The cultural and intercultural dimensions of language teaching:
current practice and prospects
Jean-Claude Beacco
University of Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle
Whereas access to languages (classical and “modern”) was long regarded as an excellent form of
personal development (humanism of works/texts and humanism of educational travel), nowadays cultural
dimensions need to be, as it were, re-integrated into foreign language teaching. With increased
possibilities for contact, we should now think in terms of a kind of “humanism of encounters”, both real
and virtual. The aim of intercultural education (IE), which cannot be dissociated from plurilingual
education, is to continue these traditions while adapting them to the contemporary world and the
classroom context.
The results of the survey conducted in the 10 countries taking part in this seminar show IE to be the poor
relation:
the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, yet to be widely distributed;
activities of the ”early language learning” type are conducted in primary education but then
disappear from the curriculum;
IE is regarded as an effect of the teaching of subjects in foreign languages (CLIL-EMILE type),
but the benefits are seldom described in detail;
an element of awareness-raising about the internal diversity of languages is present in some
curricula and may help to heighten perception of the importance of IE (Sweden, Luxembourg,
teaching of Arabic in France);
IE is often interpreted in terms of a “comparison” between societies, but this drawing of parallels
does not necessarily lead to educational questioning (see below).
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This is because language teaching may tend to be limited to functional goals (communicating in order to
do) and hence to play down the importance of such goals as “communicating in order to learn” or
“communicating in order to understand (the world)”. In concrete terms, it seems that language teaching
tends to put cultural/intercultural education in the service of language learning. Priority is given to:
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lexical teaching, based on simplistic theories of the type: a language = a “world view” = a
culture;
the provision of knowledge by the teacher (or the textbook) about the societies in which the
target language is used: auto- and heterostereotypes, “psychology of peoples”, traditions and
modern folklore, everyday life etc. To save time, this knowledge/information tends to take the
form of compact generalisations which reduce internal differences, in other words a country’s
cultural diversity (Young people are…, think…, do…), because a nation-state is a political and
not a cultural entity (as “ethnic groups”, which are also constructs, claim to be);
the knowledge imparted is often of an ordinary nature with little input from the human and
social sciences.
This resistance is mainly attributable to issues of disciplinary (professional) identity, IE being perceived as
a foreign body or as an obstacle to the transmission of specific knowledge which it is thought necessary
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to have about the target societies, to which “debates” on general topics (eg for or against nuclear power)
are preferred.
IE does indeed suffer from a lack of integration because it came into being outside language teaching
and, to some extent, outside the founding perspective of plurilingual education. IE is, by definition,
transversal to all school subjects (eg history or philosophy, see Council of Europe White Paper) and can
be the subject of activities in a specific class (eg education for citizenship), itself becoming a “subject”.
The main problem arising with regard to it is therefore not one of transversality/convergence, but that of
its place in language courses. Its presence is not only desirable for generic reasons or reasons of
symmetry, but because IE constitutes a key aspect of language teaching: to learn an unfamiliar language
is, in a very strong sense, to discover others because, in so doing, we learn about linguistic otherness
(even if only provisionally and reversibly).
If interculturally-oriented activities are to be built into language courses, it is important they should be
precisely specified in the curriculum. However, we are faced with a profusion of terms (cultural,
intercultural, pluricultural, socio-cultural, altercultural etc), which admittedly reflects a concern for better
understanding of the concept but which continues to allow scope for multiple interpretations, including
the most simplistic (intercultural = comparison of societies). For its part, the Guide for the development
and implementation of curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education suggests the following
definitions (p. 16):
Pluriculturality is the desire and ability to identify with several cultures, and participate in them.
Interculturality is the ability to experience another culture and analyse that experience. The intercultural
competence acquired from doing this helps individuals to understand cultural difference better, establish
cognitive and affective links between past and future experiences of that difference, mediate between
members of two (or more) social groups and their cultures, and question the assumptions of their own
cultural group and milieu.
Pluriculturalism - identification with two (or more) social groups and their cultures – and interculturality –
the competences for critical awareness of other cultures – may complement each other: active discovery
of one or more other cultures may help learners to develop intercultural competence. 1
It might be argued that the ability to participate in different cultures depends on intercultural experiences
handled in a detached and open-minded manner. In any event, curricula must propose a definition of IE.
For my part, I maintain that IE is a learning tool designed to develop open, proactive, reflective and
critical attitudes in language teaching so that learners learn how to learn positively and how to derive
benefit from all forms of contact with otherness. It aims to develop curiosity about discovery and a
personal, attentive and benevolent approach to cultural diversity, because it seeks to soften
ego/ethnocentric attitudes. It is therefore based on a plural and dynamic view of cultural and social
identity.
IE’s priority where curricula and teacher training are concerned is therefore to restore the learner as a
social being to a central position and no longer to focus exclusively on societal/cultural knowledge to be
acquired and reproduced (which, to a great extent, is part of general culture). IE assumes responsibility
for changing ego/ethnocentric attitudes, steering learners towards forms of curiosity and tolerance about
that which is different and getting them to regard this as a possible contribution to personal development.
