Chapter 1

An Intercultural Approach to Second

Language Education

This chapter introduces intercultural language teaching by addressing the

following issues:
The limitations of a communicative model of linguistic interaction.
Intercultural communicative competence, and its relevance to both state
sector and commercial ELT.
The main theoretical influences on intercultural communicative compe-
tence.
A review of the role of culture in ELT.

What is an Intercultural Approach to Second Language

Education?
Since the mid to late 1980s, a number of teachers and educationalists
have been arguing that an intercultural approach to second language
teaching prompts us to re-examine the most basic assumptions about what
language does, and what a language course should seek to achieve. Current
communicative methods of second language teaching generally view
language as a means of bridging an information gap. Communicative
language learning also assumes that by bridging a series of information
gaps, learners will naturally develop their linguistic knowledge and skills,
ultimately to the point where they will acquire native-speaker competence.
This view of language and linguistic development has tended to underrate
culture. Stern (1992: 206) notes that, despite a sustained and consistent
body of work, particularly in America, drawing attention to the importance
of culture in language teaching, the cultural component has remained
difficult to accommodate in practice. In fact, cultural content was often
stripped from learning materials. Pulverness (1996: 7) says of English
language teaching (ELT) in the 1970s:
English was seen as a means of communication which should not be
1
2 Intercultural Approaches to ELT

bound to culturally-specific conditions of use, but should be easily

transferable to any cultural setting. Authenticity was a key quality, but
only insofar as it provided reliable models of language in use. Content
was important as a source of motivation, but it was seen as equally
important to avoid material which might be regarded as culture
bound. Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, syllabus design
and materials writing were driven by needs analysis, and culture was
subordinated to performance objectives.

However, more recently, there have been fresh attempts to integrate

culture into the communicative curriculum. While acknowledging the
obvious importance of language as a means of communicating informa-
tion, advocates of an intercultural approach also emphasise its social
functions; for example, the ways in which language is used by speakers and
writers to negotiate their place in social groups and hierarchies. It has long
been evident that the ways in which these negotiations take place vary
from community to community. A language course concerned with
culture, then, broadens its scope from a focus on improving the four
skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking, in order to help learners
acquire cultural skills, such as strategies for the systematic observation of
behavioural patterns. Moreover, as learners come to a deeper understand-
ing of how the target language is used to achieve the explicit and implicit
cultural goals of the foreign language community, they should be
prompted to reflect on the ways in which their own language and
community functions. The intercultural learner ultimately serves as a
mediator between different social groups that use different languages and
language varieties.
The ultimate goal of an intercultural approach to language education is
not so much native speaker competence but rather an intercultural com-
municative competence (e.g. Byram, 1997b; Guilherme, 2002). Intercultural
communicative competence includes the ability to understand the language
and behaviour of the target community, and explain it to members of the
home community and vice versa. In other words, an intercultural
approach trains learners to be diplomats, able to view different cultures
from a perspective of informed understanding. This aim effectively
displaces the long-standing, if seldom achieved, objective of teaching
learners to attain native speaker proficiency. Obviously, one key goal of
an intercultural approach remains language development and improve-
ment; however, this goal is wedded to the equally important aim of
intercultural understanding and mediation.
English language teaching has long been a multidisciplinary field in
practice, but it has drawn mainly upon research into linguistics and psy-
An Intercultural Approach to Second Language Education 3

chology for its theoretical insights. An intercultural approach continues to

draw upon these disciplines, but gives equal weight to other areas of
research and practice in the humanities and social sciences. Some of these
disciplines, such as anthropology and literary studies, are well established;
others, such as media and cultural studies, are relatively young and still devel-
oping. Since the theoretical frameworks that have stimulated intercultural
approaches are diverse, and potentially bewildering, much of the remainder
of this chapter seeks to summarise them and clarify their contribution.
Much recent work on the intercultural approach to second language
education has been done in state schools and colleges, particularly in
Europe, and in courses and seminars sponsored by state institutions such
as the British Council. An intercultural approach has been slower to impact
upon ELT in the commercial sector. The commercial sector clearly is not
motivated by exactly the same ideological considerations that govern state
education. Modern languages education in state schools usually has to
conform to goals that explicitly embed foreign language teaching in a
broader humanistic curriculum. For example, a Working Group preparing
modern language teachers in England and Wales for a revised national cur-
riculum defined the curricular aims of modern languages teaching in a
manner wholly in accord with the goals of an intercultural approach. The
Working Group proposed that learners should have the opportunity to:

appreciate the similarities and differences between their own and cul-
tures of the communities/countries where the target language is
spoken;
identify with the experience and perspective of people in the coun-
tries and communities where the target language is spoken;
use this knowledge to develop a more objective view of their own
customs and ways of thinking. (DES, 1990: 3, cited in Byram et al.,
1994: 15)

Such goals are more likely to be part of a liberal state-sponsored educational

curriculum than a commercially driven one. However, there are benefits for
the commercial sector in adopting and possibly adapting aspects of an
intercultural approach. The skills of social observation and explanation that
are taught in the intercultural classroom give a coherent rationale for the
teaching of the traditional four skills. Communicative language teaching has
always demanded that classroom activities have a purpose. An intercultural
approach gives teachers and learners a clearly defined and consistent set of
purposes. Furthermore, while a fully developed intercultural approach, as
such, has not yet been systematically or widely adopted by commercial
language schools, many English language teachers will nevertheless