This revised edition of Michael Byram’s classic 1997 book updates the text in light of both recent research and critiques and commentaries on the 1st edition. Beginning from the premise that foreign and second language teaching should prepare learners to use a language with fluency and accuracy, and also to speak with people who have different cultural identities, social values and behaviours, the book is an invaluable guide for teachers and curriculum developers, taking them from a definition of Intercultural Communicative Competence through planning for teaching to assessment. This edition refines the definitions of the five ‘savoirs’ of intercultural competence, and includes new sections on issues such as moral relativism and human rights, mediation, intercultural citizenship and teachers’ ethical responsibilities.

This book explores the nature of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), a set of abilities required to promote sojourner engagement with diversity during study abroad and other educational exchange experiences. A highly original contribution to the intercultural communication literature, this book bases its multinational perspective of ICC on an extensive literary search in six languages and spanning 50 years to identify ICC’s multiple components, to develop a comprehensive assessment tool, and to assess its development and impact on exchange participants in multiple countries.

This ground-breaking book is the first to describe in detail how teachers, supported by university educators and education advisers, might plan and implement innovative ideas based on sound theoretical foundations. Focusing on the teaching and learning of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms in the USA, the authors describe a collaborative project in which graduate students and teachers planned, implemented and reported on units which integrated intercultural competence in a systematic way in classrooms ranging from elementary to university level. The authors are clear and honest about what worked and what didn’t, both in their classrooms and during the process of collaboration. This book will be required reading for both scholars and teachers interested in applying academic theory in the classroom, and in the teaching of intercultural competence.

It is now widely recognised that learning a language should not just involve linguistic competence but also intercultural competence. It is also clear that intercultural competence can be developed through related subjects such as geography, history, mother tongue teaching. This book takes this as a given and provides practical help for teachers who wish to help their learners acquire intercultural competence in the ordinary classroom. It contains descriptions of lessons and materials from a wide range of classrooms in several countries and for beginners to advanced learners.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 13,00 Punkte, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Institut für Anglistik), course: Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in the EFL Classroom, language: English, abstract: Although intercultural concepts tend to essentialism and reductionism and thus run the risk of constructing artificial ethnic differences and stereotypes, the existing models are quite useful for teaching purposes as well as for the purpose of this paper which is to analyse a textbook for German high school in order to find out more about its potential to help develop ICC. In my view, using both terms interchangeably is acceptable as long as one considers culture to be a dynamic, negotiable phenomenon (cf. Freitag 2008). Regarding the actual teaching I agree with Hu (2009) that intercultural concepts in spite of their deficits cannot and should not be replaced immediately, but gradually with the narrative-constructive concepts of intercultural learning in mind. The national KMK-Bildungsstandards (2010: 12f.) set rather high standards for ICC emphasising the role of literature and diversity of texts in developing ICC. Landeskunde should be taught as well, but not only to impart fact knowledge, but to enable students to communicate in real intercultural situations. Generally speaking, the task of a teacher is to prepare his students for the challenges of future life and they are definitely going to take place in a globalized, inter- or transcultural world. According to the White Paper on Intercultural Learning by the Council of Europe, in a democracy, we do not only have the opportunity, but the duty to act as active, responsible, reflective and self-critical citizens, respectful of others and to help build a peaceful, democratic world. (2008: 29). I think that helping students to achieve this aim is best done by enhancing their discourse ability (more in chapter 2.1) Since the most common way of teaching EFL in Germany is by using a textbook (cf. Kurtz 2010), this paper will try to find out how well this can be done in regard to developing ICC based on the realities of the FL classroom. In order to do so first of all we have to clarify the basic theoretical concepts which are needed to understand the idea of intercultural communication and consequently the competences which are required for the successful accomplishment of that interactive task. In a second step I will conduct a small qualitative research exploring and evaluating both the theoretical ICC learning models and the textbook New Context.

This volume provides a strong theoretical introduction to the field of intercultural communication, offering practical examples of classroom activities, as well as presenting empirical research which demonstrates that intercultural communicative competence (ICC) can be developed effectively in specially tailored courses adjusted to the needs of learners. It presents a novel model of intercultural sensitivity assessment, and outlines the results of research into intercultural communicative competence conducted among the students of English Language Studies in state colleges in Poland. The cultural component in developing ICC as an extra-linguistic determinant is assigned particular prominence in the book. A thorough analysis of the empirical material collected from participant observation, the administered questionnaires and interviews allowed the most common values and attitudes held as components of intercultural sensitivity to be identified. The obtained findings are subsequently analyzed to predict the potential areas of communication misunderstandings and failures between Polish learners of English and representatives of other cultures.

This book investigates whether and to what extent foreign language textbooks can contribute to promoting adolescent pupils' acquisition of intercultural communicative competence. It gives a full scientific account of a research project carried out amongst Flemish learners of German. The focus of the research was on the relationships between the culture teaching approaches adopted in textbooks and the pupils' learning of culture. Although the sub-title refers to a particular group of pupils learning a particular language, the study has more general bearing and constitutes a substantial contribution to the literature, and in particular empirical research, on the development of intercultural competence in and through foreign language education.The composition of the volume reflects the affective, cognitive and contact dimensions of the culture learning process. It also gives space to the theoretical platform on which the research was built, and to the research methodology adopted. Chapter 1 sets out to contextualise and define the research topic. It clarifies the study's position within the field of culture-and-language learning-and-teaching theory, practice and research. It also situates the investigation into the specific context of teaching and learning foreign languages-and-cultures in Flanders. In chapter 2 the theoretical framework informing the study is developed. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the techniques of data collection and analysis employed, of the kinds of data collected, and of the chronology of data collection. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 provide an interpretative description and analysis of the investigation's key concepts. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the pupils' culture learning processes and analyse relationships between attitude, contact and perception data. In chapter 6 the culture teaching approaches adopted in the investigated textbook series are described and evaluated with regard to their potential for promoting the pupils' learning of culture. Chapter 7, finally, provides a summary overview of the study's main findings and presents the main conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence presented in earlier chapters. It estimates the value of the study's research methodology and theoretical framework. It also reflects on how the research findings can find application and implementation.