A survey on the intercultural communicative competence of ELT undergraduate students

Abstract

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is the ability to communicate effectively andappropriately with other cultures to negotiate meaning. A high level of ICC is required for a successfulcommunication across numerous cultures. Since English has recently been accepted as the mainintercultural communication language among different cultures, teaching/learning English has gainedpopularity. As long as learners master English and understand its cultural contexts, they are better atintercultural communication, which results from the ICC level. Hence, there is a relationship betweenthe development of ICC and the development in the target language. Based on this idea, the currentstudy aims to investigate the ICC levels of undergraduate English language teaching students to find outthe effect of language competence on intercultural communicative competence, and also whether there isa change throughout the four-year teacher training program. A total of 238 first-year and fourth-yearundergraduate ELT students were surveyed. The collected data revealed a high level of ICC regardless ofstudy year. It also yielded a significant difference between first-year students’ ICC and fourth-yearstudents’ ICC, which means mastering in English positively affects the ICC level. In accordance with theresults, some implications were shared.