Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Tatjana Paunović
UDK 81`33
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE:
BEYOND QUEEN, QUEUING, AND CRUMPETS 1
Abstract. Developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is a difficult
task for L2 learners: it involves an understanding of what culture comprises, positive
attitudes towards cultural diversity, and sundry communicative skills. It is a
difficult task for L2 teachers, too, since they need to guide students through this
development. Therefore, ICC training should be a substantial part of L2 teacher
education. This paper presents a study of the papers produced by 40 English Department
students during an ICC course, implemented for the first time as part
of their pre-service education. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify
the concepts that could indicate the ideas, cultural elements, and communicative
contexts students found relevant, thus revealing their cultural sensitivity, their attitudes
towards cultural differences, and their critical cultural awareness. The results
are discussed in the context of EFL teacher education.
Keywords: intercultural communicative competence, critical approach, ethnographic
approach, qualitative content analysis, L2 teacher education.
1. Introduction: Intercultural communicative competence
For several decades, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram
1997) has been more and more widely promoted as a vital goal in language education.
Although language and culture have always been seen as inseparable (Byram
2003: 57) and intertwined in very complicated ways (cf. Bugarski 2005),
with the increasingly complex and pressing global interchange the very notion
of culture and what it comprises is being re-defined, and so are the views on how
it should be included in L2 teaching and learning. In the ‘shrinking world of the
twenty-first century’ (Chen & Starosta 2008: 215), it has become obvious that, in
order to respond to varied communicative contexts in effective and appropriate
ways (Chen & Starosta 2008: 217), L2 learners need wider and more complex
competences, since they are required to act as ‘language and cultural mediators’
(Coperías Aguilar 2007:77).
1
The article was done under scientific project No. 178002, Ministry of Science and Technological
Development.
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