Title: How can integrating intercultural communicative competence in the English language classroom motivate learners and develop their intercultural awareness? A case study in a private school for girls in Jordan

Abstract

In a dominating textbook-based approach to foreign language education, research on English Language as a Foreign Language (EFL) has addressed a gap in international textbooks’ cultural content. Furthermore, it has addressed different learning challenges that are believed to impact English learners’ motivation towards acquiring the language. Byram’s intercultural communicative competence (ICC) approach has been known as one of the most effective approaches to develop learners’ intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes towards the target culture and their own. However, empirical research on the model’s best practices in learning design and teaching methodologies is still limited. Thus, this study investigates Byram’s model as an innovative approach to developing English learners’ ICC and their language learning motivation by designing and implementing supplementary ICC materials. The study findings suggest that the ICC materials have a positive impact on promoting the participants’ language learning motivation. As for ICC skills, the participants demonstrated a development in knowledge, interpreting and relating skills and attitudes of openness and curiosity. It also observed some development in the participants’ critical intercultural awareness and willingness to evaluate cultures critically. Yet, the study’s ICC materials pedagogy needs to be implemented in a wider scope to observe a deeper development of this skill and the attitude of readiness to critically decenter from one’s own beliefs and consider other cultural practices.

Keywords: intercultural communicative competence, English language learning, language learning motivation, autonomous language learning, intercultural understanding. 

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