Fostering Learners' Intercultural Competence with CALL

Abstract

There is increasing pressure on world language educators to expand the cultural instruction in their curriculum and to advocate for their language programs as a means to prepare learners with 21st century skills (The Four Cs: Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical thinking). In similar vein, ACTFLs Global Competence Position Statement (2014) further described the need for language instructors to foster learners interactional abilities and behaviors to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from self. Yet many language educators are confused about best-teaching practices during this transition time from methods that focus primarily on students ability to use the language to communicate, to a time where it is increasingly emphasized that students should access content information through the language for meaningful cultural reflection. This paper demystifies some confusion about fostering learners intercultural competence in instructed language learning and concludes with a variety of tools and techniques to integrate computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and meaningful cultural inquiry at beginning levels of instruction.