Developing and validating assessments of business professionals’ linguacultural competence

Abstract

Internationally operating professionals require linguacultural competence, namely the ability to communicate effectively with people from multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds. One of the pedagogical challenges of developing learners’ linguacultural competence is how to assess it. To address this issue, a novel linguacultural competence (LCC) framework was developed to underpin the creation of two assessment tools used in an instructional program. The instruments – a self-report questionnaire and an analytic rubric for email writing tasks – were designed to assess two specific linguacultural competencies in the LCC framework: the ability to express one’s home culture and understanding how religion affects professional communication. This article reports the development and validation of these instruments according to an adapted version of the argument-based validation framework for English for professional purposes (ABV-LAPP). The data provided convincing validity evidence for the questionnaire and the rubric, despite some potential rebuttals. These results offer insight into the obstacles involved in developing novel assessments for this new construct and provide a direction for how these assessments can be revised, improved, and implemented in future studies.