Given the increasing significance of the intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in both real and virtual intercultural contact situations, a prominent aspiration of foreign language education has been the development of the speaking and interaction competences of foreign language learners in intercultural contexts. On this basis, the potentiality and significance of online intercultural exchanges (OIE) to act as a catalyst for promoting ICC is being increasingly documented in the literature. On the other hand, the literature confirms that the affective and attitudinal factors play an important role in foreign language learners’ ICC development. Given that neither the role of affective factors nor the impacts of the application of telecommuncative technologies in the ICC development in foreign language education contexts have received due attention yet, the present study set out to explore how OIE and attitudes toward people and things from other cultures (ATPOC) may contribute to the Iranian EFL learners’ development of ICC and intercultural sensitivity (IS). With data obtained from 150 upper-intermediate and advanced Iranian EFL learners the findings verified that there was a positive correlation between the learners’ OIE experience and ICC development; however, the correlation was weaker with learners’ IS. Moreover, regarding the learners’ ATPOC a positive correlation was found with the learners’ ICC; however the correlation was stronger with the learners’ IS. Such findings imply that online exchanges help the learners gain authentic information. Next, when it comes to foreign language development and interaction with individuals from different cultural backgrounds, language learners’ ATPOC play vital role.
