System 115 (2023) 103070

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System
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/system

Facilitating EFL learners’ intercultural competence through

culturally responsive teaching in oral English classrooms
Hongjing Liao, Liwen Li *
School of English for Specific Purposes, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study explored the potential of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) as a pedagogical
Intercultural competence approach to intercultural foreign language teaching. Implementing 14 CRT sessions with English
EFL teaching as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a Chinese university, this study examined and assessed
Culturally responsive teaching
students’ intercultural learning in oral English classes. Based on a mixed-methods analysis of
Intercultural teaching and learning
Mixed methods
students’ learning journals, interviews, intercultural assignments, and assessment results, this
study highlights the potential of CRT in fostering openness, sharing multiple perspectives, and
critical meaning-making processes in the Chinese EFL context.

1. Introduction

With the role of the English language being continuously shaped by cultural globalization, intercultural competence (hereafter, IC)
has become an increasingly important goal for EFL education, so that learners are able to communicate with people from different
cultural backgrounds (Kusumaningputri & Widodo, 2018; Ribeiro, 2016). In the Chinese educational landscape, IC has recently been
established as one of the core objectives of the national foreign language curricula (Ministry of Education of the PRC, 2018). This
update in policy has marked a change in the goal of foreign language teaching, and brought significant implications and challenges for
pedagogical practices (Qian & Garner, 2019). One of the biggest challenges facing Chinese EFL instructors is the development of
intercultural English pedagogy relevant to the local setting, thereby making the best of the currently available resources when foreign
cultural encounters are not common.
This paper investigates how to incorporate intercultural teaching in EFL classrooms by engaging students in culturally responsive
discussions. In particular, this study examines students’ experiences and assessments in tandem, and argues about the potential role
that culturally responsive teaching (CRT) can play in exploring, sharing, and constructing multiple cultural meanings and facilitating
more open attitudes and cultural awareness.

2. Literature review

2.1. Intercultural competence and teaching practices

In China’s National Standards of Teaching Quality for Undergraduate Foreign Language and Literature Curricular, intercultural

* Corresponding author. School of English for Specific Purposes, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2, North Xisanhuan, HaidianDistrict, Beijing
,100089, China.
E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Li).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2023.103070
Received 16 September 2022; Received in revised form 18 May 2023; Accepted 19 May 2023
Available online 20 May 2023
0346-251X/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Liao and L. Li System 115 (2023) 103070

competence is defined as “having respect for cultural diversity; having intercultural empathy and critical cultural awareness; un­
derstanding basic intercultural research theories and analytical methods, and understanding basic features, similarities and differences
of Chinese and foreign cultures; be able to interpret and evaluate different cultural phenomena, texts, and products; be able to
communicate effectively and appropriately, and help mediate communication for people with different backgrounds” (Ministry of
Education of the PRC, 2018, p.95). To put the IC definition to practice, the pedagogical design of this study views culturally different
people as people “represent (ing) different or divergent affective, cognitive, and behavioral orientations to the world” (Spitzberg &
Changnon, 2009, p.7). In other words, this study takes a non-essentialist view of culture, including not only national cultures, but also
small cultures and the diversity of individuals (Dervin, 2011; Holliday, 2016). This study also highlights an emergent, dynamic, and
negotiated nature of intercultural communication, and pays attention to the co-constructive aspect of intercultural understanding in
learning (Dervin, 2011, 2016).
Scholars have made various attempts to equip students with IC in the past two decades by providing EFL pedagogical strategies
(Feryok & Oranje, 2015; Holliday, 2016). Previous studies have examined the development of IC in language classrooms by adopting
different media of teaching, such as the use of emails, online forums or blogs (Meinecke, Smith, & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2013),
different formats of learning materials, such as visuals, film clips, and literature texts (Gómez Rodríguez, 2014; Kusumaningputri &
Widodo, 2018; Moeller & Nugent, 2014), and different teaching activities, such as story-telling and role-play (Quist, 2013; Ribeiro,
2016). Other scholars have focused on creating a multicultural learning context, such as online co-learning of students from different
countries (Wang, 2013). A large number of studies investigated intercultural development during international exchange programs
(Baker-Smemoe et al., 2014; Tanghe, 2016).
Pedagogical innovations in Chinese foreign language classrooms are also documented in the literature, though many of them are
written in the Chinese language, thus rarely known outside the Chinese-speaking world (Sun et al., 2021). Reflection, ethnography,
MOOC, and intercultural contests have been used to help facilitate intercultural learning (Suo & Chi, 2018, pp. 89–96; Zhang & Zhao,
2018; Zheng & Li, 2016).
While these previous studies give precious insight into the teaching of IC, the number of empirical studies relating to pedagogical
applications is still small (2.8%, according to Shi & Zhu, 2015). In addition, issues specific to the Chinese educational context also need
to be addressed. For example, reviews of Chinese IC studies show that the current intercultural teaching in China still centers around
teaching knowledge and skills, and the concept of “culture” is often vaguely defined and largely essentialized (Qian & Garner, 2019;
Wang & Kulich, 2015). One of the frequently cited reasons is the lack of international experiences of most Chinese instructors and
students. However, even with extensive foreign cultural contacts, essentialized intercultural teaching that focuses only on national or
ethnic cultures can easily result in reductionist overgeneralization and ethnocentric otherization (Holliday, 1999). We, therefore,
argue for the use of an intercultural teaching approach responsive to students’ own cultural repertoire. The more recent development
of intercultural teaching has advocated the use of diverse cultural representations to facilitate intercultural learning in foreign lan­
guage classrooms (Risager, 2018), and empirical studies on intercultural learning of Chinese students have revealed a rich diversity of
cultural backgrounds in Chinese students (Achirri, 2021). However, there is little research on how to make better use of such diversity
within Chinese cultures in intercultural teaching. Therefore, this study aims to explore culturally responsive teaching as a pedagogical
framework, and use it in the commonly seen class discussion to facilitate students’ IC development.

