Assessing intercultural communicative competence in virtual environments: Vietnamese EFL teachers' perceptions of assessment criteria

This study examines Vietnamese tertiary EFL teachers’ perceptions of assessment-relevant abilities and behaviours for digital intercultural communication competence (DICC) in virtual environments. Drawing on a teacher-only subsample of 197 participants from universities across Vietnam, the study used a 30-item questionnaire covering five dimensions: Intercultural communication readiness, contextual sensitivity, virtual interactional competence, reflective adaptability, and operational performance. Descriptive statistics and Cronbach’s alpha were used to analyse perceived importance, response variation, and internal consistency. Findings showed stronger endorsement of respect, openness, contextual sensitivity, polite and clear language, communicative adjustment, and culturally appropriate disagreement, while confidence, participation, explicit reflection, sensitive-topic management, and broad collaboration were relatively less salient or more variable. The results suggest that teachers conceptualise assessable virtual ICC primarily as relational, context-sensitive, adaptive, and behaviorally observable competence. The study highlights the need for contextually grounded, multimethod assessment criteria in Vietnamese tertiary EFL education and offers directions for future assessment framework development.