Developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) based curriculum for tourism guidance departments

Intercultural communicative competence refers to the ability to interact with people from different cultures using a common language, in this case English. Culture has been incorporated in EFL courses to develop intercultural competence among L2 speakers of English. However, in ESP courses the integration of intercultural communicative competence is neglected due to various reasons. Among these reasons, the lack of a course curriculum specifically developed for the related profession, instructors' lack of knowledge and skills in subject area or language teaching pedagogy and lack of instructional materials that incorporate ICC could be listed. On the other hand, professions such as tourist guiding requires ICC more than other fields because tourist guides are constantly are subject to intercultural encounters. But, it is one of the fields where ICC is not emphasized sufficiently. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop an ICC-based ESP course curriculum for tourist guiding bachelor's degree program students at Sinop University in Türkiye. To achieve this goal, a mixed-method approach was adopted as a research approach. Data were collected through ICC questionnaire, semi structured interviews with students and instructors, and a document analysis during the needs assessment stage. The findings obtained from piloting phase yielded the conclusion that the suggested course curriculum is appropriate for the target learners and it can benefit the development of ICC in ESP courses.