2.2. Culturally responsive teaching (CRT)

CRT was first developed to foster the multicultural competence of individuals, including the tendency to be open-minded and a
desire to reduce prejudice in a multicultural society (Bennett, 2001; Gay, 1995). Later, it expanded beyond pedagogy and developed
into a multidimensional construct encompassing curriculum content, instructional strategies, and learning assessment (Pringle &

Fig. 1. Culturally responsive teaching design and procedures.

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H. Liao and L. Li System 115 (2023) 103070

McLaughlin, 2014).
Although there are differences in conceptualizations of CRT, the following two features have been generally agreed upon, which
also serve as guiding principles for the pedagogical agenda of this study.

(1) It uses students’ own background as cultural capital and focuses on finding a “hook and anchor” to help draw students into
building learning on their own past experiences (Gay, 2010).
(2) It provides multiple opportunities for students to learn and accommodate different perspectives, helping students to explore
new knowledge and new perspectives while maintaining a connection to and reflecting on their own culture, and to challenge
their cultural assumptions (Day & Beard, 2019; Kumar et al., 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2014).

Therefore, due to the above characteristics, CRT has become a desirable pedagogical approach to activate students’ own cultural
backgrounds and prior experiences as cultural resources and create a relevant context for better facilitation of IC. In other words, the
cultural topics and experiences included in CRT involve small cultures and the diversity of individuals with various orientations
(Dervin, 2011; Holliday, 2016) rather than merely foreign national cultures. CRT design, implementation procedures, and examples
are illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2 (See Appendix A for more details.)

3. Research questions

This study aims to investigate CRT’s role in intercultural language learning with the following research questions.

1. How do students perceive their intercultural learning experiences through CRT?

2. How does students’ intercultural assessment relate to their development of IC?

4. Methodology

4.1. Mixed research design

In the current study, we utilized a qualitative-dominant concurrent mixed research design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018), wherein
we adopted a qualitative, poststructuralist stance concerning the research process, while including quantitative analyses to yield
triangulated inferences. The qualitative strand utilized a multiple case study design (Stake, 2005), where multiple information-rich
participants provided insight into the study of perception and development of intercultural learning (Yin, 2009). Specifically, an
embedded design was utilized, wherein the qualitative responses from cases were transformed into quantitative scores, and results
from both qualitative and quantitative strands were triangulated to yield meta-themes. More details about the design are illustrated in
Fig. 3.

