Teaching intercultural communicative competence: theoretical background

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Teaching intercultural communicative competence: theoretical background

Стаття присвячена дослідженню теоретичних основ сутності міжкультурної комунікативної ком-петентності та розробці практичних засад для розробки відповідної дидактичної моделі для реалізації методики формування цієї компетентності. Автор припускає, що ті, хто вивчають англійську мову, в майбутньому будуть більше спілкуватися із собі подібними, ніж із носіями мови. Саме тому у статті наголошується на перенесенні акценту у вивченні англійської мови для надання студентам можливості висловити свої думки відповідно до культурних цінностей не лише носіям мови, але й представникам інших культур. Відповідно, питання міжкультурної комунікації стає невід'ємним у вивченні англійської мови, особливо студентів, що вивчають іноземну мову за професійним спрямуванням. global market examine

Ключові слова: міжкультурна комунікативна компетенція, міжкультурна комунікація, взаємодія, компетенція, навчальні стратегії, культура

Global considerations impact everyday busi-ness decisions for companies large and small. Where should we produce, market, and sell our products and services? For most, it is a global market to consider. One only needs to examine the current and projected growth of internation-al trade to clearly see the impact on our future. Corporations are aware that to be successful in tomorrow's marketplace requires employees to be competent in communicating with those from other cultures. In the past, most international managers relied on general cultural guidelines for conducting intercultural negotiations. Howev-er, the increase in global trade transactions has resulted in integrated cultural exchanges, new cultural partnerships, and unique cultural inter-actions, making old, superficial generalities less accurate.

In today's world of global village, living with differences both at home and abroad is becom-ing more important. Differences such as values, attitudes, culture, ethnicity, social practices, po-litical beliefs, sexuality and religion clearly direct people all around the world who embarked var-ious meanings to their surroundings according to their individual attitudes that must be fully re-spected and integrated into life (Tesoriero 2006). In recent years, many scholars have completed various studies to deal with these differences, and as a result of these studies one particular and important aspect of working with difference is conceptualized as `intercultural communication competence' (ICC).

Intercultural communication competence grew out of the interpersonal communication competency research. The contextual distinctive-ness of the intercultural interaction is a unique communication competency issue. It is possi-ble that an individual may be highly competent in communicating with others in his or her own culture but not competent when interacting with others who are culturally different.

The goal of teaching a foreign language has always been the issue of hot debates in language teaching methodology. With emergence of Com-petence-based Approach the idea of teaching communicative competence became quite per-suasive in this respect. Though, it can often be heard in teaching circles that language is culture, so should we teach the language as part of culture or we could get off with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary fit into four speech skills? If the first option is to be tackled (as has been approved of in recent perspective investigations) then what can be called «communicative competence» (CC) and what role is played by culture in it?

The communicative approach considers tar-get language-based communicative competence essential for foreign language learners to par-ticipate fully in the target language culture. As such, the target language culture and its inhab-itants, the native speakers, are elements crucial to the success of the teaching model. Learners are not only expected to acquire accurate forms of the target language, but also to learn how to use these forms in given social situations in the target language setting to convey appropriate, coherent, and strategically effective meanings for the native speaker. Thus, learning a foreign language becomes a kind of enculturation, where one acquires new cultural frames of reference and a new world view, reflecting those of target language culture and its speakers.

However, despite this increased focus on so-ciocultural elements, writers have been critical of the way that communicative language teaching has tended to ignore the sociocultural dimen-sion of these proposed models of communicative competence, and that it has instead assumed a certain universality in the way in which speech functions are used and interpreted. As early as 1974, Paulston pointed out that the communica-tive approach was tending to concentrate mainly on referential meaning while ignoring the social meaning of words and phrases. Buttjes (1991) suggests that communicative language teaching excluded the learners' cultural background and failed to see the acquisition of communicative competence as a process of cultural adapta-tion. Instead, teachers used role-plays and vid-eo observations to train their learners in the use of pragmatic strategies and appropriate speech functions in authentic situations. Roberts, Byram, Barro, Jordan and Street (2001) conclude that, while communicative language methodology has done much to highlight the social contexts of language use, it: «has come to be interpreted somewhat narrowly and prescriptively, as appro-priate language use rather than competence in the social and cultural practices of a communi-ty of which language is a part.» (Roberts et. al., 2001:26)

