Intercultural Communicative Competence And Short Stays Abroad Perceptions Of Development PDF Download

Along with the inclusion of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) into the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) World Readiness standards, there has been recent interest in the field of Chinese foreign language teaching towards integrating ICC into the course curriculum. However, many Chinese teachers still display a limited view of culture in their pedagogy and may not have enough information on how students perceive their individual development of ICC; examining perceptions of how students develop ICC helps instructors improve their implementation of ICC into the curriculum.This qualitative multiple case study of five students in a 400-level elective Chinese language course used Byram's (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence to explore how students perceive their individual development of ICC, as well as personal and pedagogical factors that contribute to those perceptions. Data collection sources included three participant reflective journals, weekly classroom observations over a semester, one focus group, and three semi-structured interviews.The findings indicated that, except for Byram's (1997) ICC model elements of "knowledge" and "attitudes," students perceive their development of the skills of critical cultural awareness (CCA), interpreting and relating (I and R), and discovery and interaction (D and I) primarily from sources outside the Chinese language classroom. Secondly, the data indicated that Chinese language teachers at ECU tend to focus on effective and culturally appropriate communication and are not adequately providing opportunities for reflection on one's own language and culture. The ability to do this kind of reflection is essential for the development of the skills of CCA, I and R, and D and I. Thirdly, according to the data, practice of the skills of critical reflection, interpretation, mediation, gathering information and real-time interaction occurred mainly in their mother tongue of English. This factor limits participants' development of ICC, since target language proficiency plays a major role in cultivation of one's ICC. (Fantini, 2014; Lopez-Rocha;2016; Byram, 2021).Fourthly, students provided examples corresponding to each of the five savoirs of Byram's (1997) model of ICC that demonstrates the potential of ICC integration in the Chinese language classroom. Finally, while most participants showed positive attitudes towards the development of ICC, their development of the discovery and interaction savoirs is being further limited by their perceived low level of Mandarin and hesitation to interact with Chinese speakers. The researcher concludes the study with practical applications for Chinese language teachers and stakeholders for implementing ICC into their curriculum and goals.