This study explores students' awareness of sociopragmatic elements namelypoliteness strategies, speech acts, andinference in ICT-basedlearningthatcontribute to the development of critical cultural competence. Employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Data were gathered through observation and semi-structured interviews with six sixth semester EFL students who taken sociopragmatic class. The findings reveal three major themes emerged: sensitivity to inference and miscommunication in digital contexts, reflective understanding of speech acts, and awareness of cross cultural politeness strategies. These insights demonstrate that ICT, when integrated with sociopragmatic instruction, fosters not only linguistic competence but also critical reflection, empathy, and intercultural awareness key components of 21st-century global education.
Keywords: critical cultural competence, ICT-based learning, sociopragmatics, EFL, intercultural communication