How to develop intercultural communicative competence - ICC in foreign language teaching and learning - Intercultural communicative competence and intercultural speakers (Byram, 1997)

9 important questions on How to develop intercultural communicative competence - ICC in foreign language teaching and learning - Intercultural communicative competence and intercultural speakers (Byram, 1997)

Which three problems do the competence vs. performance and the communicative competence models have according to Byram?

  1. the problem of creating an impossible target and consequently inevitable failure.
  2. it would create the wrong kind of competence, implying that a learner should be linguistically schizophrenic, abandoning one language in order to blend into another linguistic environment, becoming accepted as a native speaker by other native speakers'
  3. the notion of a native speaker is only an idealised and outdated myth

Which three types of privilege are traditionally associated with the native speaker?

  1. entitlement by birth
  2. right acquired through education
  3. prerogative membership in a speech community

What is Byram's (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence?

An intercultural speaker mediates between different perspectives and cultures.
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Which sub-components of intercultural competence exist?

  • attitudes (savoir être)
  • knowledge (savoirs)
  • skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre)
  • skills of discovering and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire)
  • critical cultural awareness/political education (savoir s'engager)

What is savoir être?

Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about the other cultures and belief about one's own.

What is savoir comprendre?

Ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one's own culture.

What is savoir apprendre/faire?

Ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction.

What is savoir s'engager?

Ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria the perspectives, practices and products of one's own and other cultures and countries.

What is intercultural communicative competence?

The ability to interact with people from another culture in a foreign language.

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