Date

Spring 2018

Document Type

Master's Thesis (Open Access)

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Teacher Education

Abstract

World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (ACTFL, 2017) articulate the development of the linguistic and intercultural communicative competence as important outcomes of world language education in secondary and post-secondary schools. The present body of literature lacks research on the topic of intercultural communicative competence of Japanese language learners in the novice level of proficiency. This study attempted to discover if the Observe State Explore Evaluate (OSEE) Tool (Deardorff, 2009) increased the intercultural communicative competence among novice level high school Japanese language learners in a quantitative nonequivalent groups, pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. Can-Do Statements for Intercultural Communication (ACTFL, 2017) were used as the pretest and posttest measurements. Study participants were 44 high school students in their second semester of second year Japanese class during the weather report unit. Twenty-one participants in the treatment group received the OSEE Tool intervention. Analyses of the independent and paired t-tests showed that the increase of mean scores between pretest and posttest was bigger and the standard deviation figures were smaller in the treatment group than the control group. However, these figures were not statistically significant. Continued investigation and documentation on this construct is needed to ensure all language learners are developing intercultural communicative competence.

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