"Instruction" as a determining factor in the development of intercultural communication in Iranian language teachers

This paper explored the effect of instruction on the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) level of Iranian language teachers in four dimensions of intercultural communicative competence, that is, skills, attitude, knowledge and awareness. One hundred language teachers were chosen through convenience sampling for this study and divided into two groups of experienced and novice teachers based on their teaching experience. All participants were chosen from state schools in Golestan province. They all taught English at English institutes and high schools. Oxford placement test and ICC questionnaire were run to find the language proficiency level and ICC level of language teachers respectively. ICC questionnaire was run before and after instruction to determine the effect of instruction on ICC. The instruction lasted for ۲۰ hours in ten sessions. The results of the study disclosed that the teachers' level of language proficiency was upper-intermediate. Also, it was revealed that instruction was effective as the ICC level of the teachers was below average before instruction and their ICC level was improved after instruction. So, the results of this study showed that instruction had an eye-catching effect on the improvement of four dimensions of intercultural communicative competence of language teachers.

کلیدواژه ها:

attitude ، awareness ، intercultural communicative communication (ICC) ، knowledge ، novice /experienced teachers ، skills