BYRAM VERSUS BENNETT: DISCREPANCIES IN THE ... - CERCLL

Paula Garrett-Rucks Byram Versus Bennett
areas and group-specific skills that facilitate cultural interactions” (p. 11). Sercu (2005) defined
intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in FL education as a learner’s ability to cope with
intercultural experiences. She further described the intercultural competencies and
characteristics as:
the willingness to engage with foreign culture, self-awareness and the ability to
look upon oneself from the outside, the ability to see the world through the
others’ eyes, the ability to cope with uncertainty, the ability to act as a cultural
mediator, the ability to evaluate others’ point of view, the ability to consciously
use culture learning skills and to read the cultural context, and the understanding
that individuals cannot be reduced to their collective identities. (p. 2)
Byram (1997) underlined the importance in FL education to move beyond an understanding of
communication as an exchange of information but rather to “understand and relate to people
from other countries” (p. 5). He defined successful communication in FL learning as the ability
of learners to “establish and maintain relationships” (p. 3). Byram (2000) described the
attributes of a person with intercultural competence communicative competence as:
…someone who is able to see relationships between different cultures—both
internal and external to a society— and is able to mediate, that is interpret each
in terms of the other, either for themselves or for other people. It is also someone
who has a critical or analytical understanding of (parts of) their own and other
cultures—someone who is conscious of their own perspective, of the way in
which their thinking is culturally determined, rather than believing that their
understanding and perspective is natural. (p. 9)
Described by Hoyt (2012) as “a constellation of notions” (p. 94), Byram’s multimodal model
contains prescriptive definitions and 28 performance assessment objectives centering on
learners’ attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical cultural awareness. Byram (2000) described
successful intercultural learners as “conscious of their own perspective, of the way in which their
thinking is culturally determined, rather than believing that their understanding and perspective
is natural” (p. 10).
Echoing Byram’s definition of a successful intercultural learning, Bennett underscores the
importance of understanding and accepting diverse cultural perspectives in order for individuals
to shift from ethnocentric to ethnorelative ways of responding to cultural differences in his
Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Bennett (1993) defines intercultural
sensitivity as individuals’ psychological ability to deal with cultural differences. Hammer and
Bennett (2001) described learners with basic intercultural sensitivity as able to recognize and
accept the complexity of cultural differences as “different constructions of reality” (p. 12). There
currently exist a large number of practices that have been recommended and implemented for
assessing intercultural competence depending on the particular definition or model of
intercultural competence adopted. The following section presents a brief review of some of the
most salient quantitative and qualitative practices I found to assess intercultural competence
across the literature.
EXAMPLES OF QUANTITATIVE IC ASSESSMENT TOOLS (BASIC, ICSI, CCAI, IDI, AND
INCA)
Many of the aforementioned studies in the review of the literature used surveys and
questionnaires that were either designed by the researchers, or adapted from pre-existing IC
assessment tools. Four salient types of assessment tools in the professional literature are for
observers’ assessment of others (BASIC), self-reports (ICSI, CCAI and IDI), or a combination of
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