Here and there: issues in materials development for
intercultural learning
Alan Pulverness
This is the text of a paper given at the Culture in ELT Seminar - Intercultural Materials in the
Classroom and on the Web organised by the British Council at Kraków 23-25 January, 2004.
In it Alan Pulverness addresses twelve major questions facing teachers who want to add this
dimension to the learning materials they produce.
1. Is intercultural awareness just a buzzword? What justification is there for
attending to students’ own cultural context in teaching materials?
Over the last 15 years or so, there has been an increasing trend in European education
towards a concept of ‘language across the curriculum’, or at least cross-curricular approaches
within the foreign language class. This tends to break down strict subject boundaries, so that
the foreign language lesson can potentially embrace mathematics, history, geography, biology
etc. and first language culture. In fact, a cross-curricular perspective creates the potential for
foreign language teachers to take on a much broader and more satisfying identity, as
educators, rather than merely foreign language trainers.
There is a positive case to be made for a ‘Janus-faced’ approach. Claire Kramsch makes
the point that ‘[T]he teacher of culture is faced with a kaleidoscope of at least four different
reflections of facts and events’ (1993: 207); as teachers of ‘language-and-culture’ (Byram,
Morgan & colleagues 1994), we should be concerned with more than simply the two
dimensions of observing the cultural Other and observing how the others see themselves; we
should be equally concerned with cultural self-reflexiveness – ‘seeing ourselves as others see
us’ – and seeing how we see ourselves.
The experience of learning another language is more than simply the acquisition of an
alternative means of expression. It involves a process of acculturation, akin to the effort
required of the traveller, striving to come to terms with different social structures, different
assumptions and different expectations. To pursue the metaphor, when the traveller returns
home, his/her view of familiar surroundings is characteristically modified. The language learner
is similarly displaced and ‘returns’ with a modified sense of what had previously been taken for
granted – the language and how it makes meaning.
This sensation of seeing one’s own language and culture refracted through the medium of
a foreign language and culture reflects what was described by the Russian Formalist critic,
Viktor Shklovsky (1917), writing about Tolstoy’s literary technique, as ‘defamiliarisation’, or
‘making the familiar seem strange’:
After we see an object several times, we begin to recognise it. The object is in front of
us and we know about it, but we do not see it - hence we cannot say anything
significant about it.... Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange.... He describes an
object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening for the
first time. (in Lodge 1988: 21)
For the majority of learners encountering a foreign language for the first time, their own
culture is so familiar, so much a given, that they ‘do not see it’. Their culture provides them with
one way of looking at the world and their language with one way of doing so. The experience
of defamiliarisation involved in foreign language learning, described by Byram (1989: 137;
1990: 19) as the ‘modification of monocultural awareness’, suggests that there is largely
untapped potential in teaching materials for focusing as much on the source culture as the
stimulus culture, and on the effect upon the learner of this modification.
The implication of an intercultural approach is that foreign language learners should be
concerned with more than just acquiring a different communicative code and certainly with
more than merely amassing information about a ‘target language culture’. As Byram suggests,
entering into a foreign language implies a cognitive modification that has implications for the
learner’s identity as a social and cultural being, and suggests the need for materials which
privilege the identity of the learner as an integral factor in developing the ability to function fully
in what Kramsch calls cultural ‘third places’ (1993: 233-259).
For the learner, as for the immigrant, linguistic adjustment may produce the deepest
feelings of cognitive dissonance, creating a seemingly unbridgeable divide between things in
the world and the language available to refer to them. Eva Hoffman has written eloquently
about this disjunction in her memoir of moving from Polish into English, Lost in Translation:
There are some turns of phrase to which I develop strange allergies. ‘You’re
welcome,’ for example, strikes me as a gaucherie, and I can hardly bring myself to say
it - I suppose because it implies that there’s something to be thanked for, which in
Polish would be impolite. The very places where language is at its most conventional,
where it should be most taken for granted, are the places where I feel the prick of
artifice. [...]
The words I learn now don’t stand for things in the same way they did in my native
tongue. ‘River’ in Polish was a vital sound, energized with the essence of riverhood, of
my rivers, of my being immersed in rivers. ‘River’ in English is cold - a word without an
aura. It has no accumulated associations for me, and it does not give off the radiating
haze of connotation. It does not evoke. (1991: 106)
With her now finely nuanced command of a second language, Eva Hoffman recaptures her
initial resistance to the language, which she has been able, magnificently, to overcome. Her
insight into this condition reminds us how uncomfortable a new language can feel, even when
we have become quite proficient users of that language.
