Cultivating Chinese college students' intercultural competence with intercultural language teaching approach: An action research

Cultivating students' intercultural competence has become one of the objectives of language teaching, and a range of courses have been designed and conducted for preparing students to take an active part in the global world. As more college students are willing to work at multinational corporations or studying abroad, language teachers play an important role in providing students with more opportunities to enhance their intercultural knowledge and skills. Under the guidance of Byram's intercultural competence model (1997), by applying the intercultural language teaching approach proposed by Liddicoat (2003; 2013), the researcher developed a course that aims to cultivate students' intercultural competence in four dimensions, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and awareness. Two classes of second-year English major students attended the 12-week course, one acted as the treatment group. During the course, students experienced a process from notice, compare, to reflect through the intercultural activities. Using a range of resources including questionnaire, interview, and reflective journals, the study found that students' intercultural competence has been promoted, and the course has positive influence on students' attitudes cultivation, cultural knowledge acquisition, and intercultural skills development. Suggestions for future language teaching practice and curriculum development are also provided.

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