Huang Lin
School of Foreign Languages, Xinyang Agriculture and Forestry University, Xinyang, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Feb 9;14:1126141. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1126141. eCollection 2023.
The soaring demand for intercultural competence (IC) in the globalized world has made it a key concern in foreign language education. Most existing training on IC has often focused on providing immersive intercultural experiences, equipping learners with cultural knowledge, and simulating intercultural situations. However, some of these approaches may not be feasible in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, nor are they effective to prepare learners to cope with the complexities and uncertainties in novel intercultural situations unless there specifically involves higher-order thinking. Thus, this study took a perspective of cultural metacognition and examined whether and how could an instructional design that highlighted cultural metacognition facilitate learners' IC development in an EFL classroom at the tertiary level in Chinese mainland. Fifty-eight undergraduate students enrolled in an English Listening, Viewing, and Speaking course were involved in the instruction, and questionnaires and focus groups were employed for the data collection. A paired sample -test revealed that there was a significant enhancement in students' intercultural competence in terms of affective, metacognitive, and behavioral dimensions, but not in the knowledge dimension. Thematic analysis indicated that the instructional design was effective in supporting students' intentional knowledge acquiring, developing positive intercultural attitudes, and promoting the translation of cognition into actions. The findings thus confirmed that the instructional design featuring cultural metacognition can be used in domestic EFL contexts, such as College English classrooms at the tertiary level in Chinese mainland, as an effective way of enhancing learners' IC. This study also offered additional evidence of how students' IC development was achieved through a range of metacognitive processes, which may provide implications for teachers to design their IC instructions in similar EFL educational settings.
在全球化的世界中，对跨文化交际能力（IC）的需求激增，这使其成为外语教育中的一个关键问题。大多数现有的跨文化交际能力培训通常侧重于提供沉浸式的跨文化体验，为学习者传授文化知识，并模拟跨文化情境。然而，其中一些方法在外语（EFL）课堂中可能不可行，而且除非特别涉及高阶思维，否则它们在让学习者准备好应对新的跨文化情境中的复杂性和不确定性方面也并不有效。因此，本研究从文化元认知的角度出发，探讨了一种突出文化元认知的教学设计是否以及如何能够促进中国大陆高校外语课堂中学习者的跨文化交际能力发展。58名参加英语听力、视听说课程的本科生参与了教学，并通过问卷调查和焦点小组进行数据收集。配对样本t检验显示，学生在情感、元认知和行为维度的跨文化交际能力有显著提高，但在知识维度上没有。主题分析表明，教学设计在支持学生有意获取知识、培养积极的跨文化态度以及促进认知转化为行动方面是有效的。这些发现因此证实，以文化元认知为特色的教学设计可用于国内外语教学环境，如中国大陆高校的大学英语课堂，作为提高学习者跨文化交际能力的有效方式。本研究还提供了额外的证据，证明学生的跨文化交际能力发展是如何通过一系列元认知过程实现的，这可能为教师在类似的外语教育环境中设计跨文化交际能力教学提供启示。