When teaching adolescents, it is generally difficult to predict, beyond immediate
academic purposes, what future use(s) they will have for a foreign language. The practice
of needs analysis works very well in EOP or ESP contexts, but is inevitably much fuzzier
at secondary school level. We presume - probably quite correctly - that a foreign language
(and for all kinds of geo-political and technological reasons English is self-evidently the
definitive example) will be useful, both in terms of getting a job and doing it. However, we
cannot predict with any degree of certainty exactly how the foreign language will serve our
learners’ future needs, or if indeed it will. So, despite the fact that education across
Europe in general is becoming increasingly utilitarian, increasingly focused on
socio-economic needs, foreign language teaching continues to retain a much larger
educational value - broadening learners’ horizons, enabling them to understand and
appreciate difference. Whatever career choices they eventually make, and whether or not
they have the opportunity to make use of their foreign language(s) in the future, the
educational value of foreign language learning has to do with education for citizenship. To
some extent, this has always been the case, but in the context of an expanding European
Union, and in the face of rapidly increasing globalisation, this function seems more
important then ever.
It seems to me that this educational project should equip learners with the resources
to define and assert their own cultural identity; to gain an understanding of other cultural
identities; and, crucially, to be able to ‘read’ the messages that will confront them - and
when necessary, to resist them.
I may seem to have strayed from the specific question of whether foreign language
teaching should include an element of teaching and learning about students’ own culture,
but if we are to extend our function as foreign language teachers, we need to have more
than a vague sense of why this might be an important thing to do.
There may not be any overwhelming consensus about the sequencing of a functional
syllabus, but most materials writers adopt the conventional strategy in the opening units of
most beginners’ books for foreign language teaching of equipping learners with the basic
linguistic routines they will require to introduce themselves. For any kind of interpersonal
encounter, it clearly makes good sense to start with the ‘I’, and this perspective can indeed
be extended to quite a high-level competence in terms of representing the learner’s own
culture to others - becoming, in effect, ‘ambassadors’ of their own culture.
2.
Whose perception of a culture should the teacher/materials writer adopt - the
representatives of that culture or the outsider’s?
I would want to say that the most effective approach is to draw on a multiplicity of
perceptions. As a materials writer, within the practical limits imposed by copyright and
publishing constraints, this is comparatively easy to achieve: the conscientious materials
writer is at liberty to anthologise all kinds of perceptions and thus to create a dialogic interplay
of discourses. This is certainly one way of dealing with the problem of generalisation and
stereotyping. The teacher, on the other hand, may have a lot less freedom: s/he may be
forced to work with a more monologic coursebook and may not have ready access to
supplementary materials that would introduce an element of cultural polyphony. It should,
however, be the teacher’s responsibility to do whatever s/he can to diversify the range of
voices/perceptions to be made available in the classroom. This may be done with all kinds of
authentic materials - songs, advertisements, photographs, mini-texts, articles, brochures,
leaflets etc etc.
3. How can authentic materials be used to teach the students’ own culture?
Should such teaching be conducted in L1 or L2?
This raises two linked issues: one is purely linguistic - the use of L1 - while the other is
related to the relevance and appropriacy of students’ own cultures. The context of cultural
learning offers an important justification for the presence of the L1, namely the
inter-penetration of language and culture. Language is not simply a vehicle for conveying
cultural meaning - cultural meaning is deeply embedded in language. In many cases, the
language is the culture, or at least one of the most highly articulated representations of the
culture. Therefore, if we accept the proposition that students’ own culture should occupy a
central place in cultural learning, then it seems axiomatic that some of the treatment of this
‘home’ culture will quite naturally - and appropriately - be in the students’ own language.
Translation, too, has a place - not the often painful attempts to produce a faithful
rendering of the original text, but translation tasks which perform other real-world
cross-linguistic functions, such as summarising, interpreting and (in one of the key terms
of the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework) mediating.
Of course, ‘authentic materials ... to help teach the students’ own culture’ need not be in
the students’ own language: the language teacher who acknowledges the relevance of the
students’ own culture, but who has serious reservations about using excessive stretches of the
L1, need not look very far for a wide range of useful texts written in English and dealing with
the ‘home’ culture: (sadly) occasional articles in the British ‘quality’ press (most of which have
searchable databases on their Web pages); books and essays on Central & Eastern Europe
(e.g. Eva Hoffman, Slavenka Drakulić, Vitali Vitalyev); English-language journals such as The
Central Europe Review; English-language newspapers such as The Warsaw Voice; tourist
materials and various kinds of promotional materials.
Going back to Kramsch’s ‘kaleidoscope’ of cross-cultural perceptions, it is texts like these
that are not merely useful, but essential, tools to decode and understand what is going on
within as well as between cultures.
