When considering the key concept intercultural communicative competence (ICC) consisting of communicative competence (CC) and intercultural compe-tence (IC), it may be fair to argue that the level of difficulty increases from CC to IC and to ICC, once we aim at assessing these competences. Generally speaking, CC has gradually gained ground if not yet taken centre stage when speaking of communicatively-focused assessment. At the moment, the real challenge for as-sessment is offered by IC and particularly by ICC. -- We concentrate in the follo-wing analysis on the CEFcult project emphases on ICC assessment.
CEFR (2001) is often misleadingly interpreted to include only linguistically-fo-cused language proficiency scales. In fact, however, CEFR also includes a number of scales that help to assess some intercultural aspects of CC (Table 1; The refe-rences to Byram follow his terminology).
TABLE 1. CEFR scales in assessing intercultural aspects of communicative compe-tence (Baten, Beaven & Harjanne 2011).
Self-assessment grid (1.2)
* Spoken interaction (Byram: discourse competence) Qualitative aspects of spoken language use (1.3)
* Interaction (Byram: discourse competence) Communicative activities (2.1)
* Overall spoken interaction (Byram: linguistic competence)
* Conversation (Byram: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence) Communicative language competence (2.4)
* Sociolinguistic: Sociolinguistic appropriateness (Byram: sociolinguistic competence)
* Pragmatic (Byram: linguistic competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence)
For lack of space, we cannot open up all these CEFR scales here, but as a general note, the higher we go on the continuum of A1 to C2, the more culturally-loaded the descriptors become. It is also significant to bear in mind that even A1 inclu-des certain intercultural elements. As an example, in the scale of sociolinguistic appropriateness, an A1 language user “can establish basic social contact by using the simplest everyday polite forms of: greetings and farewells; introductions; say-ing please, thank you, sorry etc.” At A2, a language user “can socialise simply but effectively using the simplest common expressions and following basic routines [and] can handle very short social exchanges, using everyday polite forms of greeting and address. Can make and respond to invitations, apologies etc.” The higher proficiency levels, correspondingly, enrich the intercultural component.
For instance, a B1 language user ”is aware of the salient politeness conventions and acts appropriately.” A B2 user ”can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker.” For a C1 language user, the require-ments are already rather high: ”can use language flexibly and effectively for social purposes, including emotional, allusive and joking usage.” Finally, a C2 language user ”appreciates fully the sociolinguistic and sociocultural implications of lan-guage used by native speakers and can react accordingly [and] can mediate effec-tively between speakers of the target language and that of his/her community of origin taking account of sociocultural and sociolinguistic differences.” Naturally,
Intercultural Communicative Competence, and Its Assessment:
these examples do not exemplify all the intercultural elements provided by the sociolinguistic appropriateness scale.
The CEFR scales are needed when assessing ICC’s communicative dimension, represented in Byram’s model (2010) by the linguistic, sociolinguistic and dis-course competences.
In the CEFcult project, in addition to CEFR scales, also some INCA scales are used, with an aim to help assess intercultural competence (IC). The INCA scales were created as part of a Leonardo da Vinci project INCA (2001–2004), in which Byram together with some other researchers worked on developing a diagnostic instrument to assess IC within a professional environment (INCA s.a.).
The INCA scales can be seen as links between the CEFR scales (2001), intercultu-ral competence and the working life, as they were initially used in a United King-dom based engineering company (Prechtl & Davidson Lund 2007). Out of the original six constituents of IC with several strands of competences, three strands were kept for INCA: openness, knowledge and adaptability, each subdivided into two constituents of intercultural competence assessment (Table 2).
TABLE 2. The IC strands, components and elements in INCA (Baten, Beaven &
Harjanne 2011).
Strands Components Elements
Motivation Skill/Knowledge Behaviour Openness Respect for otherness
Tolerance of ambiguity Knowledge Knowledge discovery
Empathy
Adaptability Communicative awareness Behavioural flexibility
In CEFcult the IC components are assessed at three levels: basic, intermediate, advanced (see Appendix B, http://bit.ly/HkiScenario). As one example, beha-vioural flexibility is assessed as follows (Table 3).
TABLE 3. Behavioural flexibility (INCA scale).
Previous experience of required behaviour begins to influence behaviour in everyday parallel situations. Sometimes takes the initiative in adopting/conform-ing to other cultures’ behaviour patterns.
Is ready and able to adopt appropriate be-haviour in job-specific situations from a broad and well-understood repertoire.
Regarding ICC assessment, CEFcult first capitalizes on the previous project’s outcomes (WebCEF). In WebCEF (http://www.webcef.eu), an online tool was developed, helping language users assess oral proficiency samples in a number of languages. The WebCEF assessment tool was directly linked to the CEFR lan-guage proficiency scales. The CEFcult project continues from and expands this basis. The users of the newly-constructed CEFcult tool (http://www.cefcult.eu/
tool) can partly utilize the language samples of WebCEF but then also assess and see assessed oral proficiency samples from an intercultural perspective. For this assessment, CEFcult makes use of the INCA scales as explained above. When combining both CEFR-based communicative competence (CC) scales with IN-CA-based intercultural competence (IC) scales, one is likely to approach a situ-ation in which ICC is also assessed, albeit rather subjectively and approximately.
When assessing ICC, most researchers tend to rely on one of two solutions. The first solution is to adopt an atomistic perspective, leading to certain elements being assessed as separate items (e.g., factual knowledge of foreign countries or explicit gestures and signs used in a certain country or culture). Many assessors seem to favour linguistic analysis, even if it is just a small part of ICC. We find it difficult to see how this could contribute to solid ICC-focused assessment. Too often the various elements—language, (inter)culture, competence—are discussed as separate standalone elements only. Some researchers (e.g., Skopinskaja, 2009), however, discuss various factors and criteria that should be taken into account.
– The other solution is grounded in building an instrument that is expected to cover most if not all relevant components of ICC. Fantini (2006), for instan-ce, enumerates 87 such assessment tools of ICC, SIETAR online documentation centre lists 57 (http://www.sietareu.org).
One may justifiably ask if it is generally speaking at all possible to really, genui-nely and overarchingly assess ICC. It may well be that assessing ICC is too
Intercultural Communicative Competence, and Its Assessment:
tifaceted, too context-specific and too swiftly passing to be done objectively and authentically enough. It is also to be noted that each and every one’s personal ICC is constantly evolving along with one’s growing intercultural experiences. Furt-hermore, people’s various cultural backgrounds and communication styles, their own conceptions of time, routinized personal habits, deficient language skills, biased beliefs and prejudices, attitudes and false interpretations mixed with a number of other factors as well, are bound to have a great effect on the way they interpret and assess intercultural encounters. Whatever the case is, increasing one’s and other people’s reciprocal understanding of one’s own and other people’s cultures and communication styles, is—hopefully—likely to lead to enhanced transcultural communication, which, in the final analysis, also is conducive to successful assessment of ICC.