INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE ASSESSMENT AT THE MULTILINGIUAL UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS

The Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) defines as an
ability to participate in foreign language communication and now
is the priority of TEFL. ICC includes understanding cultures,
nonverbal communication, awareness of students’ own cultures
and culture of foreign languages. During teaching English for
multilingual students in Kazakhstan the most crucial point that
teachers often face is to measure students’ language skills which
they have achieved through designed tests, quizzes, projects,
presentations, debates, online testing programs, etc. Proposed
activities learn and accommodate new civilization stages,
creatively find ways to manage the dynamics of differences in
cultures, intergroup posture, and the accompanying stress.
Nevertheless, the most pivotal aspect at achieving high level of
ICC concludes in complete assessment of ICC. However, ICC
achievement is hard to assess because of its vast content and
subtleness of perception.
The purpose of our study is to measure key components of ICC in
order to observe and experimentally check multilingual students’
academic achievement. From literature review, we distinguish
three main components of ICC as cultural knowledge, attitude
and behavior. These ICC skills are required to understand and
work successfully in another culture or in transnational
companies. What is more, the cultural knowledge, attitude and
behavior expand to include elements as follows: attitudes,
knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery
and interaction, critical thinking awareness and political
education.
The research was conducted at the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian
National University, Astana city during the 15 weeks in 2018.
The experimental teaching was organized for 30 third year
students of the speciality “Foreign Languages: Two Foreign
Languages”. The participants were 19-20 years old learners of
different nationalities: Kazakh, Russian, Uzbek, German, Kirgiz,
Ukraine, etc. They master their own native language, the
language of communication either Kazakh or Russian, and less
than one foreign language.
The evaluation of ICC formation is done through formative and
summative assessment, namely in the form of rubrics, evaluation
list and checklists at the beginning and after experimental
teaching. Rubrics, evaluation list and checklists define the criteria
of performance based activity and tasks to be used which
elements are used to find the success of the students’ public
speaking skills.
Rubrics consists typically two sections: scores along with one
axis of the grid and language behavior descriptors inside the grid
for what each score means in terms of language performance.
Language categories along one axis and scores along the other
axis and language behavior descriptors inside the grid for what
each score within each category means in terms of language
achievement. Rubrics, evaluation list and checklists help students
become more thoughtful judges of the quality of their speech and
those of their peers. Additionally, these assessment tools save
teachers’ time spent on evaluating student work. They are easy to
use, very vivid and creative.
Actually in comparison with the control group, the moderated
average variance of the experimental group is higher in many
scores. The results point out that all participants of the control
group had made some improvements after the study but the
improvement was not as huge as the one made by the
experimental group learners.
The results show that the students improve their foreign language
acquisition, cultural awareness, self-esteem and motivation.
Moreover, after conducting experimental teaching we propose the
methodological guidelines for selection of assessment types and
strategies, setting appropriate tasks and making rubrics.
Keywords: Intercultural communicative competence assessment;
multilingual skills