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New Trends in Teaching Language and Culture
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Mariusz Marczak
Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
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Please Cite as follows: Marczak, M. (2010) New Trends in Teaching Language and Culture. In
Komorowska, H. & Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, L. (eds.) Coping with Diversity. New Trends in Language
and Culture Education. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Psychologii Społecznej, pp. 13-28.
New Trends in Teaching Language and Culture
1. A shift in the language teaching paradigm

Kachru (2008) distinguishes between three circles of English language users
worldwide: (a) the inner circle (380mln), which embraces the native speakers from countries
such as UK, USA or Australia; (b) the outer circle (300mln), with speakers of English as a
second language, i.e. speakers who acquire English in a different language and cultural
setting, e.g. speakers of English from India; and (c) the expanding circle (1000mln), which
comprises speakers of English as a foreign language, e.g. those who learn the language in
countries such as Poland, France or China.
Due to the currently observable spread of English across the world this model is in
part gradually losing its validity, as learners in certain European countries, e.g. Holland or
Finland, resemble second language learners. Kachru (Graddol 2006) has, therefore, lately
verified his view of the circles by admitting that in an age of globalisation and mobility it is
the level of target language proficiency that determines which circle an individual falls into.
Consequently, the inner circle “(…) is now better conceived of as the group of highly
proficient users of English” (Graddol 2006: 110), irrespective of how they have developed
their knowledge of the language or in what circumstances they use it. Yet another significant
implication of Kachru’s model is that non-native speakers of English by far outnumber the
native speakers.
Consequently, nowadays English functions mostly as a lingua franca, i.e. a tool for
international communication, which does not necessarily involve native speakers
(Komorowska 2006). Globalisation, through intermarriage or permanent mobility for
example, has led to the emergence of people’s multicultural/hyphenated identities (Graddol
2006), which has been breeding cultural hybridity (Cooper 1998). In addition, cultures clash
now on a regular basis, and this in turn has brought cultural diversity to the fore so much that
culture, which undeniably relates to language, is now more clearly than ever recognised as
heterogeneous, with less much less attention to individuals’ nationality than before.
The above-mentioned phenomena have had an impact on the teaching of English as a
foreign language, which is supposed to respond to global trends in language and culture. In
effect, the native speaker has lost the status of a language/culture model (Kramsch 1993;
1998). Instead, a non-native speaker model appears to be more relevant to students’ needs.
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After all, most teachers of English are non-native speakers, anyway, while most language
learners might never come into contact with native speakers (Danova 1998). The EFL
classroom, therefore, is to prepare learners for using English as an International Language
(EIL) (Gozdawa-Gołębiowski 2007) or English as a Lingua Franca (ELF-ish) (Sobkowiak
2008). This kind of language use/usage on the one hand elevates the status of a non-native
language model, and on the other hand makes (inter)cultural awareness a vital skill
(Aleksandrowicz-Pędich 2005).
2. The new language teaching paradigm in educational documents worldwide

