Language
Policy and Language Education
in
Emerging Nations
Focus
on Slovenia and Croatia
Edited
by
Robert
de Beaugrande
University
of Vienna
Meta
Grosman
University
of Ljubljana
Barbara
Seidlhofer
University
of Vienna
1998
Note: In older versions of WORD or a different browser than Microsoft Explorer, the ‘Slavic’ or other ‘non-English’ letters may appear in outlandish perversions. Contact me if you need help at
1.
Applied linguistics, pragmatics, and language pedagogy Barbara
Seidlhofer and H.G. Widdowson
2.
The intercultural component
in teaching english as a foreign language Meta Grosman
3.
‘The troubles’: a project
in British cultural studies Tina Mahkota
4.
Context, knowledge, and teaching translation Mirjana Bonačić
5.
Literature as comparative discourse: parallel readings in
two languages Uroš Mozetič
6.
Parallel texts and parallel worlds: assessing validity in
interpretation and translation through descriptive text corpora Rosanna
Masiola Rosini
7.
The genesis and development
of dictionary illustrations Sabine Langridge
8.
Large corpus research and
foreign language teaching John McHardy Sinclair
9.
Introducing English into
croatian primary schools Mirjana Vilke
10.
The
role
of
the
native
language
in
teaching
English
as
a
foreign
language
Janez
Skela
11.
The role of feedback in teaching and learning English as a foreign language
Gertraud Havranek
12.
Affect, attitude, and motivation in learning English as a foreign language Jelena
Mihaljević Djigunović
13.
Toward an interlingual collocational dictionary of English and Slovene Dušan
Gabrovšek
14.
Anglicisms in contemporary Slovene and their lexicographic treatment Eva
Sicherl
15
Theory and practice in communicative grammar:
A guide for teachers David Newby
16.
Relating grammar to discourse: can grammar classes be like poetry classes? Irena
Kovačič
17.
Teaching aspect to Slovene learners of English: discourse in context Silvana
Orel
18.
Models of intonation for the university teacher of English Smiljana Komar
19.
Testing reading in theory and practice Saša
Benulič
20.
Teaching a foreign language for specific purposes Wilfried Wieden
21.
ESP textbooks: who should produce them and how? Melita Djurić
22.
Oral testing in English for specific purposes
Željka Radelic
23.
Writing effective abstracts for international readers Bernarda Kosel
24.
Language specialists and aviation specialists in radio-telephony programmes Alenka
H. Kukovec
25.
Textuality and training in developing style John Fox
26.
Using case reports in teaching medical English
Maria Soledad García Martínez and Lourdes Divasson
Cilveti
27.
Designing language programmes in emergent nations: The outlook in Slovenia Robert
de Beaugrande
Section
I
1
————————————————————————————————
APPLIED
LINGUISTICS, PRAGMATICS, AND
LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY
Barbara
Seidlhofer
H.G.
Widdowson
Institute
of English and American Language
University
of Vienna
1.
INTRODUCTION
Applied
linguistics, as a mediating area of enquiry which seeks to establish the
relevance of theory to practice, needs to take note of developments in
theoretical and descriptive linguistics. One particularly prominent
development over recent years has been the shift of attention from the formal properties of language as such to the functional values they take on in use. At least in some quarters,
linguistics has shifted its emphasis from the study of grammar and semantics
to the study of discourse and pragmatics, and from code in isolation to
context in relation to code. Correspondingly, language teaching pedagogy has
shifted to a greater concern for communicative competence, and to a
reconsideration of the relevance of discourse and pragmatics for defining both
the objectives of language learning and the classroom activities which are
most effective for inducing such learning. Naturally the role of the teacher
is being reappraised, as well as the pedagogic competence required for
teaching language.
The
purpose of our contribution is to bring the three areas of enquiry cited in
the title into clearer focus, and to show their inter-relationship. We shall
try to do this by elaborating the points raised in the opening paragraph and
by exploring their implications. We hope to provide an example of how
reflection might be stimulated by textual deconstruction, and to identify
certain key issues in the relationship between our three areas. We make no
claim that these issues will be definitively or exhaustively dealt with, but
only that they will be raised to consciousness and offered as matters for
subsequent critical enquiry.
2.
APPLIED LINGUISTICS AS MEDIATION
In
the opening paragraph, we proposed to view applied linguistics as a
‘mediating area of enquiry’. We have discussed this view in relation to
language teaching and teacher education before (e.g. Seidlhofer, 1994;
Widdowson, 1990) but it would be well to restate here what we mean by mediation,
because it is central to our way of thinking. In our view, mediation is
closely inter-related to relevance.
