Exploring a Pedagogy for Understanding and Developing Chinese EFL Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

This chapter explores how Byram’s (1997) intercultural communicative competence (ICC) framework can inform the development of an intercultural communication course delivered within English language education in a Chinese university. The theoretical concept of ICC represents a comprehensive set of criteria that provides a useful basis for designing intercultural language learning curricula and associated learning objectives in a systematic way. At the same time, the incorporation of such a theoretical concept into the language curriculum within the Chinese EFL context also presents a challenge to teachers, particularly given the exam-oriented education system and the traditional focus on grammatical knowledge and skills.