In Europe, the intercultural awareness of its citizens has been emphasised in the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment,
issued by the Council of Europe (CEFR 2001). As Bandura (2009) observes, what the key
European educational document highlights is the co-existence of multiple cultures on the
continent on the one hand, and the need to explore the complex relations between particular
cultures on the other. Amongst the competences to be developed in learners are there are:
knowledge of the world, sociocultural knowledge, intercultural awareness, practical
intercultural skills, attitudes of openness towards otherness (Council of Europe 2008).
The European Language Portfolio, which was prepared and piloted by the Language
Policy Division of the Council of Europe between the years 1998-2000, and subsequently
introduced across Europe in 2001, is a practical instrument for learners with which to
implement the CEFR’s educational guidelines. In its three parts it focuses heavily on language
and intercultural learning: the Language Passport gives an overview of the learner’s
proficiency, including intercultural experiences; the Language Bibliography permits
“planning, reflecting upon and assessing” (CoE 2004: 7) one’s own learning process; and the
Dossier helps one “collect materials to document (...) achievements or experiences recorded
(...)” (CoE 2004: 8). A similar tool both in format and contents is the Autobiography of
Intercultural Encounters (CoE 2009).
Overall, the work of the Council of Europe has been seminal for most European
schools systems, which appended their teaching programmes and syllabi with elements of
socio-cultural and intercultural competence (Komorowska 2006).
Institutional support for intercultural teaching across Europe is also provided by the
European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz, which in the years 2004-2007 produced and
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published online a myriad of materials on and for intercultural teaching within the research
and development programme Languages for social cohesion: Language education in a
multilingual and multicultural Europe (ECML 2004-2007). It also published Guenova’s
Social Identity and the European Dimension: Intercultural Competence Through Foreign
Language Learning (Aleksandrowicz-Pędich 2005), which offers a number of intercultural
teacher training modules for European teachers and educational decision makers.
In the United States of America, the year 2006 saw the publication of the National
Security Language Initiative, a document which is to safeguard America’s national security
through language and cultural education, and ”(...) promote understanding, convey respect for
other cultures and provide an opportunity to learn more about our country and citizens” (NSLI
2006: 1). According to Bandura (2004), the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages promoted intercultural communication and understanding as a goal of language
education in the USA already in 1996. Internationally, bodies which that have placed
intercultural education in their documents and recommendations include the United Nations
and UNESCO (Bandura 2007).
3. From teaching culture to intercultural teaching

Culture has always constituted an element of foreign language teaching. However, it
has mostly involved transmission of declarative, factual knowledge, which teachers relayed to
learners from the position of a ‘knower’. Intercultural teaching, which is advocated today
(Byram 1997; 1998; 2003; 2008), shifts the teaching of culture towards the development of
skills of observation, empathy for otherness, and the ability to adopt behaviour which would
help one function appropriately in intercultural situations Aleksandrowicz-Pędich (2005).
What is more, as the term intercultural teaching indicates, this kind of teaching
focuses on two culture systems: the learner’s native culture as well as the target one, as the
systems interact in the EFL classroom, e.g. through the learner’s own cultural identity, which
must not be overlooked as part of any educational process. Therefore, intercultural teaching is
at the same time intracultural (Aleksandrowicz-Pędich 2005), in that it permits the learner to
gain additional insight into their own native culture.
Aleksandrowicz-Pędich (2007) defines the goals of intercultural teaching in the EFL
classroom as follows: to prepare learners for intercultural contacts in educational, professional
and tourist settings; to enable learners to participate in social life in the changing
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circumstances of a mother/foreign country which result from migration processes; to ensure

that learners use the target language without the feeling of discomfort and adequately for the
social interactions they engage in; and finally, to foster learners’ increased awareness of their
native culture and cultural identity. In sum, teachers no longer are expected to teach about the
target language culture, but rather ensure that their students will successfully handle
intercultural communicative situations through the medium of English (Byram 2003).
Intercultural teaching is pedagogically postmodernist in nature (Risager 2007), i.e. it
accentuates the very learning processes that occur in the mind of an interculturally engaged
learner. Strategies and skills as well as the learner’s meta-cultural awareness are far more
important here than declarative knowledge, which had been the focus of the educational
modernism up to the 1980s (Risager 2007).
The step that FLT pedagogy has taken from teaching culture to intercultural teaching
in the EFL classroom is best illustrated when one compares the content-based British Studies
approach to the currently advocated, intercultural approach, based on the development of
awareness and skills. The two are juxtaposed below in a table adapted from Bolt (2001: 101).
1: British Studies vs. Intercultural teaching

BRITISH STUDIES INTERCULTURAL TEACHING
Knowledge-based Experiential (awareness and skills)
Focus: Target culture Focus: Target and learner’s native culture
Outcome: target culture, and native speaker Outcome: variety of cultural outcomes
Teacher-centred Learner-centred (autonomy)
Culture-dependent Generic (transferable)
Monolithic, national picture of culture Heterogeneous picture of culture
Textbook-based Centred on original resources
Goal: knowledge Goal: skills, attitudes, knowledge
From the pedagogical vantage point, culture is now viewed as a multi-faceted