4.2. Participants and settings

This study adopted an embedded mixed sample (Creswell, 2012). A quantitative sample of 47 students (15 male and 32 female)
participated voluntarily in this study. They were second-year Chinese undergraduates majoring in foreign languages (other than
English). The majority of the students also speak a Chinese dialect (89.4%). A CEFR Standardized English Test1 was used to assess
students’ English proficiency level, and the sample’s average score was 61.8. In other words, they could be considered as intermediate
English learners with adequate fluency in speaking and writing. The background survey showed 66% of the students traveled abroad
for tourism, student exchange program or for family visit purposes, two thirds of the students (66%) learned English from foreign
teachers for several months or years, and 10.6% of students graduated from a foreign language high school, where English learning was
set as priority in curriculum. Details of demographic information of participants are illustrated in Table 1.
A subset of the quantitative sample was purposefully drawn as a qualitative sample, which consisted of 7 students. A maximum
variation sampling strategy was used, and key criteria for qualitative sampling included intercultural background, IC changes found in
intercultural assignments, and learning experiences observed in student reflective journals (See Appendix B).
This study was carried out at a leading Chinese university specializing in foreign language programs. The Oral English course under
study is compulsory for second-year foreign language majors, offered in two 50-min sessions per week for 16 weeks.

4.3. Data collection

Data triangulation was used to include different data sources and data points at different times of the semester to minimize
researcher bias and threats to research credibility (Creswell, 2012). Student consent was obtained before data collection, and for
confidentiality purposes, only student numbers were presented in the results.

1
CEFR refers to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language. The test was designed in alignment with the CEFR Level B2 with
sub-tests on English listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

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H. Liao and L. Li System 115 (2023) 103070

Fig. 2. An example of CRT discussion on Superstition from unit 3.

Fig. 3. Qualitatively dominant concurrent mixed methods design.

Table 1
Quantitative sample demographics and characteristics.
Variables Characteristics Percentage

Gender Male 31.9%

Female 68.1%
Foreign language teacher Yes 66.0%
No 34.0%
Chinese dialect Yes 89.4%
No 10.6%
Travel abroad Yes 66.0%
No 34.0%
Foreign language high school Yes 10.6%
No 89.4%

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H. Liao and L. Li System 115 (2023) 103070

4.3.1. Background survey

An Intercultural Background Survey (IBS) developed by the authors was administered to all participants to extract demographic
information and to collect open-ended responses about student experiences of international travels, intercultural training, and lan­
guage learning experiences with foreign teachers.

4.3.2. Intercultural assessment

All participants were asked to write an intercultural case analysis in the first session and the last session of the course as their IC
assessment. Of the 47 participants, 44 finished both case analyses, with a response rate of 93.6%. Student responses were quantified to
generate numeric scores on the variables of intercultural competence (See Appendix C). Each case analysis includes a prompt about an
intercultural incident with two questions regarding the respondents’ understanding of the case and feasible solutions. In the quan­
tification of student responses, rubrics were developed based on the definition of IC in the National Standards (Ministry of Education of
the People’s Republic of China, 2018). Details of grading are shown in Appendices C and D.

4.3.3. Reflexive journal

All students were invited to keep a reflective learning journal for each unit, and 49 reflective journal entries from the 7 participants
were included in analysis as triangulated data sources with interviews. The average length of each entry was 358 words. All partic­
ipants chose to write in English with occasional use of some Chinese phrases.

4.3.4. Interview
Interviews were conducted at the end of the course to solicit student feedback on the intercultural teaching and learning. Each
interview lasted 45–65 min, and member checks were performed to enhance credibility of the data.

4.4. Data analysis

Thematic analyses were conducted on the textual data deriving from students’ intercultural assignments, reflective journals and
interviews (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Numeric scores were generated from students’ responses by using a four-point scale rubric (0 =
not mentioned, 1 = minimum, 2 = medium, 3 = strong). The rubric contained five IC constructs that evaluated intercultural
awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors with a full credit of 15 points (See Appendix C). Techniques described by
Onwuegbuzie and Teddlie (2003) were used to quantify data emerging from student assignments. For example, according to the rubric,
if a student made a statement rated as strong, then a score of ‘3’ was given for that response; a score of ‘1’ was given if the statement was
assessed as demonstrating the minimum level of competence; and a score of ‘0’ was given if no relevant statement was found.
Inter-rater reliability of the raters reached 85.1% and differences in rating were resolved through discussion. A paired-sample t-test
(and nonparametric tests for variables that did not meet the normality assumption) was used to compare student overall scores before
and after the teaching.

4.5. Researcher positionality

As suggested by Dervin (2011), researcher positionality in this study also needs to be acknowledged. The authors of this study are
Chinese instructors and researchers who have received academic training abroad. The participants were their students. Both authors
have established a personal relationship with some students in class and maintained friendly relations. It is also noticeable that
compared with voluntary student interviews, reflective journals and intercultural assessments were assigned as class assignments with
grades, which might affect how students demonstrate their understanding.

