The relationship between intercultural sensitivity and English language achievement

In a globalizing world, it is inevitable to encounter different cultural characteristics and interact with people from a different cultural background. Today, culture is believed to be one of the fundamentals of language learning and teaching. The Council of Europe aimed to illustrate the concept of culture in the context of Europe and tries to promote cultural differences and intercultural communication between people from a different cultural background. In the light of these attempts like encouraging intercultural communication, adapting to and benefiting from these diversities is for the improvement of the ongoing education system. The present descriptive study aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between intercultural sensitivity and English language achievement of learners of English as foreign language in Turkey. For the purpose of the study, quantitative research methodology was used. The number of the female participants was 120, and male participants were 205. A total of 325 participants who were attending preparatory school at a state university selected by using cluster random sampling. The "Intercultural Sensitivity Scale" developed by Chen and Starosta (2000) was used to obtain the quantitative data. The obtained data was analyzed by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study indicated that there is a weak positive correlation between intercultural sensitivity and English language achievement of learners of English as foreign language in Turkey. However, there was a significant difference between the intercultural sensitivity scores of the participants regarding the English language proficiency levels. The results showed that the higher the English proficiency level, the greater the intercultural sensitivity scores are. Additionally, findings indicated that there was not a significant difference between intercultural sensitivity scores of the female and male participants. According to the results, the intercultural sensitivity scores of female and male participants are close to each other. Keywords: Intercultural sensitivity, English language proficiency, intercultural competence