Intercultural Communicative Competence: A Literature Review

Abstract

In the situation of globalization, people of different backgrounds and perspectives are coming together in dense interactions both physically and virtually for many purposes. To be successful in those interactions, it is believed that they need to have “the ability to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations and to relate appropriately in a variety of cultural contexts” (Bennett & Bennett, 2004, p. 149), which theoretically refers to their development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). It is widely accepted that enhancing ICC has become a necessarily important mission of educators (Byram, 1997; Bennett, 2004; Deardorff, 2006; Bagwe & Haskollar, 2020) because nowadays it is not only a nicety but a necessity (Bennett, 2015). Educationally, a number of authors have developed different approaches in order to increase English-as-a-foreign-language learners’ sense of ICC. However, very few studies have compared and contrasted different approaches based on their consideration of theoretical backgrounds that guide their research, teaching and learning contexts, two-side effects behind their pedagogical selections. The present research gathers data from many electronic sources to formalize a comprehensive picture depicting the history of ICC development and some ICC-related teaching and learning approaches together with their theoretical frameworks and implications. Purposefully, the findings of this research provide scholars, teacher educators and teaching practitioners with better understandings of various approaches in intercultural education; therefore, they can make better choices of ICC-related practices fitting their own situations.