phenomenon to be presented to language learners, as opposed to the monolithic, national
image which was projected onto students within the British Studies approach. Moran (2001),
who represents the intercultural approach, distinguishes between explicit and tacit
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components of culture, which are all supposed to be taught in the EFL classroom. The explicit
components include: cultural products and practices, but also communities and individual
people that interact with the former two. Simultaneously, he observes that the explicit is
motivated by perspectives, which, although difficult to trace, are also meant to be explored, as
only that guarantees intercultural understanding.
Moran (2001) parses culture into cultural knowings and indicates how each of those
can be taught in the foreign language classroom, in terms of teaching content, activities, i.e.
classroom procedures, and outcomes to be reached:
3: Cultural Knowings: Content, Activities, Outcomes (Moran 2001: 18)

Content Activities Outcomes
knowing about cultural information gathering information cultural knowledge
knowing how cultural practices developing skills cultural behaviours
knowing why cultural perspectives discovering explanations cultural understanding
knowing oneself Self Reflection self-awareness
According to Moran (2001), teaching content is supposed to embrace: (a) cultural

information, (b) cultural practices (c) other people’s perspectives, and (d) the learner’s self.
The corresponding activities through which this content is to be taught involve: (i) gathering
cultural information which would build the basis of the learner’s cultural exploration; (ii)
developing skills which would enable the learner to notice and properly utilise culturally-
determined behaviours; (iii) discovering explanations in order for the learner to discern other
people’s perspectives and achieve intercultural understanding; and (iv) reflecting
introspectively on one’s self, as understanding others is only fully possible when one
understands oneself first. In effect, the resultant outcomes of teaching culture are: cultural
knowledge, which has dominated language and culture teaching pedagogy so far, along with
cultural behaviours, cultural understanding, and understanding oneself, i.e. increased self-
awareness.
It needs emphasising that culture is currently recognised as a dynamic entity (Fenner
and Newby 2000), i.e. a process, which covers people’s thoughts and feelings involved in
communication, as Lusting & Koerster (Moran 2001) postulate. In Corbett’s words, “Culture
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is a verb” (Corbett 2005); it is “(…) the negotiation of beliefs, values, attitudes, and their
interrogation and celebration through signifying practices” (Corbett 2005).
All in all, Bolt (2001) proposes that culture in the EFL classroom is to be seen as:
inclusive (including diverse aspects of life), non-national (occupational, age-related), multiple
(involving an individual’s multiple identities), a process (producing behaviours and products),
and contemporary (focused on the present and future, instead of the past mostly).
In intercultural teaching, the learner is supposed to develop a better understanding of
the target culture as well as their own, without attempting to mimic the native speaker model
of cultural behaviour. The learner is therefore to assume the “third place” (Kramsch 1996:
181), between both cultures, so that they can detach themselves from their native culture on
the one hand, and endeavour to see the target culture without the interference of their native
cultural perspective on the other hand. A learner who successfully accomplishes the task and
is able to mediate between two cultures is referred to as an intercultural speaker (Byram and
Zarate 1997; Byram and Fleming 1998), intercultural diplomat (Corbett 2003), intercultural
intermediary (Council of Europe 2008) or intercultural mediator (Irishkanova et al. 2004).
A truly intercultural speaker is defined by Byram and Fleming (1998) as a person who
is familiar with other cultures and social identities, and is capable of using this knowledge
when in intercultural contexts for which they have not received direct training. This seems to
take into account the view of culture as dynamic, but also heterogeneous, as ethno-linguists
such as Riley (2007) suggest. In the intercultural world of today nothing can be fully
prescribed, and a set of generic intercultural skills constitutes a better survival kit for
intercultural mediators than a body of pre-taught knowledge. Interestingly enough, the role of
intercultural mediator is ascribed to both the learner and the teacher in the intercultural
approach, thus both parties are actively involved in intercultural learning.
Foreign language and culture teaching, as well as communication in the target
language inevitably involve coping with intercultural encounters, which may involve text,
video material or a native speaker in person (Morgan 1998). In such situations speakers do not
share a common first language, they utilize different politeness codes, and they rely on a
stereotyped picture of both self and others.
Factors which determine success in intercultural encounters include (a) the situation
(e.g. the people involved and time); (b) the affect (physiological, emotional, kinaesthetic and
tactile modes of perception); and (c) the cognitive (the salience of particular cultural
