Intercultural competence

One of the most significant changes in language learning and teaching over the
past few decades has been the recognition of the cultural dimension as a
key component. The objective of language learning is no longer defined in
terms of the acquisition of communicative competence in a foreign language,
which refers to a person’s ability to act in a foreign language in linguistically,
socio-linguistically and pragmatically appropriate ways. Rather, it is defined in
terms of the intercultural competence, which is “the ability of a person to
behave adequately in a flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes
and expectations of representatives of foreign cultures”. This definition, in fact,
adds to the notion of communicative competence and enlarges it to incorporate
intercultural competence.

Communicative competence
When people are talking to each other their social identities are unavoidably
part of the social interaction between them. In lg teaching, the concept of
communicative competence takes this into account by emphasising that
language learners need to acquire not just grammatical competence but also
the knowledge of what is appropriate language.

When two people talk to each other, they do not just speak to the other to
Exchange information, they also see the other as an individual and as someone
who belongs to a specific social group.

Byram
As stated by Byram the success of interaction implies not only an effective
interchange of information, as was the goal of communicative language
teaching, but also the “the ability to decentre and take up the other’s
perspective on their own culture, anticipating and where possible, resolving
dysfunctions in communication and behavior ”

No vives de gramática
A good knowledge of grammar rules, a rich vocabulary, a few memorised
speech acts and cultural facts will not sufficiently help non-native speakers of a
foreign lg to socialise, negotiate or make friends in the foreign lg (I’ll pretend to
make friends by speaking like Sofia Vergara). Furthermore, native or near native
fluency alone will not necessarily help native or non-native speakers of a lg to
successfully communicate with other people from other cultures either.

Intercultural competence
The ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social
identities and the ability to interact with people as complex human beings with
multiple identities and their own individuality

Culture
When language teachers are asked about what culture means to them, they
most frequently answer by listing subjects such as literature, geography and
arts. Although these subjects are all extremely important ingredients, it seems
that there are other equally significant components of culture that should find
their way into second and foreign language classrooms.
You won’t talk about history and literature with natives to be friends. So it’s not
enough
Kramsch’s definition: a world view, “a common system of standards for
perceiving, believing, evaluating, and acting”. E.g.: landing a job// me cayó del
cielo

Kramsch
The primary focus of teaching based on the intercultural approach is on the
target culture, yet, it also includes comparisons between the learner’s own
country and target country, thereby helping learners to develop a reflective
attitude to the culture and civilization of their own countries. Thus, educating
students to use a second/foreign language means to accustom them to being
interculturally sensitive, by supporting them to build the ability to act as a
cultural mediator, to see the world through the other’s eyes, and to consciously
use culture learning skills. Within this framework, the foreign language learner
is viewed as an “intercultural speaker”, someone who “crosses frontiers, and
who is to some extent a specialist in the transit of cultural property and
symbolic values.
This change in focus in the conceptualization of the foreign language learners
entails a change in the expectations voiced towards foreign language teachers.
Teachers are now expected not only to teach the foreign linguistic code but
also to “contextualize that code against the socio-cultural background
associated with the foreign language and to promote the acquisitions of
intercultural communicative competence”. The teacher is expected to
mediate between the native language and target language culture(s) to help
learners achieve the above mentioned goals. Thus, to support the intercultural
learning process, foreign language teachers need additional knowledge,
attitudes, competencies and skills. They need to be acquainted with basic
insights from cultural anthropology, culture learning theory and intercultural
communication and need to be willing to teach intercultural competence and
know how to do so.

Social identity
-Teacher: you cannot say “I don’t know why this boy is sitting for the exam if
he’s not going to pass it anyway. He should look for a job and let his
classmates study.

National identity
The one you are supposed to have because you live in a country.
● E.g. drinking mate, loving football, saying “che boludo”

Simplification
To see only one identity in a person is a S. An intercultural speaker is aware of
this simplification, knows something about the beliefs, values and behaviours
but is also aware that there are other identities hidden in the person with whom
they are interacting.

Lingua franca
When two people in conversation are from different countries speaking in a
language which is a foreign/second for one of them, or when they are both
speaking a lg which is foreign to both of them, a lingua franca, they may be
acutely aware of their national identities.
They are aware that at least one of them is speaking in a foreign language and
the other is hearing their own lg being spoken by a foreigner. Often, this
influences what they say and how they say it because they see the other person
as a representative of a country or nation. This and relying on stereotypes
reduces the individual from a complex human being to someone who is seen as
a representative of a country or culture.
Stereotypes are based on feelings rather than reason. Challenge ideas and not
people who express the ideas to make them overcome this prejudices.

Culture learning
Damen explains that “culture learning is a natural process in which human
beings internalize the knowledge needed to function in a societal group. It may
occur “in the native context as enculturation or in a non-native or secondary
context as acculturation”. As we grow up, we build our cultural identity and
way of life with our own cultural beliefs and values which we instinctively and
naturally believe to be right and powerful. “Acculturation, on the other hand,
involves the process of pulling out of the world view or ethos of the first
culture, learning new ways of meeting old problems, and shedding ethnocentric
evaluations.”

