Intercultural competence of first year students of English at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University: a report of research

Abstract

The article presents the initial stage of research conducted at the Department of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University in Brno. The aim of the research is to examine the departmental students’ intercultural competence (IC) at the beginning of their studies (autumn 2011), compare it with their level of IC at the end of their studies (autumn 2016) and investigate the influences that played a role in their IC development. In this paper, only the initial stage of the research is presented, i.e. examining the students’ IC at the beginning of the studies. The Intercultural Development Inventory®, version 3, was used for the purposes of the research. Since this instrument is not currently being used for academic or corporate purposes in the Czech (or Slovak) Republic, a secondary aim of the article is to introduce it to the wider academic community. The results indicate that students tend to overestimate their level of IC, and find themselves in ethnocentric stages of intercultural development at the beginning of their university studies.