However, it appears that the absence of overt attention to the learners' cultural background in the communicative methodologies of the 1970's and 1980's was motivated by a more complex set of reasons than simply a narrow interpretation of what communicative competence involved. First-ly, the lack of a cultural component during that time (and, to some extent, still today) reflects a common belief that English should be considered a global language or Lingua franca. Of course, this could only be achieved if English was seen as «a neutral vehicle of communication, an emp-ty structural system that does not carry with it cultural, political and ideological baggage» (An-derson, 2003: 81). Therefore, it was necessary to try and disassociate English from its cultural heritage. The argument at the time seemed to imply that as students were going to be using En-glish in contexts other than in English speaking cultures, then it was unnecessary to burden them with information about these cultures. Commen-tators such as Gray (2002) have pointed out how the English language teaching industry adopted this trend in the 1980's by moving the location of English language textbooks from Britain and the United States to international settings. Simi-larly, instead of dealing with issues of relevance to the learners' target or home cultures, the con-tent of textbooks focused more on `bland' topics such as travel and the future and thereby avoided any risk of insulting buyers from different cultural backgrounds.

The other reason for the decline of the cul-tural component in language teaching during this period also had a political background. In the late 1980's, writers such as Brumfit (1985), Phillipson (1992) and Prodromou (1988) were influential in making English language educators question the consequences and impact of their profes-sion. Phillipson's work caused many to consider whether English language teaching represented some kind of new, more subtle form of linguis-tic and cultural imperialism and whether their methodologies and materials had more to do with assimilation of learners than with their em-powerment. As a result of this preoccupation with avoiding the imposition of their cultural values and principles on their students, Pulverness sug-gests that English teachers chose to avoid cultur-al content completely: «At a time when Britain no longer occupies a dominant political position in the world, it is perhaps reassuring for teachers to feel that they are permitted to treat English purely in terms of a language system, uncomplicated by any cultural sub-text. Cultural knowledge in EFL classrooms ... has remained largely peripheral to language learning, acquired by students inci-dentally, but rarely focused on for its own sake.» (1995:25)

Answering the above mentioned and other questions including the query of what dimen-sions are applied in understanding the word «culture», what kind of culture is practiced in the English-speaking world, it is essential to take a closer look at the perception of CC. It has been generally acknowledged that CC can be viewed as communication behaviour in achieving goals by exhibiting this behaviour in an appropriate way in a certain situation (Spitzberg and Cupach, 1984). To be able to demonstrate such behaviour a communicatively competent individual, accord-ing to Canale and Swain's influential model of communicative competence (1983), should pos-sess grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competencies which, in our view, refer to integration of Chomsky's concept of linguistic competence (grammatical competence) with-in culture-specific social context (sociolinguistic competence) and the ability to cope in an au-thentic communicative situation (strategic com-petence) avoiding interaction misunderstandings by the extended use of the language in culturally and socially varied surrounding (discourse com-petence).

The given above components of communica-tive competence should be viewed from the per-spective of reality. Considering the first issue of grammatical competence, it is important to ana-lyze what kind of language system should be ac-quired by an English language learner in order to enable him/her to use it in a certain culture-spe-cific social context. There are at least two options in this respect: 1) the language of BBC (which casts some doubts on the possible chances to use this type of language in other than BBC stu-dio surrounding social contexts); 2) the language commonly heard in ordinary surroundings (in the streets, supermarkets, offices, plants and facto-ries, to name but a few). To exacerbate the is-sue, it shouldn't be forgotten to be mentioned that there is a huge variety of dialects spoken by peo-ple in English speaking countries (not to mention the discrepancies in Englishes of those countries) (Alptekin, 2002: 48). So the question then arises like this: what kind or type of culture-specific so-cial context should be chosen to be included in the curriculum for English language learners?

One of the principal outcomes of the decline in cultural content in communicative language teaching was that it moved the focus of the lan-guage classroom from preparing learners to read in the foreign language to being tourists in the foreign country. The content of many commu-nicative syllabuses involved helping learners to buy bus tickets, ask the way and order food in the target language. This was criticized by many as a superficial approach which lead to the trivialisa- tion of language learning and a lack of motivation among students. Pennycock sees it as being re-sponsible for creating what he describes as «the empty babble of the communicative language class» (1994: 311). Bredella and Christ (1995) suggest that the problem with this approach was that learners were encouraged to believe that interlocutors from different cultures would auto-matically mean and understand the same thing when engaged in conversation together. There-fore, there was no need for learners to ask others what they meant by their utterances and, and as a result, to find out more about the different worl-dview of their partners. In other words, no `nego-tiation of meaning' ever took place.

