Intercultural english teacher for the global village 2

Carla Chávez Saavedra
Magíster en Lingüística Aplicada

Many opportunities for education and
sustainable human development are being
undermined by the lack of tolerance and
intercultural understanding, upon which
peace is founded.
(Unesco)

 Introduction
 Language from three perspectives
 The communicative approach
 The intercultural communicative competence
 The intercultural English teacher: a
profile
 Suggested activities
 Shared conclusion

 The concept of growing globalization requires
the development of intercultural citizenship.
 It is always necessary to try new ways to engage
students in learning a second language.
Emphasizing the cultural dimension fosters
critical thinking, independent learning and
positive attitude.
 Currently, most teacher training programmes at
Chilean universities seek to develop
competences from the communicative approach
in their language levels. A globalized world
requires to emphasize the ICC in teacher training
to turn them into intercultural speakers.

 There is an interest to reorganize and improve English
teaching trainning programmes at universities.
 The results in public schools, in terms of proficiency and
comprehension in EFL, are not satisfactory.
 The opportunities to learn and practice English as a second
language in private schools are varied. Students have the
possibility to sit for international certificates such as PET,
FCE, IB or IGCSE. They have contact with international
students in exchange programmes or in sports activities. In
this context the three dimensions of languages are in
integrated, so this scenario provides the necessary
elements to form intercultural speakers.

Canale and Swain (1983) present a four-
component model, which has been the
basis for most second language syllabi
for more than thirty years. The
components of this traditional approach
are:
1. The grammatical competence
2. The sociolinguistic competence
3. The strategic competence
4. The discursive competence

1. It doesn’t consider the ability for using
the language because the authors
consider it beyond the limits of any
theory of human action.
2. However, strategic and discoursive
competence make implicit references
to this ability (Johnson 2001).
3. There is no explanation or identification
of the mechanism responsible for
interaction among the competences.

4. The definition of interaction is ambigual up
to certain point. It is not clear if they refer
to the individual’s mind or the one with the
outside environment or both.

Nowadays, it is necessary to integrate the
development of an appropriate linguistic
competence with the cultural dimension,
forming an intercultural speaker able to
interact in real situations. (Byram 1997)
Most recent theory has stressed that when a
foreign language is used for verbal
communication between living individuals in real
time, linguistic competence is insufficient.
(Byram and Doyé 1999)
It is necessary to consider different ways of
behaving, different beliefs and understanding of
the world when communicating in a second
language.

It is defined as:
“The ability to see and manage the
relationships between themselves and their
own cultural beliefs, behaviours and
meanings, as expressed in a foreign
language, and those of their interlocutors,
expressed in the same language, which may
be the interlocutor’s native language, or
not” Byram (1997)

 Develop a sense of national identity.
 Integrate linguistic and sociocultural skills.
 Widen world knowledge as much as possible.
 Develop other perspectives with interest and
curiosity.
 Know, investigate and analyse the product
and practices of social groups.

Skills
Interpret and relate
Knowledge
Of self and other:
Of interaction:
Individual and
societal
Education
Political education
Critical cultural
awareness
Attitudes
Relativising self
Valuing other
Skills
Discover and/or
interact

An intercultural English teacher:
 Guides learners through the cultural
experience to develop cultural knowing.
 Organizes cultural experience joining
cultural content and the learning process.
 Helps learners to participate, describe,
interpret and respond to cultural input.
 Uses different teaching strategies.

5. Presents or elicits cultural information.
6. Coaches and models cultural behaviors.
7. Guides and conducts research and
analysis.
8. Listens, emphathizes and shares their
own experiences as culture learners.
9. Is willing to take the time to thoughtfully
design new activities or modify existing
ones.

 Ability to perform the behaviours effectively,
or accurately.
 Ability to select the appropriate forms of
behaviour.
 Ability to recall or restate the information
presented.
 Ability to separate “fact” from their
interpretation or evaluation of that
information.

 Ability to understand cultural content (the
target culture, the learner’s culture,
concepts of culture, personal experiences).
 Ability to compare cultures.
 Awareness of one’s own feelings,
perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes.

 use videos, CD-ROMs or the Internet to illustrate an aspect
of the foreign culture.
 ask your pupils to think about what it would like to be like
to live in the foreign culture.
 use role-play situations in which people from different
cultures meet.
 decorate your classroom with posters illustrating
particular aspects of the foreign culture.
 ask your pupils to compare an aspect of their own culture
with that aspect in the foreign culture.
 talk with your pupils about stereotypes regarding
particular cultures and countries or regarding the
inhabitants of particular countries.

 Organize chitchat clubs with native speakers.
 Include activities that call for story sharing and personal
narrative.
 Participate in Internet-based collaborative learning.
 Encourage students to enroll in volunteer programmes in
different parts of the world.
 Celebrate festivals and celebrations from other cultures.
 Produce a guidebook, poster or webpage for visitors to
your town, country or region.

 Intercultural communicative competence
provides the opportunity to work with the
communicative approach from an interactive
perspective.
 There are many factors that intervene in SLT
(learning environment, learner’s motivation
and affective filter, materials available,
etc); in this way, teachers are called to
promote innovative ideas and new
approaches to help learners to be effective
second language users in the global village.

 Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing
Intercultural Communicative Competence.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
 Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical
bases of communicative approaches to
second language teaching and testing:
Applied Linguistics.

Intercultural english teacher for the global village 2

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