scholarly journals Implementing Critical Thinking Tasks to Fostering English Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence in a Genre-based Learning Environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Luis Fernando Gómez-Rodríguez

The development of intercultural communicative competence in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) education in many countries is still a difficult goal to achieve. EFL teachers and learners require more tangible and concrete methodological approaches to foster this important competence in the classroom. Therefore, this reflection article aims at proposing the use of genre-based learning as a significant communicative language approach to foster English learners’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through a Sequence of Critical Thinking Tasks. Through two samples of genres, the article explains how the skills of discovery, of interpreting, and of relating, contained in the concept of ICC, can be articulated, complemented, and enhanced gradually through a set of more specific Critical Thinking Tasks. These mental skills can be useful to help learners understand, discover, interpret, and evaluate critically elements of deep culture that appear in different documents, genres, or texts produced by English-spoken cultures, other language communities, and learners’ own culture. Doing critical thinking tasks through genre-based approach can constitute a preliminary but significant step to enhance English learners’ critical intercultural awareness in EFL learning environments.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Fatma ZAGHAR

In the present time’s globalized atmosphere, the need for intercultural communicative competence in the workplace runs high. Accordingly, in the area of foreign language education, English teachers need more than ever to incorporate intercultural awareness and cross-cultural understanding in their syllabi. This article reports on a case study that involves the use of many research instruments including questionnaires, classroom observation, and assessment of assignments and exam sheets. This paper tends to suggest a cultural teaching based on standards for intercultural learning elicited from related literature in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) setting, addressed to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Master students approaching the end of their course of study and getting ready to enter the world of job-market. It proposes ways of instilling multicultural awareness into these language learners through the implementation of intercultural activities, helping them better understanding diversity and developing positive attitudes in the workplace. The research goals comprise increasing students’ intercultural global awareness, promoting their tolerance, and helping them remedy negative attitudes towards the target culture and other alien cultures. Findings of the study show that the proposed intercultural approach stimulates students’ thinking, helps them better comprehend how to immerse in diverse perspectives on complicated international issues, and how to become global citizens able to deal effectively with multiculturalism in the work environment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
A.K. Zhunussova ◽  
◽  
A. Althonayan ◽  
A.A. Golovchun ◽  
◽  
...  

In the article, the modelling is considered as one of the effective methods in the formation of intercultural and communicative competence of students. The FLT system, like any other system, functions and develops in the light of its predetermined goals and planned results, and this regulates the delineation of several subsystems within the parameters of the entire system - in this case, a foreign language education system. The necessity to move away from a narrow book understanding of “foreign languages” towards the general system of foreign language education as a multifaceted area of research has become apparent in the modern era.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Spaliviero

Literary education and language education are connected by a relationship of mutual exchange. On the one hand, without the mastery of appropriate language skills it is impossible to grasp the complexity of literary works. On the other, improving language competence is one of the multiple aims of literary education. Moreover, considering the current multicultural dimension of the Italian school system, teaching literature from an intercultural perspective provides an opportunity to foster the development of relational skills while discussing the meaning of the works. In this scenario, we explore the state of the art of literary education and the teaching of literature in Italy and we consider their implications with language education, intercultural education, and intercultural communication. Furthermore, we present both a model of literary and intercultural communicative competence and a hermeneutic and relational method, also aimed at improving language acquisition and promoting intercultural awareness. In our view, literary and intercultural communicative competence makes it possible to communicate effectively in events where the language is spoken in order to understand literary texts, to identify the original meanings, to discuss their significance from the students’ current perspective, and to formulate critical judgements. The aim of the volume is to offer content and methodological resources for the teaching of literature that can impact positively on the development of language and relational skills. Thus, we draw up some guidelines aimed at increasing students’ motivation for studying the works, fostering their active participation and allowing literature to preserve its educational function.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1072-1079
Author(s):  
Xiaomei Zhu ◽  
Anwei Feng

This paper discusses intercultural communicative competence (ICC) education in the context of Sino-Foreign Institutes (SFIs). Through an overview of the development of internationalization of higher education in China, the paper puts forward four strategies that are widely adopted to facilitate the development of students ICC. The four strategies are provision of ICC specific courses, integration of ICC in subject courses, integration of ICC with foreign language education, and intercultural activities and projects. Towards the end, the paper argues that more empirical research is needed to evaluate the effects of the strategies on students’ ICC and challenges the SFIs face in the post-pandemic era.


2006 ◽  
Vol 151 ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Lies Sercu

Foreign language curricula now frequently require foreign language teachers to integrate intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. This study's objective was to investigate whether and to what extent foreign language teachers support this new objective. To that aim, an international research design was developed, involving teachers in Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Our findings suggest that the larger part of the teachers who participated in our study are clearly willing to teach intercultural communicative competence (icc) in their classrooms, but that this overall positive disposition is conditioned by a number of convictions regarding the best way to teach ICC. In addition, we found that, despite differences in national teaching circumstances, teachers in different countries share a number of these convictions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 600
Author(s):  
Tan Lihua

<p><em>Cultural integration, an important part of college English teaching, plays a key role in enhancing students’ English proficiency and overall quality. The author in this paper attempts to explore the cultivation of college English learners’ intercultural competence from the three aspects of relationship between cultural integration and college English teaching, the contents and ways of cultural integration into college English teaching. The author considers that college English learners’ intercultural competence involves both intercultural communicative competence and overall quality including virtues, critical thinking and extensive knowledge. </em></p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 189-198
Author(s):  
Manuela Derosas

Since the early ’80s the adjective "intercultural" in language learning and teaching has seemed to acquire a remarkable importance, although its meaning is strongly debated. As a matter of fact, despite the existence of a vast literature on this topic, difficulties arise when applying it in the classroom. The aim of this work is to analyze the elements we consider to be the central pillars in this methodology, i.e. a renewed language-and culture relation, the Intercultural Communicative Competence, the intercultural speaker. These factors allow us to consider this as a new paradigm in language education; furthermore, they foster the creation of new potentialities and configure the classroom as a significant learning environment towards the discovery of Otherness.


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