Developing critical intercultural awareness through video clip-assisted intercultural tasks

ABSTRACT

This paper reports quantitative findings of a project investigating the in-progress formation of EFL students’ critical intercultural awareness (CIA) in the Indonesian tertiary context. It examines a 10-week pedagogical intervention using culturally appropriate YouTube clips with intercultural tasks. A one-group pre-test/post-test design was employed involving a cohort of 50 undergraduate participants of mixed gender in five faculties and from varying ethnic groups. An intercultural awareness questionnaire was administered twice before and after the learning intervention. A paired-sample t-test was performed with SPSS 28 to examine the mean differences. The results revealed a significant improvement (Sig. 2-tailed value .001, p < .05) in participants’ CIA scores. This suggests that video clip-assisted intercultural tasks promote the development of abilities to identify, interpret, and critically evaluate the intercultural values embedded in the clips. The study further showed that gender, fields of study and ethnicity did not significantly contribute to the CIA development.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical intercultural awareness
• intercultural learning
• YouTube clips
• pedagogical tasks

Introduction

In today’s multicultural and multilingual educational context, it is paramount to equip students with critical intercultural awareness (henceforth CIA). CIA is a set of abilities, including ‘critical understanding, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of sociocultural realities’ that facilitates effective communication between people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Kusumaningputri & Widodo, 2017, p. 49). Tran and Duong (2018) assert that CIA helps students become aware of their own and other cultures and respect cultural differences. As the central element of intercultural communication competence (henceforth ICC), CIA can assist students in building mutual understanding, encourage exploration of different perspectives and maintain interaction with other language users (Byram, 2021). Having adequate CIA can foster a willingness to communicate with people from different backgrounds and facilitate effective communication among English language users in various sociocultural contexts (Susilo, Yang, & Qi, 2019). Therefore, promoting students’ CIA becomes one of the crucial goals in most language education programmes, including English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms (Kiss & Weninger, 2017).

Incorporating ICC in EFL classrooms is demanding as the process requires time and effort (Hauerwas, Skawinski, & Ryan, 2017). Many teachers encounter several major challenges in explicitly teaching ICC in the classroom (Vo, 2017); these include the complexity of cultural factors, unavailability of appropriate resources, little opportunity to experience international interactions and little support from institutions or policymakers to address ICC. A further challenge is integrating cultural aspects into syllabi and classroom practices, as teachers are burdened with limited time and an already loaded curriculum (Gandana, 2015; Wahyudi, 2018). These issues might explain why ICC elements, such as intercultural knowledge, attitude, and skills, have not been well incorporated in EFL classrooms; these also suggest why most Indonesian EFL students have low intercultural competence (Wahyudi, 2018).

Several studies have proposed classroom strategies for promoting ICC. EFL teachers can enhance students’ ICC in the classrooms by incorporating intercultural elements into the curriculum, shifting from traditional to intercultural language teaching, and using cultural-related textbooks or artefacts (Liton, 2016). Various strategies or media can be utilised to facilitate intercultural learning, such as digital storytelling (Belda-Medina, 2022; Memet, Buket Turhan, & Nihan Arslan, 2020), visual texts (Kiss & Weninger, 2017), telecollaboration (Dugartsyrenova & Sardegna, 2019; Üzüm, Akayoglu, & Yazan, 2020) and social media platforms (Fornara, 2018; Tyas, Sunarto, Naibaho, Nadeak, & Sormin, 2021).

However, there has been little research on the use of pedagogical tasks to develop students’ CIA in Indonesia. Kusumaningputri and Widodo’s study (2017) may be the only reliable classroom-based research that develops university students’ CIA through self-selected digital photographs and intercultural tasks. While their study sheds light on how pedagogical tasks could help students improve CIA, it relied on qualitative data to see how their views of otherness changed. Furthermore, variables that might affect the CIA development, such as gender, academic major, and ethnicity, were not investigated. Previous research findings were not unanimous regarding the influence of these variables on students’ CIA development. Some studies claimed that these variables significantly impacted the development of students’ intercultural competence (Solhaug & Kristensen, 2020; Tambunan, Lubis, Andayani, & Sari, 2021), while others found the opposite (Czura, 2016; Zhao, 2018). Consequently, the roles of gender, academic major, and ethnicity in the development of students’ CIA remain unclear.

This study extends the existing scholarship by investigating the use of video clip-assisted intercultural tasks in developing students’ CIA in the Indonesian tertiary context. It examines whether implementing intercultural awareness-based learning via YouTube videos and pedagogical tasks can significantly improve EFL students’ CIA. It also looks at the mean differences between student groups in terms of gender, academic major, and ethnicity.

