Major Components That Make Up Intercultural Competence - Assignment Example

Running Head: Intercultural Competence Intercultural Competence Customer Inserts His/her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 08.11.2010 What do you see as the key components of intercultural competence? As a language teacher, how will/does this knowledge impact on your practice in the classroom? Introduction Intercultural competence has been defined as an individual’s or people’s ability to effectively communicate with people from different cultures. Through intellectual competence (IC) an individual is able to easily interact with people from cultures different from, her or his own as we’ll as understand their way of thinking, perceptions, actions and even their feelings. The concept of intercultural competence is of great importance to language teachers who in their day to day performance of tasks get to interact with students of different cultures and who work towards ensuring that these students become intellectually competent. This paper looks at the major components that make up intercultural competence and discusses how the knowledge of this may affect a language teacher’s practice in teaching. Discussion Major Components That Make Up Intercultural Competence The various key components that make up intercultural competence have been discussed by different authors some of who have also tried to relate these components to language teaching and learning. According to Byram (1997) intercultural communication competence calls for the need to ensure that learners acquire the skills, cultural awareness, knowledge and even attitudes that will promote efficient intercultural communication. These aspects are what Byram referred to as the key components making up IC. Below is a detailed discussion of each of these components. Knowledge This relates to a person’s ability to have comprehensive or full knowledge about his or her own particular culture as well as that of a foreign culture. This knowledge has a great influence on the level and quality of interaction between the various parties and on the individuals’ level of intellectual competence. The major components that make up complete cultural knowledge includes being able to understand the different views of others, being able to understand the effect and role that ones culture may have on communication and behavior as well as religious and historical contexts. It also entails having a sociolinguistic form of awareness on the existing relationship between a particular language and its meaning within a social context. It is through understanding foreign cultures and values that the behavior of individuals can be understood. Language teachers therefore need to have knowledge on the different cultural values of their foreign students as well as knowledge on the cultural issues of these students. The appropriate cultural knowledge has been found to differ in every intercultural context and to have be potentially unlimited meaning that it is too broad to constantly be known within the intercultural context. Skills Due to the difficulty that has been attributed to fully identifying cultural knowledge, specialists have defined skills that are process oriented as being of importance in ensuring that individuals are able to acquire knowledge about their own cultures and that of others. Skills that enhance cultural knowledge include listening, observation, and presentation, interpretation, analysis and evaluation skills in terms of cultural elements. Every culture has been identified as having its various ways through which they are able to manage its differences and resolve existing conflicts. It is this aspect of conflict management that further builds on intercultural conflicts. Conflicts mainly occur when there is a communication breakdown between parties thus; good skills of communication play a huge role in conflict resolution (Silverthorne, 2005). The acquisition of good communication skills calls for one to be language competent. Poor language proficiency makes it difficult for a language teacher to express his or her ideas in a way that is appropriate and using the correct words to the foreign students. Other than interpersonal skills which include listening, presentation, analysis and negotiation skills among others, good communication skills can also be defined in terms of interaction skills whereby individuals are able not only to gain cultural knowledge but also operate the gained knowledge. It is also through communication competence that one is able to do as well as know the reason for doing that (Richard 2003). Learning skills aim at helping individuals gain both knowledge and ability or skills such as adaptability, application and understanding skills. This makes learning and other communication skills an important factor in ensuring intercultural competence. Attitude Attitude can be defined as an individual’s readiness, curiosity and openness in the suspension of ones disbelief about the cultures of others and belief about that of ones own. It is through openness that individuals are able to seek and receive knowledge or to learn more receptively. A person is able to get actively engaged in new cultural-environments if they are open minded (Kim, 2004). According to Kim appreciation of differences in culture, openness, respect, patience, tolerance, calmness and courage in terms of openness make up some of the basic attitudes. These basic factors make up key components for language teachers who are in continuous contact with varying cultures as well as languages. Successful performance of their various roles requires language teachers to develop these attitudes. According to the intercultural competence pyramid model by Deardorff (2004) attitudes make up the foundation for which intercultural competence is built. Through the various attitude factors, an individual is able to gain all the necessary knowledge as well as skills likely to bring out expected external and internal outcomes. The diagram below represents the Intercultural Competence pyramid model. InIntended tended External income Intercultural Reflection IC pyramid model Source: Deardorff (2004). In addition to knowledge, attitude and skills, intercultural reflection is another important component of intercultural competence. Reflection can be explained in terms of empathy whereby an individual places him/herself in the shoes or situation of the other person. through empathy, a person is able to clearly understand the culture and cultural practices of the other person, here the individual places him/herself in the place or culture of the other group and in turn gets to understand their experiences, identify their needs and even know the best way to relate with them. Empathy requires that a person takes up another culture and makes it her or his own. Intercultural competence calls for individuals to be able to easily adapt to new cultures and cultural practices that include communication styles, styles of living, norms as well as values. Integrated education for intercultural competence In relation to education, there is need to examine the level to which intercultural competence can be included into the teaching curricula as a key educational goal. Intercultural competence development cannot only be supplied through learning of languages meaning that it is necessary to ensure that the approach taken is one that is done in a manner that is integrated and that individual aspects are communicated using different learning forms and at levels that are diverse. Intercultural competence can only be obtained if learners provided with different opportunities through which interculturally interact in an effective way. Developing educational programs that are innovative provides a great potential activity for IC. Formative Evaluation For successful intercultural competence, it is important to ensure that effective evaluation tools and instruments are developed to assess the process as well as degree to which IC is obtained during learning. Effective evaluation is done through the use of indicators that serve as the basis through which intercultural competence can be assessed (Richard, 2003). Impact of the Key Components on the Language Teacher’s Practice in the Classroom Knowing and understanding the various key components that make up intercultural competence is likely to affect the practice of language teachers in a number of ways. One such way is the ability this knowledge provides the teachers in terms of ensuring that intercultural competence identified as a key goal in language learning. It is through this knowledge that the teachers are able to understand the importance of IC and the key components as well as understand their role in enhancing it. The teachers are also bale to demonstrate what they have learned in the creation of their lesson plans, setting up goals as well as in the implementation of their plans. As knowledge on intercultural competence continues to grow, the various roles of language teachers also continue to change in such a way that, they are able to develop attitudes, intercultural skills and value awareness as well as develop knowledge pertaining to a given culture as well as existing varying cultures. By understanding the major components of IC, a language teacher will be able to effectively facilitate the interaction of learners with different cultures and societies with an aim of ensuring that learners not only get to understand their own cultures but also that of other people around them. Other than helping language teachers to be able to effectively communicate and perform their roles with their various students from varying cultures, intercultural components also enables them to be able to transfer their various skills, knowledge and attitudes to their students. Through this, the students are also trained to become interculturally competent such that they can effectively and appropriately understand, communicate and interact with different languages and cultures. To be able to effectively communicate and relate with people and students of different cultural backgrounds, language teachers need to combine skills, attitudes and knowledge. A combination of these three components should be their mandate. It is through these components that I am going to teach my students not only about cultures and styles of communication, but also about stereotypes, non verbal and verbal communication. This represents the essential knowledge in terms of target culture which in my situation is English as well as entails both national cultures and even subcultures. It is my belief that language teachers today are capable of teaching skills as well as attitudes and even be able to facilitate an environment of learning that is based on a number of human virtues that include respect for one another and even empathy. It is such virtues that will enable the language teacher to successfully perform his or her role and to effectively interact, communicate and teach students from different parts of the world and whose cultures vary (Fennes, & Hapgood, 1997). Conclusion This paper presented the key or major components that constitute intercultural competence with the focus being on language teachers. From the discussion above, it is evident that IC is a key requirement in language teaching or among language teachers whose daily tasks involve contacting and interacting with students from different cultures and languages and from different parts of the world.By being able to understand how communication and cross cultural adaptation relate to each other, a language teacher can in turn be bale to facilitate students to employ effective communication as a way of dealing away with cultural shock and of enhancing successful assimilation. The IC pyramid model by Deardorff (2004) describes attitudes as being the key to enhancing intercultural competence. According to Deardorff, the acquisition of attitude and its various components helps one to gain knowledge as well as skills and in turn enables one to achieve the intended outcomes, both external and internal. Teaching does not only involve the dissemination of relevant knowledge and information but also ensuring that each student acquires the right skills and tools and is able to make use of the gained knowledge and skills in his or her daily life both today and in the future. It is through such skills that the student will be able to understand and interpret different contexts, weight out existing perspectives and develop into an individual who is responsible, respectful and reflective and one who actively takes part in dialogues that are empathic and constructive. The student is able to interact with others, exchange ideas and in turn learn from them. It is important for every language teacher to ensure that a constructive dialogue that aims at achieving mutual understanding is created. This should be the key goal for the intercultural class. References Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Deardorff, D. (2004). The identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization at institutions of higher education in the United States. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University. Fennes, H., & Hapgood, K. (1997). Intercultural learning in the classroom: Crossing borders. London: Cassell. Kim, Y. (2001) Becoming intercultural: an integrative theory of communication and cross- cultural adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Richard E. (2003). Communication skills: stepladders to success for the professional. Bristol: Interllect Books. Silverthorne, C. (2005). Organizational psychology. New York: New York University Press. Read More