The predictors of intercultural communicative competence in Turkish and Kazakh settings: Academic self-concept and L2 motivational self-system

The aim of the present study was to determine Kazakhstani and Turkish pre-service teachers' level of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), academic self-concept and L2 motivational self-system and to investigate the nature of relationship among these constructs. To do so, the study followed the paradigm of sequential exploratory mixed methods research, in which the data were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. ICC scale developed by the researcher, Academic Self-Concept Scale (Liu & Wang, 2005) and L2 Motivational Self-System Scale (Taguchi et al., 2009) were administered to pre-service ELT teachers in Kazakhstan and Turkey. Two groups of participants involved in the study: pre-service ELT teachers (N=314) from Turkey took part in the pilot study and pre-service ELT teachers from Kazakhstan (N=307) and Turkey (N=258) participated in the main study. To analyze the quantitative data descriptive statistics, correlation, regression analyses and content analysis were used. The results indicated that pre-service ELT teachers in Kazakhstani and Turkish educational contexts had high levels of ICC, academic confidence and academic effort, ideal L2 self, ought to L2 self and attitudes to learning English. Further results revealed that statistically significant differences existed between Kazakhstani and Turkish pre-service teachers in terms of their level of ICC, academic confidence and ought to L2 self-guide. Regression analyses revealed that while the best predictor of Kazakhstani pre-service ELT teachers ICC was academic confidence, Turkish pre-service ELT teachers ICC was best predicted by their ideal L2 self.