EXPLICIT COMPARISONS IN DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

Since English is claimed as lingua franca among nations, intercultural
competence (ICC, henceforth) becomes a new enterprise in English
Language Teaching (ELT). The teaching of English should put
forward to capturing target culture, but unnecessarily neglect the
local culture. It should embed not only the target culture, but also
other non-native cultures of periphery nations. Responding to the
emergence of non-native varieties of English and to the fact that people
from non-native countries of English communicate in English,
teaching-learning materials and activities should also cover the nonnative
cultures of English. This paper attempts to offer an alternative
mode to develop the learners’ ICC. The explicit comparisons, then,
consequently comprise both cultures, i.e., learners’ cultures and
cultures applied by other non-native speakers. Emphasizing on
developing learners’ ICC seems more promising than those of
developing communicative competence (CC), though it is hard to put
into practice.