Critical intercultural awareness

The terms ‘cultural awareness’ and ‘intercultural awareness’ have been used interchangeably in some studies though the two concepts differ. Baker (2015) emphasises that cultural awareness refers to a cross-cultural perspective and recognition of two cultures (own culture and the target culture); intercultural awareness extends this concept to intercultural and translingual frameworks. He further asserts that intercultural awareness is a conscious understanding of culturally based forms, practices, and frames of reference and the capacity to make use of these concepts in intercultural communication in flexible and appropriate manners. In Byram’s (1997) influential work, critical cultural awareness is the core element of intercultural communicative competence and encompasses the knowledge, skills, and attitude necessary to engage in intercultural encounters.

Intercultural awareness has two distinct aspects: conceptual and practice-oriented perspectives. The former focuses on acquiring knowledge and attitudes of different cultures, whereas the latter emphasises understanding and acquiring intercultural communication skills and behavioural aspects. Students constantly develop their intercultural awareness through lived experiences or exposure to explicit intercultural training (Baker, 2015). For instance, they may start by understanding culture as a set of shared behaviours, beliefs, and values, then progress to see culture as relative, constantly changing norms, and develop the capacity to negotiate and mediate sophisticated intercultural exchanges.

This study, drawing from Byram’s ICC model (1997), conceptualises the CIA as the ability to critically evaluate sociocultural realities based on explicit criteria, perspectives, practices, and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries. Specifically, the CIA entails:

1. identifying and interpreting explicit or implicit sociocultural values depicted in learning materials (YouTube clips) in one’s own and other cultures in a non-judgemental way;

2. critically analysing the events or documents based on explicit perspectives and criteria based on the given context of culture and situation; and

3. interacting and mediating in intercultural exchanges.

Intercultural communicative language teaching

At the outset, ICC was introduced to complement the concept of communicative language teaching (CLT). CLT aims to help students achieve grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence. As English is internationally used and its users vary in linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds, intercultural competence was recognised as pivotal in facilitating multilingual interactions and communications. Hence, intercultural communicative language teaching (ICLT) emerges when intercultural elements are incorporated into CLT.

Currently, ICLT is widely implemented in ELT classrooms, including in EFL contexts (Ramirez, 2018; Tran & Duong, 2018). Grounded in Byram’s comprehensive model of ICC (1997), ICLT embraces four components: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and intercultural competence. The linguistic aspect deals with the acquisition of linguistic codes covering grammatical rules, vocabulary, phonology, and graphology; the sociolinguistic dimension relates to the mastery of sociocultural codes, including appropriate use of linguistic codes, register, politeness, and style in a given situation; the discourse aspect concerns the ability to select, sequence, and arrange language structures into different types of cohesive and coherent expressions or written texts (Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, & Thurrell, 1995).

Attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical intercultural awareness are fundamental intercultural components (Byram, 2021). Intercultural attitudes deal with curiosity, willingness, openness, respect, and readiness to suspend disbelief about one’s own and other cultures. Practically, intercultural knowledge refers to the set of understandings about social groups, cultural beliefs, practices, products, interactional features, and the ability to communicate them. Communication covers two aspects. First, it deals with the ability to make sense of various cultural perspectives and connect over both similarities and differences. Second, it relates to acquiring new cultural knowledge/perspectives, practices, or products and using them in authentic interactions. Critical cultural awareness thereby demonstrates the capacity to critically evaluate cultural perspectives, practices, and products through the lens of one’s own and other cultures.

Methods

The study adopted a one-group pre-test/post-test design to examine whether there was any significant improvement in the participants’ levels of CIA after participating in an intercultural learning programme that incorporated YouTube clips and intercultural tasks. This design is widely employed, especially in educational research contexts where ‘random selection or random assignment of classes is quite impracticable’ (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2018, p. 406). Despite criticisms of offering little or no control over extraneous variables (Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen, & Walker, 2019), the pre-test/post-test design was deemed more appropriate than comparing learning achievements between different experimental groups. It allowed the researchers to examine any improvement in participants’ CIA before and after the intervention. A group of 50 undergraduate university students completed a pre-test questionnaire. They completed the questionnaire using Google Forms in an average of 25 minutes. They then participated in a 10-week intercultural learning intervention and were asked to complete the same post-test questionnaire.

The following research questions guided this study:

1. Does incorporating video clip-assisted intercultural tasks in the EFL tertiary classroom enhance students’ CIA?

2. Are there significant differences in the mean scores between different groups in terms of gender, academic major, and ethnicity?

The hypotheses being tested were:

• There is no significant difference between students’ CIA in the pre-test and post-test results.

• There is no significant difference in students’ CIA in terms of gender, academic major, and ethnicity.

Setting and participants

This research was conducted at a private university’s Language Centre in East Java, Indonesia. It was chosen for practical reasons. The university offers a Public Speaking module to its undergraduate students to equip them with basic and functional English communication skills in various contexts.

