Developing Intercultural Competence through Movies

Abstract

In its simplest sense, the goal of intercultural competence, or global literacy, is to help students understand how to communicate with people who are different from them. Living in a global environment means that individuals from diverse cultures will need to know how to interact with each other, both face-to-face and online. Intercultural communication incorporates the study of communication patterns and cultural norms of diverse groups and students in English language classrooms can learn these norms in order to understand, appreciate and appropriately communicate with diverse others. In Byram’s (1997) words, the task of understanding others’ cultures is not an easy one although with the help of international media and popular culture among which films is the leading one, one can decipher the meanings of certain issues or behaviors portrayed with the help of what he calls a “skill of discovery” which: