International Posture and Intercultural Awareness: A Survey Study of Indonesian Pre-Service Teachers of English

Abstract

This study intended to investigate Indonesian pre-service English teachers’ International Posture and Intercultural Awareness. It also sought to investigate the extent to which learners' International Posture influenced their Intercultural Awareness. To this end, the study involved 73 learners studying in English Language Education departments at a state university and a private university in Java, Indonesia, in a survey. Through descriptive statistics on SPSS, the study found a quite high level of Intergroup Approach-Avoidance Tendencies (IAAT), the first dimension of International Posture. It also found a moderate-high level of Interest in International Vocation and Activities (IIVA), the second dimension of International Posture. Furthermore, learners’ awareness of their own cultures and those of others was generally high though some of the participants' awareness of specific aspects of other cultures was reported to be low. Using multiple regression, the study found that generally, learners' International Posture significantly influenced their Intercultural Awareness, accounting for 22.3% of the total variance in Intercultural Awareness. However, from the beta coefficient analysis, it was found that only learners' IAAT significantly influenced their Intercultural Awareness in a positive direction. Learners' IIVA did not significantly influence it. The findings highlighted the need to nurture second/foreign language (L2) learners’ International Posture and conduct further investigation on the possible impacts of learners’ International Posture on learners’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in general.