The Role of “Instruction” in the Development of Intercultural Communication among Iranian Language Teachers

This paper explored the effect of instruction on the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) level of Iranian language teachers in four dimensions: skills, attitude, knowledge, and awareness. One hundred language teachers were chosen through convenience sampling and divided into two groups of experienced and novice teachers based on their teaching experience. All participants were chosen from state schools in Golestan province and they all taught English at English institutes and high schools. Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and ICC questionnaire were used to find the language proficiency level and ICC level of language teachers respectively. ICC questionnaire was carried out before and after instruction to determine the effect of instruction on ICC. The instruction lasted for 20 hours across ten sessions. The results of the study disclosed that the teachers' level of language proficiency was upper-intermediate. Also, it was revealed that instruction was effective as the ICC level of the teachers was below average before instruction and was improved after instruction.  Therefore, the results of this study showed that instruction had an eye-catching effect on improving four dimensions of intercultural communicative competence of language teachers.