Understanding the repercussions of intercultural communicative competence: a study on the degree of students’ cultural awareness, social and communication skills

Abstract

Demographic change is transforming the way we communicate. In many parts of the world, the society has become increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic. In this context, intercultural cognizance is one of the pivotal facets for intercultural communication. The recent years has seen the emergence of the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) concept permeating the education field thereby a large and growing body of literature has commenced to investigate the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its repercussion in the context of teaching and learning. The notion of ICC is incepted on the acquisition of several “savoirs” associated with attitudes and values, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness. However, the process of acquiring and negotiating meaning in the context of intercultural communication lies a tremendous challenge and demands a continuous effort. Thus, the objective of this study is to probe on how students’ attitudes towards another culture affect their degree of cultural awareness and to deliberate how social and communication skills can foster intercultural competence that is influenced by the level of ICC acquisition. The findings indicate that the students possess intercultural competence in which they demonstrate positive attitudes towards individuals from other cultures; henceforth is reflected in the high cultural awareness amongst the students. Apart from this, the findings yielded also show that the students are able to exhibit and display significant competencies in both social and communication skills which are allied to the high level of ICC acquisition.