Intercultural Communicative Competence and Individual Differences

Book excerpt: This book presents a concise critical overview of the literature on intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and offers insights into research on this concept. As a novel contribution to the field, the book frames ICC in relation to other learner variables, such as motivation, willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and self-perceived communication competence. Based on empirical data, the study proposes and tests a model of English majorsâ (TM) ICC interacting with individual differences related to L2 communication. The findings highlight that studentsâ (TM) beliefs about their own performance, their apprehension from communication situations and their language learning motivation were successfully integrated into a new model of intercultural communicative competence as understood in an interactional EFL context.