LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND… BUT SO DO SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND… BUT SO DO SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Summary/Abstract: The world we are living in—a world in which migration and technological advancements have become commonplace—is so interdependent and complex from the cultural point of view that all these changes have somehow marked our attitudes towards diversity and, consequently, the way in which we interact with one another and with people from other cultures. That is why, intercultural communicative competence has become a necessity for today’s global citizens. Building on the three models of intercultural competence (Bennett’s 1993; Byram’s 1997; Deardorff’s 2006), and by taking into consideration the opinions expressed by the students enrolled at Faculty of European Studies within Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), on the one hand, and the opinions of the foreign language teachers working in the aforementioned institution, on the other hand, this article analyses the undeniable connection between second language proficiency and intercultural communicative competence, as well as the necessity of ‘an intercultural mindset’ (Bennett et al. 2003) for today’s students, as well as the importance of the two elements for the global workforce.

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