Developing intercultural competence is important for effectively living, traveling, and working abroad. Intercultural competence involves three domains - relationships, communication, and cooperation - as well as traits like respect, flexibility, and curiosity. It is a developmental process that includes increasing awareness, knowledge, skills, and attitudes over time. When teaching culture, it is important to go beyond superficial celebrations of difference and critically examine how social and cultural practices are constructed and contested. Teachers should help students develop skills and mindsets for interacting with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

1. Developing Intercultural
Competence
Yamith José Fandiño
La Salle University
Bogotá, Colombia

2. Introduction
“…we need to be educated to become better global
participants — able to empathize with and understand
other persons on their own terms which also deepens an
appreciation of our own heritages.” ( Fantini, 2000, p. 32).
“…successful relationships with friends and neighbors and
intercultural partners depend on the ability to deal effectively
with differences in a positive manner” ( Fantini, 2000, p. 25).

3. Overview (Fantini, 2000, pp. 25-26)
• Cross-cultural preparation is important to ensure intercultural effectiveness when
living, traveling, or working abroad.
• From the arena of international business to the intimacy of family life, there is an
increasing need to be able to deal effectively and appropriately with diversity,
whether ethnic, racial, religious, or cultural.
• Program activities (even if of short duration and conducted in a specific context)
become opportunities to effect changes in individuals, extending beyond the
duration of the program to their lives once back home.

4. Organizational aims and individual
competences (Fantini, 2000, p. 26)
• In addition to institutional missions, we need to be explicit about individual
competencies: “intercultural competencies” that include second language
proficiency and whatever other abilities needed for the chosen field.
• Development of competence in another culture and proficiency in its
language provide the opportunity for powerful reflections into one’s own
native world view.

5. What is intercultural competence? (Fantini,
2000, p. 27)
• 3 themes (or domains of ability) emerge:
1) relationships,
2) effective communication, and
3) compliance and cooperation.
Interculturalists often overlook the task of developing language competence, just as language teachers
neglect the task of developing intercultural abilities.
This interconnectivity invites a fresh look at how we conceptualize what is meant by world view, its
components, and their interrelationships; and at how language and culture mediate (inter)cultural
processes.

6. Constructs of ICC (Fantini, 2000, pp. 27-
30)
• In addition to the three domains, ICC is also often described with a variety of traits, at least five
dimensions, and as a developmental process.
TRAITS DIMENSIONS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
Intercultural abilities are
often evidenced through
behavioral manifestations
or traits, such as:
- respect or empathy,
- flexibility,
- patience or tolerance for
ambiguity
- interest, curiosity,
among others.
Awareness, attitudes, skills,
knowledge (A+ASK).
Awareness leads to deeper
cognition, skills, and attitudes just as
it is also enhanced by their
development.
Learning to perceive, conceptualize,
and express ourselves in FL is
essential for intercultural competence.
ICC development is an on-going and lengthy, often a
lifelong process.
How far one progresses and how much one adapts to a
second culture, ultimately resides in the choices one makes.
• I: Educational Traveler (4-6 weeks)
• II: Sojourner (longer cultural immersion),
• III: Professional (working in intercultural contexts)
• IV: Intercultural/Multicultural Specialist (consulting,
advising, educating)

7. Activities, indicators and assessment
(Fantini, 2000, p. 31)
• The more domains, traits, dimensions, and developmental nature of ICC are understood, the better
programs and activities to foster it can be designed.
• Caution: Most educators know how to assess knowledge and skill (traditional assessment), but feel
hesitant or feel incapable of assessing awareness and attitudes (formative and innovative assessment).
• Assessment may be ongoing and conducted in various ways and at various points in time… it may
include self-evaluation, peer evaluation, as well as staff evaluation of participants.

8. The teaching of ICC (Fandiño, 2014, pp.
86-87)
Perspective Definition
Thanasoulas
(2001)
Factual perspective: Transmission of facts regarding the target civilization.
Interpretive perspective: Establishment of points of reference between one’s own country and
that of the target culture.
Peterson &
Coltrane (2003)
Enrich and inform the teaching content of their lessons through proverbs, role-playing, culture
capsules, literature, films, and ethnographic studies
Clouet (2006) A comparative and contrastive approach: Achieve a greater awareness of their own culture.
Saluveer (2004) Cultural knowledge: receiving information about the target culture.
Cultural awareness: a consciousness about one’s own culturally induced behavior as well as that
of others.
Cultural competence: sum of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow one to perform
intercultural actions.

9. The teaching of ICC (Fandiño, 2014, pp.
86-87)
Perspective Definition
Álvarez and
Bonilla (2009)
A critical intercultural approach: Achieving a lingocultural experience by integrating
otherness (a study of the target culture and its cultural subjects) and myness (a study of who I
am as a cultural subject).
Barletta (2009) From an N-bound perspective (a focus on norms, standards, and regularities) to a C-bound
approach (working with the complexity of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors).
Kramsch (2013) A modernist view: Preexisting social structures characterized by having common experiences
and being grounded in a homogeneous national citizenry.
A postmodernist view: Culture does not depend on the territory and history. Instead, it deals
with possible interpretations that individuals make of practices according to their particular
interests and agendas.

10. The teaching of ICC (Fandiño, 2014, pp.
87-88)
Post-method
condition
• Background and
experiences = Teachers
as knowledge
producers
World
Englishes
• New varieties of
English = Learners as
international speakers
Multicultur
alism
• Social struggle, inequality,
and injustice = Culture as
relations of power.

11. The teaching of ICC (Fandiño, 2014, pp.
87-88)
Figure 1. Theoretical bases and basic strategies for teaching culture in Colombia.

12. The teaching of ICC (Fandiño, 2014, p. 90)
“.. Teachers and learners need to go beyond a superficial celebration of difference and incipient
inclusion of diversity so that they can critically examine how social and cultural practices are
constructed, legitimated, and contested. They also need to be able to approach and reflect upon their
own beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors as well as those of others in order to develop the skills and
mindset needed to interact and communicate with people with different cultural backgrounds”
“Ultimately, these strategies can help us all keep away from becoming and creating what Bennett
(1993) called “a fluent fool”: someone who speaks a foreign language properly, but does not
understand the social and philosophical content of that language (p. 16)”.

13. References
Álvarez, J., & Bonilla, X. (2009). Addressing culture in the EFL classroom: A dialogic proposal. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 11(2), 151-
170.
Barletta, N. (2009). Intercultural competence: Another challenge. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 11(1), 143-158.
Bennett, J. M. (1993). Cultural marginality: Identity issues in intercultural training. In R. M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the intercultural experience (pp. 109-135).
Yarmouth,
ME: Intercultural Press.
Clouet, R. (2006). Between one’s own culture and the target culture: The language teacher as intercultural mediator. Porta Linguarum: Revista internacional de
didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras, 5, 53-62.
Fandiño, Y. J. (2014). Teaching culture in Colombia Bilingüe: From theory to practice. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 16(1). 81-92.
Fantini, A. (2000). A central concern: Developing intercultural competence. In A. Fantini (Ed.), SIT Occasional Papers Series, Addressing Intercultural Education,
Training & Service (pp. 25-42). USA: School for international training.
Kramsch, C. (2013). Culture in foreign language teaching. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 1(1), 57-78.
Peterson, E., & Coltrane, B. (2003). Culture in second language teaching. (ERIC Digest No. EDO-FL-03-09). Washington, DC: Center for applied linguistics.
Saluveer, E. (2004). Teaching culture in English classes (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
Thanasoulas, D. (2001). The importance of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom. Radical Pedagogy, 3(3).