All
areas of practical activity imply
some set of abstract ideas which
give shape and meaning to the activity. Actions involve doing something, and
that something is conceived, pre-conceived as an abstract category of some
kind. And so it is with the practical activity of language teaching. It too
must be informed in one way or another by theoretical ideas; otherwise it
would not be possible to recognise when you are doing it. Of course, teachers
may not be aware of what these ideas are, and may not be able to make them
explicit: the ideas may not be a part of the teachers’ declarative
knowledge. All the same, whenever you are involved in practice, as you are
in language teaching, you are inevitably acting upon theoretical ideas, and
what you do is informed by theory.
For
language teaching, it seems reasonable to suppose that the theory or part of
the theory we are concerned with must be about the nature of language and the
way it is used. What materials writers put in textbooks and what teachers do
in classrooms carry assumptions about language and how it is learned. It seems
sensible to bring these assumptions out into the open, make them explicit so
that we can see just what they are. And it also seems reasonable to suppose
that these assumptions can be referred to the explicit theoretical and
descriptive statements that linguists make. The difficulty is that these
statements are not always readily accessible to a person working in the very
different domain of pedagogy: they are designed to be conceptually valid in
their own terms, not to be of immediate practical use. Hence the need for mediation. So what applied linguistics seeks to do is to demonstrate
the extent to which these ideas in the theoretical domain about the nature and
description of language, whether in relation to the mind, social life, or
whatever, can be made relevant to the practical concerns of language teaching.
It is in this sense that applied linguistics is a ‘mediating area of
enquiry’: it mediates between the theoretical and practical domains.
3.
ESTABLISHING RELEVANCE
But
relevance cannot be unilaterally imposed. The linguists cannot be
the ones who decide how far their ideas have a bearing on matters in
different domains. It is not their business: it is the business of those who
work in these domains. Relevance can really only be established locally
by reference to local conditions. What outsiders can do is to point to
possible areas of relevance, possible areas of application; they cannot
actually establish relevance for somebody else. But the outsiders have to be
aware of the areas in the practical domain which are susceptible to enquiry in
reference to their theoretical ideas. Here is where applied linguistics comes
in: its purpose is to identify possibilities of application, which may not be
immediately apparent, by inferring a connection between aspects of language
teaching practice and the theoretical and descriptive work of linguists and
others concerned with language use and learning. In this sense, applied
linguists provide a service: they act as agents for language teachers, making
ideas available which, if relevant, can be appropriated
and put to work.
This
does not mean, however, that the only ideas which are to be countenanced in
applied linguistics are those with an immediate practical payoff in terms of
classroom technique. Teachers draw on a wealth of experience, and particular
acts of teaching are carried out and given weight against a background of
complex expertise. This expertise can be made explicit, and thus more
adaptable, by reference to theory.
As
Nádasdy (1994) points out, teachers need an awareness of theory, whether or
not they actually make this directly explicit to their students. What has
perhaps been neglected in teacher training over recent years is the
theoretical knowledge teachers need to have, about phonology or grammar for
example, even though it may not be directly projected into teaching technique.
The point is that such knowledge is a formalisation
of experience, it is available as a conceptual
resource, a set of pedagogic
parameters, so to speak. How the resource is actually used, how the
parameters are appropriately set, must ultimately be a matter of local
pedagogic decision. The teachers themselves must do the fine-tuning to make
ideas relevant to particular circumstances; but they cannot exploit ideas they
do not have.
In
short: there is nothing so theoretical
as good practice, and nothing so practical as a good theory. Similarly,
for practice to be sound it needs to have
reference to theory; for theory to be valid it has to have relevance
to practice. In respect to Nádasdy’s point, teachers need to be aware of
the nature of language very broadly as a general resource of knowledge to be
adapted to future pedagogic requirements which may be simply unpredictable.
4.
TEACHER EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING
The
acquisition of knowledge, an awareness of theoretical issues, beyond the
immediate needs of the moment, should be part of teacher education. In contrast, teacher training seeks only to provide, in a parsimonious way, the
knowledge and expertise to carry out a particular task. This narrowly
conceived teacher training, designed to provide prospective teachers with a
repertoire of solutions to relatively predictable problems, clearly does not
encourage the innovative development of new ideas, or the exploration of other
possibilities in other contexts, apart from those in which teachers are
initially trained. You would only be able to replicate those techniques
acquired in training, and would find it difficult to adjust whenever
circumstances called for adaptation.
