Intercultural Competence To Maintain The Nation’s Identity
Diah Vitri Widayanti, Fathur Rokhman, Ida Zulaeha, Sri Rejeki Urip

Foreign Language Department,Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia

Abstract

The globalization era and development of technology make the foreign languages as a need to access the information and to communicate across the nation. Learning a foreign language contains not only linguistics elements but also cultural elements. Introduce and teach a new culture that contains different perception, values and way of life from the culture of learner may cause the problems. Therefore, learning a foreign language should understand foreign cultures. The problem is not all foreign language learners understand it. Learn new culture could cause misunderstanding or even vitiate the local or national culture. That’s why the intercultural competence is important for the learner to have tolerance to a foreign culture and enhance their own culture. This study aims to investigate the elements of intercultural competence and strategy to develop intercultural competence for learners of foreign languages, especially French. Field studies method employed in this paper. Samples were observed in this study were 30 students of the French Language Study Program in Universitas Negeri Semarang. Data was collected by class observations, focus group discussion and interview. The result of this study reveals that intercultural competence consists of perceptions elements, verbal and non-verbal elements. Perceptions elements involve cognitive competence and competence emotive. Thus the strategies are developed by considering the language competence including verbal and non-verbal elements and psychological maturity of the learner.

Keywords: Intercultural Competence, Element, Nation’s Identity, Strategy.

Topic: Pluralist Society: Freedom and Tolerance