Intercultural attitudes
● Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other
cultures and belief about one’s own
This means willingness to relativize one’s own values, beliefs and behaviours,
not to assume that they are only possible and naturally correct ones, and to be
able to see how they might look from an outsider’s perspective who has a
different set of values, beliefs and behaviours. Decentre

Knowledge
Not only knowledge about a specific culture, but rather knowledge of how
social groups and identities function and what is involved in IC interaction. If it
can be anticipated with whom one will interact, then knowledge of that person’s
world is useful. If it cannot, then it is useful to imagine and interlocutor in order
to have an example.
Of a social group and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s
interlocutor’s country, and of the gral processes of societal and individual
interaction. 2 major components: K of social processes, and K of illustrations
of those processes and products; the latter includes knowledge about how
other people are likely to perceive you.
Skills of interpreting and relating
We need to be able to see how misunderstandings can arise, and how they
might be able to resolve them, they need attitudes of decentring but also skills
of comparing. By putting ideas, events, documents from two or more cultures
side by side and seeing how each might look from the other perspective, IC
speakers/mediators can see how people might misuderstand what is said or
written or done by someone with a diff social identity.
The ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it
and relate it to documents or events from one’s own.

Skills of discovery and interaction

It is important to acquire the skills of finding out new knowledge and
integrating it with what they already have. They need especially to know how to
ask people from other cultures about their beliefs, values and behaviours,
which because they are often unconscious, those people can easily explain.
The ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the
ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-
time communication and interaction.

Critical cultural awareness

Learners’ beliefs, values and behaviours are deeply embedded and can create
reaction and rejection. Bc of this unavoidable response, IC speakers/mediators
need to become aware of their own values and how these influence their views
of other people’s values.
An ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria,
perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and
countries.

Being a successful icc speaker

The acquisition of intercultural competence is never complete and perfect, but
to be a successful ic speaker and mediator does not require complete and
perfect competence. The 1st reason for this is that it is not possible to acquire
or to anticipate all the knowledge one might need in interacting with people of
other cultures. Those cultures are themselves constantly changing; one cannot
know with whom one will use a specific lg since many lgs are spoken in more
than one country. Similarly there are in any one country many different cultures
and lgs. And any lg can be used as a lingua franca with anyone from any
country. So it is not possible to anticipate the knowledge learners need and this
has been the main failure of the emphasis on knowledge in civilization, etc, bc
whatever is taught it is inevitably insufficient.
2nd reason: everyone’s own social identities and values develop, everyone
acquires new ones throughout life as they become a member of new social
groups; and those identities, and the values, beliefs and behaviours they
symbolise are deeply embedded in one’s self. This means that meeting new
experience, seeing unexpected beliefs, values and behaviours, can often shock
and disturb those deeply embedded identities and values, however open,
tolerant and flexible one wishes to be. Everyone has therefore to be constantly
aware of the need to adjust, to accept and to understand other people.

Aim
● No perfect model to imitate
● Not no imitate but to accept, adjust and understand

Do I need to be a native?
IC dimension is a vision of lg teaching and learning which goes beyond the
concept of lg learning as just acquiring skills in a lg, accompanied by some
knowledge about a country where the lg is spoken. ICC is diff from factual
knowledge about another country, it enables learners to interact with people of
diff cultural backgrounds, multiple identities and a specific individuality.

The best teacher

The best teacher is neither the native nor the non-native, but the person who
can help learners see relationships between their own and other cultures, can
help them acquire interest in and curiosity about otherness and an awareness
of themselves and their own cultures seen from other people’s perspectives.

Themes: follow the curriculum

The set programme of study is likely to be based on themes as well as
grammatical structures. When developing IC skills, teachers can start from the
theme and content in the text-book, and then encourage learners to ask further
questions and make comparisons.
Themes treated in text-books can lend themselves to development in an IC and
critical perspective. The key principle is to get learners to compare the theme
in a familiar situation with examples from an unfamiliar context
● Grammatical exercises can reinforce prejudice and stereotypes or
challenge them. SHE likes cooking HE likes playing football
● Themes: gender, age, religion, racism, food, homes (Chinese houses),
school (exercises from first where diff people talk about similar things in
diff places), tourism,
● Routines: compare breakfasts ● Technical books

Authentic materials
We can use as sources of information authentic texts, including audio
recordings and a variety of written documents and visuals such as maps,
photographs, diagrams and cartoons. The activities involve understanding,
discussing and writing in the target lg. The approach to the materials is always
critical. There is every reason for applying such principles to all topics studied
in the target lg. It is a question of challenging the reader by bringing together
texts and visual materials which present contrasting views. Learners need to
acquire concepts for analysing texts more than factual information.
● This is what we do in English Language, analysing texts from the
guardian, the ny times, etc.

Teachers
Teachers, as everyone, have their own values, beliefs and behaviours but it goes
without saying that they need to overcome prejudice and will not use sarcasm,
irony and despairing judgements.

Overcome stereotypes
We cannot do without any stereotype at all in foreign lg teaching –after all
identities are often defined in stereotypes, even by people defining themselves!
The way one nation sees another is at least partly dependent on how it thinks
about itself. Stereotypes are there to be challenged, for this is the only way to
develop an individual who is ready to discover the essence of ‘others’ in
members of other cultures and understand the complexity they embody.

Intercultural speakers
Or mediators, who are able to engage with complexity and multiple identities
and to avoid the stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through
a single identity. It is based on perceiving the interlocutor as an individual
whose qualities are to be discovered, rather than as a representative of an
externally ascribed identity.
● IC communication is communication on the basis of respect for
individuals and equality of human rights as the democratic basis for
social interaction.
Assessment
To assess the ability to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,

Conclusion
One of the most significant changes over the past few decades has been the
recognition of the cultural dimension as a key component of language studies. This
has transformed the nature of the experience of teaching and learning languages to a
great extent and the traditional aim of developing linguistic skills modelled on the
norms of native speakers has lost ground. According to the intercultural model,
languages are related to the cultures, communities and societies that use them for
communication and language learners should be encouraged to become competent
intercultural speakers. For this purpose, language teachers are expected to guide
students in the acquisition of various skills, contributing to the development of their
knowledge and understanding of a target language and culture(s), and helping them
reflect on their own culture as well.