Assessment of intercultural communicative competence in FL education: A survey on EFL teachers’ perception and practice in China

ABSTRACT

The intercultural approach to language teaching, intercultural communicative language teaching, has emerged in response to the limitations of communicative language teaching. As a result, the ultimate goal of foreign language (FL) education is being shifted from communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence (ICC). In China, this calls for an understanding of the status quo of ICC assessment in FL. The aim of the present study, which is a part of a nation-wide survey, is to investigate the opinions and attitudes of teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in China on assessment of ICC and to gauge how and to what extent these beliefs are reflected in their classroom implementation. Data were collected from 1170 Chinese university EFL teachers by means of a questionnaire. The analysis reveals that, despite a willingness to assess ICC, the EFL teachers lack a clear conception of ICC. This leads to confusion about what should be assessed and how to assess it, and to deficiencies in their attempts to measure students' ICC in the classroom. Possible reasons for the deficiencies are explored and solutions proposed. The findings from this empirical study have implications for intercultural language teaching in China.

随着跨文化外语教学的推进, 外语教学的终极目标正从培养交际能力逐步转向培养跨文化交际能力, 这意味着教学过程中教师要对外语学习者的跨文化交际能力(ICC)进行评估。本文旨在调查中国高校英语教师对跨文化交际能力测评的认识和实践情况。本研究采取调查问卷, 对全国39所高校1000余名英语教师的ICC构成认知、ICC测评的必要性、测评方法、测评目的等方面进行了调查,结果发现中国高校外语教学中ICC测评还处于起步阶段,相当一部分教师对ICC的概念和构成认识模糊, 对ICC测评尚未给予足够的重视, 而且测试存在盲目性、偶然性和片面性。作者探寻了导致这些问题的可能原因, 并提出了可行性建议。

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural communicative language teaching (ICLT)
• intercultural communicative competence (ICC)
• teachers' perception and practice
• foreign language assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Gu Xiaole is an associate professor in School of Foreign languages, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. She holds a doctoral degree in linguistics and applied linguistics. Her research interest includes intercultural communication, intercultural language teaching and intercultural pragmatics. She is an active researcher in the field of intercultural communication and has published a number of papers on related issues. She is hosting and participating in a number of state-level and provincial-level projects on intercultural language teaching.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by China's Social Science Foundation [grant number 10BYY037], Social Science Research Program of China Ministry of Education [grant number 11YJC740076], Heilongjiang Social Science Foundation [grant number 13C018], Social Science Foundation of Harbin Institute of Technology [grant number HIT. HSS. 2009004], Graduate Education Reform Program of Harbin Institute of Technology [grant number JGYJ-201529].