Everything I can find is based on self-assessment, so I wonder if any other method exists such as an assessment centre. The topic spans two fields: cross-cultural communication and competency modeling.
I think the reason why you found mostly self-assessment in the literature is that many people feel that that's the only way intercultural competence can be really assessed (as my colleague and I briefly summarised here: http://www.lcnau.org/pdfs/lcnau_2011_strambi_mrowahopkins.pdf). Having said that, you can use models that were developed for self-assessment (e.g. Byram's criteria for the development of the EU portfolio) as a basis to develop categories for qualitative analyses of students' artifacts. See, for example, http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/liaw/default.html.
Another example of a framework used to analyse students' diary entries is in an article by Tony Liddicoat (Liddicoat, A.J. 2006. Learning the culture of interpersonal relationships: Students’ understandings of personal address forms in French. Intercultural Pragmatics 3(1), pp. 55-88). Liddicoat's study focused on the acquisition of address forms in French. He looked for evidence of learners' progress from a completely ethnocentric view of address forms, through the identification and comprehension of linguistic and cultural differences, and an appreciation of the complexities of the French system, to arrive at a completely decentered attitude (in Byram’s terms, a “critical cultural awareness”).
Hope this helps. Please post back if you do find anything interesting :-)
I think the reason why you found mostly self-assessment in the literature is that many people feel that that's the only way intercultural competence can be really assessed (as my colleague and I briefly summarised here: http://www.lcnau.org/pdfs/lcnau_2011_strambi_mrowahopkins.pdf). Having said that, you can use models that were developed for self-assessment (e.g. Byram's criteria for the development of the EU portfolio) as a basis to develop categories for qualitative analyses of students' artifacts. See, for example, http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/liaw/default.html.
Another example of a framework used to analyse students' diary entries is in an article by Tony Liddicoat (Liddicoat, A.J. 2006. Learning the culture of interpersonal relationships: Students’ understandings of personal address forms in French. Intercultural Pragmatics 3(1), pp. 55-88). Liddicoat's study focused on the acquisition of address forms in French. He looked for evidence of learners' progress from a completely ethnocentric view of address forms, through the identification and comprehension of linguistic and cultural differences, and an appreciation of the complexities of the French system, to arrive at a completely decentered attitude (in Byram’s terms, a “critical cultural awareness”).
Hope this helps. Please post back if you do find anything interesting :-)
Your paper looks really interesting, Antonella. Thank you for sharing it here. Have you done a follow up study? I'd love to read more!
Thank you very much. My research project is still in very early stages, but this should be helpful.
This research will be cross-disciplinary, converging streams from cross-cultural competence and human capital development. I am now more hopeful that some important insights will come out of it.
Look forward to reading more about your project, Brock.
And thank you, Julia (and isn't it funny that we get to talk about our research on here, rather than face to face?!); unfortunately, life and other projects have got in the way and I'm afraid Colette and I haven't taken that one much further. Perhaps we could do something together? ;-) There have been some developments elsewhere in the meantime, though. For example, an Italian repository of activities to teach pragmatic aspects has been made available here: http://lira.unistrapg.it, and there are also Andrew Cohen's projects focusing on strategies to learn pragmatic aspects in Japanese and Spanish (http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/sp_pragmatics/home.html).
I guess it's summative assessment tools you are looking for. However, if you are also interested in formative assessment, maybe this can help:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14708470802303090#.Uy__lPl5OwQ
I can suggest intercultural sensitivity model for intercultural communication competence. However, as a suggestion, you may consider to put interaction comfort perceived cultural distance and inter-role congruence into your model. I have been studying on this subject too (intercultural communication competence and customer satisfaction). Therefore I can suggest that you may consider to combine some other constructs with intercultural communication competence.
Thanks
Thank for this interesting discussion about intercultural communication competence!
Is it a language competence?
I believe that classroom projects with both purposes to enhance oral communication skills and cultural awareness of students who are learning English as a foreign language are really useful. Students can benefit from such projects since they may feel more confident working in groups, resulting an excellent and effective way to improve one’s linguistic skills and familiarise oneself with each other´s culture.
Go to the article below and look at Table 1. It provides a good framework for cross-cultural/intercultural competency.
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