Abstract:

The aim of the paper is to identify the peculiarities characterising the way in which pre-service teachers of English as a foreign language interpret and subsequently apply in practice the key premises of the Framework of Reference for Intercultural Communicative Competence proposed by Lussier (1997; 2003). The empirical material for qualitative analysis consists of model lesson plans targeting intercultural communicative competence that were designed by students undertaking a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language as part of the coursework for the Intercultural Communication course. The use of research material from the students of the three consecutive years of studies (2017-2019) allowed to triangulate research evidence. The analysis revealed certain recurrent peculiarities of the implementation of theoretical framework that shed light on possible challenges to fostering learners’ intercultural communicative competence as part of English language teaching. Research participants tend to approach culture from the perspective of its tangible elements, in particular objects and festive and/or ritualistic social practices, which results in a marked emphasis on the dimension of cultural knowledge in their proposed teaching activities. On the contrary, the dimension of intercultural know-how, i.e. the ability to use a language to function in the target cultural environment, appears to be related to noticeable interpretation difficulties. One of the most frequent difficulties is the inability to comprehend the dimension of know-how as both interactional and functional language use related to a concrete purpose in the simulated cultural environment.

Keywords:

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), Framework of Reference for ICC, application, pre-service teacher education.