Towards an Intercultural Communication Competence Tool for Academic Mobility Purposes

Abstract

This research investigates intercultural communication competence (ICC) and its main components (affective, cognitive and behavioral) in relation to academic mobility. It also discusses the value of assessing intercultural competence in higher education and points out the relationship between academic mobility, foreign language learning and the development of intercultural competence. The discussion then leads to the development of an intercultural communication assessment tool for academic mobility: Mobile Students’ Intercultural Competence Scale (MSICS). This tool focuses mainly on analyzing Turkish Erasmus students’ intercultural competence before and after their study abroad experience. Even though many intercultural competence assessment tools exist in the present literature, there is a lack of materials in this context which mainly focus on analyzing mobile students’ intercultural communication competence.