Leadership Skills As A Key Constituent Of Efl Teachers’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

Intercultural communicative competence is regarded as the major characteristic of a foreign language teacher in any educational context. Being of a very complex structure, it presupposes quite a deal of various knowledge and skills and emphasizes not only a good language proficiency, but also the ability to understand and interpret one’s own and the other view of the world in their interaction forming the basis for effective intercultural communication. The study of literature devoted to intercultural communicative competence shows that there is practically no direct reference to leadership skills among its numerous components, whereas they prove to be one of the most necessary abilities for the teacher in the constantly increasing diverse students groups. The article is aimed at indicating interrelation between EFL teachers’ intercultural communicative competence and leadership skills. As a practical implementation of the results found, an attempt to design a special technique for developing EFL teachers’ leadership skills as part of intercultural communicative competence has been made. The technique can be used as part of an advanced professional teachers training program in Additional Education Center at Irkutsk State Agrarian University. The main task of the program is to improve teachers’ organization and time-management skills, assertiveness, flexibility, critical and quick thinking, cultural consciousness and tolerance while working in an intercultural group of students.