Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Reviews / Votes

With remarkable educational integrity, Michael Byram revisits his highly successful 1997 book and responds to his critics. The result is a rich and thoughtfully revamped version of the original classic, adapted to our multicultural societies and mindful of the need to educate language learners to global intercultural citizenship through intercultural communicative competence. The added sections on mediation, teachers' ethical responsibility, and pluralism and human rights are particularly noteworthy. * Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA * This new edition not only clarifies the ambiguities and inclusiveness of the ICC theory, but also situates it in a more contemporary and global teaching environment. Byram's conceptualization of critical cultural awareness leading to democratic citizenship has far more importance now for other non-European regions including Asia, where foreign language is taught mostly for instrumental purposes and the value of wholesome humanistic education is often left behind. * Kahoko Matsumoto, Tokai University, Japan * There is little way that anyone can read this book and not believe that all universities should have a foreign language requirement [...] Though gifting this book to your administrator may be a longshot, it definitely belongs in the hands of anyone that will be teaching and/or creating content for language education from now on. -- Boris Yelin, Northeastern University, USA * LINGUIST List 32.2158 *