Collaborative assessment for communicative competence

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The Context

As universities increasingly rely on international student uptake, it’s also increasingly important for teaching staff to take on a responsibility to ease the transition for students from this cohort. An important aspect of transition to university for students of all backgrounds is communicative competence. This term refers to the ability to adapt one’s language use and communicate competently across a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts (D’Orazzi & Marangell, 2025; Jackson, 2023).

International students from non-English speaking backgrounds often struggle to develop the communicative competence they need to engage fully in their university studies. This guide focuses on how the use of collaborative assessment – such as group research projects – can be used to improve communicative competence for international students who have English as an additional language, at the same time as it benefits students from all backgrounds. Focussing more broadly on addressing communicative competence across the cohort (rather than operating within the international/domestic student binary) can shift the deficit discourse and create a sense of shared responsibility for communication in the classroom.

Student collaboration across a diverse cohort creates opportunities to:

• Improve students’ attitudes towards peers from differing backgrounds and identities, and increase interaction across the cohort; (D’Orazzi & Marangell, 2025)

• Help mitigate unconscious bias, stereotypes, and prejudices (D’Orazzi & Marangell, 2025)

• Reduce the monolingual mindset of domestic students with English as a first language, allowing them to see themselves as members of a heterogenous international community,

• Increase empathy towards non-in-group members, and grant exposure to a wider field of knowledge (D’Orazzi and Marangell, 2025; Li et al., 2024; Sadigzade and Alisoy, 2025)

• Create a space where students can acknowledge and share the diversity of their identities and backgrounds. (Li et al., 2024)

Student collaboration across a diverse cohort can be:

• Collaborative projects conducted over a mid- to long-term period. These can increase students’ self-confidence and confidence in their additional language (Labrie and Clement, 1986; Pak et al, 1985; Clark and Henetz, 2014).

• Scaffolded projects which allow EAL learners in particular opportunities to adjust to the necessary vocabulary and content (Sadigzade and Alisoy, 2025). This strategy has also been shown to improve class participation and heighten students’ sense of inclusion.

Recommendations

Design teams for maximum diversity

If students are asked to form their own groups, they will tend towards homogeneity. Actively interrupt this tendency by purposefully designing group composition for maximum cultural/linguistic diversity – i.e. a range of international and domestic students.

Consider group size

Small groups have been found to lower anxiety among some EAL students in class (Sadigzade & Alisoy, 2025).

Structure and scaffold group projects

For first-year students, it will be important to scaffold the team project process. You might map out the steps of the project planning process, week-by-week – development of research aim in Week One, development of data collection methods in Week Two, etc.

Support students with communication challenges

Be frank with students. Group work is traditionally maligned by students and presents interpersonal challenges, particularly for first-year students. Devote some class time to acknowledging the difficulties/challenges of intercultural communication and provide students with strategies. Likewise, acknowledge the benefits of meeting these challenges!

Offer clear definitions

Introduce intercultural competence and communicative competence as key terms to help students conceptualise what they are doing in their collaborative assessment work.

Suggested Activities

Thinking about culture: “Four Analogies” Icebreaker. Students form small groups. Each group is given one of the following concepts: an onion, an iceberg, a fish in water, or a lens. Students are asked: how might this object act as a metaphor for culture? What insight does this give you about what might be needed to work effectively within a diverse team? (Berrardo & Deardorff 2012)

Object Based Learning research project. Curate a suite of objects relevant to your course material. Once student groups are formed, invite students to choose an object as a team which they then use as the basis of a research project.

Listening exercises. Before final project submission, give teams the chance to present their finalised project outcomes to another group for questions and feedback. Finish with a whole group discussion about how it felt to undertake that exercise in terms of insights about the process of undertaking the project, and working interculturally.

References

• Berrardo, K. & Deardorff. D. (2012). Building cultural competence: Innovative activities and models. Sterling, VA: Stylus

• Clark, H. H., & Henetz, T. (2014). Working Together. In T. M. Holtgraves (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (pp. 85–97). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838639.013.019

• D’Orazzi, G., & Marangell, S. (2025). The Role of Intercultural Communicative Competence in Student-To-Student Interactions at an Internationlized University. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 54(1–2), 46–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2025.2462099

• Jackson, J. (2023). Introducing Language and Intercultural Communication (3687854). Routledge. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=afe90d91-18a9-3312-b505-d69ae74ba1dd

• Labrie, N., & Clément, R. (1986). Ethnolinguistic vitality, self‐confidence and second language proficiency: An investigation1. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 7(4), 269–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.1986.9994244

• Li, D., Dutton, J., Jeffrey, C., Wang, W., Aayeshah, W., Rejón, R., Meehan, O., & Quillinan, S. (2024). Internationalisation of the curriculum in an Arts foundation subject: A collaborative autoethnography. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 21(04). https://doi.org/10.53761/0h9zdb86

• Pak, A. W.-P., Dion, K. L., & Dion, K. K. (1985). Correlates of self-confidence with English among Chinese students in Toronto. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 17(4), 369–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0080043

• Sadigzade, Z., & Alisoy, H. (2025). Classroom Guidance and Strategies to Support EAL Learners. Porta Universorum, 1(3), 157–185. https://doi.org/10.69760/portuni.010315

• Summers, M., & Volet, S. (2008). Students’ attitudes towards culturally mixed groups on international campuses: Impact of participation in diverse and non‐diverse groups. Studies in Higher Education, 33(4), 357–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802211430