5. Results

5.1. Research question 1: student perceptions of intercultural learning experiences via CRT

Qualitative data showed a multilinear unfolding of intercultural learning experiences, and the results are organized into two parts:
the first part presents three meta-themes with two somewhat contradictory dimensions, and the second part presents two individual
cases to show student changes in perceptions throughout the semester.

5.1.1. Meta-themes and sub-themes

The three meta-themes are synthesized as openness, understanding multiple perspectives, and critical awareness. When viewed
from the two perspectives of 1) how CRT served as facilitation of students’ intercultural learning, and 2) how it added complication in
the learning process, these meta-themes also represent two different dimensions of student perceptions, i.e., facilitation and
complication. Thematic analyses show that CRT not only facilitated a more open and curious attitude towards various social and
cultural issues and people with different orientations, but also prompt students to critically consider different possibilities of view­
points, beliefs, values, and their relationships.
Qualitative data framing this part of the results were also transformed to frequencies and percentages using the quantification
method described by Onwuegbuzie and Teddlie (2003), and descriptive statistics of student statements formed manifest effect size of
each theme and sub-theme to show prevalence rates of codes (Onwuegbuzie, 2003). Altogether 281 relevant statements were coded,

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and Table 2 illustrates the manifest effect size and percentage of the three meta-themes and 14 sub-themes. Descriptions of themes and
examples are provided in Table 3.

5.1.2. Case analysis of student perceptions

In addition to meta-themes and sub-themes that provide a general picture of all participants’ perceptions, the following are two
examples of individuals with different characteristics of intercultural learning processes. For confidentiality purposes, pseudonyms are
used.

5.1.2.1. Fang. Fang is a 20-year-old female sophomore of Han ethnicity. She comes from a county-level city in southern China,
currently studying in the Thai language program. She has no international traveling experiences, nor received any intercultural
training, but she participated in a summer program taught by foreign teachers in high school.
Fang’s reported intercultural learning process featured in her development of sensitivity to different small cultures of her peer
groups, and ongoing negotiation of her roles in these small social groupings and learning activities.
She identified small cultures in her class early in the course but from the discomforts encountered in class discussions. She sensed a
peer-acknowledged hierarchy of regional pop cultures, in which students who liked certain pop cultures enjoyed more power in
discussion:
There is this mysterious ‘chain of contempt’ in our discussion group. There is a distinction between fans for ‘foreign circles’ and
‘domestic circles’. That means Marvel fans like the girl sitting next to me who binge-watching all Marvel movies look down their
noses at K-pop, and they, in turn, think little of someone like me who likes Xiangsheng (Chinese cross talk). Because I belong to
the ‘domestic circle’, I’m at the bottom, inferior, and do not have much power to talk about pop culture.
In the follow-up interview, Fang also touched on the transience nature of such small cultures, in the sense that such attitudes and
opinions were true only for this small discussion group: “Students in another class (may) view it (chain of contempt) quite differently or
probably pay no attention.”
Fang’s understanding of small cultures such as peer group “chain of contempt” continued to develop as she engaged more in CRT
discussions. In one of her reflective journals, Fang revisited her challenge in peer cultures in writing her learning moment about the
plurality of cultures. She wrote about her assumption of settling with a mainstream answer:
I think the biggest issue with me before is when I get a question, I get a mainstream answer. I know it is not my answer, but I take
it as the answer to the question. After we analyzed the Fall of Icarus and different interpretations of the painting (Unit 5), I think
when you analyze a thing, apart from the mainstream answer of your first reaction, you can look for other answers … Like our
discussion on ‘Fan cultures’, I didn’t say mine, but I think my answer could be right, it’s just that at the moment I’m not able to
articulate it completely and comprehensively in English.
This reflection could also be considered a turning point for Fang, because she started to contribute to her peer cultures by offering a
presentation on her favorite Chinese Xiangsheng performance organization “Deyun She”, and even announced herself as a “Deyun girl”
in class. Her effort received some responses from her fellow classmates. In a class activity of a simulated auction of cultural items, her
classmates decided to use Xiangsheng as their item. Fang regarded this change as a success of her impact: “it was totally unexpected,
but I think I had some impact on this”.
Fang identified more small cultures in her later reflective journals, such as “you’d rather be hardworking than smart in our class,
but is it true for all students or Chinese?” and she developed a habit of noting such discoveries and thinking by “writ (ing) them down in
my phone memos.”

