An Intercultural Approach-Based Program for Developing Al-Alsun Sophomores' Informative Speaking Skills and Their Awareness of English as a Language of Diplomacy

The study aimed at developing Al-Alsun Sophomores' informative speaking skills as well as their awareness of English as a Language of diplomacy by using an intercultural-based program which was conducted over forty second level students who were randomly selected from Hurghada Faculty of Al-Alsun (Languages). The study followed the one-group quasi-experimental design with its pre and post-testing procedure. It utilized these instruments and materials: an informative speaking skills questionnaire, an informative speaking test, an informative speaking rubric, English for Diplomacy Purposes awareness scale, and a program based on the intercultural approach. The instruments and materials of the study were validated in terms of content validity and the reliability. The informative speaking skills included: demonstration, definition, description, and explanation. English as a language for diplomacy purposes awareness scale included different items that aim to identify participants' awareness of these items using the Likert scale. Results of the test and the scale showed significant mean differences between the participants in the pre and post-testing procedures favoring the post-testing. They also confirmed that there were significant mean differences between the participants in both their informative speaking skills and their awareness of English as a language of diplomacy due to the program of the study favoring the post-testing. Recommendations of the study included using the intercultural approach for developing students' speaking and compiling ESP courses for developing diplomacy-oriented language skills; running further research on using the intercultural approach over different types of participants.