Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in Foreign Language Classrooms: A study of EFL learners in China

Abstract

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been accentuated with the wave of globalization. Universities in China have highlighted ICC in language classrooms. Following Byram’s (1997) ICC model (including knowledge, skills, and attitudes), this study focuses on the efficacy of explicit instruction in developing ICC among EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in classrooms in China, and to discover how this development is related to the English proficiency. This research, therefore, has two purposes: (1) to use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to assess ICC including questionnaires through self and others after explicit instruction. And (2) to investigate the relationship between the development of ICC and English proficiency. The results show that (1) explicit instruction is effective in raising students’ development of ICC, especially the knowledge and skills, and (2) English proficiency is significantly related to better acquisition of ICC. In order to promote learners’ ICC based on the mentioned results, some methods can be adopted: refine the intercultural content, manifest the teaching objectives, improve the involvers’ initiatives and implement the scientific evaluation.