INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

There is a close two-way relationship between language and culture and this symbiotic relationship shows that culture has an indispensable place in language teaching. In addition, in our world, which is described as a global village with great developments in information, communication and transportation technologies, it has become a normal situation for individuals with different cultural backgrounds to come together and communicate for different reasons, and this reality has turned intercultural communication into a skill that needs to be acquired. This study aims to examine the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and cultural components (CC) perspectives of preservice teachers of English language studying in the first year and fourth year in a Turkish university setting during the 2014-2015 academic year spring term and looking for any difference between the test scores and variables of grade, gender, and GPA (Grade Point Average). The required data were collected from 85 participants with the ICC Questionnaire (Mirzaei & Forouzandeh, 2013) and the Inventory of CC (Razı, 2012). The results indicated that participants performed high scores in the ICC questionnaire and CC inventory. Moreover, the t-test results indicated that there was a significant difference between different genders and GPA groups and no significant difference between participants in the first year and fourth year of the university. According to the correlation results, high and moderate positive correlations were found between ICC, its components, and CC scores of pre-service teachers of the English language. It can be concluded that the participants had high levels of ICC and CC as well as ICC and CC scores differed regarding the gender and GPA variables, and ICC levels and CC levels had a positive correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]