ENHANCING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION THROUGH STORYTELLING IN EFL CLASSROOMS

In contemporary foreign language education, the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence has emerged as a central objective alongside linguistic proficiency. This study examines the impact of storytelling on the development of intercultural communicative competence among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, drawing on Byram’s (1997) model as a theoretical framework. Utilizing a qualitative research design, the investigation was conducted with university-level EFL learners over a six-week pedagogical intervention in which storytelling tasks were systematically incorporated into classroom activities. Data were collected through classroom observations, reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews, and analyzed thematically according to Byram’s five dimensions of intercultural communicative competence. The findings demonstrate that storytelling positively influenced learners’ intercultural attitudes, cultural knowledge, interpretive and relational skills, discovery and interaction abilities, and critical cultural awareness. Storytelling activities created meaningful opportunities for intercultural reflection and empathy, thereby facilitating engagement in intercultural dialogue. The results indicate that, when pedagogically structured and theoretically grounded, storytelling serves as an effective approach for integrating intercultural communicative competence into EFL instruction, with practical implications for foreign language teaching.