Impact of intercultural communication apprehension upon students’ plurilingual and pluricultural competence development

Abstract

Efficient communication is the basis for person’s satisfaction with mutually beneficial relationships in personal, academic and professional fields. To be efficient in today’s global cross-cultural encounters citizens need plurilingual and pluricultural communicative competences. However, students who aim at developing their plurilingual competences at higher education institutions often exhibit communication apprehension, fear of speaking, anxiety of public speaking, are afraid of communication breakdowns, miscommunication and failure in general and, thus, face difficulties in using foreign languages in real life situations. The study aimed, first, at identifying the level of intercultural communication apprehension as a possible hindrance to efficient plurilingual competence development and, second, to find out if conscious and planned attention to affective domain during the language learning classes can assist language learners in developing their higher self-confidence and defeat of fear, thus ensuring the development of plurilingual and pluricultural communication skills which, consequently, leading to more successful communication. The study used quantitative and qualitative research methods. Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) [18] and Personal Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension (PRICA) [19] were employed to identify the level of students’ general and intercultural communication apprehension. The research respondents (n=114) were students of English for Intercultural Communication (C1 level [11]) who studied the course in 2018-2020. A model of ADM activities was created and implemented in the course, which provided promising results in favour of explicit communication apprehension defeat training during the language classes. [...]