The Concept of Competence in Foreign Language Teaching for Intercultural Communication

Abstract

That the globalization occurs in all fields of life is an undeniable fact on the one hand and necessity of foreign language teaching and learning according to the requirements of globalization and intercultural communication is another reality on the other... The demands and expectations from language teachers, enabling the language learners to be successful interlocutors in the intercultural spaces have long been the issue of investigation and discussion in the field of foreign language teaching and learning. We think the term ‘competence’ has the key role for this issue and it needs to be dug and discussed as deep as possible to be figured out in detail. Once the content, concept and boundaries of the term ‘competence’ is defined and described neatly in the field of foreign language education we believe that the path to be followed by both language educators and learners would be more definite. In this paper it is aimed to discuss and figure out the term ‘competence’ in terms of foreign language teaching for intercultural interaction and communication. The very general purpose of foreign language teaching/learning, the role of competence in cognition of foreign language and the use of it in intercultural spaces have also been tackled throughout the paper.