Developing Students’ Intercultural Competence During the Professional Oriented Course in English as a Foreign Language

Intercultural competence is one of the most important soft skills deemed necessary for future engineers to become competitive specialists at the labor market. We consider problem, intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches to be the most important in developing such skills. The objective of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of active teaching methods implemented into the English teaching practice, and to monitor how intercultural competence components developed over time. We suggest two criteria for determining the level of three components. “Linguistic skills” and “linguo-cultural skills” stand for the cognitive component; “empathy skills” and “reflective skills” refer to the emotional component; “sociability” and “lack of aggressiveness” imply the behavioral component. The implementation of chosen intercultural based and professionally oriented material alongside with active teaching methods (collaborative learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, role-play) contributed to the increase of students’ intercultural competence level in the treatment group. After examining the behaviour of the students, we could state the qualitative dynamics of its three components as well. The results of this study should be taken into consideration while designing the framework for developing students’ intercultural competence during the extracurricular time.