Individual Orientations Towards Intercultural Differences on The Basis of a Study Conducted Among The Polish Students of English Philology

The aim of the present paper is to show how the Polish students of English Philology changed their orientations towards intercultural differences as a result of intercultural encounters they experienced and instruction in intercultural development offered to them. With increased levels of intercultural communication, their competence in intercultural relations magnified. As assumed, the students‘ initial emotional desire to acknowledge, appreciate, and accept cultural differences occurred to be weak. However, with the intercultural development, the levels of intercultural sensitivity being a component of intercultural competence, rose significantly. In effect the students were able to recognize certain values and pick up on verbal and non-verbal signals typical of other cultures allowing for further empathy being developed and adjusting to different scripts of communication. For the purpose of observing the varying levels of intercultural sensitivity and subsequently intercultural competence, the author decided to design a ranking questionnaire as a research instrument. It consisted of a series of statements marked by the respondents with numbers 1-5 to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with them. It was designed for comparative analysis of their responses. The interpretation of the collected data involved searching for relations between the investigated variables. Through careful examination of the questionnaire and its collected data, the author managed to notice a meaningful change in the attitudes, values and skills exhibited by his students in terms of their intercultural identities