This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at Western Sydney University, Australia (Approval no H12882). It was conducted overtly with participants’ explicit, written consent. The participants were carefully selected in accordance with the ethical guidelines. Their participation was entirely voluntary, and they had the right to withdraw at any stage of the research process without any consequence. The information regarding the recruitment process was disseminated via flyers on campus. They were also informed of their responsibilities and rights and the study’s overall objectives.

The target population were students enrolled in the Public Speaking module that commenced in the 2018/2019 academic year (November 2018–January 2019). Using a convenience sample technique, the study approached those who expressed interest in participating in this research project. It involved a group of 50 students (37 females and 13 males) mixed in gender, age, faculty, and ethnicity. Their age range was between 17 and 22 years old, with the average age being 19. Participants were from five faculties: Economics, Education, Engineering, Health and Social and Political Science. In addition, this study categorised the participants into two groups: the major ethnic group (Javanese with 84%) and the minor ethnic group (all other ethnicities – Batak, Buton, Dayak, Chinese-Javanese, Komering, Malay, Muna and Sundanese, with 16%). Due to the small sample size, all minor ethnicities were combined into a single group. This decision enabled the researchers to perform quantitative analysis (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2018).

Based on the questionnaire responses, just under 50% of the participants frequently interacted with local people from different sociocultural backgrounds. Most had rarely travelled to other regions in Indonesia (60%), and none had travelled overseas. Some participants (40%) had communicated with people from other countries, while one-third of the participants indicated they had never communicated with people outside Indonesia. All participants were interested in learning about both local and foreign cultures.

Intervention materials and procedures

The themes and objectives of intercultural learning were integrated into the Public Speaking module. The main goal of the module was to improve students’ ability to communicate in public spaces. Students were required to attend 16 meetings/tutorials, and the duration of each meeting was 90 minutes per week. For this study, the module outcome was expanded to promote CIA among students, enabling them to communicate effectively with diverse cultural audiences.

Before implementing the ten-week intercultural learning programme, ten culturally appropriate YouTube clips were selected as the intervention materials. The selection process adhered to three criteria. The first criterion considered participant profiles, ensuring compatibility with students’ socio-demographic characteristics. The second criterion addressed potential offensiveness, eliminating or altering clips that contained inappropriate or offensive content. The third criterion assessed the suitability of the video’s structure for pedagogical purposes, considering context, length, visual cues, and the representation of cultural realities. The chosen clips varied in length and content to align with learning objectives and student needs.

In this study, YouTube clips served as realia – authentic materials or objects used in teaching to provide students with a direct experience of real-life situations. These materials helped students learn about diverse cultures, sociocultural issues, and various English dialects spoken worldwide, thereby enhancing their CIA (Zhang, 2020; Zhang & Zhou, 2019). The topics covered various sociocultural realities and issues, as detailed in Table 1.

Table 1. Themes/Values embedded in the YouTube clips.¹

Video Title	Themes/Values
1. The importance of intercultural awareness.	Intercultural awareness; intercultural communication skills; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg_YIqqprB4
2. Too quick to judge.	Openness; curiosity; non-judgmental evaluation; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzn_AKN67oI
3. An idiot abroad–India.	Cultural festivals, practices, and products; Ethnocentrism; stereotyping; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9eItPOLH5Q
4. Mr Bean–Middle finger scene.	Non-verbal communication across different cultures; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JwBaLrgzUY
5. An Idiot Abroad–Karl teaches in an African school about risks.	Risks in diverse cultures; self-awareness; worldview frameworks; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaVc5pExmPQ
6. Latifa Abu Chakra defends hijab and other powerful speeches in the UK.	Religious beliefs and practices; persuasive speech; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqiKzzD3vlQ&t=60s
7. Building a museum of museums on the web.	Cultural changes; informative speech; effective visual aids; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1JIqxXmZhU
8. Flying into America–Trevor Noah	Racism; Public speaking on other occasions; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxoktuehP3c&list=RD27q_WaYwxX4&start_radio=1
9. Cross-cultural communication.	Communication across different cultural contexts; speech structure; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyofREc5Jk
10. How to start an empathy revolution.	Empathy; effective speech delivery; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT5X6NIJR88

The researchers and teachers held three meetings to prepare for the research and provide training to the teachers, ensuring the proper implementation of the intervention using the selected clips. The first meeting was used to introduce the intervention in detail and establish the research schedule. During the second meeting, we discussed the intercultural topics and themes embedded in the ten selected YouTube clips. This initiative aimed to build a similar understanding between the teachers and the researchers. At the third meeting, a simulation of intercultural awareness-based teaching was conducted to equip the teachers with the skills necessary for facilitating the learning intervention. To ensure alignment between their teaching and the intervention, regular fortnightly lesson observations and discussions were conducted with the four teachers as part of the internal checks.

