An Investigation into Chinese Novice and Expert Teachers’ Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

Abstract

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is an essential ability for language learners, which has raised lots of research. However, while comparing with the studies on the learners’ ICC, we can find few empirical studies on the ICC of the language teachers, especially those teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. This study attempts to explore the difference of the ICC between the novice teachers of Chinese as a foreign language and expert ones, the reasons and possible influences of such difference, as well as some implications from it. 20 teachers of Chinese as a foreign language (10 expert teachers and 10 novice teachers) from different universities in Beijing participated in the interview designed by this study. The analysis shows that expert teachers have a keen awareness of the culture teaching and have the confidence to teach culture in the class, while the novice teachers tend to avoid the culture teaching and pay more attention to the language teaching. Therefore, the novice teachers need intercultural training so that the students can enhance their ICC.

Keywords

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) / novice teachers / expert teachers / Chinese as a Foreign Language

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