PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE TEACHING/LEARNING OF ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The relationship of culture, language and literature are amalgamated in every society. Relationship between these elements cannot be underestimated. Culture reflects in every aspect of the society i.e. language, religion, social life style of people, art, literature etc. People of a community symbolize their culture. Language bridges communication between different people and societies (Patil, 2015). The current study is based on pre-service English teachers’ cross-sectional survey to determine their attitude toward the variant aspects of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in the teaching of English as foreign language (EFL) in Pakistan. A self-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. The results of the survey include teachers’ perception about EFL and their attitude towards ICC in the teaching of EFL. Reasons for learning English by Pakistani pre-service teachers are also included in the study which determine that vocational purpose tops the list among various given causes. The population of the current study included the future English teachers. The study was limited to the higher education institutes in the Southern Punjab, Pakistan. The sample of the study consisted of the students of English language studying at graduate level in the Southern Punjab Universities. The collected and tabulated data revealed that major part of the population was from urban background. Only a few of them had been to some English speaking country. Reading was decided as the major proficient language skill and the participants were least proficient in speaking. They considered language as the chief epitomizing symbol of a culture. The majority of the participants were learning English for occupational intentions. They believed that English is an international xiv language. It is not the language of any particular country or nation and professional success in the modern world demands proficiency. The participants had a positive attitude towards the learning of different cultural aspects of major English speaking countries to boost their communication skills in the natural situations. Further, the researcher also found that there was a significant relationship between the pre-service teachers’ attitude toward Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and their language proficiency and educational qualification. However pre-service teachers’ residential background, age group, medium of instruction, language learning experience and gender differences had no significant effect on their attitude towards ICC on the teaching/learning of English as foreign language.