Furthermore, we are concerned with a quest of what should be meant by «an authentic com-municative situation» in which a learner has to deal using English, depending on his/her com-municative behaviour goals. In this view it is sig-nificant to highlight the fact that the term «authen-tic communicative situation» is now perceived as the one where English is used as the means of international communication, since social and economic globalization has necessitated the use of international English spoken in the «global vil- lage». It can be explained by a mere example of two people doing business in Germany though being an Italian and a Japanese by nationality but still using English at work. Then there emerg-es another issue which needs clear analysis in terms of whose culture should be primary to make these two people communicatively compe-tent (following the Canale and Swain's model): British or American or Canadian or Australian or German or Japanese or Italian? Or maybe Inter-national?

Another question arises concerning the defi-nition of the «native speaker» whose model of communicative competence should be acquired by foreign language learners according to Cana-le and Swain's model of CC. Kramsch (1998), concentrates more on the sociological and po-litical consequences of the importance which is attributed to the native speaker and looks at how membership of the group `native speaker' has been awarded - by birth, by education, or by membership to the social community - and analy-ses the weaknesses which each of these involve. According to the author, being born in the country does not make one automatically a native speak-er, as many people who are born into a society do not automatically come to know and speak the standard dialect of that society, for example Glas-wegians in Scotland or children born of Chinese immigrants in the United States. She also rejects the theory that being educated in a language is sufficient to achieve native speaker status, as the membership of this group involves much more than fluency and full communicative competence in the language. Instead, «one must be recog-nized as a native speaker by the relevant speech community» (1998: 22). Kramsch therefore con-cludes that the term native speaker is more social and political than linguistic and she suggests that the realities such as increased use of English as a lingua franca, the multicultural nature of mod-ern societies and the increasing importance giv-en to nonstandard English dialects has rendered the term an «outdated myth» (1998: 23).

As English is on the way to spread as an inter-national language, the number of its users is set to grow, and soon will far exceed the number of na-tive speakers of English. Thus, we presume that the learners of English will be more likely to use it to interact more with the same type of people rather than the native speakers. Therefore, we are witnessing the shifts in the goal of learning English as to enable learners to communicate their ideas and culture with not only native English speakers but also those of other cultures. Consequently, the question of intercultural communication is inevita-bly indispensable in English language learning as far as students' communicative competence de-velopment is of primary concern.

The processes of national and international integration have predetermined modernization tendencies of Ukrainian foreign language edu-cation. Today a foreign language is a means of world comprehension being the tool of recognition of the values of other nations, of cultural unique-ness discovery. Thus, it has become necessary to build a personality that doesn't only speak a foreign language, but is ready to participate in the global society, to understand it, to respect the other foreign cultural identities. This has led to shifting the emphasis which has been tradition-ally accepted for the past decades from the im-portance of formation of foreign communicative competence to the necessity of formation of for-eign intercultural communicative competence.

The desire to understand other cultures and their representatives has been urgent for as much time as the cultural and ethnic diversity has been in existence, that's why the notion of intercultural communication is still being discussed greatly in scientific and methodical papers.

The majority of the scientists now consid-er that the case for intercultural communication (interaction) is valid as long as people represent different cultures and are aware of everything that doesn't belong to their culture recognizing it as something «strange». The relationships then become intercultural meaning that people don't act according to their national traditions, cus-toms, behaviour patterns, but try to get familiar with the «strange» behaviour rules and norms of everyday communication. Moreover, here both common and different peculiarities come up, so that people can distinguish them and accept thor-oughly (Кирабаев :15).

In summary, in this section it has been shown how social and political factors such as increased migration and the growth of transnational com-munication (Kramer, 2000) as well as a ques-tioning of what the goals of the language learner should be have led to criticism of the communica-tive approach to foreign language teaching and its inherent `native speaker as standard' model. As an alternative, recent approaches have pro-posed the `intercultural speaker' as an alterna-tive goal for models of foreign language learning. Byram and Fleming describe such a learner in the following way: «It is the learner who is aware of their own identities and cultures, and of how they are perceived by others, and who also has an understanding of the identities and cultures of those with whom they are interacting. This intercultural speaker is able to establish a rela-tionship between their own and other cultures, to mediate and explain difference - and ultimately to accept that difference and see the common humanity beneath it.» (Byram and Fleming 1998: 8) However, it has been questioned whether such an approach should not lead to an avoidance of materials which focus on the target culture itself. Studying target cultures does not imply that the norms, values and pragma-linguistic rules of this culture have to be imposed on the learner. Nev-ertheless, learners have a right to be exposed to the foreign culture in order to be made aware of alternative worldviews and to be given the option of `taking on' aspects of this culture if it is in their personal interests.

