

It seems that the current English textbook developers are not only interested in developing their audience's communicative competence but also willing to improve the learners' intercultural competence. This shift in instructional goals is in line with the emerging shift in the learners' need to use English as an international language rather than a second or a foreign language. It is noteworthy that there has been considerable research on the cultural content of high school textbooks in Iran; however, little attempt was done to adopt a comparative intercultural perspective to them. Having noticed the weighty contributions of the locally developed textbooks in Iran and India with regard to their expansive distribution and use among English learners, the researcher investigated Iranian high school textbooks (Prospect and Vision) and the official high school textbooks in India (Standard English) from a comparative perspective based on intercultural communicative competence emphasizing critical awareness, and discovery and interaction skills as its defining criteria. Through content analysis, the whole contents of the Iranian and Indian high school English textbooks, 12 volumes in all, were analyzed and the instances the intercultural communicative competence were quantatively recorded, classified and discussed. The results revealed that, Standard English, the textbook developed in outer circle in India, to little extent, included intercultural communicative competence, especially, critical cultural awareness. By contrast, the Iranian high school English textbooks totally were deprived of intercultural communicative competence components since there was not a plausible example of interculturally communicative tasks in Prospect and Vision.

English language teaching (ELT) in the era of globalization does not simply equip learners with linguistic competence. English language learners need to develop intercultural communicative competence (ICC) - one of the indispensable skills in the 21st century. To develop ICC for learners, teachers should incorporate intercultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills into the language classroom. For this purpose, the current study was conducted to explore EFL high school teachers’ perceptions of ICC in language teaching and investigate their practices of ICC integration in EFL classes. The study was designed as qualitative research. The data from both classroom observations (n=8) and semi-structured interviews (n=4) were examined to have insights into the teachers’ perceptions and practices. The findings showed that despite their positive attitudes towards ICC teaching, their practices of ICC integration in EFL classes were at an average level and they tended to prioritize linguistic proficiency over cultural competence. Furthermore, the results indicated that they were in favor of and integrated ICC knowledge in their teaching rather than ICC attitudes and skills. Notably, the preferred activities that most of the participants consider the most effective way to include ICC are role-play and video watching. It is implied from the research findings that EFL high school teachers should master not only instructional goals to know how to adapt teaching materials in compensation for lack of cultural content but also intercultural teaching stages to know the way of creating strategies appropriate for each stage and integrating ICC into their classroom practices.

Foreign Language (L2) teachers’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and their awareness and understanding of the intercultural similarities and differences is the key to their professional success. One of the indispensable components of communicative competence, which is highly influenced by L2 teachers’ ICC and its impact on the classroom practices is considerable, is pragmatic knowledge of the L2 learners. Accordingly, the current investigation has sought to explore the relationship between L2 teachers’ intercultural competence and their students’ knowledge of common English speech acts. Participants were 85 EFL teachers and 610 upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency-level students. The participants had been studying English at language institutes from 3 to 5 years and they had almost completed American File conversation book series. These participants were selected based on the results of a Michigan Language Proficiency Test. First, the teachers filled out Jaou’s (2011) ICC questionnaire. Then, Tajeddin and Malmir’s (2015) multiple-choice test of frequent English speech acts was administered to the students. Data analysis using multiple regression revealed that all four components of teachers’ ICC were significant predictors of their students’ speech-act knowledge. Intercultural skills were the strongest predictor followed by intercultural knowledge as a mediocre predictor. However, intercultural attitudes and awareness were poor predictors of speech-act knowledge. These findings imply that L2 teachers can enhance their learners’ pragmatic knowledge regarding common speech acts by increasing their own intercultural communicative competence.

The impact of intercultural contact on the intercultural communicative competence of Chinese EFL undergraduates: The mediating role of English learning motivation.

Teaching cross-cultural knowledge in language teaching is drawing more and more attention nowadays. This study investigated the effect of integrating teaching cross-cultural issues and teaching listening skill on students’ intercultural competence. The participants were 30 Vietnamese students of English as a foreign language (EFL) who participated in the course on Listening 2 in the second year of their MBA program in Kien Giang University, Vietnam. The study consisted of an experimental study based on a pretest-posttest research design on integration of cross-cultural issues and teaching listening. The intercultural sensitivity self-assessment questionnaire (ISSAQ) that serves as a pre-test at the beginning of the semester is based on the theoretical framework put forth by Bennett and Bennett (2004). It is to elicit a self-assessment of their intercultural knowledge, behaviors and attitudes. During the ten-week intervention, besides helping students master the language and listening skill, the researcher helped promote students’ cross-cultural competence with the process-oriented intercultural teaching mode by Li (2016). At the end of the course, the posttest was given to measure the effects of the integration model on students’ intercultural communication competence. The results of the study suggested that integrating cross-cultural knowledge and language teaching could improve EFL students' intercultural communication competence (ICC).

