Cultivation of cross-cultural competence in foreign language education: a reflective pedagogical model

Abstract

The cultivation of cross-cultural competence is frequently declared as an outcome of foreign language education, yet the term often remains detached from classroom procedures and assessment. The difficulty is not a lack of cultural information. It lies in converting information into an ability to interpret unfamiliar meanings, suspend premature judgement, negotiate interaction and revise one's own position. This conceptual study develops a reflective pedagogical model for that conversion. The model is based on an integrative analysis of scholarship on intercultural communicative competence, plurilingual and pluricultural education, democratic culture, critical interculturality and virtual exchange. It treats culture as dynamic, internally diverse and shaped by context rather than as a stable list of national characteristics. Five connected learning movements are proposed: noticing, decentring, contextual interpretation, dialogic action and reflective transfer. Each movement is linked to observable learning evidence and to classroom practices such as critical incident analysis, comparative discourse work, ethnographic observation, mediation, virtual exchange and reflective writing. A three-level assessment rubric is also offered. It avoids reducing competence to a single score and instead combines performance, reflection, peer response and portfolio evidence. The study shows that cross-cultural competence develops through recurrent encounters with ambiguity, not through the accumulation of facts about other societies. Its practical contribution is a curriculum matrix that teachers can adapt to language courses in higher education. The proposed model also makes visible several limits: contact does not automatically produce learning, comparison can reinforce stereotypes, and assessment becomes ethically problematic when students are judged for holding prescribed identities or emotions.