4. Most students will not ever live in a target language country, but will use
English in multi-cultural settings, such as doing business with people whose
mother tongue is not English. What are the similarities and differences between
teaching language-and-culture in foreign language and second language
contexts?
Much published language teaching material seems designed to promote what Gillian
Brown (1990: 12) has called ‘cosmopolitan English’, partly as a consequence of idealised
notions of English as a lingua franca, and partly to ensure maximum worldwide sales by
avoiding any taint of cultural specificity. I feel very strongly that this attempt to separate
language from its cultural roots is likely at best to prove inadequate, because it aims at
developing the foreign language as a neutral code, free of its history, free of its social moorings
– in short free of culture. Some kind of communication may result, but it seems to me that the
result is likely to be at best an impoverished form of communication. The concept of something
called ‘International English’ is the basis for a popular argument against the inclusion of a
cultural dimension in the language classroom. I feel that it rests on a weak and unproven
construct of English fulfilling the role that the proponents of Esperanto intended for their
‘international’ language. It ignores the fact that English, like any other language, is the
outcome of long and complex social history, and equally it ignores the fact that interlocutors
making use of English as a mutually comprehensible means of conducting transactions will
themselves be speakers of languages with equally long histories and equally rich cultural
meanings.
I doubt whether the lingua franca argument ought to inhibit us from including a cultural
dimension in the foreign language classroom. Clearly, the second language context will
always be far more demanding, for teachers and for students, as the objective is likely to
be a degree of assimilation - or at least sufficient understanding and sensitivity to operate
comfortably in the host community. But since our students’ future needs are relatively
unpredictable, perhaps the overlap between the second language and foreign language
contexts are greater than we may imagine.
However, as long as we equate ‘teaching culture’ with teaching about the Other culture,
there may seem to be little justification for devoting precious teaching time to something
which is, at best, of speculative value. If on the other hand, we view ‘teaching culture’ as
raising inter-cultural awareness - as much concerned with thinking about one’s own
culture as learning about the Other - then no justification is necessary - it becomes an
educational goal rather than a purely linguistic one.
5. To what extent should we encourage students to assume the behavioural patterns
of a target language culture?
The simple answer is to whatever extent our students wish to do so. In other words, I don’t
think there can be a universal answer. In a sense this is very close to the question of how far
we should encourage students to approximate to a native-speaker accent. It is commonly
observed that immigrants fall into two broad categories with regard to accent - those who want
to merge into the host community as far as possible and therefore aim to sound as British as
the British (or as Polish as the Polish) and those who want to preserve their own first-language
personae, and therefore resist any modification of their ‘foreign’ accent. It seems to me that the
question of whether or not ‘to assume the behavioural patterns of the target language culture’
is subject to the same kind of attitudinal drives.
Allied to this underlying conception of the self in relation to the target language culture,
there are, of course, more practical considerations of the type that the business person may
need to take into account - a much more conscious - and perhaps calculated - set of decisions
as to whether there is more advantage to be gained through an attempt at behavioural
congruence with representatives of the target language culture, or whether rigorously
preserving one’s own cultural identity will elicit more sympathy, or simply be more attractive.
6. As teachers of EFL we often speak about ‘the target language culture’. But there are
many English language cultures. (How) is it possible to reconcile the differences
between different English-speaking cultures? How can we strike a balance between
the different English speaking cultures in language classes?
Teachers, being human, will perhaps inevitably tend to privilege the culture(s) that is/ are
‘closest to their heart’. There are complex, though quite apparent, reasons for the emphasis
given in different places at different times to one English-speaking culture or another. In terms
of the use-value of the foreign language, this is understandable and fairly irresistible: it would
clearly be doing our students a perverse disservice if we were to concentrate, say, on New
Zealand culture to the exclusion of other, more globally significant English-speaking cultures.
However, linguistically, historically and politically, the spread of and consequent variation in
English language and culture may well itself be a subject of great interest for students. We
may not be able to ‘reconcile these differences’, and there is always the vexed question of
limitations on teaching time, but we should certainly try to avoid conveying the impression that
it is only British, or only American culture that counts.
We also need to consider the practical classroom implications of the pluralistic attitude
to English-speaking cultures that I have been advocating. The appropriate ‘balance’ will
derive from a number of influences: underlying political and economic priorities; the
geographical location of the school; the school’s, or the department’s policy; parents’
preferences; the content of course materials; the teacher’s own background - and, not
least, the students’ interests.
The challenge for the teacher, in the face of all these powerful influences, is to do as
much as s/he can precisely to ‘strike a balance’. One interesting way of achieving this
difficult goal may be to focus on texts and other materials which themselves relate to more
than one English-speaking culture - such areas as the globalising influence of American
popular culture, relations between the UK and former British Commonwealth countries,
the incursions of African or Indian writing into the British literary landscape.
