The book by Michael Byram “From Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Essays and Reflections” is devoted to learning foreign languages in terms of culture at primary school. Language learning without cultural dimension is believed to cause danger, since children would use it to encode their own world, with no experience of “otherness”. Teaching is determined by social, political, and economic position of the society. According to the author, internationalization and globalization leave an impact on the educational sphere, and language teaching methodology requires revision, with consideration of intercultural competence. On the other hand, language learning is perceived as danger to children’s “national identity”. Barret singled out a number of issues, connected with language learning and intercultural competence; among them there are issues of the age (when pupils start learning their own culture and others); of the lacking connection between knowledge about a country and the attitude to it; of school textbooks with doubtable narratives and their influence, etc. But at the same time, a teacher isn’t the only source of language and culture acquisition, as it is strongly believed.
Many scholars have studied the interaction between language and culture in terms of language learning and provided many ideas about it. For example, Curtain and Pesola have singled out 3 groups of the representations of other cultures in the children’s world: cultural symbols, cultural products, and cultural practices. More importantly, Skender has proposed a few techniques of teaching foreign language: identification of elements of the foreign culture, in the use of typical images; emphasis on the ludic dimension of learning through songs, games, stories, creation of the atmosphere of the other culture.
Peter Doyé has made a significant contribution to the field of intercultural competence and specified the issues and aspects of intercultural competence: selection of content, appropriate for learners; relativising the opposition of Us vs. Them; taking perspectives and changing the centre; adjusting stereotypes; eliminating prejudice, halting discrimination, becoming more tolerant.
As for teachers, they are proposed to have a good, but not necessarily advanced level of intercultural competence and be a person with rich experience of intercultural interactions. They must also know developmental and social psychology. For a good level of intercultural competence Doyé offers a model of education, which includes education, foreign language pedagogy, linguistic and cultural study, and psychology, which would be a part of a special training course. Moreover, a teacher must have at least one year experience of teaching abroad.
As for the materials and curriculum planning, it is generally acknowledged that intercultural integration must be thoroughly planned and designed. Each case of involving a foreign perspective must arouse children’s interest and expand their way of thinking. But they must never make general assumptions. It can be achieved by visiting other countries, exchanging of materials, using electronic media, etc. Nevertheless, this issue cannot be resolved by teachers alone.
The scholar also pays attentions to researches of cultural dimensions and their connection to teaching and education. Integrative motivation or desire to learn the language to feel closer to native speakers is considered to be the best ground for successful learning of foreign culture. Most researches have indicated that there is no strict connection between teaching and attitude to the foreign culture. However, Kramer has called for closer attention to learning language in the light of the current social situation. He states that we must learn language and culture following the directions of how to live and how we actually live. Many other researchers underline this tendency, for instance, Risager advocates for learning a foreign language and culture from the perspective of globalization, where no national selfishness is allowed. The author presents researching as divided into two types – analysis (“exploring self-understading of learners and teachers”) (Byram 97) and advocacy (finding the ways and establishing the goals and objectives). Many scholars have held researches in analysis and advocacy of intercultural cooperation and interaction. Byram states that culture learning must go through experience, particularly, the experience of differences between cultures and languages, which must be in the limelight of learning. Among other research results, they offer some means of teaching in terms of intercultural competence – using “culturally loaded words”, teaching pragmatic differences, utilizing modern technologies of communication (e.g., the Internet, electronic conferences, email exchanging, etc.), tandem-learning, analysis of the cultural component in textbooks, etc. (Byram 95) By the way, interaction with native speakers is viewed as a crucial component, although their value as teachers is still widely discussed and investigated. However, although there are many approaches and views, most of them are still in the initial phase of theory and planning, which, moreover, can discredit the fundamental ins and outs of language and culture learning and teaching. Byram believes that all the projects focused on intercultural interaction and education in multilingual environment still need thorough evaluation (Byram).
Works Cited
Byram, Michael. From Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Essays and Reflections. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2008. Print.
