An Intercultural Approach to Second Language Education

This chapter introduces intercultural language teaching by addressing the following issues:

• The limitations of a 'communicative' model of linguistic interaction.

• Intercultural communicative competence, and its relevance to both state sector and commercial ELT.

• The main theoretical influences on intercultural communicative competence.

• A review of the role of 'culture' in ELT.

What is an 'Intercultural' Approach to Second Language Education?

Since the mid to late 1980s, a number of teachers and educationalists have been arguing that an 'intercultural approach' to second language teaching prompts us to re-examine the most basic assumptions about what language does, and what a language course should seek to achieve. Current 'communicative' methods of second language teaching generally view language as a means of bridging an 'information gap'. Communicative language learning also assumes that by bridging a series of information gaps, learners will 'naturally' develop their linguistic knowledge and skills, ultimately to the point where they will acquire native-speaker competence. This view of language and linguistic development has tended to underrate culture. Stern (1992: 206) notes that, despite a sustained and consistent body of work, particularly in America, drawing attention to the importance of culture in language teaching, 'the cultural component has remained difficult to accommodate in practice'. In fact, cultural content was often stripped from learning materials. Pulverness (1996: 7) says of English language teaching (ELT) in the 1970s:

English was seen as a means of communication which should not be bound to culturally-specific conditions of use, but should be easily transferable to any cultural setting. Authenticity was a key quality, but only insofar as it provided reliable models of language in use. Content was important as a source of motivation, but it was seen as equally important to avoid material which might be regarded as 'culture bound'. Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, syllabus design and materials writing were driven by needs analysis, and culture was subordinated to performance objectives.

However, more recently, there have been fresh attempts to integrate 'culture' into the communicative curriculum. While acknowledging the obvious importance of language as a means of communicating information, advocates of an intercultural approach also emphasise its social functions; for example, the ways in which language is used by speakers and writers to negotiate their place in social groups and hierarchies. It has long been evident that the ways in which these negotiations take place vary from community to community. A language course concerned with 'culture', then, broadens its scope from a focus on improving the 'four skills' of reading, writing, listening and speaking, in order to help learners acquire cultural skills, such as strategies for the systematic observation of behavioural patterns. Moreover, as learners come to a deeper understanding of how the target language is used to achieve the explicit and implicit cultural goals of the foreign language community, they should be prompted to reflect on the ways in which their own language and community functions. The intercultural learner ultimately serves as a mediator between different social groups that use different languages and language varieties.

The ultimate goal of an intercultural approach to language education is not so much 'native speaker competence' but rather an 'intercultural communicative competence' (e.g. Byram, 1997b; Guilherme, 2002). Intercultural communicative competence includes the ability to understand the language and behaviour of the target community, and explain it to members of the 'home' community – and vice versa. In other words, an intercultural approach trains learners to be 'diplomats', able to view different cultures from a perspective of informed understanding. This aim effectively displaces the long-standing, if seldom achieved, objective of teaching learners to attain 'native speaker proficiency'. Obviously, one key goal of an intercultural approach remains language development and improvement; however, this goal is wedded to the equally important aim of intercultural understanding and mediation.

English language teaching has long been a multidisciplinary field in practice, but it has drawn mainly upon research into linguistics and psychology for its theoretical insights. An intercultural approach continues to draw upon these disciplines, but gives equal weight to other areas of research and practice in the humanities and social sciences. Some of these disciplines, such as anthropology and literary studies, are well established; others, such as media and cultural studies, are relatively young and still developing. Since the theoretical frameworks that have stimulated intercultural approaches are diverse, and potentially bewildering, much of the remainder of this chapter seeks to summarise them and clarify their contribution.

Much recent work on the intercultural approach to second language education has been done in state schools and colleges, particularly in Europe, and in courses and seminars sponsored by state institutions such as the British Council. An intercultural approach has been slower to impact upon ELT in the commercial sector. The commercial sector clearly is not motivated by exactly the same ideological considerations that govern state education. Modern languages education in state schools usually has to conform to goals that explicitly embed foreign language teaching in a broader humanistic curriculum. For example, a Working Group preparing modern language teachers in England and Wales for a revised national curriculum defined the curricular aims of modern languages teaching in a manner wholly in accord with the goals of an intercultural approach. The Working Group proposed that learners should have the opportunity to:

• appreciate the similarities and differences between their own and cultures of the communities/countries where the target language is spoken;

• identify with the experience and perspective of people in the countries and communities where the target language is spoken;

• use this knowledge to develop a more objective view of their own customs and ways of thinking. (DES, 1990: 3, cited in Byram et al., 1994: 15)

Such goals are more likely to be part of a liberal state-sponsored educational curriculum than a commercially driven one. However, there are benefits for the commercial sector in adopting and possibly adapting aspects of an intercultural approach. The skills of social observation and explanation that are taught in the intercultural classroom give...