7. How does an intercultural approach modify the traditional language syllabus?
Course materials are largely governed by a tacit consensus about what should constitute a
language syllabus. Apart from a brief pendulum swing in the late 1970s, when the elaborated
phrasebook of an exclusively functional approach almost entirely displaced grammar, and
despite the development of multi-strand syllabuses, the structured, incremental grammatical
syllabus remains the principal axis around which the overwhelming majority of coursebooks
are organised. The overarching aim of the language syllabus is to develop a command of the
language as a systematic set of resources. However, the focus of most teaching materials
remains fixed on the content of these resources rather than on the choices that speakers (and
writers) make in the course of social interaction. The cultural dimension of language consists of
elements that are normally classed as ‘native speaker intuition’ and which may be achieved by
only the most advanced students. As native speakers, we function effectively in our own speech
communities not simply by drawing mechanically on an inventory of language items, but by
employing the pragmatic awareness which enables us to make appropriate and relevant
selections from that inventory. This awareness may not be wholly determined by cultural factors,
but it is culturally conditioned. It includes elements such as forms of address, the expression of
politeness, discourse conventions and situational constraints on conversational behaviour.
Grice’s ‘cooperative principle’ (1975) and Lakoff’s ‘politeness principle’ (1973) have up to now
made remarkably little impression on EFL materials. It is lack of awareness of such contextual
and pragmatic constraints that is often responsible for pragmatic failure. Although teachers may
incidentally address some of these features, there have been few attempts in published materials
to deal systematically with the ways in which linguistic choices are constrained by setting,
situation, status and purpose. Like many coursebook texts, tasks requiring oral interaction tend to
be situated in neutral, culture-free zones, where the learner is only called upon to ‘get the
message across’.
One recent challenge to the centrality of grammar as an organising principle for the syllabus is
to be found in the ‘Lexical Approach’ (Lewis 1993; 1997), with its insistence on language as
‘grammaticalised lexis’ instead of the customary view of ‘lexicalised grammar’. The coursebook
inspired by Lewis’ work (Dellar & Hocking Innovations 2000; 2004), emphasises the significance
of collocation and lexical phrases, partly subsumed under the category of ‘spoken grammar’,
while key elements of a traditional structural are retained under the less dominant rubric of
‘traditional grammar’. This focus on how lexical items cluster together through use and constitute
larger units of meaning provides an important design principle for materials that intend to combine
cultural learning and language learning. Porto (2001) makes a strong case for taking lexical
phrases as a foundation for developing socio-cultural awareness from the earliest stages of
language learning:
Given that lexical phrases are context-bound, and granted that contexts are
culture-specific, the recurrent association of lexical phrases with certain contexts of use
will ensure that the sociolinguistic ability to use the phrases in the appropriate contexts is
fostered. (2001: 52-53)
Another lexical area that might profitably be explored by materials writers is suggested by
research into cognition and cross-cultural semantics (Wierzbicka 1991; 1992; 1997). Wierzbicka’s
research methodology, at word- or phrase-level, as well as when dealing with broad semantic
categories and longer stretches of text and interaction, is one that lends itself to adaptation by
EFL materials writers. Her analyses are based on extensive collections of data, exemplifying the
use of particular items in multiple contexts, from which she then begins to draw conclusions about
the cultural specificity and the semantic limitations of key concepts. On a smaller scale, this
rigorously inductive approach might have a particular appeal to learners who are in any case
constantly engaged in just this kind of exploration of meaning, albeit in a relatively unstructured
fashion. The increasing availability of affordable concordancing software should also make it
possible before long for the coursebook treatment of this kind of activity to be open-ended and
supplemented by providing learners with the tools to pursue their own further exploration.
One of the most challenging aspects of moving into the culture of another language is the
adjustment to different rhetorical structures. Learners have to cope receptively and productively,
not just with word-level and sentence-level difference, but with different modes of textual
organisation. While contrastive studies in rhetoric and text linguistics (e.g. Kaplan 1966; 1987)
have explored the problematic nature of text and discourse across cultures, a great deal of
language teaching continues to operate at sentence-level. It is generally only on EAP courses in
academic writing that text structure receives any substantial attention. Yet sometimes radically
different assumptions about the structuring of spoken and written discourse can produce a sense
of cultural and linguistic estrangement that all learners have to struggle to come to terms with,
often without any help from course materials. A number of recent coursebooks have tentatively
included small translation tasks, usually at word- or sentence-level. More extensive translation
activities could raise learners’ awareness of how differently ideas may be organised at text-level.
