Intercultural Awareness and Attitudes Toward Intercultural Communication Among Fourth-Year Students in Thailand:                       A Mixed-Methods Study

พัสภ์ชญา พานพิชย์ทวี; Wipada  Sutthiroj

ผู้แต่ง

Patchaya Panpistharwee Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep, Thailand.
Wipada Sutthiroj Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep, Thailand.

คำสำคัญ:

Intercultural Awareness, Intercultural Communication, Thai EFL Students, Higher Education

บทคัดย่อ

This study examined the intercultural awareness of fourth-year students at a Thai university, focusing on whether enrolment in an intercultural communication course was associated with higher levels of intercultural awareness. It also investigated the relationship between course enrolment and intercultural awareness and explored students perceived attitudes toward intercultural communication. A mixed-methods research design was employed with 150 fourth-year students enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts program at Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep. The sample comprised 75 students who had completed an intercultural communication course and 75 who had not. Quantitative data were collected using a 15-item questionnaire developed based on Deardorff’s Process Model of Intercultural Competence and Byram’s Model of Intercultural Communicative Competence. The instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .96). Qualitative data were obtained through seven-question semi-structured interviews with 20 selected participants and analysed using thematic analysis. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, an independent-samples t-test, and Pearson’s correlation.
The findings indicated that students who had enrolled in the course demonstrated significantly higher intercultural awareness (M = 4.39, SD = 0.55) than those who had not (M = 3.84, SD = 0.66), t (148) = 5.54, p < .001, with a large effect size (d = 0.90). Course enrolment was also positively associated with intercultural awareness, r (148) = .41, p < .001. Interview findings showed that students generally perceived intercultural communication as important for their future employment, although they reported limited opportunities for authentic intercultural interaction and anxiety related to language use. The findings highlight the potential of structured intercultural communication instruction to enhance students’ intercultural awareness and underscore the importance of experiential learning opportunities in developing practical intercultural communicative competence.

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