The fifty selected students were divided into two heterogeneous classes, each with 25 students of varying gender, faculty, and ethnicity. Both groups received the same pedagogical intervention using YouTube clips and intercultural learning tasks. The four teachers conducted the ten-week intercultural learning programme using a two-teacher team-teaching format.

The pedagogical intervention in the form of video clip-assisted intercultural tasks involved four main activities: authentic input, noticing, reflection, and verbal output (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013) (see Table 2). Firstly, the teachers started with authentic input. They heterogeneously grouped students (four or five per group), asked them topic-related questions, and guided them in identifying intercultural issues. To promote authentic input, the groups were asked to watch the clip(s) while taking notes on any important sociocultural realities depicted in it. The teachers would pause and replay video clips to facilitate students’ learning needs. These efforts ensured that students understood the cultural information and values in the clips and progressed beyond their current level of comprehension, as suggested by Krashen’s input hypothesis (1985).

Table 2. Teacher and student activities.

Phase	Teacher activities	Student activities
Authentic input	1. Asking questions to activate students’ prior knowledge about the sociocultural issues being discussed. 2. Asking students to watch video-clip(s) and take notes on important information.	1. Responding to the teacher’s questions. 2. Observing the clips and making notes.
Noticing	3. Assigning students to study their notes and identify unique cultural elements and sociocultural similarities and differences.	3. Identifying and interpreting sociocultural values represented in the clips.
Reflection	4. Engaging students in a group discussion to share what they have noticed. 5. Asking students to negotiate and exchange perspectives. 6. Asking the group to reflect on what they have discussed.	4. Discussing collaboratively the sociocultural issues depicted in the clips. 5. Comparing and contrasting ideas. 6. Critically analysing sociocultural issues from various viewpoints and sum up the discussion.
Verbal output	7. Scaffolding the in-class discussion by inviting groups to present the results of the discussion.	7. Presenting the results of the discussion with other groups.

In the noticing phase, and within their peer groups, students were asked to review their notes, detect the perceived unique cultural elements, and identify sociocultural similarities and differences. According to Schmidt’s noticing theory (2001), this noticing activity enabled students to attend to previously overlooked input aspects. This process also assisted students in identifying and observing gaps between their own and other students’ perspectives, thereby enhancing their discovery abilities (Byram, 2021).

In the reflecting phase, the teachers scaffolded student groups by (a) reflecting on what they had noticed in the video clips in association with their notes, (b) engaging in the negotiation process and perspective, (c) comparing cultural similarities and (d) contrasting cultural differences. Additionally, each group was asked to critically analyse what was/not taken for granted to better understand their own and others’ cultural behaviours. As described in Long’s interaction hypothesis (1996), these student-centred activities, along with the teacher’s scaffolding, made intercultural learning more productive and meaningful.

Lastly, the teachers came to the verbal output phase and facilitated an in-class discussion by inviting groups to present the results of their group discussion to the whole class. Students were given numerous opportunities to exchange perspectives and negotiate sociocultural issues with other groups, allowing them to understand these issues deeply (Buchanan et al., 2018). As described in Swain’s output hypothesis (2000), this activity encouraged them to produce more verbal output.

Data collection and analysis

This study used a questionnaire pre-test and post-test to measure students’ awareness of sociocultural realities represented in the YouTube clips. The questionnaire was composed in Indonesia, consisting of two sections. Section 1 contained 45 closed questions, and Section 2 contained 14 items that elicited participants’ demographic information. In section 1, the participants were asked to choose one response on a five-point Likert scale to indicate the level of agreement towards the statements: 1) strongly disagree, 2) disagree, 3) neither agree nor disagree, 4) agree, and 5) strongly agree. It is common practice to use the five-point Likert scale to generate high-quality data (Revilla, Saris, Krosnick, & Alwin, 2014). The first ten items of section 1 investigated students’ attitudes towards learning English and beliefs about the relations between culture and EFL learning. The remaining 30 questions consecutively explored three overarching indicators of CIA: a) identifying and interpreting sociocultural realities, b) making use of critical analysis and evaluation, and c) interacting in intercultural communication.

The data collected from the questionnaire (pre and post) were analysed quantitatively using SPSS 28. A paired t-test was conducted to measure the development of students’ CIA over the 10-week intervention sessions. The statistical calculation became the basis to answer the research questions on whether participating in the video clip-assisted intercultural tasks helped to develop Indonesian EFL tertiary students’ CIA. Furthermore, one-way ANOVA was used to examine the mean differences in students’ CIA levels in terms of gender, academic major, and ethnic groups.

