Abstract
This paper proposes a prototypic assessment tool for intercultural communicative competence. Because traditional discourse completion tasks (DCTs) focus on illocutionary competence rather than sociolinguistic competence, a modified version of a DCT was created to target sociolinguistic competence. The modified DCT employs speech acts as prompts and asks respondents to write about a situation in which a given speech act would be appropriate. This new tool is named a reverse discourse completion task (R-DCT). The task was given to learners of Turkish as a second language. Data from 12 participants were analyzed for their provision of sociopragmatic factors such as power, distance and imposition and also with respect to whether the situation was relevant to a given speech act. Responses from the participants show that R-DCTs can be used to assess intercultural competence as they help reveal respondents’ knowledge of sociolinguistic context in which a given speech act may be appropriate. By removing the need for comparison with native speaker data and the limitations that emerge from the lack of linguistic formula at respondents’ disposal, R-DCT is a promising elicitation task to assess sociolinguistic competence, an integral part of Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence.
Highlights
This paper proposes a prototypic assessment tool for intercultural communicative competence
Scoring based on the sociopragmatic factors and the relevance of the situations revealed that 3 participants wrote about situations that were relevant and would be appropriate for the utterances given in all four scenarios
This paper has described a new measure, which I have proposed to name reverse discourse completion task, for assessing intercultural competence as well as pragmatic competence
Summary
This paper proposes a prototypic assessment tool for intercultural communicative competence. The modified DCT employs speech acts as prompts and asks respondents to write about a situation in which a given speech act would be appropriate This new tool is named a reverse discourse completion task (R-DCT). Responses from the participants show that R-DCTs can be used to assess intercultural competence as they help reveal respondents’ knowledge of sociolinguistic context in which a given speech act may be appropriate. In addition to international travel, the Internet made intercultural communication possible without travelling abroad by opening up the door for new communication technologies like email, teleconference and video chat This contact between people from different cultures has made intercultural competence an important aspect of communicative competence. She depicted these functions and skills in a process model according to which developing intercultural competence is an ongoing and lifelong process (Deardorff, 2006, p. 256)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call