Effects of Intercultural Competence and Social Contact on Speech Act Production in a Chinese Study Abroad Context

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of intercultural competence and amount of social contact in the development of pragmatic knowledge. All these variables were time-varying variables and measured twice over a 3-month study abroad. Participants were 109 American college students studying Chinese in a semester study-abroad program in Beijing. Using Kelley & Meyers's (1995) instrument, intercultural competence-defined as one's potential to succeed in intercultural adjustment-was measured by 4 factors: emotional resilience, flexibility/openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. A survey was used to assess the amount of time spent on a variety of social activities in Chinese. Pragmatic knowledge was measured with a spoken task, which assessed participants' ability to produce speech acts (k = 24). Latent Growth Curve Modeling showed that cross-cultural adaptability and social contact, when combined, explained 26% of pragmatic gains. Cross-cultural adaptability had no significant direct effect to speech acts gains: It had indirect effects through social contact. with the growing need to develop L2 learners' competence to engage in intercultural interaction. A successful intercultural speaker possesses two competences: communicative and intercultural (Byram, 2012). The former involves the ability to communicate appropriately and effectively in intercultural interactions, while the latter refers to a set of personality traits and attitudes that help individuals engage with cultural differences. These two competences, together, assist individuals to participate in intercultural communication.This study seeks to illuminate the relationship between communicative competence and intercultural competence in second language (L2) Chinese. According to Byram's model,

Replication research in contextual and individual influences in pragmatic competence: Taguchi, Xiao & Li (2016) and Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos (2011)

“…The results suggest that actual ACCESS to learning opportunities (indicated by intensity of interaction), rather than mere AVAILABILITY of such opportunities (indicated by LoR), is a meaningful predictor of pragmatic competence. This finding adds to the limited empirical evidence showing a positive impact of interaction amount on pragmatic development (e.g., Matsumura 2003;Taguchi 2008;Taguchi et al 2013;Taguchi et al 2016), and reinforces Kasper & Rose's (2002) conclusion that LoR is not a reliable predictor of pragmatic competence.…”

“…3.1. Study 1: Taguchi, Xiao & Li (2016) This study, published in The Modern Language Journal, investigated the effects of a contextual factor (i.e., language contact) and an individual factor (i.e., intercultural competence) on the development of speech act production in L2 Chinese in a study abroad program. A line of studies revealed that exposure while abroad, assessed quantitatively via perceived amount of language contact or frequency of participation in social activities, was related to pragmatic gains (e.g., Matsumura 2003;Taguchi 2008;Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011;Taguchi, Li & Xiao, 2013).…”

“…In this replication, the target pragmatic features can be expanded (e.g., to include various speech acts), and the measure of intensity of interaction can be refined to incorporate more detailed descriptions of interactive and non-interactive activities (e.g., Moyer 2005). Moreover, as mentioned in the discussion of Taguchi et al's (2016) study, researchers can introduce alternative measures to document learner's quantity and quality of contact with the target language during study abroad.…”

The effect of positive orientation and perceived social support on foreign language classroom anxiety

“…A longer stay abroad was linked to a stronger reduction in anxiety levels in English. The lower anxiety levels after students returned home might be attributed to their improvement in language skills, for instance oral or auditory ability (Allen & Herron, 2003;Serrano, Llanes, & Tragant, 2016), pragmatic comprehension (Taguchi, 2011;Taguchi, Xiao, & Li, 2016), and intercultural adaptability and sensitivity (Williams, 2005). Overall, overseas experiences not only benefit the development of linguistic attributes and intercultural communication competence, but also enhance the students' psychological well-being.…”

The Complexity of Study Abroad: Stories from Ethnic Minority American Students in China

“…This also applies to study abroad in China. Even though recent years have seen a surge of interest in research in this area (e.g., Diao, 2014; Du, 2013, 2015; Duff et al, 2013; He & Qin, 2017; Lee, Wu, Di, & Kinginger, 2017; Taguchi, Xiao, & Li, 2016), few studies have addressed the experience of ethnic minority American college students in the study abroad in China context, likely because of the low numbers of ethnic minority students who study in China. The current article is a case study of the only two African Americans and three Chinese Americans who participated in my research in 2013–2014, described in the “Methods” section of this article.…”