Piloting the questionnaire

At the outset, we developed a closed-ended questionnaire with fifty questions to assess students’ CIA. Three academics were then consulted to assess the relevance and integrity of the questionnaire. One academic with expertise in Indonesian focused on language use, and the other two with expertise in intercultural communication reviewed the content. The questionnaire was refined based on their feedback and comments. We then trialled it with a group of students at the same university (n = 58) to examine its validity and reliability.

Pearson product-moment correlation was used to measure the validity of test items. The result revealed 45 items dictated valid (r_count >0.218), with the validity criteria of High (10 items), Fair (29 items), and Low (6 items) (Sugiyono, 2013). The invalid items (n = 5) were removed from the questionnaire; thus, the final questionnaire consisted of 45 questions. In addition, Cronbach’s Alpha was used to test the reliability. The result showed that the value of Cronbach’s Alpha was .910, confirming a high level of reliability (Field, 2018).

Results

Pre-test and post-test: a significant effect

The results revealed that the mean scores (M) of the pre-test and post-test were respectively 123.88 and 144.68, with the standard deviations (SD) of 16.362 and 9.011 (see Table 3). The higher mean score of the post-test indicates that participants’ CIA levels had increased. The detailed pre-test and post-test results based on the three observed indicators are available in the Appendix. The pre-test results showed a skewness of −.466 (SE = .337) and a kurtosis of −.433 (SE = .662). Likewise, the post-test result indicated a skewness of −.314 (SE = .337) and a kurtosis of −.312 (SE = .662). Given these data, and looking at the visual histograms, normal Q-Q plots, and box plots, it could be assumed that the data had an approximately normal distribution for both pre-test and post-test (Doane & Seward, 2017).

Table 3. Results of pre-test and post-test.

Pre-test/Post-test		Statistic	Std. Error
Pre-test	Mean	123.88	2.314
	Median	128.53
	Std. Deviation	16.362
	Skewness	−.466	.337
	Kurtosis	−.433	.662
Post-test	Mean	144.68	1.274
	Median	145.00
	Std. Deviation	9.011
	Skewness	−.314	.337
	Kurtosis	−.312	.662

The initial step of data analysis was to undertake tests of normality and homogeneity to ensure that the two data sets had a normal distribution and were homogenous. Using Shapiro-Wilk, we found that the significant values of the pre-test and post-test scores were respectively .104 and .523. The results indicated that the data were normally distributed as the gained values were higher than .05. The homogeneity test revealed that the significant value based on the mean was .052, indicating that these two data sets are homogeneous.

The dependent sample t-test was then used to examine whether there was a significant difference in students’ CIA scores before and after the intervention.

Table 4 provides the statistical calculation of the paired sample t-test. It revealed that the significance value (2-tailed) was .001 lower than .05. This meant that the hypothesis of this study, “There is no difference between the students’ CIA tests in the pre-test and post-test” was rejected. It was confirmed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, Cohen’s d was estimated at 1.57, indicating a large effect (Cohen, 1992).

Table 4. Results of paired sample t-test.

Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean	95% Confidence Interval of the Difference		t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)	Cohen’s d
			Lower	Upper
−20.80	16.651	2.355	−25.532	−16.068	−8.833	49	.001	1.57

Differences between female and male students

The statistical analysis revealed that gender had no significant impact on the development of students’ CIA. The results showed that male students had a slightly higher mean score of CIA (M = 145.15, SD = 6.656) than female students (M = 144.51, SD = 9.780). A visual inspection of the histograms, normal Q-Q plots and box plots showed that the CIA scores were considered normally distributed for both groups, with skewness of .538 (SE = .616) and kurtosis of −.999 (SE = 1.191) for the males and skewness of −.359 (SE = .388) and a kurtosis −.505 (SE = .759) for females. A Shapiro-Wilk’s test confirmed this result (p > .05); the gained values of males and females were consecutively .177 and .385. A Levene’s test revealed F (1, 48) = 2.546, p = .117. This meant that the assumption of the equality of variances was satisfied (p > .05) (Martin & Bridgmon, 2012). The result revealed p = .828, higher than .05, suggesting no significant difference between males and females in their CIA levels.

Differences across five faculties

The statistical analysis revealed that the participants’ academic majors had no significant impact on CIA development. The participants from the Engineering group recorded the numerically highest mean level of CIA (M = 150.67, SD = 4.546), and the Social and Political Science group showed the numerically smallest mean level of CIA (M = 142.08, SD = 10.059). The participants from the Education, Economics and Health groups consecutively had mean values of 145.00 (SD = 4.301), 146.07 (SD = 11.202), and 142.42 (SD = 7.038). The normality test was estimated to be satisfied as the five groups’ distributions were associated with skewness and kurtosis less than |2.0| and |9.0| respectively. A Shapiro-Wilk’s test further confirmed that the gained values of all the faculties were higher than .05. The assumption of the equality of variances was tested and satisfied based on Levene’s test, F (4, 45) = 3.058, p = .026. Tukey’s HSD multiple comparisons revealed that none of the comparisons between faculty groups was statistically significant (p > .05), as depicted in Table 5.

