Empathy in Language Learning and Its Inspiration to the Development of Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

In intercultural communication misunderstandings between communicators will appear. It is quite necessary to improve learners’ communicative competence. The term “communicative competence” first gained wide exposure in the writings of Hymes (1971). He argued that communicative competence must include the linguistic forms of a language and the knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms. There are some necessary conditions before we are competent in intercultural interactions. These conditions include knowledge about the people in other cultures, the communication rules, and the context governing the interaction with the member of the other culture, etc. In many definitions of empathy, the idea of “acquiring another person’s perspective” is crucial. It is this sense that is supposed to contribute a lot to achieving effective intercultural communication. We are supposed to be clear of the ways of improving empathy ability, among which understanding who we are culturally is the first step to becoming empathetic towards other cultures. The second step is to realize the differences between one’s own culture and foreign cultures. This thesis only covers a very limited aspect of this issue, and it is expected by the author that the exploration may become further and further.