English as International Language

With the development of economic globalization, English, as an international

language, is rapidly being learned globally which we can define it as English

globalization. As an international language, English has become a widely studied

language. According to an Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange

(2018), over the past three years, the number of international students studying in the

United States colleges and universities has grown by 1.5 percent to 1,094,792.

The use of English is no longer limited to native speakers. Instead, English belongs

every who use it. English is the most commonly used language in the world. In other

words, English has been used as a world language to communicate with people from

different cultural backgrounds. Smith (1987) states that the basic tenet of world English

is that English is no longer the property of native speakers, but a global property of

people all over the world, and that the English norms must be pluralized, thus permitting

linguistic diversities (Tanaka, 2006). Therefore, cultural differences would be redefined

when English as Second Language (ESL) learners communicate in English. There is no

single accepted way of communication in English, which requires ESL learners to adapt

to intercultural communication with other speakers of English.

Relationship Between Language and Culture

Successful language learning is inseparable from the contribution of target

language cultures, as Tseng (2002), puts it: “success in language learning is conditional

upon the acquisition of cultural knowledge: language learners acquire cultural

background knowledge in order to communicate and to increase their comprehension

in the target language” (p.13). In other words, it requires one to have cultural knowledge

and awareness in that language if you want to learn a language well. Likewise, Seliger

(1977) concluded that culture will affect a person’s learning rete and degree when they

learn a second language. Seliger (1977) concluded that what affects the learner's

response to the input they are exposed to is the feelings, attitudes, and motivations of

learners in relation to the target language, to the speakers of the language, and to the

culture. The relationship between language and culture is an important aspect of

language learning as “the person who learns language without learning culture risks

becoming a fluent fool” (Bennett, Bennett & Allen, 2003, p. 237). However, there are
limitations in the traditional thoughts of foreign language teaching. Most of the

instructors are more focused on teaching foreign literature in the classroom. This is not

enough, Savignon and Sysoyev (2002) support that the relation of language and culture

into account should be considered as the current trend of foreign language teaching

associated with culture.

In addition to improving learners overall English proficiency, ESL learners often

perform well in an international and multicultural environment in ESL classes with

students from different backgrounds, which requires good intercultural communication

skills.

Metacultural competence

The term ‘metacultural competence’ relates to a competence that allows people to

exchange and negotiate their cultural concepts in the process of intercultural

conversations. “An important element of metacultural competence is conceptual

variation awareness, or the awareness that one and the same language could be used by

different speech communities to encode and express their respective cultural

conceptualisations” (Sharifian,2013).
 Learning EIL is learning English as an international language, referring to the fact

that learning English is a multi-centered language (Mallow,2006). At present, many

language communities around the world use English and apply it to express their unique

communicative needs. In this sense, learning EIL needs to expose to the diversity of

languages at different levels, ranging from sound systems to deep-seated semantic and

pragmatic meanings which involve specific cultural concepts (Xu,2017).

This is especially worthy for students who have higher language proficiency, since

exposure to diversity is less likely to lead to confusion at this stage. Learning English

may be inconvenient to some teachers since it may require them to make efforts to

expose students to a variety of English (Mallow,2006). However, these activities ensure

that learners understand the fact of utilizing English in the globalized world nowadays.

In addition, in the process of second language learning, exposure to various cultural

concepts may broaden conceptual horizons of learners.

Intercultural Communication (IC)

Intercultural communication can be defined as communications between people

of different cultural societies. This concept was first illustrated by Hall (1959) in his
book, The Silent Language. Additionally, intercultural competence defined by Sultan

(2007) as the acquisition of cultural knowledge in language learning. Intercultural

competence as a base knowledge acquired by English learners though culturally and

linguistically integrated teaching. According Sinicrope et al., (2012), they are

emphasize that preparing for individuals to interact appropriately and effectively with

those from other cultural backgrounds will be at the heart of intercultural competence.

However, Kaur (2011) explains problems of intercultural communication as below:

“The commonly held belief that intercultural communication is more fragile and

thus pre-disposed to problems stems from the assumption that the differences in norms,

values and beliefs between participants of different cultural backgrounds are likely to

hamper attempts at achieving successful communicative outcomes” (P. 94).

It can be said that the exchange of messages in communication does not equal the

exchange of the same meanings as participants in communication may attach different

meanings to the same message. Base on Scllon and Scllon (1995) explain that we have

a hard time understanding each other when we communicate with people who are

completely different from us, so we cannot assume that we understand each other even
when we share knowledge and background. In fact, it is believed that the reasons of

misunderstanding and aphasia intercultural communication is the lack of common

experience and assumptions. What the way to make communication effective is to have

sufficient similarity in the understanding of meaning. Gudykunst (2004) explained that

the way to minimize misunderstanding is that our understanding of information is

similar.

It is obvious that many researchers emphasize that culture is the main cause of

misunderstanding in intercultural communication. On the other hand, other researchers

whom interested in English as a lingua franca (henceforth Elf) of intercultural

communication has different claims. From House (1999) and Mauranen (2006)’s

research of intercultural communication, it can be seen that the main cause of

misunderstanding is not the difference of participants' cultural backgrounds.