For example, translating a source text and then comparing its structure with a parallel L1 text on
the same topic and in the same genre, or using a ‘double translation’ procedure, i.e. translation
into L1 and then back into L2, comparing the second version with the L2 original. Limitations of
space will normally prohibit extensive treatment of longer texts within the coursebook, but here
again the book can serve as a manual, equipping the learner with strategic competence and
procedural guidelines as a basis for further work outside the book.
The construction of cultural ‘third places’ is essentially a critical activity, as it forces
learners to become aware of ways in which language is socially and culturally determined.
Language awareness has become a rather hollow label, often (e.g. on many pre-service
training courses) more or less synonymous with declarative knowledge about how the
language works. Van Lier’s (1995) definition is more comprehensive and should alert us to the
fact that language is always ideologically loaded and texts are always to be ‘mistrusted’:
Language awareness can be defined as an understanding of the human faculty of
language and its role in thinking, learning and social life. It includes an awareness of
power and control through language, and of the intricate relationships between
language and culture. (1995: xi)
Critical Language Awareness (CLA) proceeds from the belief that language is always
value-laden and that texts are never neutral. Language in the world beyond the coursebook is
commonly used to exercise ‘power and control’, to reinforce dominant ideologies, to evade
responsibility, to manufacture consensus. As readers, we should always be ‘suspicious’ of
texts and prepared to challenge or interrogate them. However, in the foreign language
classroom, texts are customarily treated as unproblematic, as if their authority need never be
questioned. Learners, who may be quite critical readers in their mother tongues, are textually
infantilised by the vast majority of course materials and classroom approaches.
A CLA approach implies ‘a methodology for interpreting texts which addresses ideological
assumptions as well as propositional meaning’ (Wallace 1992: 62), which would require
students to develop sociolinguistic and ethnographic research skills in order to become
proficient at observing, analysing and evaluating language use in the world around them. It
would lead them to ask and answer crucial questions about a text: Who produced it? Who
was it produced for? In what context was it published? It would encourage them to notice
features such as lexical choice, passivisation or foregrounding that reveal both the position of
the writer and the way in which the reader is ‘positioned’ by the text. It would offer them
opportunities to intervene creatively in texts, to modify them or to produce their own
‘counter-texts’ (see Kramsch 1993; Pope 1995). It would empower students to become active
participants in the negotiation of meaning rather than passive recipients of ‘authoritative’ texts.
In short, it would transform language training into language education.
8. If language and culture are inseparable, what implications does this have for
materials writers who try to produce internationally ‘consumable’ course
books?
Many writers (myself included) would agree that ‘language and culture are
inseparable’. In my own case, the implication has been to move away from trying to
produce ‘internationally ‘consumable’ course books’ and to become more involved in
country-specific publishing. But for textbook writers who are going for the global option, I
think there are some serious implications. One is to acknowledge the futility of trying to
pursue the internationalist, English-as-lingua-franca model: this only seems to result in
bland and characterless constructions of international conferences, airport lounges and
hotel reception desks, which could be anywhere and nowhere, where people come from
everywhere and nowhere, and everyone speaks Gillian Brown’s ‘cosmopolitan English’.
This seems to be a severely limited approach, and the other implication for materials
writers is to make a virtue out of cultural specificity, to make the point that language never
exists or functions in a cultural vacuum, that it is never simply a neutral, a-cultural code.
The objection that is raised, of course, is the potential irrelevance of such culturally
specific materials for large numbers of learners, and so the corollary is to bring the learner
into the material - not just paying lip-service to an intercultural perspective by inserting a
‘Now write about your country’ task in the bottom right-hand corner of a double-page
spread, but finding ways throughout the materials of integrating the learner’s perspective,
of acknowledging the experience and the knowledge of the world that the learner brings to
the classroom. To develop cultural awareness alongside language awareness, materials
need to provide more than a token acknowledgement of cultural identity (‘Now write about
your country’) and address more thoroughly the kind of cultural adjustment that underlies
the experience of learning a foreign language. One powerful means of raising this kind of
awareness in learners is through literary texts which mimic or more directly represent
experiences of cultural estrangement.
A ‘whole way of life’ view of culture has trickled down into some ELT coursebooks, where
iconic, tourist brochure images of Britishness have been replaced by material that is more
representative of the multicultural diversity of contemporary British life. But since language
training remains the primary agenda, the effect is often unproductive in terms of cultural
understanding, with texts and visuals serving primarily as contextual backdrops to language
tasks. Moreover, since the majority of coursebooks are designed to function in as diverse a
market as possible, materials design is rarely capable of encompassing the learner’s cultural
identity as part of the learning process. At most, learners may be called upon to comment on
superficial differences at the level of observable behaviours. There is a great deal of incidental
cultural information available in course materials, but it is on the whole an arbitrary selection,
and crucially, it remains information - learners are not required to respond to it in terms of their
own experience or integrate it into new structures of thought and feeling. The subculture of the
language learner and the ‘small culture’ of the classroom tend not to be addressed.
