MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES HỒ THỊ PHÙNG DUYÊN TEACHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE TO BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS- A CASE STUDY AT A COLLEGE IN VIETNAM DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING HUẾ - 2020 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES HỒ THỊ PHÙNG DUYÊN TEACHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE TO BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS - A CASE STUDY AT A COLLEGE IN VIETNAM DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 9 14 01 11 Supervisors: 1. Tôn Nữ Như Hương 2. Phương Hoàng Yến HUẾ - 2020 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The thesis entitled “Teaching Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) to Business English students- A case study at a college in Vietnam” has been submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis.
I have fully acknowledged and referenced the ideas and works of others in my thesis. My thesis does not contain works extracted from any theses, dissertations or research papers previously presented for other degrees or diplomas at this or any other institutions. Signature Hồ Thị Phùng Duyên i ABSTRACT Among various studies on Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in Foreign language Teaching (FLT), there has been little empirical research on teachers’ perceptions of ICC in Business English teaching (BET), their ICC practices and factors influencing their integrating ICC into BET. In order to fill in such a gap, this case study research was carried out with six Business English (BE) teachers working in a selected college specializing in business in the southern part of Vietnam.
The research aimed at exploring the teachers’ perceptions of ICC in their BET, their ICC practices and factors influencing their integrating ICC into BET. The data were collected through three research instruments, namely in-depth interview, document analysis of three course syllabi, twelve lesson plans and three BE textbooks in current use and classroom observation. The research findings revealed that the teachers neither perceived ICC adequately nor taught it comprehensively to their BE students. In their view, language competence was the first priority in BET while ICC came the second in importance.
This led to their limited ICC teaching with the dominance of intercultural knowledge dimension through teacher-centeredness. Intercultural skills dimensions were touched upon either incidentally when the cultural contents were explicit or spontaneously with the aim to facilitate or enliven the language teaching and learning. Multiple opportunities potential for teaching ICC throughout the interculturalized BE textbooks were not fully exploited. The findings also unveiled several barriers influencing their decision to teach and not to teach ICC in their BE classes.
They were the teachers’ insufficient ICC knowledge and pedagogy, the students’ low language proficiency and inadequate self-study ability, the absence of explicit ICC objectives in the teaching syllabi and assessment as well as the lack of facilities and experiential learning. ii In spite of some limitations in the research scope and data gathering tools, the research findings shed more light on teaching ICC in BE education at tertiary level in Vietnam and provided empirical evidence for practical implications to BET. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my whole-hearted gratitude to my chief supervisor, Dr. Tôn Nữ Như Hương for her advice, support and encouragement from the very start of my PhD journey.
I am also deeply grateful to my associate supervisor, Assoc. Phương Hoàng Yến who gave me a lot of enthusiastic guidance and sincere sharing whenever I was lost in confusion. I particularly would like to express my thankfulness to Assoc. Trần Văn Phước, Assoc.
Phạm Thị Hồng Nhung, Dr. Bảo Khâm, Assoc. Trương Viên, Assoc. Lê Phạm Hoài Hương, Dr.
Trương Bạch Lê, Dr. Hồ Thị Mỹ Hậu, Dr. Nguyễn Hồ Hoàng Thủy, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Bảo Trang, Dr.
Trần Quang Ngọc Thúy and Dr. Nguyễn Văn Huy who supported me with practical advice and philosophical direction. Their comments on my thesis generated a plenty of meaningful ideas to fulfill my research. I am indebted to the research site for allowing me to conduct this research, and to all of the participants who enthusiastically joined my research and provided me with a very valuable source of data.
Last but not least, this dissertation could not have been completed without the boundless love and encouragement from my whole family. Thank you for your unconditional love and care for me. My deepest thanks go to my loving husband, son and daughter for being patient with me and always by my side throughout the hard journey. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .x LIST OF FIGURES .xi LIST OF TABLES .xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Research aims and research questions. Research design overview. Significance of the research. Structure of the thesis.
7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of key terms. Theories of Intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Models of ICC in Foreign language teaching (FLT).
ICC-What to teach. ICC-How to teach. Culture-static view and dynamic view. Culture teaching approaches.
Liddicoat’s Interacting Processes of Intercultural Pedagogy. Newton and Shearn’s ICLT approach. Techniques and activities for developing ICC in ELT. Inter-relationship among teachers’ perceptions, practices and influential contextual factors.
ICC in English language teaching (ELT) and Business English teaching (BET). ICC in ELT. ICC in BET. Review of previous studies.
Teachers’ perceptions of culture/ ICC teaching and contextual factors. Teachers’ culture/ICC teaching practices. Studies on ICC in business. Data gathering methods.
In-depth interview. Data analysis methods. Analysis of the interview data. Analysis of the teaching documents.
Analysis of the classroom observation data. The analytical framework of the research. 65 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS & DISCUSSIONS. Teachers’ perceptions of ICC in BET.
Teachers’ understanding of culture. Teachers’ understanding of ICC and ICC teaching. Teachers’ awareness of the significance of ICC. Teachers’ attitudes toward interculturalizing BET.
Reluctance and reasons. Teachers’ ICC practices. Priority of language competence with syllabus and textbook-oriented teaching. ICC teaching contents- the dominance of intercultural knowledge dimension.
Awareness and attitude dimensions. Teacher-centered culture teaching approach. Student-centered culture teaching approach. Missing many opportunities potential for developing the students’ ICC.
