Intercultural Communication Competence: A Comprehensive Review of Oxford English for Undergraduates

Abstract: This study aims to evaluate the prescribed textbook, Oxford English for Undergraduates (OEfUs), developed for teaching English at the undergraduate level at a public sector university. Developing students’ Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) is widely significant for ESL/EFL learners when they move abroad for study or immigration purposes. For content analysis of the OEfUs, the study used various dimensions of the three frameworks namely Cortazzi & Jin’s (1999) cultural contents; Ting-Toomey & Chung’s (2005) cultural levels; and Byram’s (1997) ICC model. Eventually, referring to the first framework, the results reveal an imbalance between the source culture, the target culture and the international culture while referring to the second framework, the dominance of surface-level culture over the intermediate-level and deep-level cultures is evident by expressing physical and artistic work. Additionally, referring to the third framework, textbook analysis exhibits that the book requires to address more substantially five elements of intercultural competence intercultural attitudes, knowledge, skills of relating/interpreting, skills of interacting/discovery, and critical knowledge. Finally, the study deduces that OEfUs are required to address ICC; so that, the graduate level students may develop their cross-cultural competence. Keywords: Intercultural, Communication, Content, Byram, Cultural.