Moreover, the pedagogical implications extend beyond issues of content: if culture is seen
as the expression of beliefs and values, and if language is seen as the embodiment of cultural
identity, then the methodology required to teach a language needs to take account of ways in
which the language expresses cultural meanings. An integrated approach to teaching
‘language-and-culture’, as well as attending to language as system and to cultural information,
will focus additionally on culturally significant areas of language and on the skills required by
the learner to make sense of cultural difference. A language syllabus enhanced to take
account of cultural specificity would be concerned with aspects of language that are generally
neglected, or that at best tend to remain peripheral in course materials: connotation, idiom, the
construction of style and tone, rhetorical structure, critical language awareness and translation.
The familiar set of language skills would be augmented by ethnographic and research skills
designed to develop cultural awareness.
There are encouraging signs in some recently published coursebooks of greater cultural
relativism and more pluralistic representations of English-speaking cultures. But as long as
courses continue to be produced for a global market and construed exclusively in terms of
language training, such developments will remain largely cosmetic. It seems to me that the
way ahead for integrated language-and-culture materials lies in various kinds of
country-specific joint publishing ventures and as the Polish British Studies Web pages have
demonstrated so effectively, in electronic publishing.
It has to be acknowledged that such innovative projects remain the exception.
ELT at large continues to be dominated by the mass market, ‘international’ coursebook.
But here the teacher has a vital role to play in acting as an intercultural mediator and
providing some of the cultural coordinates missing from the coursebook.
I have been involved as consultant or writer in several joint projects in Central and
Eastern Europe, and in Hungary I was fortunate to observe a wide range of classes in
various parts of the country. All the classes I saw were working with coursebooks:
Headway Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced; Access to English: Getting On;
Blueprint 2; New Blueprint Intermediate; Meanings into Words 2. The teachers were all
sufficiently experienced and confident to take subject matter present in coursebook units
as a vehicle for the presentation of language items or the development of language skills
and to use it as the basis for exploring cultural dimensions of the topic or theme.
Coursebooks provide invaluable resources (topics, texts, visuals, language) and
enable teachers and students to structure learning, but they also impose constraints which can be
difficult to resist. Teachers who are conscious of this can easily become discouraged by the
difficulty of obtaining suitable supplementary resources, but I was impressed by the ways in which
all the teachers I observed made use of appropriate extra materials which enabled them to go
beyond the coursebook - to use the currently fashionable commercial metaphor, to ‘add value’ to
the coursebook. Examples included: a teacher’s own photographs of Hungarian and British
houses; text and video extracts from Trainspotting; a poem (‘Neighbours’ by Kit Wright); National
Readership Surveys table of socio-economic categories (from Edginton and Montgomery 1996);
students’ own family photographs and Christmas cards; jumbled extracts from two contrasting
‘background’ books; students’ posters based on material collected during a study trip to Britain.
These materials either compensated for cultural dimensions that were totally absent from the
coursebook or took students well beyond the usual end-of-unit gesture of Now compare this with
houses/festivals/occupations etc in your country.
Some of the teachers took topics from coursebook units as springboards for lessons
which focused on content rather than concentrating exclusively on language points. This is
not to say that language learning was absent, or even incidental, but the primary objectives
were clearly to develop critical thinking about cultural issues, resisting the tendency of the
materials to use content only to contextualise the presentation and practice of language
items. For example, one lesson sprang from a coursebook unit where the topic was
homelessness, but the unit was about expressions of quantity. The lesson, however, was
about homelessness, with practice of expressions of quantity arising meaningfully through
her use of the material.
There is a crucial distinction between classes that are driven by a language training agenda
and those that are informed by cultural learning objectives. There is still a need, of course, for
classes where the primary focus is language learning, but here, too, it is important that cultural
learning is seen as an integral part of language education and not restricted to the ‘cultural studies
lesson’. One lesson on writing was an excellent example of this kind of integration. The teacher’s
primary aim was to raise students’ awareness of the conventions and structural norms of writing
postcards and informal letters in English, but this was done by getting the learners to carry out a
detailed contrastive analysis of a range of authentic texts (received by the teacher) in English and
in Hungarian. Thus what could easily have been an exclusively English language lesson achieved
its objectives through exposure to and reflection on representative samples of equivalent
language behaviour in different cultural contexts.
