Mapping intercultural trajectories: Chinese secondary school learners’ standpoints on the cultivation of intercultural awareness in English education

With the intensification of globalisation and international exchange, intercultural communicative ability has become a focal point in English as a foreign language education in Chinese secondary schools. However, recent studies have indicated that the developmental construct of intercultural awareness is sometimes conflated with intercultural communicative competence. This leads to ambiguity in defining appropriate learning objectives. Using a sequential explanatory research design, this study s