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phenomena, readiness to seek consistency and accept difference in contacts with others, and
striving to attribute cultural actions observed to situations rather than the people involved).
Intercultural encounters can be best illustrated by referring to Weaver’s (Morgan
1998) iceberg metaphor of culture, perhaps in its elaborated version proposed by Morgan
(1998), who added to it the language component in order to emphasise the inseparability of
language and culture in intercultural communicative contexts. What meets the eye in
intercultural encounters is the tip of the two icebergs, one’s native culture and the target
language culture, i.e. the tangible cultural aspects such as language, particular behaviours and
the beliefs which cultural actors may happen to clearly imply or express explicitly. What
escapes notice, however, is the tacit part of every culture, i.e. the implicit beliefs, values and
thought patterns that underlie people’s actions. In an intercultural encounter two such icebergs
clash head-on, but as the participants remain blind to the true underpinnings of one another’s
proceedings, i.e. those that remain under the surface of the water, they frequently misattribute,
misinterpret strangers’ behaviour, and thus stereotype otherness.
In Lusting and Koerster’s (Moran 2001) view, in intercultural communication the
participants are expected to communicate but also cooperate and attempt to establish
relationships, i.e. their task is to mediate the culture clash for the sake of mutual benefit and
increased understanding; in other words, what intercultural communication requires is
intercultural communicative competence.
The concept of Intercultural Communicative Competence was introduced by Byram
(1997) as a goal of foreign language teaching which, apart from educating learners in
language, would simultaneously further their intercultural competence. Interestingly enough,
Byram’s concept was a combination of two hitherto separate notions: communicative
competence and intercultural competence, where the latter might be developed independently
from the former, even outside the foreign language classroom.
To Byram (1998), communicative competence consists of linguistic competence,
sociolinguistic competence and discourse competence. Linguistic competence involves the
ability to perform correctly in the target language by applying in practice the knowledge of
rules that one has managed to accumulate in order to interpret and produce spoken or written
messages. Sociolinguistic competence covers the ability to ascribe appropriate meaning to the
language produced by one’s interlocutor in agreement with the interlocutor’s implicit
intentions or on the basis of meanings negotiated or expressed explicitly by them. Discourse
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competence refers to the ability to construct particular text types, e.g. monologues or
dialogues, in congruence with the conventions of the target language. However, this kind of
competence would also enable one to negotiate a new, intercultural text type which might
serve a particular purpose in an intercultural communicative situation.
Byram’s (1997) intercultural competence comprises three elements: affective
(attitudes), cognitive (knowledge), and action-oriented (skills). Attitudes are proposed as
indispensible to intercultural learning, as they foster in foreign language learners a degree of
curiosity and open-mindedness which would facilitate intercultural exploration. Moreover,
attitudes also denote the learner’s readiness to cope with difference, as well as defamiliarise
their native culture in order to look at it from an outsider’ perspective.
Knowledge refers to the knowledge of social groups, cultural products and practices
which every intercultural learner should accumulate as the basis of intercultural exploration.
However, such exploration also requires the knowledge of the mechanics of societal and
individual interaction, which Byram (1997) places here as well.
The skills component contains: (a) skills of interpreting and relating, i.e. the ability to
interpret documents or events from a foreign culture, and the ability to relate them to their
equivalents from the learner’s own culture; and (b) skills of discovery and interaction, i.e. the
ability to acquire more knowledge of cultural products and practices, as well as the ability to
implement the affective, cognitive and action-oriented components of one’s intercultural
competence in real time while interacting and communicating with strangers in intercultural
contexts.
Byram’s (1997) intercultural competence model was topped up with critical cultural
awareness – the ability to evaluate own and foreign cultural products, practices and
perspectives on the basis of explicit criteria. This kind of evaluation is to serve foreign
language learners in: recognizing conflicts which inevitably arise within intercultural
interactions, seeking solutions through negotiation in real time, and discovering that
difference needs to be accepted.
For the sake of clarity, Byram (2008) has also presented his model of intercultural
competence as a set of savoirs:
-Savoir être (Attitudes)
-Savoirs (Knowledge)
-Savoir comprendre (Skills of relating and interpreting)
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-Savoir apprendre/faire (Skills of discovering and interacting)

