Intercultural competence as an aspect of the communicative ...

concept of ICC in the university setting may be a springboard for further research based
on intercultural competence and communication, and help define further and more
definite investigation. In order to achieve this, the approach employed was a mixed
methods approach (Teddlie, Tashakkori 2009), which presents ‘an integration of
statistical and thematic data analytic techniques, plus other strategies unique to mixed
method (e.g. data conversion or transformation)’ (Teddlie, Tashakkori 2009: 8). Such
research can address a number of questions which are exploratory in nature, might give
stronger inferences, and offer a wider range of views (Teddlie, Tashakkori 2009).
The study tried to establish whether students knew how to identify possible
troublesome areas (fixed points, Jensen 2006) through a culture assimilator. A number of
critical incidents comprising the culture assimilator were devised, specially focused on
the Serbian and Anglophone cultures in contact. These might be used in class to practice
both language and intercultural competence. In that respect the study has a concrete
outcome – a teaching (and potentially assessment) tool, which can be further honed and
tested. Hopefully, this may help English language teachers at a university and even high
school level in terms of including culture assimilators into their teaching practices.
Finally, the aim for the study was not to provide any a particular level of the
participants’ ICC, as it was focused on a ‘section’ of foreign language learning. Rather, it
might serve as a starting point for a wider study that would engage scholars from different
fields of Serbian language, English language, sociology, pedagogy, psychology in a joint
venture to provide training in ICC.
1.3. Significance of the study
There are several aspects that the study addressed, thus making it significant both
for the understanding of ICC in the Serbian context and the applied linguistics, especially
for the current TEFL practices at the tertiary level. While this is further commented on in
the concluding chapter, only several significant aspects are presented here.
Firstly, the field of ICC is relatively new, despite its having been developed over
the course of 60 to 70 years, there have not been many studies conducted to explore these
particular issues in Serbia. While there were studies that were concerned with the
students’ views on EFL or explored students’ stereotypes about a FL culture there have
not been studies aimed solely at students’ ICC.
Secondly, culture does not play a significant part in ELT, and the same goes for
IC elements. The research conducted so far (Kramsch 2003, Lambert 1999, Sercu 2005)
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