To summarize the stated above ideas, we have to conclude that the English language be-came the medium of intercultural communication, and it caused the emergence of new approach-es to its learning in educational establishments, particularly in school. Having investigated the possible solution to such an urgent problem the following ideas can be expressed:

1) Having analyzed the notion of intercultural communication and its components it is possible to say that they are nationally-specific components and require understanding in situations of intercultural communication, so it is necessary to familiarize students with them, train them to understand their nature, thus developing their ability to communicate on intercultural level. On this basis we can say that the advantage of learning language and culture in relationship on the level with traditional one is manifesting in the development of skills to communicate with native speakers in real life situations.

2) Interacting with people from other cultures we can face barriers in perception (preconcep-tions, stereotypes, dimensions of collectivism ver-sus individualism, history and experience, roles by gender or social class, values, customs, uncertain-ty, ethnocentrism) non-verbal (tone and loudness of voice, facial expression, posture, gestures, eye contact, chronemics, haptics, space in communi-cation, kinesics and proxemics) and verbal pro-cesses (competency in writing and speaking a language, idioms, slang, jargon, figurative expres-sions, exaggeration/understatement). To over-come difficulties in intercultural communication, it is necessary to follow such general guidelines: have a positive attitude about communication. Defensiveness interferes with communication; speak slowly and clearly; avoid assuming you've understood what's been said; practice reflective listening to check your own understanding; and use open-ended questions to check other peo-ple's understanding; avoid using slang and idioms, choosing words that will convey only the most specific denotative meaning; listen carefully and, if in doubt, ask for confirmation of understanding (particularly important if local accents and pro-nunciation are a problem); watch for any changes in body language; investigate their culture's per-ception of your culture by reading literature about your culture through their eyes before entering into communication with them; be patient.

3) The principles of intercultural communi-cative competence are interconnected and con-stitute the basis for development of methodology of intercultural English-speaking strategies forma-tion. The aim of intercultural strategies is to teach students to communicate with the English-speak-ing native speakers, taking into account personal needs and requirements of modern society, and the process of their formation consists of four lev-els. To achieve this goal in formation of intercultur- al English-speaking communicative competence one has to follow the following strategies: the use of lectures to explore foreign cultures, com-munication with native speakers, listening to au-dio recordings interviews, video-record interviews and reading of authentic texts. These intercultural communicative strategies, which enable to depart from the standard pattern of the English language teaching, will make training more effective and help to succeed in intercultural communication.

4) On the basis of critical review of domes-tic and foreign researches as well as a thorough analysis of the practical material, we can say that the choice of learning content, organization and presentation of training materials should be ac-complished taking into account students' inter-ests which appear in the process of study.

5) It has been found that the most appro-priate and most effective activities for teaching intercultural communication in higher forms are cultural assimilations, cultural capsules, mini-dra-mas, role-plays, social and cultural tasks, the use of media, training, comparative and project technology. We have determined that for the formation of students' intercultural communica-tive competence it is necessary to choose such means of assessment as tests, portfolios, ob-servation, interviews, summary of material anal-ysis in diaries, report of the foreign/own culture monitoring means. They will help quickly and ob-jectively identify the level of knowledge and for-mation skills of readiness for the intercultural in-teraction. The carried out investigation suggests that the developed methodology of intercultural English-speaking communicative strategies for-mation in students is effective. On the basis of our research guidelines for intercultural commu-nication training have been formulated.

6) We consider it appropriate to emphasize the fact that intercultural communication training promotes expansion of worldviews, strengthen-ing the motivation for language learning, devel-oping intercultural communication skills, content of foreign language studies, optimization and up-dating traditional teaching languages with infor-mation and methodology and providing training to use foreign language in any environment.

7) The social dimension of this theoretical explication delineates the interactional aspect of the communication process. Knowledge in-volves knowing the personal, relational, and cul-tural standards of competences and the skills are depicted in the behavior of the communica-tor. Inability to perform the «standards» of what is considered competent results in perception of incompetent communication.

8) To enhance the potential of foreign lan-guage lessons in terms of intercultural communi-cative competence development it is significant to encourage students into participation in the network-based international language learn-ing projects accomplished in collaboration with the students from a variety of cultures using the same foreign language.

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