Intercultural communicationcompetence-oriented FL teaching
Fern Sakamoto

InterculturalCommunication
CompetenceYou can’t be shy. You have to clearly say “yes” and “no”
and tell them what you want.
Study Abroad Travel Agent

That homestay student was so rude. He just kept saying“I want this” and “I want that.” He had no manners at all.
My mumTarget culture?
Cultural tidbits?
Culture/country-specific language?

“intercultural competences
aim at freeing people from theirown logic and cultural idioms inorder to engage with others
and listen to their ideas”(UNESCO, 2013)

ICC
the ability tocommunicate
effectively andappropriately in avariety of culturalcontexts

attitudes

ICC
knowledge

skillsICC-oriented FL teachingWhat “ideal” do you have guiding your teaching ofEnglish?

In what ways or situations do you set a native speaker
ideal?
In what ways or situations do you set an intercultural
speaker ideal?

ICC-oriented FL teachingpedagogy

“teaching and acquiring interculturalcompetence cannot be product-oriented,
as there exists no definable end-product”(Witte, 2011, p.103)

process-oriented

“IC would seem to be as much about
participatory competence as it isabout presentational competence”(Philburn, 2011, p.429)

collaborative

“Educators are not merely subject experts inthe sense of being containers of knowledge
for transfer to the learner… It is for us tocreate the situations in which transformative
learning can occur”(Killick, 2015, p.157)

student-centred

“a central principle of (inter)cultural learning
has to be explorative and experiential learningwhich can address students’ affects, attitudes
and constructs of identity”(Witte, 2011, p.96)

experiential

process-oriented

experiential

collaborativestudent-centred“opportunities to engage with difference”(Bouchard, 2017)“opportunities for critical reflection” (Deardorff, 2011)“opportunities to engage with ideas, behaviors, andemotions... in ways which would not happen if[students were] left to their own devices” (Killick, 2015)

1
Makeconnections

5
Interact acrossboundaries

2

IcLL
FRAMEWORK

Compare &contrast(Richards, Conway, Roskvist & Harvey, 2011)

4

3

Examine own
cultureLink culture &language

What kinds of activities do you (or could you) use toprovide these kinds of opportunities in your classes?

ImagineExamine

DiscoverExplain

CreateInteractThank you.

References
Bouchard, J. (2017). Ideology, agency, and intercultural communicative competence. Springer.
Deardorff, D. K. (2011). Assessing intercultural competence. New Directions for Institutional Research, 2011(149), 65–79.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.381
Killick, David. 2015. Developing the Global Student. New York: Routledge.
Philburn, R. (2011). Aspects of English and German Sociable Selfhood. In A. Witte, & T. Harden (Eds.). Intercultural competence:Concepts, challenges, evaluations. Intercultural studies and foreign language learning (pp.411-436). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang Oxford.
Richards, H., Conway, C., Roskvist, A., & Harvey, S. (2011). A framework for analyzing observation data: Language teacher provision ofopportunities for learns to develop intercultural competence. In In A. Witte, & T. Harden (Eds.). Intercultural competence: Concepts,challenges, evaluations. Intercultural studies and foreign language learning (pp.239-252). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang Oxford.
UNESCO. (2013). Intercultural Competences Conceptual and Operational Framework.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002197/219768e.pdf
Witte, A. (2011). On the teachability and learnability of intercultural competence: Developing facets of the "inter." In A. Witte, & T.
Harden (Eds.). Intercultural competence: Concepts, challenges, evaluations. Intercultural studies and foreign language learning (pp.89108). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang Oxford.