Table 5. Results of Tukey’s HSD multiple-comparisons for faculty group.

Comparison		p
Education	Social and Political Science	.972
Education	Economics	.999
Education	Engineering	.832
Education	Health	.982
Social and Political Science	Economics	.778
Social and Political Science	Engineering	.321
Social and Political Science	Health	1.00
Economics	Engineering	.823
Economics	Health	.828
Engineering	Health	.360

Differences between majority and minority ethnic groups

The results showed that the mean score of the majority ethnic group (M = 144.19, SD = 9.681) was slightly lower than that of the minority ethnic group (M = 147.25, SD = 3.240). The assumption of normality was examined and found to be satisfied as the distributions of the two groups were below the skewness |2.0| and kurtosis |9.0|. A Shapiro-Wilk test supported this assumption (p > .05); the gained values were .414 for the majority ethnic group and .835 for the minority ethnic group. The assumption of the equality of variances was tested and failed to satisfy Levene’s test, F (1, 48) = 8.738, p = .008. Since the assumption was violated, Brown-Forsythe’s test was used to test the hypothesis. The result revealed p = .113, > .05, suggesting no significant difference between the CIA levels of the major ethnic group and the minor ethnic group.

Discussion

The first aim of this study was to examine the use of video clip-assisted intercultural tasks in developing Indonesian EFL university students’ CIA. At the onset of the research, the participants completed a questionnaire (pre-test) and then followed a 10-week intervention of intercultural learning. After the learning intervention, they completed the same questionnaire as a post-test. The paired-sample t-test revealed a significant difference (Sig. 2-tailed value .001, p < .05) in participants’ CIA scores before and after the intervention. This suggests that using video clip-assisted intercultural tasks helps students develop their CIA.

The rich and authentic sociocultural content was the primary reason YouTube clips played a pivotal role in shaping students’ CIA. The combination of audio and visual features in the clips introduced key issues of interculturality and enabled students to make sense of cultural values because they could listen to the details while observing the situational and cultural contexts (Vezzali, Di Bernardo, Stathi, Visintin, & Hewstone, 2019; Zhang, 2020). Students could observe various dynamic intercultural communication activities and encounters through the clips. After watching the third clip, for example, students gained knowledge about various cultural festivals, religious practices, and cultural heritages in India. The intercultural tasks provided them with new inputs, reinforced their pre-existing intercultural knowledge, and increased their understanding of the complexity of cultures. These findings were evident in the questionnaire results, particularly for questions 1, 3, and 5, which had the highest post-test mean values (M = 4.74, 4.64, and 4.50, respectively). The results demonstrated that the students were aware that people from different cultures express their ideas differently and that understanding other cultures is essential for effective communication. The findings supported previous findings that exposing students to culturally relevant video clips could improve their ability to identify and interpret sociocultural issues (Vezzali, Di Bernardo, Stathi, Visintin, & Hewstone, 2019; Zhang, 2020).

YouTube clips functioned as culturally laden learning resources. The clips explicitly showed ideas and concepts of intercultural encounters and contained stories that reflected cultural differences (Jacobsson, 2017). For instance, video 2 showed students the necessity of openness, curiosity, and non-judgmental evaluations in effective communication with people from diverse backgrounds; video 4 demonstrated how being alert to non-verbal communication in various cultural contexts may prevent potential misunderstandings. Thus, incorporating the clips into the student-centred learning tasks might encourage them to critically identify and analyse sociocultural issues. Besides, students could better evaluate the issues or values embedded in the clips by considering multiple perspectives. This result was consistent with previous research outcomes (Fitri, 2022; Zhang, 2020).

It was evident in the pre-and post-test questionnaire results. On the pre-test, for instance, students showed the lowest mean values on items 10 and 25 (M = 1.92 and 1.94, consecutively). They believed that ‘people of Eastern countries are politer than those of Western countries’ and ‘Most Western people are individualistic’. These interpretations reflect ethnocentrism and prejudiced attitudes toward cross-cultural differences (Barbuto, Beenen, & Tran, 2015). In addition, they demonstrated stereotypical views. They believed that ‘the culture of the West is more advanced than that of the East’ (item 11) and that ‘Indonesian people value their local cultures more than Western people value their local culture’ (item 14). Interestingly, the post-test results revealed that these items had the highest average score increases (see details in Appendix). This suggested that participants were capable of challenging their stereotypical perspectives.

