Intercultural Communication Paper (and INCA Survey) Instructions

Communicative awareness is the ability to recognise different communicative conventions and their impact on discourse processes, and to attune to the communicative conventions that seem to govern the behaviour of discourse partners. Based on these assumptions, each person tries to adapt his own discourse behaviour to these conventions or to explain his own conventions and situational preferences to others. Dealing with the effects of different communicative conventions Communicative awareness also means assessing the discourse situation and the potential impact of one’s own discourse behaviour in the ongoing intercultural situation. Based on this assessment of how utterances can provoke misunderstandings, partners try to negotiate and agree upon common discourse rules. Dealing with communicative difficulties Communicative awareness is also the ability to cope with problems in communication that result from non-native-language skills. This means to adapt to different levels of foreign language competence, e.g. by simplifying utterances, by explaining/avoiding technical terms or by trying for clear articulation. Furthermore, communicative awareness includes the use of meta- communicative strategies that address the discourse situation, e.g. by mentioning problems of word meaning (‘Maybe I did not understand XX correctly’), speakers' intentions (‘I promise you…’, ‘What I actually mean…’), discourse conditions (‘I feel that we are running out of time’), by explicitly asking for clarification (‘What do you mean by…’) or by giving feedback ‘(If I understand you correctly, by saying that XX you mean YY’?). Motivation They are willing to suspend immediate attributions when confronted with different linguistic conventions. They are curious to find out about the meanings and intentions of their communication partners. They are ready to modify given communicative conventions and to behave correspondingly. Knowledge /skill They have knowledge of different communicative conventions and levels of foreign language competencies and are able to recognise the impact of these differences on discourse processes. They know how to modify their communicative behaviour by adapting to the behaviour of communication partners or by negotiating appropriate rules for the intercultural situation. Behaviour They build and test hypotheses about different communicative conventions and appropriate language levels. They negotiate and agree upon common rules for discourse interaction. They cope with problems that result from non-

INCA – Intercultural Competence Assessment – www.incaproject.org 7