Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence in College English Teaching

Abstract

Interculturalcompetence is a concept that seems to be transparent, universally accepted,understood and used, but which has received many differing definitions andnever been assessed comprehensively inside and outside academia. In the settingof intercultural competence acquisition in college English teaching, this paperidentifies cultural knowledge, attitudes toward other cultures and culturebehavior as the three components of intercultural competence and discusses themethods of assessing them respectively. College students’ competence in interculturalcommunication should be evaluated in both a summative and a formative way withthe combined use of written test and formative assessment methods likeperformance evaluation and portfolio assessment.