Nurtaeva Aisulu, senior lecturer

Kazakh state women’s teacher training university

Building intercultural competence in the language classroom

The linking of language and culture in the foreign language classroom has been the focus of much scholarly inquiry. With increased globalization, migration and immigration there has been a growing recognition for the need for an intercultural focus in language education. While language proficiency lies at the “heart of language studies”, it is no longer the only aim of language teaching and learning. The Standards define language goals in terms of the designed to guide learners toward becoming viable contributors and participants in a linguistically and culturally diverse society. When language educators plan a standards based curriculum, it becomes clear that language and culture are inextricably linked.

What kinds of classroom tasks can successfully move students toward intercultural competence? Research on intercultural competence underscores the importance of preparing students to engage and collaborate in a global society by discovering appropriate ways to interact with people from other cultures.

An interculturally competent speaker of a FL possesses both communicative competence in that language as well as particular skills, attitudes, values and knowledge about a culture. An interculturally competent speaker turns intercultural encounters into intercultural relationships—someone determined to understand, to gain an inside view of the other person’s culture while also contributing to the other person’s understanding of his/her own culture from an insider’s point of view. When language skills and intercultural competency become linked in a language classroom, students become optimally prepared for participation in a global world. This article reviews and summarizes the literature on intercultural competence and intercultural communicative competence in order to better understand how these notions can impact the cultural component of a foreign language curriculum. Building on various models of intercultural communicative competence, examples of cultural tasks that promote intercultural communicative competence and represent best practices in language teaching and learning will be presented and illustrated for classroom integration. What is Intercultural Competence? Defining intercultural competence is a complex task. At the heart of intercultural competence is the preparation of individuals to interact appropriately and effectively with those from other cultural backgrounds.

Finally, the fast-paced transformation of Building intercultural competence in the language classroom society as a result of science, technology, and globalization, forces intercultural objectives to continuously evolve in order to reflect the needs of modern citizens and communities. It is no wonder that a precise definition of intercultural competence does not exist in the literature. Although there is no consensus on a precise definition for intercultural competence, there are common themes that emerge from the research literature. Self-Awareness and Identity Transformation Various models of intercultural competence attend to different types of self awareness and internal transformation as necessary initial components in the process of becoming interculturally competent. Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity charts the internal evolution from “ethnocentrism” to “ethnorelativism” within the context of intercultural interactions. In order to successfully navigate intercultural situations, Bennett posits that a person’s worldview must shift from avoiding cultural difference to seeking cultural difference.

Byram uses such words as openness and curiosity to explain his conviction that an individual must remain open to learning about new beliefs, values, and worldviews in order to participate in relationships of equality. When Byram presents the components of intercultural competence, he explains that it involves either interacting with the “other” while continuing to use one’s native language or interpreting documents that have been translated into one’s native language from another culture/language. In this case, intercultural competence does not require the participant to understand or speak a foreign language. Intercultural communicative competence, however, incorporates the ideas of self-awareness, inquiry, and process as outlined above, but moreover, introduces the notion of communicating in a foreign language as integral to the intercultural situation. Intercultural Communicative Competence Byram depicts someone who gains skills in intercultural communicative competence as an individual who is successful in: building relationships while speaking the foreign language of the other participant; negotiating how to effectively communicate so that both individuals’ communicative needs are addressed; mediating conversations between those of diverse cultural backgrounds; and continuing to acquire communicative skills in foreign languages not yet studied.

This final characteristic stresses that when an effective intercultural communicator learns to interact with those from a specific culture, a foundation of language and culture learning has been built, and that individual is more likely to continue to gather linguistic information from other cultures in order to broaden her spectrum of intercultural encounters.

Gaining intercultural communicative competence is about more than simple exchanges, rather it centers on building relationships and engaging in communication even when the participants involved do not share the same worldview.

References

1.Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Bennett, M. J. (2004). Becoming interculturally competent. In J.S. Wurzel (Ed.),

2.Cultural studies in foreign language education. Cleveland, England: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M. (1997).

3.Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002).

4.Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Chapelle, C.A. (2010).