Intercultural competence as an aspect of the communicative ...

esults, showing a considerable lack of intercultural competence as the participants mainly relied on
their own cultural frames to account for IC encounters, and resorted to stereotyping, generalized
descriptions and dispositional attribution.
While there were slight differences in the quantitative results across different departments,
these were not supported by the qualitative data, which rather showed low intercultural sensitivity,
empathy and the characteristics of Defense or Minimization stage (Bennett 1993) of the participants
from almost all departments.
Both the results of qualitative and quantitative stages of the study showed that factors such as
stays or studies abroad, knowledge of other FL or gender did not have a significant influence on one’s
intercultural competence. The findings also showed that intensive EFL instruction in itself did not
contribute to ICC, as the results for the English language students illustrated.
Finally, the study shows that if students are to become interculturally competent learners and
communicators, IC instruction should be included in general education at the university level. Since the
functions of language are used to transfer cultural values and meanings, the knowledge of these values
and meanings entails ‘the analysis of the values and artefacts to which they refer’ (Byram 1989: 43) as
well as the awareness that they cannot be only linguistic. This is where the intercultural component
(introduced through IC techniques such as culture assimilator) can significantly improve EFL teaching.
Accepted on Scientific
Board on:
AS
Defended:
DE
Thesis Defend Board:
DB
3 rd Dec 2009
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member:
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