EN
The concept of language competence has evolved over the decades from linguistic competence (Noam Chomsky) via communicative competence (Dell Hymes) to intercultural communicative competence (Michael Byram). The process of communication has attracted attention of numerous researchers from different disciplines: linguistics and applied linguistics, language education, ethnography and cross-cultural communication. The popular communicative-language-teaching (CLT) approach has been recently criticised for the concept of the language competence it is based on. Some international researchers point to a too narrow native-speaker-based idea of the competence which does not guarantee success in the cross-cultural encounters. Researchers observe the tendency to develop communication survival skills. Teaching materials which for many language teachers are the main source of target culture are usually concerned with what is referred to as objective culture. In the article we discuss different concepts of language competence which needs to be extended to an intercultural communicative competence (ICC), if interlocutors originating from different cultures are to achieve their communication goal in the process of cross-cultural communication. Some selected studies attempting to evaluate ICC of language teachers are referred to. On the basis of the studies one may conclude that our knowledge on the levels of ICC in foreign language teachers in Poland and abroad is still unsatisfactory. Teaching materials are not always helpful in this respect either.