Given the rise in intercultural communication around the world, developing students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through foreign language education has become crucial (Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2016; Dervin, 2010; Fantini, 2006; Sercu, 2002). However, most of the tertiary-level research on the development of ICC has been done from the perspectives of teachers. The ICC development of school-aged students is hardly studied. In addition, implementing an intercultural approach into practice for foreign language teachers in the New Zealand environment seems to be difficult (Tolosa et al., 2018). Moreover, the number of students in New Zealand language classes who come from different cultural backgrounds has also increased as more immigrants have settled in New Zealand. To better understand their ICC development and identity construction, however, there hasn't been much empirical research done. In order to fill these gaps, this study focuses on the ICC development and identity construction of Chinese Language Learners in the context of a secondary school in New Zealand.
This study used a multiple case study design with an intervention in each case to examine the roles of various educational techniques in CFL learners' ICC development across three school terms, drawing on Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural theory and Byram's (1997) ICC framework. Roleplays, cultural artefacts, and videos were used in conjunction with reflective tasks by the teachers from the three secondary schools to carry out the intervention. Twenty CFL students with a range of cultural backgrounds from these three teachers' classrooms took part in the intervention. The researcher gathered qualitative information from the students' interviews, surveys, and reflective tasks in order to investigate how their ICC developed while using instructional methods. The acquired data were triangulated and thematically analysed using Byram's ICC framework.
The results of this study showed that students had a comprehensive, multidimensional, nonlinear ICC developing process and identity construction that was overall complex. The results specifically demonstrated that students' ICC was developed in each of the four ICC dimensions-attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical cultural awareness-and that this development varied across the four dimensions. The results also revealed that various ICC pedagogical techniques had unique benefits in mediating the growth of ICC components and identity construction. This study indicated that using ICC pedagogical techniques with a reflective mindset seems to provide students a voice, particularly their thoughts on their cultural identities.
Overall, this study highlights students' voices in relation to their opinions on culture, identity, and intercultural communication. The current study offers theoretical and pedagogical insights into how to help CFL learners at the secondary school level establish their identities. It offers new knowledge on ICC development as it relates to the CFL learning environment. From a pedagogical perspective, this study helps teachers by implementing ICC pedagogical tools with a reflective stance in the CFL classroom. In conclusion, examining how ICC pedagogical tools are used in the current study, which aims to develop and mediate students' ICC, may give light on future research and teaching practices regarding intercultural language teaching and learning.
