In Curriculum and Instruction

A university is an academic place with students from a variety of cultures. Non-native English speaking (NNS) graduate students are a group representing diverse cultural backgrounds. However, these students ’ challenges in linguistic and socio-cultural adjustment impact their effective learning and academic success. Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is an important ability that they need to consider. It assesses attitude, skills, knowledge, adaptability, flexibility, and communication ability with culturally different people. Researchers in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) have suggested that instructional designers should understand diverse learners ’ abilities and cultural characteristics and apply them in their Instructional Design (ID) strategies. However, the existing ID models do not specifically include ICC as a consideration in the design process. Furthermore, there has been a lack of research on culturally diverse or minority students. Considering NNS graduate students ’ characteristics, cultural diversity, and need to develop ICC, the researcher reviewed three social theories of learning: social learning theory, sociocultural and cultural-historical activity theory, and situated learning theory. Sociall