-Savoir s’engager (Critical cultural awareness)
What must be indicated is that in the context of intercultural communication Byram’s
communicative competence and intercultural competence in are mutually related, in that
communicative competence is not complete without the savoirs. Moreover, the degree to
which the savoirs themselves are developed conditions the quality of the learner’s
communicative competence. For instance, knowledge also embraces elements of language,
savoir être may determine linguistic success while savoir apprendre/faire may also serve the
purpose of language learning.
To a certain degree Moran’s (2001) cultural knowings, and selected components of
Byram’s (2008) intercultural competence intertwine. For instance: skills of interpreting and
relating correspond to knowing why; skills of discovering and interacting fall into knowing
how; knowledge of self and other can be roughly equated with knowing about and knowing
self; and attitudes, by which Byram understands relativising self and valuing others, partly
overlap with knowing self, although the correspondence here is rather limited. Moran’s (2001)
cultural knowings, therefore, may be treated as an attempt at translating Byram’s intercultural
competence into EFL teaching content areas, classroom practices and objectives to be dealt
with by teachers in the course of their daily work.
Although the need to introduce intercultural teaching is prescribed today by the
official documents which shape national educational policies in Europe, North America or
Asia, depending on a given country’s geopolitical and cultural context, the task is approached
differently. Perhaps, an illustration of that may be the distinct difference in response to
globalisation which can be found in Asia, where, e.g. in Japan, although the curriculum has
been internationalised, the aim of it is rather to enhance the learner’s representation of their
own national culture through learning about others (Parmenter 2003).
4. Postmodernist teaching methods in the intercultural classroom

As intercultural teaching is postmodernist in its approach to learning and skills
development, it naturally relies on methods which permit learners to actively construct their
own image of cultural phenomena, independently from the teacher, albeit with the teacher’s
support. Examples of this mode of teaching are ethnographic methods and the use of
multimedia in the interculturally-focused EFL classroom.
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Ethnography – a ‘sister’ discipline of anthropology – is one of the sciences that

intercultural teaching draws upon (Corbett 2003), because the techniques it offers allow
learners to participate in others’ lives, collect data through participatory observation (Gohart-
Radenkovic et al. 2004), interview, and interpret the data collected (Barro et al. 1998) in order
to explain social behaviour. As such, ethnography is “at the very heart of the intercultural
language curriculum” (Corbett 2003: 9).
Roberts et al. (2001) maintain that through ethnography learners: explore culture and
society through concrete examples; learn to question and relativise previous assumptions;
learn how to observe; improve the ability to expand cultural knowledge through an analysis of
ethnographic data; take initiative; and become autonomous and flexible.
Ethnographic learning techniques transform the traditional British Studies approach to
teaching culture into learner-centred, anthropological exploration, where: learning about
culture is replaced with learning through cultural practices; cultural text is substituted for
(inter)cultural experience; and the palpable takes the place of the cognitive. Participatory
observers live the target culture instead of reading about it.
Finally, as ethnography does not separate language from culture, Agar’s languaculture
is the subject of study here rather than culture alone. In an ethnographic study, which aims at
“making the familiar strange” (Barro et al. 1998: 84), the learner has to constantly revise not
only their assumptions about the culture and language under observation but also their own;
the idea behind it is that both cultures are meant to be objectivised, and the observer is meant
to do it by watching others in action as well as reflecting on their own behaviour. Thus, the
ethnographic procedure follows four steps: (a) observing own daily routine; (b) describing; (c)
analysing; and (d) interpreting (Barro et al., ibid.).
According to Byram, Morgan et al., “cultural experience” (1994: 43) is central to
cultural teaching, and this can be materialised in the classroom reality through audio-visual
education. At the same time, Thanasoulas (2001) proposes that students run cultural errands
by experiencing the target culture directly, e.g. by visiting supermarkets and collecting names
of the imported products which they find there. Modern Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) equips teachers with computers which make both possible in the classroom
or at home. Although intercultural teaching appears as amongst the goals of FLT in current
educational documents, most coursebooks are notoriously devoid of intercultural content
(Żylińska 2003). Thus, ICT can be viewed as a means with which to fill this gap.
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The use of ICT in intercultural teaching facilitates postmodernist teaching, in that, as