ABSTRACTOne of the goals of foreign language (FL) education is to produce intercultural speakers. Telecollaboration can act as a catalyst for promoting language skills development, intercultural communicative competence (ICC), and multiple literacies. The significance of multimodal communicative competence (MCC) on the success or failure of a telecollaborative project and its interdependence with intercultural communicative competence (ICC) have already been established. The very few systematic reviews on ICC and second language (L2) or FL learningdo not take into account the different modalities through which learners interact and co-construct meaning and intercultural competence. Drawing on ecological linguistics (EL) and semiotics, the present review contributes to the field of applied linguistics by reviewing online intercultural exchanges (OIEs) and ICC development in relation to the modality used for each exchange that is reviewed. Features of the context of each study that was conducted in either a K-12 or a university setting were coded according to a coding scheme and analysed quantitatively using descriptive statistics. The findings of studies conducted in university contexts, were reviewed in-depth inductively in relation to the impact of Web 2.0 tools – and especially multimodality – on learners’ development of ICC. The exclusive focus on university contexts in the in-depth review stems from the frequency at which universities serve as contexts for OIEs, comprising in this case more than two-thirds of the reviewed studies. Analysis of the data suggests that multimodality in Web 2.0 tools and applications affects ICC development in multiple ways but more research on ICC and L2 and FL learners in multimodal environments needs to be conducted.

This paper investigates to what extent telecollaboration can be integrated as an effective medium for the enhancement of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the foreign-language classroom. The data was obtained over one semester from a series of asynchronous exchanges in language-exchange class settings using Google drives shared between United States-based students learning Arabic as a foreign language at three American universities, and students at a Saudi university in Saudi Arabia learning English as a foreign language. The one-on-one interactions covered a variety of topics related to cultural knowledge, perspectives, values, practices, behaviors, and products. The data from this collaborative online project also included two reflection surveys that students responded to before and after the study. Byram’s 2021 model (including its objectives) was applied, and the findings reveal that many ICC objectives are clearly reflected in students’ telecollaborative exchanges, indicating that this type of exchange can be used effectively as a tool to develop students’ intercultural competence. The findings also show a noticeable increase in students’ interests in cultural learning and understanding the culture of others.

This chapter explores how literary reading may contribute to a reconceptualization of intercultural competence as an educational goal through a focus on conflict, ambiguity and imagination. According to hermeneutic theory and the reader reception tradition of literary theory, the process of interpreting a text is a dialogical, negotiative experience that leads to a gradual expansion of the reader’s perspective. From this viewpoint, the reading of Foreign Language (FL) literature may be regarded as a form of intercultural communication. With a basis in Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and the concept of the ‘intercultural speaker’, the chapter focuses on what distinguishes reading from real-time communication in order to define the qualities of a profoundly engaged, analytical and imaginative ‘intercultural reader’. A descriptive model of ‘the intercultural reader’s’ engagement with FL literature is proposed. This model shows how the text interpretation process may operate at three, interlinked levels of communication, each of which involves the ‘intercultural reader’s’ emotions as well as her cognition. At all three levels, she considers the effects of the narrative style and structure of the text as well as the cultural, social and historical subject positions of text(s) and reader(s). Furthermore, the chapter shows how the text interpretation process may take place across notions of time and place, involving varying degrees of critical and abstract thinking. It also provides a practical example of how the fostering of such ‘intercultural readers’ may take place in the FL classroom. In doing so, the chapter sheds light on aspects of the reader-FL text relationship on which Byram’s model of ICC, as well as other theoretical perspectives on reading and intercultural competence, are unclear. Finally, it brings attention to the complexities of intercultural communication and the need to promote young individuals’ ability to handle conflict and ambivalence in a constructive, creative manner.