The development of IE requires consideration of the nature of the different forms of contact with
manifestations of otherness. These contacts may be real, with, accordingly, possibilities for interaction
(behavioural adaptations, verbal and emotional responses) and with direct implications and high personal
stakes. Contacts may also be virtual (via the media) and indirect, produce only possibilities for verbal
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See M. Byram (2009): Multicultural societies, pluricultural people and the project of intercultural education, on the
Platform of resources and references for plurilingual and intercultural education
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responses (and few behavioural responses) and raise, in theory, non-implicating personal issues. This is
generally the situation in the classroom: there, we only observe verbalisations, and then only if the
learners feel implicated by contact consisting of texts and images. These verbal responses on the part of
learners, elicited by multiple encounters, which may be unforced (random access to the media in
connection with current events) or organised in accordance with various systematic approaches, are the
subject-matter which will be treated in the classroom.
Another of the conditions for implementing IE is to take into account the existence of internal experiences
of otherness, those specific to the individual’s own social space, which call on (cognitive?) knowledge and
skills and which are conventionally termed “cultural” (actually “intracultural”). But in that space there is
also “otherness” from elsewhere, which is considered as part of “intercultural experience” (actually also
“extracultural”), comparable with internal experience, even if it no doubt brings into play other resources
in terms of knowledge/references and the nature of the competences involved. It is probably preferable to
start out from the ability to interpret and respond in one’s own social, cultural and linguistic space and
move towards analysis of experiences of a more external/”foreign” otherness.
Classroom activities implementing IE thus have the following functions:
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building encounters with other societies in which the languages in question are used, as
opportunities for discovery and for inputs of knowledge and information;
eliciting responses (expressed verbally) to those discoveries;
managing learners’ responses to those discoveries.
By management we mean:
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helping learners to progress from spontaneous responses (no doubt based on social and
emotional representations) to controlled and thought-out responses;
first making a “detour” via the internal/indigenous interpretations, which should be made known
to learners or, better, which they should be asked to reconstitute (where possible), and then
moving on to external personal responses as interested foreigners, again with possible emotional
dimensions.
In addition, these activities may be diversified because:
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internal interpretations may fall within the ambit of personal accounts, media analyses or the
social and human sciences
learners’ responses may be individual (Autobiography of intercultural encounters…) and fall
within the ambit of activities which may be autonomous, semi-autonomous, or interactive and
negotiated, which does not rule out forms of collaborative autonomy (as part of educational
projects);
they may be expressed in the language being learnt. But to enable them to be fully
implemented, language teachers should no doubt also be made aware of the usefulness (for
these specific activities only) of separating teaching of the language from teaching of the
culture because, for example, at levels A1-A2-B1, learners may consider themselves unable to
express what they feel or “think” exclusively in the target language;
they should be conceived in relation to the other subjects;
they should be calibrated to the learners’ cognitive, social and emotional development.
IE is therefore not limited to comparisons or the drawing of parallels, with learners as consumers of
information supplied to them or deriving from their personal experience. The question thus arises of the
origin and status of knowledge, particularly as regards the “society of origin”. However that may be, a
tertium comparationis is needed to serve as a descriptive/analytical framework for the comparison
(national dishes and the anthropology of food) and to give it meaning while avoiding folklorisation.
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The concept of “cultural/intercultural competence” may also be used to organise these activities and build
some form of progression into them in language classes. This might mean that priority should be given to
objectives specified in terms of descriptors of cultural and intercultural competences (as the ability to
understand and interpret one’s own social environment or societies of which one has little or no
knowledge). This therefore involves specifying the excessively broad “existential competence” of the CEFR
by using, for example, the available frameworks of reference for cultural/intercultural competences (M
Bennet and his Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, the CARAP, the typologies of M Byram
and J-C Beacco, and so on) set out by typological category and sometimes by level.
The fields in which IE can be implemented are many and varied and should be selected according to the
educational context. However, some are closer to language teaching. They fall within the scope of
linguistic anthropology (e.g. value of silence, verbal virtuosity and poetic forms, etc.), ethnolinguistics and
all the comparative/contrastive analyses of discourse forms and languages, including analysis of
enunciative operations (representations of quantification, of space/time, etc.), but also the characteristics
of communication communities: names of language acts (e.g. names of feelings), discourse types
(names, formats, characteristics), polite forms of words, etc.. Because mastering a new language also
means entering another world of discourse. This applies first and foremost to linguistic benevolence (as
opposed to verbal violence), the precondition for living together democratically (for “teaching” this in
classroom discussions; see Byram, Gribovka & Starkey: Developing the intercultural dimension of
language teaching).
In short, Plurilingual and Intercultural Education should lead teachers not to be concerned solely with
encouraging learners to speak, so that they “speak” the foreign language better, but also, this time, to
give serious consideration to what they actually say.
Text presented at the
Seminar on “Curriculum convergences for plurilingual and intercultural education”
Strasbourg, 29-30 November 2011
www.coe.int/lang
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