Bélisle (2007) observes, it combines intellectual understanding and empathy; activates the
learner; shifts learning from memorisation to transformation; promotes interpersonal relations;
and immerses learners in the foreign cultural context. When multimedia, which is an inherent
part of modern ICT, is applied to intercultural teaching, it permits multi-sensory teaching,
provides a closer alternative to real-life experience, and helps demonstrate a variety of
opinions. It also increases motivation, stirs students’ emotions, and demonstrates less
explored aspects of culture, e.g. non-verbal communication (Aleksandrowicz-Pędich 2006).
Bandura (2007) notices that computer technology facilitates learner autonomy. Noblitt
(1989) subscribes to this point of view and adds that multimedia enables learners to trace links
between related items, as well as access the same material through multiple paths. In addition,
computer-based multimedia fosters relational learning which can help learners avoid
stereotyping (Kramsch 1993) by enabling them to: relate cultural events, discover cultural
patterns, interpret links between events or patterns and perspectives.
One more aspect of computerised multimedia is the internet, which according to
Sanko (Sik 1998), can be utilised in intercultural teaching in two major ways: (i) as a
resource, and (ii) as a communication tool. Online communication allows genuine exchange
of ideas, promotes holistic learning, shifts perspectives, involves emotions, develops learners’
cultural identity, and is likely to lead learners to the third place (Żylińska 2003).
Computer-based techniques in intercultural teaching include: telecollaboration projects
(internet exchanges), e.g. eTwinning (Komorowska 2006) or Odyssee (Czaplikowska 2007);
email tandems (Penz 2001); webquests (Dudeney 2006); and web projects (Żylińska 2003).
5. Beyond intercultural communicative competence

Risager (2007) has recently put forward an extended model of Byram’s (1997)
intercultural communicative competence (ICC) which incorporates the concept of
languacultural competence and discourse, as components she deems necessary for educating
true world citizens. According to her, Byram’s model of ICC competence does not bring
language and culture together sufficiently. It also narrows the notion of language by not
recognising private and inner speech, language varieties, the sociolinguistic characteristics of
multilingual speakers, and their metalingual attitudes. Risager (2007) simply attempts to bring
11
intercultural communicative competence more up to date with the plurilingual/multilingual

realities of today’s Europe.
Therefore, with regard to communicative competence, she reconceptualises linguistic
competence as languastructural competence, i.e. a plurilingual speaker’s extension of lexicon,
syntax and morphology in relation to the languages they know. Sociolinguistic competence in
her model acquires a set of languacultural competences, which help learners not only
interpret text dialogically, negotiate meaning, distinguish between the semantic and pragmatic
aspects of spoken/written language, but also make proficient use of paralinguistic devices and
kinesics for more effective intercultural communication. She also adds new languacultural
competences to the afore-mentioned: poetics, i.e. the ability to use language creatively; and
linguistic identity, which corresponds to the conscious/subconscious development of a
linguistic identity related to the way one expresses oneself in a foreign language. Finally, she
amends discourse competence with languacultural translation and interpretation, which she
sees as the ability to interculturally mediate meaning and communication.
With regard to Byram’s (1997) intercultural competence, Risager elaborates savoir
comprendre in order that it includes the ability to analyse the discourse patterns of “the
culture industry” (Risager 2007: 230), e.g. the non-linguistic genres of music or visuals.
Savoir apprendre/faire is expanded with ethnographic proficiency, which is the ability to
ethnographically explore the world’s languacultural complexity, including sub-national
cultures. Savoirs now also covers knowledge of language and critical language awareness,
i.e. a global perception of language, an awareness of links between language and identity, a
perception of differences between first, second and foreign language learning contexts, as
well as an awareness of global issues, e.g. conflicts or terrorism, which influence language
teaching pedagogy. Last but not least, Risager (2007) adds the element of transnational
cooperation – originally absent from Byram’s ICC – which is to help learners explore the
world and establish contact with speakers of other languages through cooperation with
transnational organisations.
6. Conclusions
Whatever direction intercultural teaching takes in the future, one must be aware of the
fact that although the very idea may appear to have been part of language teaching pedagogy
for roughly two decades now, it is, nevertheless, underrepresented in teachers’ daily
12
classroom practice for a number of reasons. e.g. lack of adequate teacher training, a shortage
of teaching materials, (Bandura 2007) or the backwash effect of language examinations
(Aleksandrowicz-Pędich 2007), and to many a representative of the FLT profession
intercultural teaching per se still remains a new trend in education, and a possible future
option.
At the same time, the concept of IC teaching is constantly evolving. Byram (2008)
currently proposes that the new goal of intercultural teaching ought to transcend beyond the
that of educating intercultural speakers. Instead, language teaching should realise a broader
educational role which would be to turn learners into intercultural citizens, who would be able
to engage in communication with others in order to take action and realise common goals. In
an age of globalisation and internationalisation that is perhaps the real educational value of
language education, whereby the learner can e.g. contribute to the development of
international communities or civil societies, such as the European Union. In Europe this will
inevitably lead to the promotion of democracy amongst young people, hence the term
democratic citizenship which Byram (2008) also uses, but the primary advantage of teaching
for intercultural citizenship is the action-taking that it incites, active citizenship, as one might
put it. Ultimately, this kind of teaching would enable learners to develop cosmopolitan
citizenship, which would exceed the limit of nation states and promote social justice in newly
emerging supranational communicative communities, or transnational citizenship, which
would support the idea of giving people full civil rights in the countries they can now choose
to identify with.
The need to include the transnational paradigm within intercultural teaching is also
shared by Risager (2007), who proposes that teachers develop in their learners’ the
intercultural competence of the world citizen.
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New Trends in Teaching Language and Culture

Chapter · January 2010

Second CTER Congress (CTER 2019) View project

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New Trends in Teaching Language and Culture

1. A shift in the language teaching paradigm

2. The new language teaching paradigm in educational documents worldwide

3. From teaching culture to intercultural teaching

circumstances of a mother/foreign country which result from migration processes; to ensure

1: British Studies vs. Intercultural teaching

From the pedagogical vantage point, culture is now viewed as a multi-faceted

3: Cultural Knowings: Content, Activities, Outcomes (Moran 2001: 18)

knowing how cultural practices developing skills cultural behaviours

knowing why cultural perspectives discovering explanations cultural understanding

knowing oneself Self Reflection self-awareness

According to Moran (2001), teaching content is supposed to embrace: (a) cultural

-Savoir apprendre/faire (Skills of discovering and interacting)

4. Postmodernist teaching methods in the intercultural classroom

Ethnography – a ‘sister’ discipline of anthropology – is one of the sciences that

The use of ICT in intercultural teaching facilitates postmodernist teaching, in that, as

5. Beyond intercultural communicative competence

intercultural communicative competence more up to date with the plurilingual/multilingual

Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, L. (2006). Rozwijanie kompetencji interkulturowej na studiach biznesowych.

Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, L. (2007). Interkulturowość w kształceniu językowym w Polsce i innych krajach

Bandura E. (2004) Rozwijanie kompetencji interkulturowej w nauczaniu języka angielskiego.

Bandura, E. (2007) Nauczyciel jako mediator interkulturowy. Kraków: Tertium.

Czaplikowska, R. (2007) Zastosowanie technologii informacyjnej w kształceniu nauczycieli na przykładzie III

Gozdawa-Gołębiowski, R. (2006) ‘Interkulturowość czy antykulturowość? Rozważania nad nauczaniem

Graddol, D. (2006) English Next. The British Council

Parmenter, L. (2003) Describing and defining intercultural communicative competence – international

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