Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Inhalt

Chapter I
Introduction
Background of the Study
Related Literature
Conceptual Framework
Research Paradigm
Statement of the Problem
Significance of the Study
Scope and Delimitations of the Study
Definition of Terms

Chapter II
Methodology
Research Design
Population and Sampling
Research Instrument
Data Gathering Procedure
Data Analysis

Chapter III
Results
Demographic Profile of the Pupils
Intercultural Communicative Competence of the Pupils through Themed Writing
Teaching strategies of Teacher
Subject-related Strategies
Descriptive Correlation between teaching strategies and competency among students

Chapter IV
Discussion
Conclusions
Recommendations

Bibliography

Appendix

Chapter I

Introduction

Background of the Study

Modern educational institutions demand learners to be viable contributors and participants in a linguistically and culturally diverse society. This implies the significance of man’s ability to interact appropriately and effectively with those from other cultural backgrounds. Through speaking using a particular language with accuracy and fluency and with tolerance and flexibility in dealing with cultural differences, an individual can share his thoughts and sentiments to other people.

In a classroom setting, achieving a successful communicative competence can be hindered by the learner’s different language, traditions, religion, customs and norms. The researcher had a credence that diversities of cultures has the capability to apprehend in communication, but the study of intercultural communicative competence can make a difference for it will cultivate the learners’ proficiency in communicating across cultures to endow them a competitive advantage in the ever demanding world. According to Byram (1997) someone who gains skills in intercultural communicative competence is an individual who is successful in: building relationships while speaking the language of the other participant; negotiating how to effectively communicate so that both individuals’ communicative needs are addressed; mediating conversations between those of diverse cultural backgrounds. This final characteristic stresses that when an effective intercultural communicator learns to interact with those from a specific culture, a foundation of language and culture learning has been built, and that individual is more likely to continue to gather linguistic information from other cultures in order to broaden her spectrum of intercultural encounters.

With this, the researcher aimed to assess intercultural communicative competence among selected elementary students for the researcher believes that this can affect in student’s performance. There were some instance that there were students who found difficulties in understanding particular language to communicate due to their cultures.

The reasons for the choice of the problem were lineup and explained by the following conditions:

The study was interrelated to the researcher’s field and background experience for this was about teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. The focus of the study was part of communication skills specifically “Interactive English’ which was one of the subject taken by the researcher.

The study provided sufficient information for this was only focused on assessing intercultural communicative competence among selected Grade 4 learners.

The results that were obtained from this study will contribute updated and enhanced discoveries and notions regarding assessing intercultural communicative competence.

Moreover, the outcomes of the study served as a new contribution on the field of education since this study was about and assessing intercultural communicative competence which was part of English subject in elementary. This enable elementary teachers to gain awareness about assessing intercultural communicative competence. This would provoked them to invent novel on how to assess intercultural communicative competence. By the cognizance of these, language teachers would be able to tailor the most appropriate learning activities, strategies and assessment.

Related Literature

Sinecrope, Norris, & Watanabe (2012) revealed that intercultural competence underscores the importance of preparing students to engage and collaborate in a global society by discovering appropriate ways to interact with people from other cultures.

Byram (2003) cited that when the teaching of intercultural communicative competence includes models of reciprocal relationships in which students play the role of a “social actor”, students experience the mutual discovery of another language and culture, and language classrooms become places where students and teachers consider questions of values and morals, which can ultimately promote the notion of democracy

Hammer, Bennet, and Wiseman (2003) defined intercultural competence is “the ability to think and act in interculturally appropriate ways.” Their distinction betweenknowing and doing in interculturally competent ways offers a fitting prelude to the themes that have emerged from most contemporary work on ICC.

Saville-Troike (2012) mentioned that acculturation, gaining knowledge about a culture and its values, is important in acquiring a second language. Also, teaching and learning a language requires knowing how to communicate effectively in a specific language community, which means having intercultural communicative competence.

Neuliep (2015) mentioned that when educators have intercultural communication competency, they will understand other cultures better, and they will grow personally. Also, they will discover that they share some ideas or traits with others. Therefore, differences between cultures are not barriers for communication among individuals. The fourth benefit is that individuals’ ICC will help them to know more about the English language because learners will learn more about verbal and nonverbal messages in a larger variety of contexts, which leads to anxiety reduction while communicating.

Martin and Nakayama (2000) verbal communication or language has four components: semantics, syntactic, pragmatics, and phonetics. The first component, semantics, is the study of meaning of vocabulary words and how to use them in communication. The syntactic component is the study of grammar, and how changing the order of a sentence affects the meaning of communication. Pragmatics is the study of language in the social context. The last component, phonetics, is the study of sounds in language.

Conceptual Framework

Based on the review of related literature and studies, the researcher conceptualized that Intercultural Communicative Competence is very important in order to gain the ability about frequent contacts between people of different cultural backgrounds which students can be applied in school, at home and in the community.

The researcher also conceptualized that Intercultural Communicative Competence deals with the cognitive, affective and psychomotor capability that provide the students an opportunity to enhance and express themselves in constructing relationship with others through the means of communicating with the practice of a sole language which is English. Due to this emphasis the researcher conceptualized that the development of ICC depend on the teaching strategies used by the teacher.

The researcher was very much aware that the quality output of the learning process depends greatly on the teaching strategies used in developing ICC in order to acquire positive changes on the behavior of the students.

Research Paradigm

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In this research paradigm, it showed that the input was the researcher’s demographic profile. The process dealt with the assessment of the 2 components of the ICC strategy. The output was the assessment of ICC.

Statement of the Problem

This study attempted to assess the ICC among Grade IV pupils of the Elementary School for the Academic year 2016-2017.

Specifically, this study sought to answer the following questions:

1. What is the Demographic profile of the students?
1.1. Gender
2. What is the Intercultural Communicative Competence of the respondents in terms of themed writing?
3. What are the strategies used by the teacher in assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence in English language medium?
4. What may be inferred from the used strategies and the result of Intercultural Communicative Competence?

Significance of the Study

Intercultural communicative competence tends to broaden and enrich life by developing an individual’s ability to interact with other people using a particular language.

The result of this study is very essential because it helps teachers to find out if their students are capable of communicating using a given language despite of culture differences. Such identification will provide them an opportunity to draw subsequent plan on how to improve their teaching techniques.

To the Administrator, this can also be an instrument to planners in the preparation of an Elementary program that can develop the communicative skills, knowledge and attitude towards the awareness in various culture of the students enable to culminate them into productive citizenswhich are globally competitive.

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