In any discussion of cultural behaviour, especially in classrooms, where teachers feel
the pressure of time and other constraints, it is all too easy to resort to generalisations and
to accept particular instances as being ‘typical’. One way to avoid this trap is to make use
of materials (e.g. first-person narratives) which are self-evidently individual, or even
idiosyncratic. Other, more difficult strategies are to remind students at appropriate
moments that they should not over-generalise from particular examples, or to challenge
their natural tendency to do so. This happened very interestingly in the lesson on
homelessness, when the teacher prompted students to question the generalisations
contained in the text, giving rise to the conclusion that ‘English people are various’!
Another good example in the writing class was the teacher’s reminder to her students that
they were reading individual examples of informal writing, which they should not
necessarily regard as ‘typical’.
The lessons I saw in Hungary were neither language lessons illustrating a few bits of
cultural information nor lessons on culture with language learning as a kind of by-product.
They all succeeded in different ways in combining language learning and cultural learning, so
that although at some moments the emphasis may have been in one direction or the other, the
overall effect was of lessons in which students were developing both kinds of knowledge as
interrelated parts of the same enterprise.
9.
Do good materials change teacher behaviour? Can the approach be effected
through materials (alone)?
I am sure that good materials can have a developmental effect on teacher behaviour,
though it is unlikely that any change will be instantaneous. Any change in teacher behaviour is
bound to be a slow and experimental process, consisting of a tentative series of minor
accommodations. Teachers tend to be fairly conservative, sticking to tried and tested routines,
and suspicious, or at least resistant to innovation. They will cautiously try something out,
making small changes at the level of technique, which gradually build into major shifts in
approach and methodology. This process is rarely smooth and consistent - there may be many
false starts and discouragements, but gradually change does take place, and materials clearly
have an important role to play. However, if the materials are too radically innovative, there is a
real risk of rejection and ‘materials (alone)’ are not the answer. Materials informed by an
approach that is likely to clash with the prevailing educational culture, or which require
teachers to consider dimensions that they may previously have ignored, need to be introduced
and mediated through some kind of teacher development programme. In a sense, publishers
have always known this, and they invest significant amounts of time and money in getting their
authors to do promotional talks and seminars, simply to create a ‘buzz’ among teachers for this
year’s products (even when they are not hugely different from last year’s!). Real change in
teacher behaviour, however, implies some fundamental change in underlying teacher attitudes
and teacher beliefs, and this can only be accomplished by introducing colleagues to principles
as well as practices.
10. How is it possible to assess cultural learning? What methodological problems might
we encounter? If research itself is culturally bound, (how) can validity and reliability
be ensured?
This is obviously a very tricky area, but it seems to me that while the kind of discrete-item,
objective assessment of the five savoirs advocated by Byram (1997) is a valuable attempt to
specify the component factors that constitute successful intercultural communication, it is
ultimately reductive, as it over-systematises what must in practice be a complex and
fluctuating continuum of intercultural and interpersonal skills. This is not to say that cultural
learning cannot or should not be assessed, but rather that this kind of strict componential
approach needs to be tempered with more human, subjective evaluation - both from the
teacher and the student him/herself (e.g. the idea of portfolio assessment). The major current
issue is knowledge vs skills, both in terms of materials design and assessment. What is it that
we are teaching when we teach cultural studies? And therefore, what is that we should be
assessing? The methodological problems arise out of this central dichotomy: factual
information is important, but only insofar as it contributes to developing appropriate skills;
information is static and not an end in itself, though naturally it is what students - and teachers
- will tend to focus on. The methodological challenge is to keep in view the development of
cultural studies skills as overarching objectives.
The problem of ensuring validity and reliability of assessment has a clear analogy in
language testing. Objective testing of declarative knowledge of language systems may have
very high reliability, but its validity may be questionable; conversely, integrative tests of
communicative competence - performative knowledge - may have much greater validity, but
may be problematic in terms of reliability. When it comes to assessing cultural learning, we are
faced with very similar tensions: we may be able to test factual knowledge with a high degree
of reliability but with limitations in terms of validity; while more subjective assessment of the
development of cultural studies skills may have greater validity, but raises awkward - and
probably unresolvable - questions in terms of reliability. The answer, in both cases, is to devise
methods of assessment which take into account both kinds of learning, and marking schemes
based on highly articulate sets of descriptors, which constitute a shared understanding (shared
by teachers and students) of what is being tested and how it is being assessed.
11. How can/should language exams dictate the content and process of culture
teaching? Can positive washback help change teachers’ attitudes to teaching
culture?
