Moving From Communicative

Competence to Intercultural
Communicative Competence:
Working With MA TESOL and
TFL Students
Dr. Lynn Goldstein
Monterey Institute of International Studies,
A Graduate School of Middlebury College
CERCLL
Tucson, Arizona
January 25, 2014

Communicative Competence
vs.
Intercultural Competence
Communicative Competence (Canale,
1983)
The theoretical framework for communicative
competence proposed here minimally includes
four areas of knowledge and skill:
grammatical competence, sociolinguistic
competence, discourse competence, and
strategic competence.

Communicative Competence
vs.
Intercultural Competence
Communicative Competence (Canale, 1983)
1.

Grammatical Competence: Mastery of the language code itself

2.

Sociolinguistic Competence: Utterances are produced and

understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts
depending on contextual factors such as status of participants,
purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of
interaction.

3.

Discourse Competence: Mastery of how to combine grammatical

forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken and written text in
different genresUnity of text is achieved through cohesion in form
and coherence in meaning.

4.

Strategic: Mastery of verbal and nonverbal communication

strategiesto compensate for communication breakdowns due to
limiting conditions or insufficient competence and to enhance the
effectiveness of communication.

Intercultural
Competence

Intercultural Awareness (Baker, 2012)

For

effective communication, learners should know more than

syntax, lexis, and phonology.

Importance

of how to use linguistic and other communicative

resources in the negotiation of meaning, roles, and
relationships in the diverse sociocultural settings of
intercultural settings of intercultural communication through
English.

Skills

of multilingual communicators:

Role of accommodation in adapting language to be closer to that of

ones interlocutor in order to aid understanding and solidarity.
Negotiation and mediation skills are also key, particularly between
different culturally based frames of reference, which have the
potential to cause misunderstanding or miscommunication.

These skills enable interlocutors to adjust and align themselves

to different communicative systems and cooperate in

Intercultural Competence
(Byram, 1998)
1.
2.

3.

4.

5.

Attitudes: Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend

disbelief about other cultures and belief about one's own.
Knowledge: of social groups and their products and
practices in one's own and in one's interlocutor's country,
and of the general processes of societal and individual
interaction.
Skills of interpreting and relating: Ability to interpret
a document or event from another culture, to explain it
and relate it to documents from one's own.
Skills of discovery and interaction: Ability to acquire
new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the
ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the
constraints of real-time communication and interaction.
Critical cultural awareness/political education: An
ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit
criteria perspectives, practices and products in one's own
and other cultures and countries.

Transcultural Competence
(Slimbach, 2005)
1.

2.

3.

6 Categories of Competence
Perspective consciousness: The ability to question
constantly the source of ones cultural assumptions
and ethical judgments, leading to the habit of seeing
things through the minds and hearts of others.
Ethnographic skill: The ability to observe carefully
social behavior, manage stress, and establish
friendships across cultures, while exploring issues of
global significance, documenting learning, and
analyzing data using relevant concepts.
Global awareness: A basic awareness of
transnational conditions and systems, ideologies and
institutions, affecting the quality of life of human and
non-human populations, along with the choices
confronting individuals and nations.

Transcultural Competence
(Slimbach, 2005)
4.

5.

6.

World learning: Direct experience with contrasting

political histories, family lifestyles, social groups, arts,
religions, and cultural orientations based on extensive,
immersed interaction within non-English speaking, nonAmericanized environments.
Foreign language proficiency: A threshold-level
facility in the spoken, non-verbal, and written
communication system used by members of at least
one other culture.
Affective development: The capacity to
demonstrate personal qualities and standards of the
heart (e.g., empathy, inquisitiveness, initiative,
flexibility, humility, sincerity, gentleness, justice, and
joy) within specific intercultural contexts in which one is
living and learning.

COMPARING CC to ICC
A scene from Japanese Story

What does it mean to develop and possess

Intercultural Communicative Competence ?

Attitudes, Knowledge, & Skills

Understand that language and culture and the interactions
between them are situated and variable, that intercultural
interactions need to be ethical, and understand the roles
power and its distribution play in intercultural interactions.
Gain linguistic and cultural knowledge to understand and
interact effectively in multilingual/multicultural settings.
Develop an understanding of the roles linguistic and
cultural attitudes play in interactions across multilingual
and multicultural settings and how they influence the success
of such interactions.

What does it mean to develop and

possess ICC?
Attitudes, Knowledge, & Skills
Develop

the awareness needed to successfully

participate in multilingual/multicultural interactions.
This addresses not only the knowledge and attitudes
discussed above but also how
communication/interaction is structured across
cultures and languages, how communication is
monitored while in interaction, and what factors
support or hinder successful interactions.

Develop

"tools" for understanding their own and

others' ways of interacting in order to be able to
participate effectively in multilingual/multicultural
interactions across a range of languages and cultures.

How to Achieve These

Goals
Course content
2. Readings
3. Activities
4. Assignments:
1.