The intercultural tasks facilitated students to engage in in-class discussions. Following the four sequential phases of activities, such as authentic input, noticing, reflection and verbal output, students exchanged ideas and perspectives (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). The authentic input phase, in particular, built students’ schema of the intercultural topics and provided them with opportunities to process new cultural inputs based on the clips they watched. The noticing activity allowed the students to recognise and observe gaps between their own and others’ perspectives, as described in Schmidt’s noticing theory (2001). When students engaged in in-group discussions to make a reflection, they were encouraged to negotiate meanings with their peers (Mufanti & Susilo, 2017). This collaborative activity made intercultural learning meaningful, as indicated in Long’s interaction hypothesis (Long, 1996). Moreover, the student-centred collaborative activities, such as individual and group presentations, encouraged students to produce verbal output (Swain, 2000).

Aided by the teachers’ scaffolding, students participated in intercultural learning tasks, which helped them understand the meanings of the sociocultural issues represented in the clips and reflect on intercultural differences among their own culturally diverse groups. This process led them to experience meaningful intercultural encounters with diverse peers and groups to build and shape their CIA (Neff & Rucynski, 2013). This process helped students shape their views about sociocultural issues, and they were better able to respond to the issues using critical and non-judgemental language.

The second aim of this study was to investigate whether gender, academic majors, and ethnicity contribute to the CIA development of students. The one-way ANOVA demonstrated no statistically significant differences between the CIA scores of students based on gender, academic major, and ethnicity (p > .05), rejecting the hypotheses that these three variables served as predictors of CIA development among students in the classroom. Although male students displayed a slightly higher mean score of CIA than female students, there seemed to be no gender differences (p=.828). This result corresponds to previous research (Lin, 2012; Tosuncuoglu, 2019) that gender is not a critical factor in predicting ICC level. The findings, however, differ from other studies (Solhaug & Kristensen, 2020; Tambunan, Lubis, Andayani, & Sari, 2021; Tompkins, Cook, Miller, & LePeau, 2017). For example, Tompkins, Cook, Miller, and LePeau (2017) discovered that women in the American Midwest are more motivated to understand, respect, and tolerate cultural differences, whereas Tambunan, Lubis, Andayani, and Sari (2021) found the opposite in Indonesia’s northern part. These disparities in findings might be influenced by the cultural context of the research setting, as social status and interactions typically account for behavioural and personal differences between men and women (Miller & Costello, 2001).

Tukey’s HSD multiple comparisons on academic majors showed no statistically significant differences across the five faculty groups, indicating that academic major has little effect on students’ CIA development. The findings are consistent with previous research (Czura, 2016; Otwinowska-Kasztelanic, 2011), which concludes that the field of study may influence students’ approaches to intercultural learning in the classroom but does not significantly contribute to their ICC development. Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference between the CIA scores of majorities and minorities (p =.113). Although ethnic backgrounds may play an important role in the early stages of intercultural learning, it is not necessarily a determining variable in the development of CIA, as demonstrated by previous research (Chan, 2016).

Conclusion

This study has shown the significant changes in students’ CIA following a 10-week intercultural learning intervention. The findings discussed above highlight the three contributions of our study. First, our research supports the inclusion of intercultural components in EFL instruction to promote students’ CIA. Our empirical evidence demonstrates how culturally appropriate YouTube clips and intercultural tasks assist students in developing critical awareness of sociocultural realities. Second, our findings extend the work of Watkins and Wilkins (2011) to affirm that culturally relevant video clips provide valuable sources of intercultural issues that promote cultural lessons and enhance exposure to English language variations. The use of video clip-assisted intercultural tasks encourages students to develop their ability to evaluate sociocultural realities embedded in the video clips critically. The intercultural tasks help students engage in in-class discussions actively with diverse group members. Thirdly, as mentioned previously, intercultural education has not become a priority in EFL classrooms. This study, therefore, makes a pedagogical contribution to the field of intercultural language teaching and learning.

Several pedagogical implications can be drawn from our study. First, when choosing video clips, teachers should carefully examine the length of video presentations, cultural elements and language features. The clips should reflect the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the students to ensure that they are meaningful and accessible. Second, an introductory session on intercultural awareness is required to equip students with basic concepts of intercultural communication skills, ethnocentrism, and stereotypes. Finally, teachers should consider student diversity to facilitate each individual’s participation in intercultural learning. When comparing and contrasting sociocultural issues, teachers should scaffold the in-class discussion to eliminate confusion or uncertainty among students.

