Teaching Intercultural Communicative Competence alongside Language Proficiency

Abstract

As English has established itself as a contact language, it has become increasingly important to prepare students for interaction with other non-native speakers of English during secondary education (Seidlhofer, 2005). As such, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) should be taught alongside language proficiency to prepare students for effective communication in a globalising world. The literature study revealed how Byram’s (1997) ICC model and the Common European Framework of Reference’s (CEFR) cultural repertoire descriptors (Council of Europe, 2017) could be used to formulate criteria to analyse how popular teaching method Stepping Stones has incorporated ICC. During the Stepping Stones case study, it appeared that while Stepping Stones provides a lot of culture-specific input, it does not provide exercises to develop ICC in students. To bridge this perceived gap, complementary material was designed specifically for Stepping Stones and based on Byram (1997) and the CEFR descriptors as teaching methods represent readily available and accessible material to facilitate the incorporation of ICC in the Dutch curriculum for English (Fasoglio & Canton, 2007)