5.1.2.2. Yuan. Yuan is a female sophomore of a Chinese ethnic minority, from one of China’s largest cities. She studied in a foreign

Table 2
Student perceptions of intercultural learning: Meta-themes, sub-themes, manifest effect sizes, and percentage.
Themes/Dimension Sub-themes Manifest effect size Percentage

Openness Facilitation Curiosity to discover 29 75 41.64%

Opportunities to share 21
Safe environment 25
Complication “Chain of contempt” 21 42
“Efficiency of discussion” 13
“Discuss to practice listening and speaking” 8
Understanding multiple perspectives Facilitation Second foreign language learning as useful resources 23 68 32.03%
Appreciation of plurality/complexity of interpretation 45
Complication “Teacher’s final answer” 12 22
Perspective shock resulting in self doubt 10
Critical awareness Facilitation Awareness to self and contextual factors 35 50 26.33%
“No making without breaking” 15
Complication Cultural assimilation 14 24
Resistance 10
Total 281 100%

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H. Liao and L. Li System 115 (2023) 103070

Table 3
Theme descriptions and examples.
Theme Description Example

Meta-theme: Openness
Curiosity to discover Active engagement with CRT topics and materials “Topics and readings are intriguing not only because they are
very familiar to us, but they are also phenomenon and
mentality that we didn’t realize in daily life … What we are
guided to discuss in class, is to think about these issues in a
deeper, and more systematic way” (S6)
Opportunities to share
Opportunities in class to share knowledge and experiences on a “You know usually in oral discussions, it’s default for those
cultural matter, especially for students who were less confident whose English are most fluent to talk and they would represent
about their oral English proficiency the whole group … like I’m not good at expressing myself, but
for these topics I have some interesting experience I can share,
and the discussion requires you to give something. It was
embarrassing at first, but I made a lot of progress, and my group
used my examples in reporting – not only those whose oral
English are well were talking all the time anymore. I am very
proud to be compelled to speak up.” (S7)
Safe environment Help built a sense of safety in sharing, and help foster “Sharing personal experiences made us candid to each other,
interpersonal bonds in learning you start to care and want to express yourself.” (S30)
“Chain of contempt” Power relations were identified in sharing. More specifically, “There are different chain(s) of contempt you know, for the
speaker powers due to individual academic performance, popular cultures we love, and also our language major. We are
language proficiency, or prospect of one’s major at the bottom of the chain.” (S33)
“Efficiency of discussion” There are still students who prefer knowledge feeding and skill “I still prefer teacher giving lectures, that’s more efficient use of
drilling in oral classes. class time” (S12)
“Discuss to practice Understanding CRT solely as language practicing and “She was not responding to our thoughts but was too eager to
listening and speaking prioritizing fluency of speaking in learning goals express herself, I think she used discussion to practice listening
skills” and speaking only.” (S30)
Meta-theme: Understanding Multiple Perspectives
Foreign language learning Multiple foreign language learning experiences were viewed as “When we are asked to share, I would always first considered
experiences as useful the most important resource for better understanding of sharing what I have studied about my own major’s culture. Like
resources cultures. last time for my project I took the chance to review the whole
history of Swedish literature, and it was well received in the
discussion. It’s for my major study and cultural discussion,
killing two birds with one stone.” (S5)
Appreciation of plurality/ CRT discussions exposed students to plural interpretations of “I have a new understanding about how to read art. Before this
complexity of social events or phenomena. class I didn’t want to read them because I believed I was not
interpretation interested. But I found that if only I want to try, I could really
appreciate a painting and together we come up with so many
different ways to interpret the same painting.” (S36)
“Teacher’s final answer” Constant seeking of normative explanations, or persistently “Sure it is beneficial to listen to all kinds of explanations, but I
looking for a “truth”. sometimes still want the teacher to give a final answer.“ (S24)
Perspective “shock” For some other students, it was uneasy to be exposed to a “It’s literally my first time to think about my personal financial
number of “correct” explanations, which often resulted in self- issues seriously … my groupmates can make more than 2000
doubt. yuan per month by themselves while I don’t even ever have the
idea of doing a part-time job, I felt ashamed. I really reflect on
myself about my money concept.“ (S7)
Meta-theme: Critical Awareness
Enhanced self-awareness Students showed enhanced awareness of self and others, such as “The discussion got us thinking about the very essence of
sensitivity to one’s own assumptions, cultural biases or money … I see in myself that money is related to power or a
acquired stereotypes. feeling of possessing, then it is also associated with how I
perceive the world … So I thought that the discussion can also
be regarded as an investigation about ourselves.” (S11)
“No making without Developed awareness of the dynamic process of knowledge “I used to be pretty sure about myself, but there are plenty times
breaking” construction by reflecting on how their own views were formed that I was wrong. Then next time you would have these little
and influenced by their backgrounds and noticing their own doubts about your impression, you try to find out, some worked
constant struggle in confirming or refuting their a priori beliefs. and some didn’t, so there is a process of constructing, breaking
and reconstructing”
Cultural assimilation Set goals of language learning as being a “native speaker” of the “When you make great efforts to learn a foreign language, you
target country, but without much clarity on who the native think, speak and behave like native speakers of that language.
speakers are and what they are like. I’m more and more like them now”. (S2)
Resistance Some tolerance on superficial matters such as dressing styles “I’m ok with Koreans wearing heavy make-up and wearing
and food, but explicit resistance on matters concerning personal black all the time, but staying up late and drinking are too
values or beliefs much, that’s not acceptable to me.” (S4)

