The goal of the present study is to examine EFL English teachers' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its relation to their English language proficiency (LP). Data was collected from 81 in-service and pre-service Korean English teachers (N=81) who participated in an one-month overseas training program in the U.S.A. The participants were asked to diagnose their own levels of ICC and LP through the questionnaires whose reliability and validity were confirmed by the factor analysis. The major findings from analyses were as follows: 1) in general, participants appeared to consider themselves possessing a high level of ICC, showing an average score of 3.99 out of 5.0 on the ICC questions, 2) participants' willingness and readiness to engage in different cultures/speakers were found to be in a higher level than the other four factors of ICC, such as an ability to interact in intercultural situations, an ability to identify an importance of ICC, a degree of acceptance by other cultures/speakers, and a degree of contribution to mediating intercultural situations, and 3) chi-square, correlational, and regression analyses showed significant associations between ICC and LP of the participants. Pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed.

Effective foreign language learning accompanies the learning of the target language’s culture. But English is said to be not a foreign language, but a global language. What should culture learning be like in teaching English as a global language (EGL)? This paper aims to make some suggestions for the directions of cultural learning in EGL. First, the features of EGL learning are explored in comparison with those of EFL learning. Second, it is discussed why EGL learning does not match the communicative competence on which the communicative approach has been based. Instead EGL learning needs intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Third, it is considered what culture education should take into account for ICC. The main section seeks out the ways in which cultural contents involved in teaching materials contribute to develop ICC. Four (4) series of Korean middle school English textbooks are analysed in respect of the ownership of cultures, the types of culture and the cultural activities, from the intercultural perspective. The result admits the cultural contents of the textbook are not suitable for developing ICC. Finally, some directions will be deduced on how and what teaching materials are equipped to develop ICC in teaching English as a global language.

The purpose of this paper is to value the intercultural communicative competence model in English language assessment. As for intercultural communication, it becomes of utmost importance that (1) the inappropriateness of the conventional communicative competence models be demonstrated, and (2) altemative models from interculturally communicative needs be proposed and their use defended. Qualitative methodolgy and narrative inquiry are needed to make the assessment of intercultural communicative competence press forward in Korea.

This paper aims to make some suggestions for the direction and objectives of teaching English as a global language (EGL). To this end, the examination reveals that the number of people who use English as a second or foreign language is much more than that of people who use English as the primary language. Moreover, in many parts of the world the status of English is shifting, being used within the country as well as for international communication. Thus, it will be more likely for the learners to communicate in English with other people than English natives. Communication across cultures demands mutual intelligibility and speaker’s identities. The objective of EGL is to provide intercultural learners with intercultural communicative competence, which is a knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and which is also a capacity to discover and relate to new people from other contexts for which they have not been prepared directly. Teaching English as a global language will be effective and prosperous under due consideration of local situations around learners. Several ideas are suggested for the new direction for EGL education.

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of collaborative work between Korean EFL university students and international foreign students on Intercultural Communicative Competence. Twenty four students (14 Korean students and 10 international students) participated in this research. Chen and Starosta’s (2000) intercultural sensitivity scale was implemented with Paradigm Software to measure the participants’ resolution latency time while they were responding to the survey. The results demonstrated that two groups showed significant differences in the areas of respect for cultural difference and interaction confidence. Also, apart from the response value, the analysis of resolution latency time showed other aspects of participants’ cognitive level of intercultural sensitivity. Thus, this study indicates that a multi-round analysis can give a more in-depth insight beyond the mean value of the survey’s response.

The quasi-experimental study was designed to compare effects of two telecollaborative learning models, asynchronous (ATL) and synchronous telecollaboration learning (STL), on Korean elementary school students’ motivation, anxiety, and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). To evaluate the 27 participants’ motivation and anxiety level, a pre-test and a post-test were administered and the motivation level and the anxiety level were compared between the ATL and the STL group. On the completion of the project, to examine their ICC development, the participants were interviewed by the researcher with questions constructed based on five objectives of Byram’s intercultural competence. The results are as follows: (1) The two groups did not show any significant differences in increase their motivation level. However, when examining in more detail, the participants in ATL increased their instrumental motivation while those in STL increased their integrative motivation. (2) There was no significant difference in anxiety level between the two groups. At last, (3) regarding ICC development, the participants both in the ATL and in the STL greatly improved their knowledge, attitude, and skills, but ATL participants, compared to STL participants, demonstrated relatively limited changes in their critical cultural awareness. Implications to enhance elementary school students’ motivation and ICC by telecollaboration are suggested.

This study investigated the impact of a telecollaborative project with Australian peers on development of Korean elementary school students’ intercultural communicative competence. 57 Korean elementary school students of grade five participated in the project with 11 topics for 8 months. The responses from the 46 participants in the three ICC surveys and the data from 11 voluntary interviewees were analyzed to discover the changing process of their ICC over time within the Bennett’s DMIS framework. The research revealed that the participants were ethnorelatively oriented at the onset of the project, and at the end of the project even though they temporarily displayed an enthnocentric orientation while participating in the project. Among the participants, some shifted toward ethnocentric orientation; however, they still kept the ethnorelative orientation more intensively than the ethnocentric orientation. Examining in great detail, prior to the start of the project, they were ready to accept cultural differences uncritically, and finally reached at the adaptation stage, which is the last second stage in DMIS. Lastly, the pedagogical implication and the limitations of the study were also discussed.

Recent advancement of information, communication, and technology has brought changes in EFL instruction. Of these changes, telecollaboration is introduced as one of the innovative EFL instructional methods and the telecollaborative instruction under the ‘Smart Education’ policy has been applied to K-12 EFL class in Korea. Based on the changes in K-12 EFL class, the study was designed to investigate how telecollaboration with Australian peers influences on Korean middle school students’ English learning, especially their motivation to learn English and their intercultural communicative competence development. Over a 9-month school academic period (from March to December), the subjects in the experimental group engaged in 40-45 minute-long telecollaborative classes, guided by a total of 15 tasks. Right after completing the 15 telecollaborative classes, at the early December, the data were collected using the survey questionnaire with 43 items adapted from Gardner’s AMTB and Chen and Starosta’s Intercultural Sensitivity Scale. The responses to the questionnaire from 75 subjects were analyzed using independent- samples t-test. The results showed that (1) telecollaboration with native peers of English helped Korean middle school students stimulate their motivation to learn English, but (2) telecollaboration with native peers of English did not make any contribution to development of Korean middle school students’ ICC. The limitations and suggestions for future research were concluded.