1　Introduction

The paper points out that foreign language disciplines bear the mission of cultivating talents for international communication. Existing research has preliminarily explored the cultivation models of college students' ability to tell China's stories well, but emphasizes that international communication effectiveness depends on the construction of intersubjectivity, requiring communicators to consider the audience's perspective and engage in meaning negotiation. It further proposes that dialogic feedback can promote shared understanding, and acquiring and utilizing such feedback helps facilitate the development of international communication competence.

2　Literature Review

This section reviews the theoretical foundations of college students' international communication competence, current cultivation practices, and the research background of intercultural peer feedback. Regarding conceptualization, existing studies have predominantly focused on communicators' unidirectional output capabilities. This paper introduces the theory of communities of practice, emphasizing that international communication competence should manifest as social practice in which communicators construct intersubjectivity through sustained meaning negotiation and advance mutual commitment around mutual learning among civilizations. In terms of cultivation research, current practices exhibit three limitations: prioritizing oral and video narratives while neglecting second language writing, lacking dynamic interaction between communicators and international audiences, and failing to address sustained communication behaviors beyond course duration. To address these limitations, this paper proposes dialogic intercultural peer feedback as a viable approach, noting that this context can provide writers with sustained, explicit intercultural interaction spaces, enabling them to learn to anticipate and respond to cross-cultural readers' interpretations through negotiated meaning construction, ultimately enhancing international communication competence centered on mutual learning among civilizations.

3　Research Design

The study introduces two rounds of intercultural peer feedback activities conducted in an "Intermediate Writing" course for English majors at a university, with 23 Chinese and 20 American undergraduate participants. The activity procedure included film viewing, writing film reviews, receiving feedback from Chinese peers, intercultural asynchronous written interaction, and revising final drafts. The research employed multi-source data collection, including reflection reports, semi-structured interviews, and website feedback content. Thematic analysis was utilized, with event segments as units, combining bottom-up and top-down approaches with core concepts from communities of practice theory for coding analysis. Two major themes—internal accumulation and external manifestation of international communication competence—and 17 codes were ultimately extracted.

4　Findings

Chinese college students' development of international communication competence from "internal accumulation" to "external manifestation" in intercultural peer feedback activities. In the internal accumulation stage (Week 1), 78.3% of feedback focused on writing quality assessment, with both sides barely addressing sociocultural issues. However, discussions around film reviews enhanced Chinese students' communication confidence, with American students' affirmation of their language competence making them "no longer nervous about communicating with foreigners." Meanwhile, both parties established basic interpersonal trust, accumulating shared resources for subsequent exchanges. Entering the external manifestation stage (Week 2), interaction topics shifted to sociocultural issues, with 47.8% to 95.0% of Chinese students either actively responding to their partners' questions or proactively guiding topics, flexibly employing ancient-modern comparisons, Chinese-foreign analogies, example sharing, and experience retelling to facilitate meaning negotiation and disseminate Chinese culture.

In active response practices, CS10, addressing AS2's feedback on American gender equality issues, elaborated on changes in Chinese women's status from ancient to modern times and from macro to micro perspectives, enhancing the partner's interest in and understanding of Chinese history and culture. In proactive guidance practices, CS29 stimulated discussion through questioning, employed the Chinese-foreign analogy between "Bei Piao" (Beijing drifters) and "self-made man" to promote consensus, and demonstrated the diversity of contemporary China, driving sustained mutual commitment from both sides, with accumulated shared resources feeding back into subsequent exchanges. In sustained relationship maintenance, three students including CS8 continued email correspondence with American partners after the course ended, using holiday travel as an opportunity to introduce Nanjing, connecting urban history and culture with family emotions, transforming cultural introduction into dialogue rich with personal perspectives and emotional coloring. Both parties spontaneously incorporated sociocultural discussions with personal experiences and emotional engagement into meaning negotiation, preliminarily constructing a cultural exchange community transcending the classroom.

5　Discussion

From the perspective of communities of practice theory, this section explores the development mechanism of Chinese college students' international communication competence in intercultural peer feedback contexts. The study found that students' international communication competence underwent a gradual process from internal accumulation to external manifestation: initially participating passively due to uncertainty, then gradually building confidence and exercising agency, and finally proactively constructing and maintaining communities of practice. The synergistic effect of dialogic intercultural peer feedback and communities of practice is key to this competence development—the former promotes sustained joint meaning construction between both parties, while the latter provides the foundation for mutual commitment. The study also notes that feedback partners of similar age and educational background, with open attitudes and serious responses, are more conducive to participants obtaining authentic audience feedback and adjusting communication strategies. Based on this, universities can embed teaching elements such as online-offline integration, multi-round sustained interaction, and阶梯式任务设计 (stepped task design) in writing, speaking, and other courses to provide "learning by doing" practical pathways for international communication novices.

6　Conclusion

The paper elaborates on the promoting effect of intercultural peer feedback activities on Chinese college students' international communication competence development, finding that participants' competence transformed from internal accumulation to external manifestation, enabling them to proactively create communication opportunities and enhance intersubjectivity. The study enriches theoretical perspectives on international communication competence, revealing unique value in serving "telling China's stories well," while noting limitations of single-activity samples and suggesting future expansion to diverse teaching contexts for validation.