Promoting Intercultural Competence of Thai University Students through Role-Play

Abstract

The current situation of international communication in globalization context requires intercultural competence (IC) to achieve successful communication (Crystal, 2003). Concerning this intercultural competence, non-verbal communication (NVC) plays a key role to indicate the success of having intercultural competence. On the other hand, Thai Ministry of Education (MOE) has launched the CEFR for the country policy in English teaching and learning (Ministry of Education, 2016). The purpose of this paper is to present major results of an investigation of intercultural competence, that is, the NVC. An innovative program implemented in this study is the CEFR and project-based activities (the CEFR-PBA). The study also examines Thai university students' attitude towards this innovative class. This paper discusses the IC students learned from role-plays. The participants of the study were 44 students of third year English Education at a Thai Rajabhat University. Research method applies action research and case study (Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Method, 2003). Data collection gained was from 1) videotape recordings of students' role-play, and 2) the questionnaire. Data analysis for video recordings employed a NVC rating scale evaluated by native-speaker raters; while means, percentage, and SD were used for the questionnaire. Grounded theory's color coding (Strauss & Cobin, 1990) will be utilized in analyzing the qualitative data from raters' additional comment. Findings revealed students' NVC performance were both appropriate on body movement and position as well as vocalic communication. Moreover, their attitude towards the CEFR-PBA was positive.

Intercultural Teaching in the EFL Classroom

“…Rodriguez and Caranza (2017) demonstrated that students' engagement in storytelling and intercultural projects were associated with their IC gains, i.e., deeper understanding of different cultural aspects and stronger bonds with students of diverse backgrounds. In a similar vein, Worawong, Charttrakul and Damnet (2017) showed that role-plays contributed considerably to more appropriate intercultural behaviors of the participants as manifested by their body movement, gestures and facial expressions in specific intercultural situations.…”

Intercultural Communication Competence Among Higher Education International Students: A Systematic Literature Review

“…As research on intercultural communicative competence has progressed, so have its assessment methods. Contemporary assessment methodologies encompass a variety of approaches including self-report surveys, situational judgment tests, portfolios, and interactive role-plays tailored to intercultural contexts, as noted by Sinicrope et al (2007), and Worawong et al (2017). Given this array of assessment tools, there is an emerging necessity to amalgamate these varied methods within intercultural studies.…”

Where multicultural worldviews begin: Development of Thai university students’ intercultural competence through their life experiences and formal education

“…This includes conducting ethnographic interviews with the students' classmates or people from different cultures to explore intercultural interactions between local and international students (Arshavskaya, 2018), a Chinese TV drama to develop the intercultural competence of second language (L2), Chinese learners in Australia (Zhang, 2020), TV advertisements (Tirnaz & Narafshan, 2020), inviting guest speakers from other countries, classroom discussions and role-plays (Nakano, 2019), and using English textbooks to cultivate intercultural competence among Vietnamese university students (Quyen, 2018). In Thailand, attention has focused on adopting a teaching method and creating appropriate teaching materials to promote intercultural competence in English language classrooms, such as role-play (Noonkong et al, 2019;Worawong et al, 2017), English songs (Na Ayuthaya, 2018) and paintings (Wen, 2018). Notably, the large body of intercultural communication research in Thailand tends to be influenced by Anglophone culture (see Rattanapan et al, 2019;Suwannasom, 2019).…”