Factors influencing teachers’ integrating ICC into their BET. Learner profile- students’ low English language proficiency and lack of self-learning ability. Absence of explicit ICC in the teaching syllabi and assessment. Lack of facilities.
Absence of after-class activities and foreignness in the studying environment. Improvisational teaching acts. Teachers’ knowledge- teachers’ inadequate ICC knowledge and ICC teaching method. Summary of the key findings.
Teachers’ perceptions of ICC and ICC teaching in BET. Teachers’ ICC practices in BET. Factors influencing the teachers’ integrating ICC into BET. Implications of the research.
Implications for in-service BE teachers. Implications for Vietnamese BE teacher educators. Implications for policy makers. At macro level.
At micro level. Limitations of the research and avenues for future research. 127 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS. 129 Appendix A: Research design summary.
141 Appendix B: In-depth interview questions. 142 Appendix C: Consent form. 145 Appendix D: Sample of Interview coding and theming. 147 Appendix E: Content analysis questions.
155 Appendix F: Sample of a Teaching syllabus. 156 Appendix G: Sample of Document data coding and theming. 161 Appendix H: Sample of a Lesson plan. 162 Appendix I: Summary of the Lesson plans analysis.
166 Appendixes J, K, L: Summaries of the content analysis of the three textbooks. 168 Appendix M: Classroom observation sheet. 174 Appendix N: Information about classroom observations. 175 Appendix O: Sample of Observation data coding and theming.
177 Appendix P: Samples of Classroom observation transcripts. 181 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASEAN: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations BA: Bachelor BE: Business English BET: Business English teaching CC: Communicative Competence CEFR: The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL: English as a foreign language ELT: English Language Teaching FLT: Foreign Language Teaching IC: Intercultural competence ICC: Intercultural communicative competence ICLT: Intercultural communicative language teaching ILT: Intercultural language teaching MA: Master x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Byram’s ICC model………………………………………………………15 Figure 2.2: Data-driven model……………………………………………………….3: Sources of the teachers’ language teacher cognition…………………….4: Formation of the teachers’ classroom practices………………………….1: Summary of the main findings of the research………………………… 118 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: The participants’ demographic information .2: Research questions and the data gathering procedures .3: An example of interview data coding and theming.4: The analytical framework of the research .1: Results of the content analysis of the three syllabi.77 xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter introduces the rationale of the research, research aim, research questions, research design overview and research scope. The chapter also presents the significance of the research and its structure.1 Rationale English has become a working language in the world’s globalization. Well- known international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and others intensely carry out their business using English.
Thus, globalization has promoted ELT, especially Business English (BE) education. In comparison with General English, BE is more dynamic in its own way, more specific in context, embedded in business skills and frequently used by interactants from different cultures. Consequently, BE is more tolerant with cultural diversity (Frendo, 2005; Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2013). In this vein, communicative competence (CC) including linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence (Council of Europe, 2001) seems inadequate to communicate effectively in the global working environment since language and culture are closely interrelated (Byram, 1997; Corbett, 2003; Lo Bianco, Liddicoat & Crozet, 1999; Liddicoat, 2008; Sercu, Bandura, Castro, Davcheca, Laskaridou, Lundgren, Garcia & Ryan, 2005).
CC enables the users to communicate successfully in the target language with the effective exchange of information and messages between the interlocutors. However, successful global communication requires more than merely efficiency of information exchange; it aims at building and maintaining relationships 1 among people from diverse cultural backgrounds (Byram, 1997). In this regard, while the notion of CC skips the exploration of culture necessary to make the exchange of information appropriately in various cultural settings (Corbett, 2003), ICC steps further with the aim to help people deal with diverse cultural conflicts in intercultural communication. Thus, ICC is notably useful for businesspeople to add values to their own business and customers (Frendo, 2005).
The author affirms that BE teachers need to include three dimensions in their BET: “linguistic competence, discourse competence and intercultural competence” (p. In light of globalization and integration into the world, the Government of Vietnam has launched the project "Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education system in the period of 2008-2020”, advocating the teaching and learning of ICC to enable Vietnamese graduates to use a foreign language confidently in “an integrative, multi-lingual and multi-cultural working context” (Government of Vietnam, 2008, p. Inspired by the global trend and the national project of interculturalizing FLT, the researcher conducted the current research for the following specific reasons. Firstly, although ICC has attracted attention of multiple researchers of ICC in FLT throughout the world (e.
Al Hasnan, 2015; Bastos & Araújo, 2014; Kawamura, & Kaczmarek, 2011; Mosa, 2013; Osman, 2015; Sercu et al., 2005; Tian, 2013; Tony & Itesh, 2011; Zhou, 2011), there are few studies on this field in Vietnam. Nevertheless, these studies (Chau & Truong, 2019; Ho, 2011; Nguyen, 2013; Tran & Seepho, 2016) mainly focused on integrating culture in General English language teaching and learning while the field of BE, where language is embedded closely within authentic contexts of cultural diversity and thus, reflects the need of ICC, has not been investigated. The current research, therefore, is hoped to enrich ICC literature in BET. 2 The second reason comes from the researcher’s own motivation to explore how the teachers perceive the role of ICC in their BET and if they are teaching ICC comprehensively to their business students.
An anecdote from one of the researcher’s graduates working in an Import-Export company urged her to study this topic.