Sharing Good Practice
So , what makes intercultural learning different ? Raising awareness of what we do and the vital importance of these skills already makes intercultural communicative competence a more attainable goal . Intercultural awareness skills can be developed by designing materials that have cultural and intercultural themes as their content .
What are teachers ? Activities managers ? Language facilitation units ? Babysitters ? Intercultural learning gives the teacher a role not only as one or more of these but also as an educator .
Are we responsible for transmitting some kind of ideology to our students ? No , we are helping them become more aware of the world around them and better interact with that world . These are the crucial roles of the teacher . Moreover , EFL teachers tend to have a wide variety of different backgrounds in different disciplines .
Many teachers need to figure out the time they should introduce intercultural awareness . Previously , " cultural awareness " has often only been seen as something for advanced learners , an extension exercise that can be " tacked on " to an ordinary lesson . This is partly due to the alltoo-frequent error of assuming that students with a low level of English also have a low intellect , generally , or that it is impossible to explain intellectual concepts in level one English . As a fundamental feature of language and an integral part of language learning , intercultural awareness is important at all levels .
It has been suggested that intercultural awareness consists of having four different perspectives on communication with a different culture . Intercultural competent students should be able to look at their own culture from the point of view of their own culture ( i . e . have a good understanding and awareness of their own culture ), be aware of how their culture is seen from outside by other countries or cultures , understand or see the target culture from its perspective ( i . e . understand and be aware of what other people think of their own culture ), be aware of how they see the target culture .
Some of the ways to develop intercultural competence are to produce a guidebook , poster or webpage for visitors to their town , country , or region , to read articles or extracts from books , newspapers , magazines , or websites written by people who have visited the students ' town , country or region , to familiarise students with sources of information about the target culture . Again , newspapers and websites can be an invaluable sources of reading materials here .
Films and literary texts often reflect and interrogate their own cultures . The non-native teacher has a valuable role to play here , being a person from one culture who has a certain amount of knowledge and / or experience of the target culture . If students have visited the target culture , they can recount their experiences - perhaps by giving a written or oral presentation with advice for other students .
Conclusion
A reaction of some teachers , when faced with these ideas , is " Why bother ?". There is a feeling that we help our students to communicate anyhow , and that if culture is an integral part of the language , then students will just pick it up , that culture is impossible to teach , that we shouldn ' t , in any way , be seen to be foisting values on our students . I would argue that teaching intercultural awareness is vital to make our job-relevant and meaningful . " What am I doing ? helping your students to understand , interact with , and - hopefully - change for the better the world we all live in . Given the current global situation , there are few jobs more important than this .
Resources
• Context and Culture in Language Teaching Claire Kramsch ( OUP , 1993 )
• Language and Culture Claire Kramsch ( OUP , 1998 )
• Changing Skies Alan Pulverness ( Swan Communications , 2000 )
• The Culture Pack : intercultural communication resources for trainers Derek Utley ( York Associates , 2002 )
• Intercultural Activities Michaela Cankova and Simon Gill ( OUP , 2001 )
• unesco . org / International / Publications / FreePublications / FreePublicationsPdf / batelaan . PDF
• The Common European Framework at culture2 . coe . int / portfolio // documents / 0521803136txt . pdf ( pages 43 , 103-5 )
Marwa Mansour was graduated from the commerce faculty , Ain Shams University ; became an English Teacher after studying at Cambridge University . Since 2004 she has worked as an English Teacher , H . O . E . D , Academic Manager , and CIE Exam Officer in different countries . In addition , she works as an IB- MYP Language Acquisition Teacher .
44 Term 3 Apr - Jun 2022
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