Intercultural communicative competence in language teaching

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Intercultural communicative competence in language teaching

Anderson Lyudmila,

Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Intercultural Communications of the National Academy of Management of Culture and Arts

Intercultural communicative competence, or ICC, refers to the ability to understand cultures, including your own, and use this understanding to communicate with people from other cultures successfully. ICC is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in various cultural contexts. There are numerous components of ICC. Some key components include motivation, self- and other knowledge, and tolerance for uncertainty.

Where does culture fit? What discipline does culture belong to?

Culture has many mothers - academic disciplines that have influenced its development. One is linguistics, which has provided the concepts of language analysis that are the basis of inter-cultural communication. Another is psychology, that has provided many of the concepts we use in understanding people's motivation and behaviour. Two other disciplines, sociology and anthropology, have both influenced our study of behaviour and also the influences that form social values in different communities. So we can say that cultural awareness is an interdisciplinary subject that draws on the resources of a variety of humanistic disciplines to profile the aptitudes and skills required to understand and work successfully in another culture. The skills of cultural awareness are part of the newly developed subject of emotional intelligence, created by psychologist Daniel Goleman at Harvard University. However, you may well identify other `mothers' and other antecedents and other homes for the study of cultural awareness or cultural competence. Culture tends to be relegated to a specific section in textbooks or to be the subject of readers. Yet you could argue that every photo, drawing, reading package and dialogue is the subject not just of linguistic exploitation but of cultural discussion and debate. Nowadays our textbooks contain print, audio, CDROM and DVD components and even dedicated websites. Are these better avenues for teaching cultural awareness and if so what should we be putting in them? Teachers of Professional English often complain about the lack of `critical incident methodology' video material which highlights key areas of misunderstanding between cultures and presents them for discussion. We should exchange our recommendations on materials. An important question is how can we best incorporate cultural material in our teaching materials? Should we provide more cultural input in our ELT textbooks or should we `deculturalise' the textbooks to give them the widest application?

How should we teach cultural awareness? Should we be teaching it as a special slot, such as a culture corner or culture spot in the lesson, or should each lesson seek to contain a cultural awareness skill that students develop through working through the textbook and associated materials? Should we be teaching the skills of identifying culturally significant information, how to research cultural information and how to develop cultural skills? Should we have lectures and presentations where we tell our students what they need to know? Should we be using task-based learning and discovery techniques to help our students learn for themselves? Are some methods more appropriate than others for teachers who are not native-speakers (and may be less familiar with the culture) or have large classes of sixty or more students? In other words, when do you include culture in your lessons and how do you teach it? What methodology works for you? When we discuss the teaching of cultural awareness as a skill as opposed to teaching cultural information, we have to consider a number of issues, such as the curriculum, the materials and the methodology. The challenge is to initiate a debate on what and how to teach to help develop our students as international citizens of the world, using English and other languages as their lingua franca.

Teachers tend to forget to mention culture in their classes or maybe because they lack information about the target culture and sometimes are not even aware of the microcultures that make their own culture. So, all these arguments make it a difficult task. Teachers need trainings in order to develop their cultural awareness as well as to become interculturally competent: to believe that no culture is superior or better than the other and that we have to accept and respect each other's differences. ICC could include understanding how gestures and the distance between speakers vary from culture to culture. Ways to develop this competence include learners producing a written or online guide to their own country and culture for visitors, reading and discussing guides written by visitors, researching aspects of a target culture in various media including cinema, literature and television, giving presentations on aspects of the target culture, and exploiting the teacher's own expertise of their own culture.

We should introduce foreign language songs which let students identify some particularities of the speech and utterances used. We should use feasts, holidays, and anniversaries as a chance to touch upon intercultural communication and explore background information about a holiday in the target culture. Then, we should attempt to find a parallel in the local culture. Usually parallels exist. May be the way celebrations take place differ, but the meaning behind them and the message are universal. Students usually enjoy the search and we even explore various aspects of intercultural factors, like food, clothes, social functions, consumerism. etc. The dimensions for broadening our search are endless. As a written extension activity, we can send post cards and e-mail messages to students in other universities on these occasions.

Learning a language is very complex and should be done by following some secure steps, that's why we have language levels, usually we don't step to the next level until we don't reach acceptable result in the current level. It's brilliant to include culture in teaching a language but it's very important to know when the right moment for that is, it's important in public schools but also in private. You cannot teach a language without teaching the culture. One way is to focus on movies. songs, and newspaper articles. We cannot ignore the wealth of information available on the Internet, so introduce your students to these tools. In this way, they will be interested in reading or listening when there is content or input in the form of knowledge being transferred. We should not forget to personalize whatever content and like to their own experiences. That is why teaching a foreign language should bring not only its grammar structure, but also, the traditions, culture and thoughts which can alert us of how we should use it.

References

1. Allen B. J. Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity, 2nd ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2011. № 9 (65). Р. 186-87.

2. Bednarz F. Building Up Intercultural Competences: Challenges and Learning Processes. Building Intercultural Competencies: A Handbook for Professionals in Education, Social Work, and Health Care / eds. Maria Giovanna Onorati and Furio Bednarz. Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2010. Р. 39.

3. Bennett J. M. Cultivating Intercultural Competence. The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence /ed. Darla K. Deardorff. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009. Р. 127-34.

4. Martin J. N., Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010, 465.

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