language high school, participated in study abroad programs, and had multiple short international trips before she was enrolled in the
Korean language program at this University.
Yuan’s intercultural learning is, in her own terms, “entangling”. But it is also such entanglement that led her to discover the
complexity of cultural matters, to understand different attitudes with her research, and to integrate different pieces of knowledge into a
more systematic and cohesive thinking structure.

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Yuan’s learning of complexity started with not only unpleasant but rather shocking exposure to the money-related experiences of
her peers. She found her groupmates with similar educational backgrounds and economic statuses were raised with dramatically
different attitudes and approaches toward money-related issues such as student loans and the financial responsibilities of a college
student:
I thought money was a familiar topic but what we talked about was not familiar to me at all! My group shared their budget plans,
and like my (speaking) partner, he actually supports himself with college fees … I have no budget, my parents just give me
money … they paid for my tuition, and I don’t have a thing called living expense(s).
In the second week of the course, she described her enhanced awareness as carefully examining many of her assumptions, such as
“parents should pay for my college”, and “loans are for the financially difficult”, she wrote in her reflection that:
what impressed me a lot in our discussion is about money, especially how to finance our college studies without our parents’
financial help, which I have never thought about in my life … I used to think that talking (about) money with others and
showing eager(ness) for money like apply(ing) for loans is an embarrassed thing. I could be wrong. I learned from my (speaking)
partner that in China, there are varieties of loans for us to choose from … the government’s national student loan and a lot of
other commercial loans … It’s not just for poor families and there is nothing shameful about it.”
Different from Fang’s approach of engaging directly in behaviors, Yuan’s learning process featured a combination of seeking
knowledge and constant retrospection. “I made use of my research tools; I initiated a research and communication.” She developed her
own collection of readings on student loans and budget management, and made efforts to understand her own beliefs on family
finance. By putting pieces of information that she “didn’t think of knowing before”, such as “the new apartment my parents bought this
year”, and “the lucky money my parents let me have without asking a question”, Yuan assembled a money autobiography of her family,
and it became “clearer to see” how her views were formed by her backgrounds. For example, she explored her family’s psychology
about money and found that her “ignorant attitude” towards money was largely affected by her parents “working hard for money but
never talked about it, as if this issue did not exist, but money is important you say it or not”.
Yuan’s growing awareness of her personal and cultural beliefs also brought challenges to her intercultural learning. She identified
both affective and cognitive difficulties. On the one hand, she had to deal with negative emotions such as dissatisfaction with her
current perceptions of money, self-doubt, and even “shame on my ignorance/dependence”. On the other hand, she experienced
conceptual conflict in her beliefs, such as the ideal practices of family financial education. She found the alternative cultural frame­
work about being financially independent attractive, but she was not ready to simply switch, as complex layers of her own family
finance were revealed through her investigation: “I might consider educating my children differently … but my parents’ way of
managing money works, too … I may not have a budget, but I got sufficient money and I don’t waste.” Instead of taking a simple
“either, or” for an answer, Yuan concluded in her reflection that the investigation must go on: “The money unit provided me a template
on how to think and research about these issues … but they are questions that cannot be answered immediately. You must take time to
investigate.”
Both Fang and Yuan took a non-essentialist perspective on culture, to perceive cultures not only as signifying “ethnic” or “national”,
but as internally cohesive small social groupings within a nation, or different cognitive or affective orientations of Chinese people.
Though their intercultural attitudes were facilitated via different channels, both demonstrated critical awareness, as they did not
immediately conform to the practices and values of the alternative cultural frameworks provided by peers or teachers, but chose to
keep exploring and negotiating in their own ways.