The book titled Intercultural Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship. Identifying cyberpragmatic rules of engagement in telecollaboration brings novel approaches to Computer Mediated Communication, based on practical outcomes from a small-scale online international learning (OIL) project, i.e., CoCo, carried out during the academic year 2015–2016, between UK and France. It provides useful insights into the contribution of OIL projects to the internationalisation of the Higher Education (HE) curriculum as well as to the development of global citizenship competences, with a focus on intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the digital era. The authors structured the book into seven chapters, concentrating on essential pragmatics concepts revisited within the cyberspace and describing the project methodology and findings. Chapter 1, Introduction provides an overview of the topics presented in the volume, with clear definitions and eloquent examples, i.e., Online International Learning (OIL), Intercultural communicative competence (ICC), Telecollaboration, Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC), Threshold concept (TC), Global citizenship, and Cyberpragmatics. Chapter 2, Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Revisited brings forth an account of the historical evolution of the concepts of Communicative Competence (CC) and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), while at the same time examining the impact of the World Wide Web, coupled with the extensive use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) on the re-conceptualisation of ICC and its reassessed characteristics. It emphasises the value of integrating telecollaboration into the Higher Education curriculum with a view to creating global citizenship competences for the digital age in Higher Education. Chapter 3, Cyberpragmatics advances a comprehensive definition of cyberpragmatics seen as a professional as well as an academic genre-specific online ‘savoir-être’. It explores the theoretical foundations of the term, coined by Yus (2011), and brings forth examples of cyberpragmatic findings from similar research. Moreover, it gives an overview of the politeness theory (Brown, & Levinson 1987) and politeness principle (Leech 1983, 2014). The authors explain the blurring line between oral and written language that may occur in the case of online communication and how this affects students. The chapter also provides a clear-cut definition of the threshold concept (TC) pedagogy, upholding that Intercultural Cyberpragmatic Communicative Competence (ICCC) may be subsumed to TC. The authors advocate curricular scaffolding in HE in order to assist students with reflecting on and practising ICCC. Last but not least, the chapter presents the research question that this study aims to address. Chapter 4, The ‘CoCo’ Telecollaborative Project: Internationalisation at Home to Foster Global Citizenship Competences presents the CoCo (Coventry Colmar) telecollaborative course, along with the tasks devised and/or adopted for it, e.g., the Cultura Quizzes. It demonstrates the successful integration of CoCo into the curriculum and assessment of the two participating institutions and how students managed to apply critical digital literacies for global citizenship through active learning. The authors make an overview of research instruments and materials, including the frameworks of analysis and their application. Useful figures and tables illustrating the telecollaborative project structure, the politeness frameworks and strategies applied are also included. The fifth chapter, ‘CoCo’ Research Questions and Answers, delves further into the research questions of this study, at the same time offering a rationale for the analysis decisions taken as part of the asynchronous discussion forums with reference to tasks devised for the CoCo telecollaborative project. It tackles the impact of linguistic politeness theory frameworks on how project participants manage to negotiate politeness online. As for the asynchronous interactions in the CoCo forum, politeness strategies and facework employed by the CoCo interactants are interpreted from a cyberpragmatic standpoint through the application of Brown and Levinson’s and Leech’s politeness frameworks of analysis. Chapter 6, Emerging Online Politeness Patterns, brings forth a thorough account of the results obtained from the analysis of interactants’ exchanges carried out on the asynchronous discussion forums, with respect to the tasks devised for the telecollaborative CoCo project. In particular, three online exchanges were used in order to highlight patterns of linguistic behaviour, i.e., type and frequency of politeness strategies or maxims. The final chapter, Conclusion, presents the summary of findings, limitations and further research suggestions as well as pedagogical implications for teachers and students alike. The politeness frameworks of analysis provided by Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983), applied to cybercommunication are outlined and explained. The results revealed particular problematical areas in the field of cyberpragmatics, underpinning the challenges that students may face in telecollaboration, leading to the conclusion that detailed and structured task scaffolding is necessary in such collaborative activities. All in all, the book is an extremely useful tool for all stakeholders in the tertiary education landscape. It is a must read for language teachers, teacher trainers, trainees and educators from all educational systems across the globe.

Techniques Developing Intercultural Communicative Competences in English Language Lessons

<p style="text-align:justify">As a part of learning process, project-based assessment (PBA) is determined to be a potential approach in higher education evaluation that focuses on developing the important objectives related to critical thinking, team working and problems solving skills. The aim of the paper is to find out students’ reflection and teachers’ beliefs towards using this project-based assessment method in teaching Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC). To collect the data, a project-based assessment design was applied for 124 English major students at B University in the 9 weeks ICC course. This project was implemented from the beginning of the course, and at the end of the course, learners’ products were performed with specific activities regarding culture knowledge competition, online cultural community activities, talent performance, situational judgment ability, and eloquence skills. In addition, a set of questionnaires were delivered to the participants, plus the interviews with 36 teachers who have taught culture-related subjects from the universities in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. The findings revealed that although there were certain challenges, using project-based assessment in teaching culture had satisfactory effects on students’ intercultural competence, problem- solving skills, critical thinking, and learning motivation.</p>

With the changes in linguistic theory and pedagogical practice, culture has been regarded as an essential element in language classrooms. Thanks to the potential of information technology (IT), teaching, including learning English in general and subjects related to culture, in particular, has been supported and enhanced significantly. The study aims to investigate the effects and approaches of employing IT in teaching culture to enhance Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) of Vietnamese tertiary students of English as well as the students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward using IT in teaching culture. In order to collect the data, an IT-assisted teaching project was applied for 40 English major students at Hanoi Law University in 8 weeks to an ICC subject. In addition, a set of questionnaires were delivered to the participants, plus 13 teachers who taught culture-related subjects from three universities. The findings revealed that although there were certain challenges, using IT in teaching culture had satisfying effects on students’ intercultural competence, problem- solving skills, assessment, and motivation to discover a new language in a new culture and suitable pedagogical strategies are suggested.

As universities increasingly prioritize global citizenship through study abroad programmes, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become central to Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) education. Whilst blended study abroad provision is expanding, culturally responsive pedagogies remain underexamined in Irish higher education contexts. This study protocol outlines a single-case, one-group pre–post design investigating within-cohort changes in ICC associated with experiential Chinese cultural workshops in an 11-week blended CFL study abroad course at an Irish private university. The study adopts a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design (QUANT → qual). In Phase 1, the full cohort (estimated n = 20–30) will complete pre- and post-course administrations of the Students' Intercultural Communicative Competence Self-Assessment (SISA). Quantitative analyses will report descriptive statistics, paired-samples t -tests (or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests where assumptions are not met), and effect sizes (Cohen's d or rank-biserial correlation), alongside internal consistency for the target sample. In Phase 2, purposive sampling (approximately 10–12 participants) will support qualitative data collection through semi-structured interviews, reflective blogs, and Zoom classroom recordings, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Integration will occur by using quantitative patterns to inform qualitative sampling and interview foci, and by merging findings in interpretation. The protocol is theoretically grounded in Byram's (1997) ICC model and Kolb's (1984) . Experiential Learning Theory, mapping workshop objectives to Byram's five savoirs and structuring learning through experience–reflection cycles. Given the one-group design, the study will avoid causal attribution and is expected to generate transferable insights into how experiential cultural pedagogy can be operationalised and evaluated in blended CFL study abroad settings.

This research investigates intercultural communication competence (ICC) and its main components (affective, cognitive and behavioral) in relation to academic mobility. It also discusses the value of assessing intercultural competence in higher education and points out the relationship between academic mobility, foreign language learning and the development of intercultural competence. The discussion then leads to the development of an intercultural communication assessment tool for academic mobility: Mobile Students’ Intercultural Competence Scale (MSICS). This tool focuses mainly on analyzing Turkish Erasmus students’ intercultural competence before and after their study abroad experience. Even though many intercultural competence assessment tools exist in the present literature, there is a lack of materials in this context which mainly focus on analyzing mobile students’ intercultural communication competence.

Against the backdrop of globalization and deepening international exchanges, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become a core literacy requirement for college students in the new era, and integrating ICC cultivation into college English teaching has become an inevitable trend in the reform of English language education. This study, rooted in the researcher’s background in translation studies, years of college English teaching experience, and research focus on intercultural communication and communication studies, aims to address the current shortcomings in college English teaching—such as overemphasis on linguistic proficiency while neglecting cultural awareness, disconnected teaching content from real intercultural scenarios, and single-mode teaching methods. By adopting a mixed research method combining literature analysis, teaching case studies, and questionnaire surveys, this study first clarifies the connotation and structural dimensions of ICC based on recent interdisciplinary theories (including cross-cultural communication, translation studies, and second language acquisition). It then explores the intrinsic connections between translation practice, college English teaching, and intercultural communication: translation, as a “cultural mediator,” can effectively enhance students’ cultural sensitivity and contextual adaptation; teaching experience provides practical insights for designing student-centered activities; and intercultural communication theories offer a theoretical framework for optimizing teaching content. On this basis, the study constructs a “three-dimensional integration” ICC training model with “goal orientation, content integration, method innovation, and evaluation guarantee” as its core. The model takes “developing linguistic proficiency + cultural cognition + communicative strategies + cultural empathy” as the overall goal, integrates cultural content into language teaching through translation tasks (e.g., translating culturally-loaded texts), adopts diversified teaching methods (case analysis, intercultural simulation, project-based learning), and establishes a dual evaluation system combining formative and summative assessment. To verify the model’s effectiveness, a 16-week teaching practice was conducted at Liaoning University of International Business and Economics, involving 240 non-English major sophomores. The results show that students in the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in cultural awareness (e.g., recognizing cultural differences in discourse), intercultural communication confidence, and the ability to handle cultural conflicts in translation compared to the control group. This study enriches the theoretical research on ICC cultivation in college English teaching by integrating translation studies and communication theories. Practically, it provides an operable teaching framework for colleges and universities, especially those with translation programs, to promote students’ comprehensive English literacy and meet the social demand for intercultural talents.