The Impact of Cultural & Intercultural Competence Awareness Programs on ESL Scholarship Candidates Abroad

Nowadays, many students are granted a scholarship to study abroad. However, meeting the required score in IELTS or TOEFL is a must in order to be accepted in most universities abroad. A considerable number of students (if not the majority) have to take the ESL program in the target country in order to be fully accepted for their major. Due to a lack of intercultural competence, many of those students find difficulties in living in a different country, and interacting with others. Therefore, the paste of their language learning tends to be slow, or interrupted. In addition to the linguistic barriers, social, cultural, and religious barriers may also impede the process of ESL acquisition and learning. This paper will emphasize the impact of cultural and intercultural competence awareness programs that must be provided to those learners in their own country before they embark on their studies abroad. This research will also shed light on how intercultural competence as well as the concept of identity can be used as a vehicle towards a better understanding and accepting the other, thereby assisting in the internationalization of some cultural concepts. It will also draw the teachers’ attention on how to improve their students’ overall output in the target language and focus more on the importance of cross-cultural competence in the area of EFL/ESL learning. This is essential, given the nature of language learning in and of itself, which chief aim is to build up the learner’s awareness of self-identity, and communicate with other cultures in a more effective way.