Multicultural Competency

On the basis of an extensive survey study conducted among business professionals engaging in global communication, this paper discusses communicative competence. Rapid changes in work environments, particularly advancing globalization and new technology, have highlighted the need for expanding our knowledge of the elements that constitute communicative competence in global encounters. Competence has been investigated by several researchers; however, the language perspective, particularly the language used for international communication, that is, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), has largely been ignored. Our findings indicate that global communicative competence (GCC) consists of three layers: multicultural competence, competence in English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF) and the communicator's business know-how. Based on our findings, we present a model for GCC, which includes language as a key component. Implications for theory, practice, and education include the need for a multidisciplinary approach and the acknowledgement of ELF/BELF as the language of global interaction. ELF IBELF assumes a shared "core" of the English language, but focuses on interactional skills, rapport building, and the ability to ask for and provide clarifications.

The work presents a model of multicultural academic competence of teachers and comparative analyses of its level among representatives of different countries. Emphasizing this new kind of a teacher competence is dictated by changing  demands to the modern teacher professionalism. Teachers must not only live in a multicultural environment and deal with multicultural classroom, but work in international teams in frames of educational projects, establish long-term relations with foreign partners, demonstrate ethics and culture of multicultural communication, solve professional tasks in a multicultural society. The model of the competence is characterized by inclusion in the professional field of teaching the aspect of international cooperation which effectiveness is determined by a number of professional qualities. The competence has a five component structure including knowledge, attitudes, skills, behavior and personal qualities that are described in details. The second part of the work presents
results of a comparative analysis of the multicultural academic competence level among teachers representing different countries. The emphasis is made on the analysis of differences and similarities in every competence component among Turkish and Belarusian teachers. The survey was made with a help of specially designed questionnaire that corresponds to the structure of the competence.