Intercultural Communication Assessment Tools

Previous research has pointed out several different criteria which can be used in

assess Intercultural competence and Intercultural communication competence. Using

these tools, researchers can better measure key dimensions of IC, including cognitive
dimensions, affective dimensions and behavioral dimensions. These criteria include

Intercultural Development Inventory, Multicultural Personality Questionnaire,

Arasaratnam’s ICCI, Intercultural Adjustment Potential Scale, Cross-Cultural

Adaptability Inventory, Culture Shock Inventory, Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory

and Intercultural Competence Questionnaire. I will take the first method as an example

to explain how to measure IC. Intercultural Development Inventory assessment is

originated from the framework of the Developmental model of intercultural sensitivity

(Matveev & Yamazaki Merz, 2014). Matveev & Yamazaki Merz (2014) said that “It

measures the development of a person’s attitude toward another culture along six stages:

three ethno-centric stages (denial, defense, and minimization) and three ethno-relative

stages (acceptance, adaptation, and integration)” (Hammer et al., 2003). The DMIS

assumes that “construing cultural differences can become an active part of one’s

worldview, eventuating in an expanded understanding of one’s own and other cultures

and an increased competence in intercultural relations” (Hammer et al., 2003).

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

 Two terms have combined to form the concept of intercultural communicative

competence which is intercultural competence and communicative competence.

Intercultural competence is "the ability to change one's knowledge, attitude and

behavior to make it open and flexible to other cultures" and communicative competence

defined as “the ability to effectively and appropriately carry on communication

behavior to elicit a desired response in a specific environment”. According to this

definition, intercultural communication competence can be reflected to “the ability to

effectively and appropriately execute communication behaviors that negotiate each

other’s cultural identity or identities in a culturally diverse environment” (Alred and

Byram, 2002; Chen, 1990; Chen and Starosta, 1998).

When people use English as an additional language, English-language interactions

are necessarily intercultural when speakers come from different cultural backgrounds.

The language professors followed Byram's (1997) proposed model of intercultural

communicative competence (ICC) in order for their students to begin developing their

global cultural consciousness. According to Beacco and Byram (2007), model of

intercultural communicative competence described as a “combination of knowledge

(savoirs), skills (savoirfaire), attitudes (savoir- être) which allow a speaker, to varying

degrees to recognise, understand, interpret and accept other ways of living and thinking

beyond his or her home culture”. According to Byram (1997), knowledge and attitude

are influenced by the processes of intercultural communication, which means the skills

of interpretation and establishing relationships between aspects of the two cultures and

the skills of discovery and interaction. Byram presents these factors to be acquired or

developed by the learners, or the future intercultural speakers:

A curious and open “which is concerned with attitudes and values and consists in
attitude (savoir etre) showing curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend
disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own”
Knowledge “which refers to the knowledge of social groups and their
(saviors) products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s
country, and of the general processes of societal and
individual interaction”
Skills of interpreting “related to the skills of interpreting and relating, which means
and relating (savoir the ability to interpret a document or event from another
comprendre) culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one’s
own”
Skills of discovery “connected to the skills of discovery and interaction or the
and interaction ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural
(savoir practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and
apprendre/faire) skills under the constraints of real-time communication and
interaction”
Critical awareness “in relation to critical cultural awareness and/or political
(savoir s’engager) education, which means having the ability to evaluate
 critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives,
practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and
countries”

Figure1. Factors of Intercultural Communicative Competence (p. 31–54).

The fundamental principle of this model is the purposeful inclusion of intercultural

competence together with the linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competencies

that constitute the recognized definition of communicative competence (p. 57). Vos

(2018) states that ICC contributes to language learning because by establishing a

cultural repertoire, it prepares students to communicate not only with native speakers

but with English speakers from all cultural backgrounds. Byram's (1997) model

represents a holistic approach to ICC and categorizes in which areas of competence

students have developed and in which areas further development is still required. In

terms of what Byram defined as attitudes, knowledge, skills and critical cultural

awareness / political education, this intercultural competence will be present in the

classroom.

Intercultural Communicative Competence in Language Teaching

Some educators (Atay, D., Kurt, G., Camlibel, Z., Kaslioglu, O., & Ersin, P., 2009)

emphasize that intercultural communicative competence should be defined the

objective of language teaching and learning. Those researchers investigated the

attitudes of Turkish teachers of English towards it and their classroom applications. In

their research, they found that the teacher did not pay attention to how to integrate

culture-related classroom practices in their classes. As a result, Atay, Kurt, Camlibel,

Kaslioglu, and Ersin (2009) support that a course on intercultural communication

should be included in instructors’ curricula, in order to cultivate students’ intercultural

awareness and intercultural competence.

To teach students multifarious language, cultural, capabilities and attributes

appears to be an important obligation of teachers today (Gollnick & Chinn, 2002).

Therefore, teachers should establish welfare in a classroom environment by teaching or

facilitating ICC. Recent research shows that only teaching linguistics competence is not

enough in teaching language, intercultural communicative competence should be

involved in teaching.