This raises the same question in specific terms of test design. By posing the question
in terms of ‘language exams’, I mean to suggest that I am not thinking about
compartmentalising cultural learning as a separate subject, but in keeping with a belief
about the inter-penetration of language and culture, testing cultural learning as part and
parcel of language learning. I am not sure that language exams should - or whether they
can - ‘dictate what should be taught of culture in the classroom’ - or how. I do think,
however, that the content and design of exams can send strong signals to teachers and
students about the importance of the cultural dimension of foreign language learning, and
this might be realised both at the level of testing discrete areas of cultural knowledge and
in terms of more general cultural awareness. Since the context is language exams, it may
be productive for exams to focus on those areas of the language (idiom, politeness
markers, directness vs tentativeness etc) that are culturally specific and meaningful.
12. How can students (and teachers) be made to take the cultural dimension of foreign
language teaching seriously?
The feeling that culture is somehow an optional extra, which may be interesting, but which
is marginal and dispensable, is very deeply inscribed in attitudes among foreign language
teachers and - even very good - learners. To change such attitudes is clearly a large and
challenging task, which implies long-term changes in teacher education. In the meantime, a
corresponding change in exams could obviously lend official weight to the cultural dimension
of foreign language teaching and, sadly, it may be the case that students will only respond to
this kind of institutional pressure.
Note
The 12 questions discussed here were originally posed by PhD students at Eötvös Loránd
University, Budapest in 1997 & 1999. The answers are adapted from ‘Issues in teaching
culture through language’ in Nyelvvizsga fórum: Nyelvvizsgáztatók és nyelvtanárok lapja
May 2000 and from ‘Materials for cultural awareness’ in Tomlinson, B. [Ed] developing
Materials for Language Teaching (Continuum 2003)
References
To accompany these references there is a further selected general material writing list
found under Materials Development Bibliography
Gillian Brown. 1990. ‘Cultural Values: the interpretation of discourse’. ELT Journal 44/1
Michael Byram. 1989. Cultural Studies and Foreign Language Education. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Michael Byram. 1990. ‘Teaching culture and language towards an integrated model’. In
Dieter Buttjes & Michael Byram [Eds] Mediating Languages and Cultures. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Michael Byram. 1997. Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Michael Byram, Carol Morgan & colleagues. 1994. Teaching-and-learning language-and
-culture. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
Hugh Dellar & Darryl Hocking. 2000. Innovations. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
Hugh Dellar & Darryl Hocking. 2000. Innovations: a course in natural English.
Pre-Intermediate;
Intermediate; Upper Intermediate. Thomson Heinle
Slavenka Drakulić. Café Europa Abacus 1996; Penguin 1999.
H. Paul Grice. 1975. ‘Logic and conversation’. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan [Eds] Syntax and
Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York, NY: Academic Press
Eva Hoffman Lost in Translation: a life in a new language Heinemann 1989; Penguin
1990;
Vintage 2001.
Eva Hoffman. 1994. Exit into History: a journey through the new Eastern Europe London:
Penguin.
R. B. Kaplan. 1966. ‘Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education’. Language
Learning. 16
R. B. Kaplan. 1987. ‘Cultural thought patterns revisited’. In U. Connor & R.B. Kaplan [Eds]
Writing across Languages: Analysis of L2 text. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley
Claire Kramsch. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching Oxford University
Press.
Robin Lakoff. 1973. ‘The logic of politeness: minding your ‘p’s and ‘q’s’. In Papers from the
9th regional meeting, Chicago Linguistics Society.
Michael Lewis. 1993. The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications
Michael Lewis. 1997. Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting theory into practice.
Hove: Language Teaching Publications
Rob Pope. 1995. Textual Intervention: Critical and creative strategies for literary studies.
London: Routledge.
Melinda Porto. 2001. The Significance of Identity: An approach to the teaching of
language and
culture. La Plata, Argentina: Ediciones Al Margen/ Editorial de la Universidad de La
Plata.
Alan Pulverness. 2001. Changing Skies: The European course for advanced learners.
Swan
Communication.
Viktor Shklovsky. 1917. ‘Art as Technique’. In David Lodge [Ed] Modern Criticism and
Theory:
A reader. Longman 1988.
Leo van Lier. 1995. Introducing Language Awareness. London: Penguin
Vitali Vitaliev. 1995. Little is the Light. Pocket Books.
Vitali Vitaliev. 1999. Borders Up! Pocket Books.
Catherine Wallace. 1992. ‘Critical literacy awareness in the EFL classroom’. In N.
Fairclough
[Ed] Critical language Awareness. London: Longman.
Anna Wierzbicka. 1991. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction.
New
York: Mouton de Gruyer.
Anna Wierzbicka. 1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal human concepts in
culture- specific configurations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anna Wierzbicka. 1997. Understanding Cultures through their Keywords: English,
Russian,
Polish, German and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.