Acquisition of Communicative Skills by Foreign Students in a Multicultural Learning Environment

Abstract

The study's relevance was determined by the lack of attention towards specific aspects of foreign students' acquisition of communicative skills in a multicultural setting and the need to record the psychological and pedagogical circumstances of academic activities that facilitate successful intercultural communication skills acquisition. This study aimed to provide evidence for theoretical claims and describe the experiment that aimed to validate the psychological and pedagogical conditions under which foreign students can acquire communicative skills within a multicultural environment at Kazakh University. To investigate the cognitive, emotional, and personality-based behavioural components of communicative skills, a range of valid methods were selected. The study was conducted using a mixed method. The research comprised 22 students from China, 14 students from the Republic of Korea, 19 students from Afghanistan, 20 students from the Republic of Iran, and 9 students from Vietnam, all pursuing their education in Kazakhstan at two universities. The research results showed that high levels of empathy and ethnic tolerance were obtained by 26.4% of the experimental group and 28.2% of the control group students respectively. It was found that conflict situations were more likely to arise as a result of competition, which was confirmed by 36.8% of the experimental group and 34.8% of the control group. The results obtained have significantly broadened the parameters of foreign students' learning and work activity's communicative and personality aspects.