Rationale for a Task-based Approach to Intercultural Communicative Competence in Japanese Higher Education

Abstract

  An important challenge for language educators in Japan is the difficulty of getting students to actually produce the language they are learning for purposes of authentic communication. This paper advocates an approach that is rigorous, long-term, cross-cultural, and, most definitely, qualitative in nature. A new intercultural framework of teaching methodologies and student learning for constructing instructional environments conducive to developing intercultural communicative competence （ICC） is the focus of a task-based learning approach through collaboration.