Blogs
Other Group Analysis
Professional Needs Analysis

Course Content/Topics

READINGS
February 26th: Politeness and Face Across Languages and Cultures
Foundational
Kachru & Smith

Parameters of Politeness

Language and Professional: Choose one from either Language or

Professional below
Language
Mursy & Wilson

Towards a definition of Egyptian Complimenting

Hua, Wei &

Yuan

The Sequential Organization of Gift Giving in Chinese

Felix-Brasdefer

Declining an Invitation: A Cross-cultural Study of Pragmatic

Strategies

Orecchioni

Politeness in Small Shops in France

Ohashi

Japanese Culture Specific Face and Politeness Orientation: A

PragmaticInvestigation of Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu

Rash

Linguistic Politeness and Greeting Rituals in Germanspeaking Switzerland

Professional
Lindsley &
Braithwaite

You Should Wear a Mask: Facework Norms in Cultural and

Intercultural Conflict in Macquiladoras (Business and Policy)

Jacobsen

Interactional Pragmatics and Court Interpreting: An Analysis

April 29th: Examining The Causes of

Miscommunication in Intercultural Communication

Foundational
Wilson &
Will and Power: Towards Radical Intercultural
Communication
Wilson
Research and Pedagogy
Hua
What Are The Key Factors That May Cause
Misunderstandings
In Intercultural Communication?
Hua
What Contributes to Successful
Communication
Professional

Choose One

Guido
Officers

Cross-cultural Miscommunication in Welfare

Interrogations

Spencer-Oatey Managing Rapport in Intercultural Business

Interactions: A
& Xing
Comparison of Two Chinese-British Welcome
Meetings

May 8th: Intercultural Communicative Competence and

Awareness
Foundational
Byram
Competence
Hua
Competence
Professional
Simbach

A Model for Intercultural Communicative

How to Develop Intercultural Communicative
Choose One
The Transcultural Journey (Policy)

Peppas
Business Study Abroad Tours for NonTraditional Students: An
Assessment Outcome (Business)
Deardorff
Intercultural Competence in Foreign
Language Classrooms: A
Framework and Implications for Educators
(TESOL/TFL)
Young &
Intercultural Communication
Competence: Exploring English
Sachdev
Language Teachers Teachers Beliefs and
Practices (TESOL)
Goode

The Role of Faculty Study Abroad Directors: A

Activities: Personal, Experiential, Visual,

Tangible, Comparative, and Real World

Personal: Cultural History and

Repertoire
Experiential: Alpha versus Omega:

(Ting-Toomey and Chung)

Visual: Sleeping Babies (DIE);

Stereotypes; Written Artifacts

Activities: Personal, Experiential, Visual,

Tangible, Comparative and Real World
Tangible:

Good Will Huntinghttp

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZ0Y4rvz6E&feat
ure=
related
Pushpaka https
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW5BeHNF-e0&wid
e=1
)
Japanese Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
AIQH_msbZ2o
Real

World: Visa applications, Healthcare on

the border

Assignments
A.Blog
Sample
All observation posts should include the following
information:
.Who the participants are: Their relationship to each other
(relative status, degree of solidarity, degree of intimacy),
approximate age, gender, race, ethnicity if known, native language
if known, language of the interaction.
.Purpose of the Interaction: For example checking books out of
the library, ordering/serving a hamburger, asking for/giving
directions, making plans, asking for/offering assistance and so
forth.
Observe an interaction between participants from different
groups (age, gender, socio economic status, occupation,
status, religion, expertise, and knowledge, field of study):
Observe to see if the participants interact in ways that signal their
solidarity, intimacy, and/or their perceptions of higher or lower
status, or more or less power. What aspects of the interaction led
you to believe that the participants were enacting solidarity,

Assignments
Other Group Analysis
The

goal of this assignment is to observe and analyze an

entirely unknown discourse event.

Attend

an event (social, religious, educational, sporting, civic, and

so forth) you have never attended before in a culture different from
your own /culture you are unfamiliar with. Note that I am using
culture broadly hereit could be religious, occupational, sports,
social, avocational and so forth. You could go to a religious service
different from your own, attend a sports event of a type you have
never attended/watched, go birding having never done so before, go
surfing, take a cooking class, go to a Board of Education meeting, a
Rotary club meeting, a city council meetinguse your imagination.
Please make sure to get permission to observe (unless it is a public
venue to which all are welcome). You can let your contact person
know that you are doing an assignment to observe a setting you
have never been in before.

Assignments
Professional Needs Analysis
Step

One: For this project you will locate participants (3 people if you are taking the
class for 3 units, 5 people if you are taking the class for 4 units) to interview who are
currently working in your professional field, i.e., people who are ESL or EFL teachers,
or foreign language teachers of your FL, or interpreters or translators, or involved in
international business, or involved in policy/ policy administration, or involved in
international education management. All should be in job settings where they
regularly interact with people from different language and cultural backgrounds.
Step Five: Summarize your participants views, including where they are similar and
different, in response to all of the above questions, regarding working with people with
diverse language and cultural backgrounds.
Step Six: Given your participants answers that you have addressed in steps 3-5,
consider (1) what they already possess in terms of the knowledge, attitudes, and
skills needed for successful, ethical, intercultural interactions in their work place and
(2) what they need to learn to be more interculturally competent. In doing so, bring in
the pertinent concepts, constructs and literature from our course and readings as the
lenses through which you decide what they already believe/ know/can do and what
they need to develop in terms of beliefs/attitudes, knowledge and skills.
Step Seven: Given your analyses in step six, identify and justify the topics, readings,
and activities you would engage your participants in to develop ethical, sound
intercultural attitudes, develop their knowledge of intercultural communication in
ways that will lead to successful, ethical intercultural interactions in their work place,
and develop the skills and practices needed for successful, ethical intercultural
interactions in their workplace.