Thesis Type: Doctorate
Institution Of The Thesis: Gazi University, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Turkey
Approval Date: 2014
Thesis Language: English
Student: Şerife Demircioğlu
Supervisor: Cemal Çakır
Abstract:This study investigates intercultural competence of IBDP students from Turkey, Spain, Mexico, the UK, non-IBDP students in a private and a state high school in Turkey. The study also investigates the speech act performance of IBDP and non-IBDP students in refusals in twelve different situations (three invitations, three offers, three requests, three suggestions) of higher, equal and lower status. Additionally, it explores the opinions and attitudes of IBDP English language teachers from Turkey, the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Spain on intercultural language teaching. The study group of the research included 113 IBDP students from Turkey (32), Mexico (23), the UK (28) and Spain (30) and 75 non-IBDP students (40 private high school students, 35 state high school students). Additionally, 16 teachers from Turkey, 15 teachers from the USA, 11 teachers from the UK, 10 teachers from New Zealand and 8 teachers from Spain, in total 60 English language teachers participated in the study. An online research survey for students and teachers was prepared separately. While the quantitative data were gathered from Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS), the qualitative data were gathered from the results of a demographic part and discourse completion test for refusals in the research survey for students. Since there were seven open-ended questions in the research survey for teachers, textual analysis was used. The SPSS statistics software package was used for the statistical analysis of the data. One-way analysis of variance and an independent-samples t-test were used for the analysis. The results reveal that whereas there is not a statistically significant difference in ISS scores of IBDP students from Turkey, Spain, the UK and Mexico, there is a vi significant difference in ISS scores between IBDP students and non-IBDP students in a private school as well as between IBDP students and non-IBDP in a state school in Turkey. While the ISS scores of IBDP students from four different countries showed difference in only gender in favour of female students, the ISS scores of non-IBDP students from Turkey showed difference in grade in favour of 11th grade. The correlation between ISS scores of IBDP students and number of friends from different countries, the number of participating in cultural events of other countries abroad and the number of participating in international academic events home is found to be significantly correlated. The correlation between ISS scores of non-IBDP students and number of friends from different countries, and the number of participating in cultural events of other countries abroad and home country and international academic events abroad is significant. As for the refusals, the results showed that generally the most frequently used strategy by all IBDP students from the UK, Mexico, Spain and Turkey and non-IBDP students show similarity. The indirect strategy, excuse, explanation, and reason is the most frequently used strategy in three status in twelve situations. The second and third frequently used strategies change in terms of statuses in the given situation, the country the students live in and being an IBDP student or not. The IBDP English language teachers from Turkey, the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Spain found intercultural language teaching very important in the globalization world and they thought that ICC ought to be given a good deal of emphasis in foreign language teaching.