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Volume 3, Issue 3 December 2020, pp. 118–140

Regular Articles

In pursuit of intercultural competence: Exploring self-awareness of EFL pupils in a lower-secondary school in Norway

Anastasia Khanukaeva ¹

¹ University of Stavanger, NORWAY

DOI: https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v3n3.370

Abstract

This paper focuses on self-awareness as an integral component of intercultural competence (IC) in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context. For the purposes of this study, an EPortfolio of Intercultural Competence (EPIC) was developed by the researcher and employed during an intervention as a series of tasks and reflection prompts through various forms of media (written texts, drawings etc.). Triangulated qualitative data (in the form of EPIC entries and focus group interviews) were gathered from 56 participants, aged 14-15. The findings indicate that supporting pupils in raising their self-awareness may lead to deeper reflection on the Self as being multiple, which in turn may lead to the recognition of “multiple selves” of others (Rivers & Houghton, 2013, p. 2). The study contributes to the pool of research studying IC and grants insights into how an eportfolio approach might be integrated into EFL secondary teaching by encouraging learners to enrich their understanding of the Self through their reflections on EPIC tasks and classroom activities.

Copyright

© Anastasia Khanukaeva

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Suggested citation

Khanukaeva, A. (2020). In pursuit of intercultural competence: Exploring self-awareness of EFL pupils in a lower-secondary school in Norway. Intercultural Communication Education, 3(3), 118–140. https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v3n3.370

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