Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 55

Generally speaking, we teach culture for two reasons: “to increase cultural
awareness ... and to promote cross-cultural interaction” (Tomalin and Stempleski
11). Apart from these goals, there are some principles to be observed when
teaching culture. Kramsch warns against a simple transmission of information and
stresses the necessity to involve students actively. Students should be taught to put
a foreign culture in relation to their own. Moreover, teaching culture should lead to a
better understanding of the others (Kramsch 1993: 206).
The goal of the teaching process is mainly that of ensuring culture-specific
understanding in a foreign language context. Thus, the teacher is there to help each
learner cope with the cultural learning experience. In order to do so, the teacher has
to select content areas and learning activities to engage the learners. But this is not
enough. The way teachers present cultural information, the extent to which they are
able to empathise with the learners and share their experiences as well as their
ability to become learners of culture are key aspects of a teacher’s job in teaching
culture.
The intercultural competence
Intercultural competence is needed for people from different cultures – with their
different values, practices, and ways of communicating – to avoid conflict and
misunderstanding. Intercultural competence requires people to be flexible in their
thinking and to recognize that people are complex. People have different levels of
intercultural competence, among themselves, and from context to context. People’s
intercultural competence will be more or less effective depending on their familiarity
with the particular culture they are encountering and the particular stereotypes that
they may believe.it is here that teachers and schools come into action – in preparing
students to cope with life challenges in this field. However, we must acknowledge
the fact that no one can be completely prepared for all the intercultural experiences
they will have in the future, and so intercultural competence requires flexibility. It
requires the ability to think critically about differences. Critical thinking is also
necessary to negotiate differences and use strategies to minimize conflict and
misunderstandings. As English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers, we are
preparing our students for future intercultural encounters. In order to understand
differences, the first step is to understand “Different from what?” A necessary step in
developing intercultural competence is to have a very clear understanding of oneself
as a cultural being. That is, we need to understand what our own culture is and how
it affects us day to day. The development of intercultural competence is an ongoing
process; it never ends.
Taking the above aspects into consideration, it could be argued that an integral part
of learning a foreign language is acquiring familiarity with the culture associated with
it. For EFL teachers, the question is, “How can we incorporate cultural knowledge
and understanding within the context of our English language classes?”
A tool that can help EFL students conceptualize elements of culture is Edward T.
Hall’s (1976) “cultural iceberg” analogy. Hall developed the analogy to illustrate
differences between what we readily see when we enter a new culture (the tip of the
iceberg) and the imbedded aspects of the culture not readily visible (the submerged
part of the iceberg). The products of a culture would be examples of things we can
readily see—the surface culture— while cultural practices and social perspectives—
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