Teaching and Learning Intercultural Awareness

It is possible to distinguish between approaching cultural difference 'through language' and the use of learning techniques whose objectives are more overtly 'behavioural'.

In extending self-awareness to knowledge of other cultures or the modeling of behaviour in intercultural situations, the most common activities are culture quizzes and intercultural incidents. Culture quizzes are simply a series of questions on aspects of behaviour which reflect the cultural codes of a given national constituency. They can be either open-ended or multiple-choice.

As an exercise, culture quizzes are highly controversial since they can be seen to be reinforcing stereotypes and failing to differentiate between regional or situational variation. Treating them as quantitative tests is obviously more dangerous still but they are very effective as a basis for debate. Intercultural awareness is now perceived much more as a property of the individual rather than the outcome of knowledge of behavioural trends said to characterize specific nations. For this reason, the interest of quizzes lies in the fact that, while offering practical guidance, they provide an opportunity to scrutinize the relative truth of their answers.

The same can be said of 'intercultural incidents'. Authentic, culture-specific, intercultural incidents can be recorded by real-life participants, written up retrospectively and used for learning purposes. Once again, they serve as excellent catalysts for analysis and discussion. Their advantages as learning activities are their simplicity, and the fact that they can easily be renewed and updated.

Another increasingly prominent feature of undergraduate and graduate courses which focus on 'interculture' is the ethnographic or cross-cultural project.

The strength of the ethnographic project is that it is culture-independent and can therefore be applied in an interdisciplinary framework, as well as to students intending to travel or work in a multiplicity of cultural environments. Students are guided in a choice of 'topic' and trained in basic social science research methodologies: questionnaire design, interview and focus group, the identification of behavioural codes, record-keeping, protocol analysis and so on. A less rigorous approximation to this approach is the cross-cultural case studyin which pairs of students collect data from non-UK citizens on campus on 'attitudes towards the British way of life'. The outcome of such a project can be written up in the target language and formally presented. It has the virtue of engaging students in self-analysis, as a precursor to keeping a record of their experiences abroad, as well as improving their communication skills.

The exploitation of electronic media of communication for the development of linguistic knowledge linked to intercultural awareness is becoming increasingly commonplace as an integral element in Modern Languages Higher Education programmes. Apart from the intrinsic value of promoting communication between individuals and groups in different countries and so enhancing intercultural awareness, it is, of course, possible to keep a record (electronic or otherwise) of discussions within closed networks and then to analyze them closely as part of a group learning experience. Such approaches are a self-evident means of student preparation for an academic experience at a partner institution, but can also give rise to highly creative joint learning tasks which focus on cultural issues.

(https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2303)

2. Scan the text and decide whether the following statements are True or False

1. Culture quizzes can be either open-ended or multiple-choice.

2. Intercultural incidents cannot be used for learning purposes.

3. Both quizzes and intercultural incidents are complicated.

4. Ethnographic projects are useful for students intending to travel or work in cross-cultural environments.

5. Students collect data from UK citizens on 'attitudes towards the European way of life' for their cross-cultural case study.

6. The outcome of a cross-cultural project is written up in the target language and formally presented.

7. Electronic media is valuable in enhancing intercultural awareness.

8. Electronic communication contributes to creative individual learning tasks which focus on cultural issues.

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