Despite providing an empirical account of students’ CIA development, the current study has some limitations. These limitations include the data collection method, sample size, and group differences. Relying solely on student questionnaire responses might have drawbacks such as limited perspective, social desirability bias, overlooking unintended consequences, and lack of contextual understanding. To comprehensively assess intervention impacts, it is crucial to triangulate data with multiple sources like observations and interviews. This study used a one-group research design involving a small number of participants (n = 50) and spanning a 10-week intervention. A future longitudinal study using quasi/true experimental designs with a larger population sample would enable more reliable data. Further analysis can be undertaken to examine other variables, such as language proficiency and intercultural experience. Despite these limitations, the study advocates integrating intercultural components in classroom activities and syllabus design in Indonesia to promote EFL students’ CIA. These findings contribute to the broader field and may be of interest to ESL teachers beyond Indonesia.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) for providing the first author with a scholarship and to the participants who volunteered to participate in this study. We also appreciate Dr Susan Mowbray’s meticulous proofreading of this article and the anonymous reviewers’ insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work received open access fee support from Western Sydney University.

Notes

1. These YouTube clips were accessible online at the time the data was collected.

Appendix

Table

Items	Mean		Std. Deviation
	pre	post	pre	post
a) Identifying and interpreting sociocultural realities
1. I think I am knowledgeable about my own culture.	4.36	4.74	.631	.487
2. My knowledge of my own culture impacts how I view myself and other people.	4.02	4.46	.742	.613
3. People from different cultures express their thoughts in different ways.	4.26	4.64	.694	.525
4. It is interesting to have a lot of friends from different cultural backgrounds and countries.	4.14	4.40	.756	.606
5. A person needs to understand other cultures to communicate effectively with people from those cultures.	4.16	4.62	.618	.490
6. Communication with other people occurs both in verbal and non-verbal ways.	3.90	4.56	.735	.541
7. Body language is important in communicating across cultures.	4.06	4.60	.740	.571
8. A person’s intonation is meaningful in a communication process, and it differs from one culture to another.	3.88	4.50	.799	.580
9. Every culture has topics that are taboo to discuss.	3.20	4.20	1.069	.782
10. People of Eastern countries are politer than those of Western countries.	1.92	2.62	.877	.602
11. The culture of the West is more advanced than that of the East.	2.22	3.04	.932	.755
12. A British English accent is more widely accepted than an American accent.	2.12	2.70	.824	.647
13. Native English teachers’ teaching competencies are better than non-native English teachers’ teaching competencies.	2.24	2.94	.894	.652
14. Indonesian people value their local cultures more than Western people value their local cultures.	2.00	2.90	.833	.789
15. Learning the cultures of English-speaking countries such as Australia, the UK, and the U.S.A. is preferable to that of non-English-speaking countries.	2.44	3.08	.972	.724
Average score	48.92	58.00	6.305	3.933
b) Analysing and evaluating sociocultural issues from multiple perspectives
16. People cannot say if a culture is good or bad when compared to his/her own culture.	3.78	4.60	1.093	.606
17. My understanding of my own culture can affect my communication with people from different cultures and countries.	4.00	4.44	.670	.611
18. Having a good understanding of other cultures will make me more tolerant.	4.30	4.74	.735	.443
19. Intercultural encounters with international fellows/colleagues can broaden my worldview.	4.24	4.68	.687	.513
20. The more I understand about other cultures, the more competent I feel in intercultural communication.	4.02	4.46	.742	.613
21. When speaking in public, I should consider the contexts of the situation and culture.	4.10	4.38	.614	.602
22. Being open and curious about other people’s perspectives or viewpoints will help prevent me from misjudging them.	3.86	4.56	.756	.611
23. It is necessary to engage in community services as I am a part of society.	4.04	4.54	.755	.646
24. Cultural differences make me reluctant to travel abroad.	3.38	4.18	1.227	.774
25. Most Western people are individualistic.	1.94	2.82	.767	.774
26. I worry I will not be able to practice my religion when I am travelling overseas.	2.56	3.72	1.232	.757
27. Cultural differences are not an obstacle for me in my interactions with people from different cultures and countries.	4.02	4.42	.937	.609
Average score	44.24	51.54	6.696	3.824
c) Engaging in intercultural communication
28. If I meet foreign tourists, I am willing to greet them and have a conversation in English.	3.68	4.26	.844	.694
29. If I visit other countries, I try to communicate with local people.	3.86	4.42	.808	.609
30. I am not comfortable talking about my own culture to other people from different cultures or countries.	2.98	3.94	1.286	.867
31. If I am asked to perform traditional arts for foreigners, I am happy to do so.	3.62	4.28	.987	.757
32. I would feel comfortable serving as an assistant or advocate for someone from a different cultural or linguistic background.	4.26	4.60	.723	.571
33. If I studied abroad, I would attend groups or events that deal with diversity (e.g. student clubs).	4.08	4.58	.778	.499
34. If I travel overseas, I am interested in seeing art exhibits and cultural festivals.	4.02	4.56	.869	.541
35. If I had a chance to talk to a foreigner, I would tell him/her about Indonesian culture.	4.22	4.50	.679	.580
Average score	30.72	35.14	4.686	3.233

Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence: Revisited (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters.