BANKING ACADEMY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES --- --- GRADUATION THESIS TOPIC: EVALUATING THE PERCEPTIONS OF FINAL – YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT BANKING ACADEMY TOWARDS INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE STUDENT: DO THI QUYEN STUDENT ID: 20A7510147 CLASS: K20ATCC ACADEMIC YEAR: 2017 - 2021 ADVISOR: DR. TRINH NGOC ANH Hanoi, May 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I declare that the graduation thesis entitled “Evaluating the perceptions of final-year English Majors at Banking Academy towards intercultural competence” is the work conducted by me under the guidance of Dr. Trinh Ngoc Anh. The results from the work belong to my research.
The contributing information derived from other sources is entirely cited and mentioned in the thesis reference. Signature i | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This graduation thesis could not have been completed without the help from a great number of people who deserve my sincerest gratefulness. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Faculty of foreign languages, Banking Academy for granting me the honour to write this graduation thesis. Secondly, I am most grateful to my supervisor Dr.Trinh Ngoc Anh for her guidance and support during the whole process of this work, her timely feedbacks at every point and helpful advices for my research which contributed the most significant part to the accomplishment of my end goal.
Thirdly, I am greatly indebted to all the lecturers in the Faculty of foreign languages at Banking Academy who made a contribution to educating me to better my English. Furthermore, I gratefully want to express my appreciation to the jury members especially the English division Dr.Can Thuy Lien for her help and valuable advice. Last but not least, my entire appreciation and words of thanking go to all those who helped me to fully accomplish this work in one way or another. ii | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC ABSTRACT Nowadays, in order to become a successful communicator in diverse cultural contexts, language learners not only need to be proficient in four fundamental skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), but also develop their intercultural competence (IC).
Therefore, intercultural communication has become an important content in teaching and learning foreign languages. Adopting Byram’s intercultural communicative competence model (1977), I investigated the the awareness of final year students at Banking Academy of Vietnam (BAV) in Vietnam towards IC; specifically how they define it, recognize its significance and evaluate current teaching and learning practices. Using a questionnaire survey of 85 final-year students majoring in English at BAV, the findings show their increasing awareness of IC, but both approaches inside and outside the class are considered as inadequate for learners. To be more specific, they seem to be aware of elements contributing to intercultural competence and its impacts on some aspects of life in different ways.
Some considered "attitude" such as confidence or open-mindedness towards differences among cultures as the most important component in IC while others believed that language skills which imply "knowledge" in the applied framework are the chef key to communicate across cultures successfully. However, most students agreed that IC learning and teaching activities have not met their demands due to some limitations. Therefore, some suggestions for learners' IC development such as creating more extra-curricular activities to support in-class explicit training on IC are also included in this study. Keywords: intercultural competence, students' perceptions, students' awareness.
iii | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF FIGURES. vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION.2 Background of the study .3 Research Aim and Research Questions .4 Scope of the study .5 Significance of the study .6 Structure of the study .7 Definition of terms .5 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Concept of culture .1 Concept of language .2 The relationship between culture and language .3 Culture and Communication .2 Theoretical framework: Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence. 13 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .1 Subjects of the research .19 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
20 iv | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC 4.1 The awareness of final-year English Majors towards concept of intercultural competence (IC) and its importance .2 The learning and teaching activities that contribute to enhance IC among final- year pupils at Faculty of foreign languages .3 The difficulties and recommendations for IC learning and teaching .1 How do final-year students perceive IC and its importance? .2 Does IC learning and teaching contribute to improve IC of final-year students at Faculty of foreign languages? .3 What are the problems and solutions to improve IC learning and teaching? .2 Limitations of the study .iii v | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC LIST OF FIGURES Figures Page Figure 1: Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence 4 (Byram, 1997, p. 73) Figure 2: The assessment of elements contributing to intercultural 20 competence (IC) Figure 3: The importance assessment of IC for 3 sectors 21 Figure 4: The demand assessment of learners on enhancing IC 22 Figure 5: Ways of improving IC 23 Figure 6: The proportion of respondents satisfied with intercultural 24 communication course of Banking Academy Figure 7: Difficulties in self-improving IC of final-year students 25 Figure 8: Recommendations for enhancing IC teaching 26 vi | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction In this era of globalization, English is considered as a global language spoken across the globe. It is no doubt that it is a vital tool of communication among people from various cultures and backgrounds.
Therefore, when it comes to English education, not only linguistic knowledge is mentioned as the most important factor but also the English communicative competence of learners in intercultual contexts should be also included. It is no doubt that foreign language learners will have conversations with both non-native and native speakers in the diverse cultural context. The foreign language learning process is considered as the efforts to reach intercultural competence afterwards. Speaking of that, as Saville-Troike points out, communicative competence includes the demands for a conversation that speakers need to know so that they can make sure to communicate appropriately within a particular language community.
Therefore, focusing on intercultural competence should be the main target of learning a foreign language. In other words, integrating culture and language teaching, in general, is of paramount importance in EFL classes. Having the knowledge of culture helps learners effectively perceive the language since the meanings of a word or a sentence might be changed according to contexts. One with good mastery of grammar or large vocabulary without culture awareness still faces difficulties in communicating with speakers from other cultures.
People can express their ideas by English language but being controlled by their cultural presupposition (Yuri Kumagai, 1994). Moreover, learning another language not only requires industriousness but also a passion for those languages. Culture is being considered as one of the passion sources. Although the importance of culture on English language education in general and English communicative competence, in particular, has been notified in previous studiesthere are several reasons to explain why integrating culture in the EFL classes has not achieved effectively or it has been paid little attention to.
Some studies indicate that language teachers tend to focus on the linguistic aspects of the language, such as grammar and phonology, while overlooking the cultural 1 | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC component, which is of a paramount importance for communication (Dinamika Ilmu, 2015). Moreover, raising the intercultural awareness of EFL students is not easy since it requires language teachers to have lots of skills in addition to their expertise in teaching culture, which it seems to be not obvious for them how to do so (Young & Sachdev, 2011). Kovacs Gabrilella (2017) stated that due to the complexity in defining culture compared to grammar or vocabulary, it is not clear what and how it should be taught. During many years as an English learner, I realized plenty of benefits that intercultural competence from understanding and awareness of other cultures brings, especially in enhancing communication skill.
This recognition motivates me to undertake the study entitled “Evaluating the perceptions of final-year English Majors at Banking Academy towards intercultural competence topic”.2 Background of the study English is being known as the main medium to connect learners with a huge source of knowledge. People say that a new language means another vision of life, since knowing about the language allows people to understand its culture, ways of life and many other features. Besides, English also gives learners plenty of chances to make friends with people from all over the world including native or non-native speakers. From that, they can explore many new things from different countries.
To final-year students, English seems more important than other groups of learners since they must use their English to apply for jobs in international companies if they would like to work in a professional working environment. It is admitted that having good communicative competence in English brings them many benefits. However, many learners, especially undergraduates have not realized its importance in some ways, which leads them to ignore improving this skill. The New York Times (year?) claimed that the better English you can use, the more opportunity you will get more jobs.
In fact, English communication is one of the biggest hindrances for Vietnamese undergraduate students to stand out in this competitive labour market. This group of people have learnt English for many years even from primary school but lots of them are unable to communicate with other English speakers including native or non-native people. 2 | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC To explain this situation, many reasons have been mentioned by researchers. A reason is that too much attention being paid to the roles of grammar and vocabulary.
As a consequence, less lessons for communication skill are included. Students are only able to complete English exercises but have no idea how to use it as a tool to communicate with others from different cultures. However, it can not be denied that the EFL curriculum for teaching English has been improved to be suitable for learners, which includes 4 main skills such as reading, speaking, listening and speaking. Although these skills can partly contribute to boosting their learner’s English, it is supposed to be not enough for them to be able to have a smooth conservation with people from various background.
IC is required as an indispensable condition in a conversation with people from various cultures. About this issue, Jack (2000) stated that “Language and culture are inseparable”. Being aware of the importance of culture on communicating, however, in teaching English, language teachers only talk about culture when it is mentioned in the lessons without well-planned curricula for that. In order to help students become successful communicators and be able to avoid cultural shocks when connecting with natives, language educators need to redefine the inseparable relationship between language and culture and then gradually integrate culture into their EFL classes.3 Research Aim and Research Questions The aim of the study is to achieve an understanding of how English majored seniors at BAV perceived IC and their current teaching and learning practices in relation to IC.
In order to to attain the above objectives, this thesis is guided by the following research questions: What are the perceptions of final-year students at Faculty of foreign languages, BAV towards IC and its importance? Does teaching and learning activities contribute to enhance their IC at Faculty of foreign languages? What are the difficulties in and recommendations for IC learning and teaching practices? 3 | Đỗ Thị Quyên – K20ATCC 1.4 Scope of the study The scope of the research focus on three main points: perceptions of final-year English majors towards intercultural competence (IC), the difficulties in enhancing IC, and the suggestion to promote teaching IC. To answer the research questions, I investigated students majoring in Faculty of foreign languages, Banking Academy. To be more specific, over 85 final-year students which account for around one-third of the total population in the Faculty of foreign languages.