5.2. Research question 2: student intercultural assessment and development of IC

The grading scores of students’ two intercultural case analysis assignments were analyzed to understand student development of
intercultural competence. In the first assessment, 44 participants yielded a mean of 4.20 (SD = 2.57), which is only 28% of the full
credit (15 points). Intercultural attitudes, awareness and knowledge were among the variables with the lowest scores, with Mcase1-

Table 4
Descriptive statistics of intercultural assessment.
Variables Sample size (N) Mean (M) Standard Deviation (SD)

Case 1-Awareness 44 .68 .77

Case 1-Knowledge 44 .68 .67
Case 1-Skills 44 1.05 .48
Case 1-Attitudes 44 .59 .69
Case 1-Solutions 44 1.27 .69
Case 1-Overall 44 4.20 2.57
Case 2-Awareness 44 2.11 .75
Case 2-Knowledge 44 1.66 .68
Case 2-Skills 44 2.11 .62
Case 2-Attitudes 44 1.89 .81
Case 2-Solutions 44 1.86 .59
Case 2-Overall 44 9.52 3.02

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= 0.59, M case1-awareness = 0.68, M case1-knowledge = 0.68. In the second assessment, the overall mean score increased to 9.52 (SD
attitudes
= 3.02). Descriptive statistics of the two assignment scores, including sample size, mean and standard deviations were shown in
Table 4.
Inferential statistics were carried out in SPSS v25 to explore whether there were statistically significant differences on the
dependent variables of awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes, solutions and overall scores between the two assessment scores. Results
from Shapiro-Wilk tests revealed that the dependent variables awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes, solutions were not normally
distributed (p < .001, p = .001, p < .001, p < .001, and p < .001, respectively), while the distribution of the dependent variables case 1-
overall and case 2-overall was approximately normal (p = .52). Nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted on the
variables that represented each IC component, and a dependent t-test was performed on the Case 1 and Case 2 overall scores. There was
a significant difference in the overall scores (Mdifference = 5.318, SD = 2.843), t (43) = 12.408, p < .001, and the Case 2 test (Mcase-2 =
9.52) performs better than the Case 1 test (Mcase-1 = 4.20).
The post-course assessment also revealed improvement in specific IC components. All five-component variables were statistically
significant, and the most prominent differences were in the paired scores of intercultural skills (Z = − 5.70, p < .001), awareness (Z =
− 5.40, p < .001), and attitudes (Z = − 5.25, p < .001).
Additionally, in order to understand students’ IC status with more in-depth and concrete details, student writing on both assess­
ments was reviewed, and interviewees were asked to explain their answers. Three themes emerged from qualitative analysis as
complementary explanations for the quantitative results.
Firstly, in the second assignment, students were able to avoid common stereotypes appearing in assignment 1 due to reasons that 1)
they had a clearer idea about what is expected in the test; 2) instructors provided feedback and assignment training. For example, the
first assessment results showed that students demonstrated adequate cultural knowledge in many aspects of intercultural communi­
cation, such as the knowledge about socialization or the process of interaction. It was identified that the relatively low scores in the first
assessment were largely due to the fact that only a few students mentioned relevant cultural knowledge in the responses, and many
used absolute terms or stereotypical language in describing cultural behaviors. Such issues were addressed in class, and suggestions
such as the use of hedging were illustrated by instructors. Thus, as anticipated, the scores in the second assignment increased to a large
extent.
Secondly, interview data revealed a significant impact of student familiarity with assignment scenarios on their performance.
Students with similar experiences were more resourceful in making analysis and providing solutions: “I had this (incident described in
an assignment) happen to me before, and at that time we had a foreign teacher dealt with it, I was scared then but I know some
solutions after that” (S3). By contrast, students unfamiliar with the context had difficulty offering possible solutions. For instance, one
of the interviewees mentioned that “I was never a volunteer to a foreign VIP, and I can hardly imagine what it is like, so my answer was
very limited” (S4).
Lastly, qualitative results indicated that failures in simulated encounters could be beneficial for intercultural learning, which,
however, were not reflected in gradings. Students who reflected on their own failures in the first assignments later demonstrated
improvements in either understanding the simulated situation or coming up with coping strategies, like what student #4 listed his
solutions in the interview: “I wasn’t expecting that situation, but I thought about some measure I can take, like email him (VIP) a bullet
point list, or watch videos of his language to familiarize myself with it, etc. But that was all belated efforts …”

6. Discussion

This study used both qualitative and quantitative data to analyze college students’ perceptions of CRT and its impact on their IC
development. The qualitative findings revealed that CRT as an approach of intercultural teaching helped foster a more open attitude to
discover, learn and share cultural knowledge from multiple sources; it helped engage students in a dynamic process of constructing
multiple perspectives of others and their own, and provided abundant opportunities to critically examine opinions and beliefs brought
up in discussions. Some of the roles of CRT resonate with what has been recorded in literature, such as creating a safe and inclusive
environment, especially for underrepresented students, to improve both learning and engagement (Callen & Lee, 2009; Markey et al.,
2021; Mendoza, 2019).
Quantitative findings corroborated student improvement in IC assignments. Student overall scores for the second assessment were
significantly higher than those of the first assessment, and students’ intercultural skills, attitude and awareness suggested the most
progress. Although further mixed analysis brought to light certain limitations of the pre-post format of assessment by identifying
possible confounding factors in assessment, such as the influence of training in class, student familiarity with a simulated situation, and
students’ post hoc reflections on assignment failure, such findings also portrayed a more comprehensive picture of students’ IC
development.
More importantly, the results synthesized from both qualitative and quantitative approaches have shown how CRT can be used as a
pedagogical approach to facilitating intercultural attitude and awareness, which are considered the most difficult to teach, given the
iterative and fluid nature of IC development (Dervin, 2011; Fantini, 2012).
This study demonstrated that CRT could help instructors to go beyond teaching essentialized cultural facts and norms, and utilizing
diverse Chinese cultures and small cultures in at least the following three ways: 1) it provided opportunities for learners to encounter
cultural differences and cultural frameworks different from their own. Findings in this study also suggest a broad range of Chinese
cultures, including not only well-established cultural categories, but also more nuanced categories dynamically constructed with
students’ own backgrounds, such as their prior experiences of foreign language learning in China, their understanding of foreign
national cultures represented from a Chinese perspective, were all used as cultural resources for learning. 2) compared with limited

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and unfamiliar foreign national cultures, the CRT approach offered Chinese students relatively easier but more in-depth access to
cultural learning. Starting with a familiar context made it more acceptable to reveal multiple layers of cultural plurality and the non-
linear nature of cultural complexity. 3) Students were guided to recognize, experience, and reflect on different complications in their
own intercultural learning trajectories. As shown in qualitative findings, students with different personal and cultural backgrounds
responded to intercultural learning differently. CRT promoted student engagement in conceptual or behavioral negotiations in
different cultural frameworks and dynamics, and the learning that is closely connected to their own cultural backgrounds may not only
enhance their IC, but could also have a long-lasting impact on their whole-person development.

7. Conclusion

This study has explored CRT as a pedagogical approach to intercultural teaching in oral English classes. Student voices reveal rich
layers of intercultural learning processes, particularly the co-constructive facilitation of intercultural attitudes and awareness.
Moreover, combined with quantitative results that indicated a prevalence of themes and scales of student IC improvement, the meta-
inferences provide evidence of how CRT can be useful in fostering openness, sharing multiple perspectives, and critical meaning-
making processes. While designed with structured teaching procedures and assessments that were integrated into the language cur­
riculum, this approach has offered a flexible site of intercultural communication in language classrooms for students to explore the
diversity of their own cultural resources, and to experience the possibilities and complications of interculturality.
Despite the above benefits, this study is not without limitations. Though it has triangulated student voices with instrumental
assessment, there may be additional factors influencing student intercultural development. Future research could explore the
connection between individual differences and intercultural competence by considering student subjectivities, and identities, and
taking into account real-time interactions in the classroom. Furthermore, the implementation of CRT as a teaching approach can vary
in procedures and methods, which is likely to influence the study’s findings. Therefore, caution is necessary when generalizing these
findings to other contexts. Future research could examine the effectiveness of specific procedures of CRT to gain a more nuanced
understanding of the relationship between different variants of CRT and intercultural learning outcomes.

Funding

This work was supported by the 2019 Beijing Undergraduate Innovative Teaching Reform Project and the 2021 New Liberal Arts
Education Research and Practice Project (Grant Number: 2021180005).

Author statement

Hongjing Liao: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, writing-original draft, visualization.
Liwen Li: resources, writing-review and editing, supervision.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2023.103070.

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Hongjing Liao, PhD, is Associate Professor of the School of English for Specific Purposes, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her research focuses on educational research
and evaluation, intercultural competence in English teaching and learning, and mixed methods research.

Liwen Li, PhD, is Professor of the School of English for Specific Purposes, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her research areas include intercultural communication and
language teaching.

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