In
this respect, teacher education is problem-oriented
and equips the teacher to deal with unpredictable problems. Teacher training
is solution-oriented and depends on
situations matching up with what you have been prepared to solve. So if a
situation is problematic in a new way, either you change it so you can cope
with it and make it manageable, or you are in a quandary and do not know how
to proceed. More emphasis should accordingly be allotted to teacher education.
5.
COMPETING ORTHODOXIES: FORM AND FUNCTION
This
point is particularly significant with regard to the observation made in the
opening paragraph about the shift of emphasis, prominent over recent years,
from the formal to the functional properties of language (for discussion, see
also Beaugrande, 1994). These emphases are sometimes represented as an
absolute opposition: you accept one perspective on language only by rejecting
the other. The important thing, however, is to be aware of the beliefs and
purposes which underlie different theoretical models of language, and the
extent to which they key in with the different requirements of practice. You
may decide to reject certain formalist notions, but it makes no sense to do so
unless you know what it is you are rejecting: your decision should, surely, be
an informed one.
Teachers
who have been schooled to adopt a communicative functional approach in their
teaching should still seek to understand the claims to validity made by other
approaches to language description. And they certainly should seek knowledge
about the formal properties of the language, so that in their teaching they
can lay varying emphasis on formal and functional features of language, or
explain the complexities of form, or devise activities for manipulating forms,
depending on the level of instruction, the kind of students, their learning
disposition, their social or educational background, and so on.
In
the recent past, a lack of this broad, educational understanding of linguistic
theory has often led to the mistaken assumption that one can, in a
straightforward way, exchange a formal approach for a functional one. This
assumption has all too often been taken to sanction an exclusive focus on the
pragmatic uses of language without explicit regard to its formal properties.
But these very properties incorporate the meaning potential which is exploited
in pragmatic use. For all kinds of reasons (which, again, need to be clearly
understood), a knowledge of these properties may not be sufficient to achieve communication in a language, but it is
certainly necessary. Over recent
years, some people have been tempted to say that previously there was a
concentration on form, and now we are concentrating on function; previously
teaching the language meant teaching the code, and now we are concerned with
teaching communication, as if the two concerns were totally distinct. And in
some cases, people have, somewhat over-enthusiastically, sought to replicate
real-life communication in the classroom, and have propagated slogans like ‘meaning
rather than form’. The result has often been a kind of performance
repertoire without a solid grounding upon competence in the code.
Effective
communication in a language, in contrast, presupposes a knowledge of the
formal properties of the language and of the way these signal certain kinds of
semantic meaning, conventionally within the language code itself. The issue
then arises of how these conventionalised encodings in the semantics of a
language are realised in different contexts during the achievement of
pragmatic meaning. Educated teachers might be required to understand the
nature of semantics and pragmatics, and to recognise the problematic
relationship between the two, seeing that the formal properties are important,
but important because they are
related to the functions these forms serve to achieve. Many years ago, Roman
Jakobson wrote about interpretation being a function of the relationship
between two interpretants: code and context (Jakobson & Halle, 1956). And
this code-context relationship establishes the meaning that people achieve
pragmatically. You cannot only refer people to the context; nor can you only
refer them to the code in dissociation from the context. If teachers had been
effectively educated, we would perhaps not have been lurching from one
orthodoxy to the other, or indeed from one paradigm of pedagogy to another. In
moving to a consideration of functions and communication, you do not cut
yourself off from code and the formal properties of language. Forms and
functions exist in a necessary symbiotic or dialectical relationship, each
relevant to the other (Beaugrande, Firbas & Widdowson, 1994).
6.
THE ROLES OF THE TEACHER: INFORMANT/INSTRUCTOR
There
has, then, been a shift of concern from formal properties to functional values
in the theory and description of language. Pedagogy has tended to follow the
shift without sufficient awareness of what is involved or sufficient critical
appraisal of what the significance might be for language teaching. The shift
also raises some questions about the role of the teacher, and in particular
about the relative advantages of the native versus non-native speaking
teachers of English (see also Medgyes, 1994). If one were fanciful, or
mischievous, one might take the view that in a sense communicative language
teaching has been a conspiracy in favour of the native speaker (hereafter NS)
teacher in conjunction with NS institutions. It is all very well for NSs to go
on about communication and the importance of ‘meaning rather than form’
because they can take the language forms for granted. If you stress the
importance of so-called authentic materials, it seems clear that the native
speaking teacher is advantaged, for authenticity is necessarily associated
with NS behaviour, and authentic materials can be said to represent genuine
models of what NSs do; they both exemplify the way the language works in
everyday situations. But all this may be without regard to pedagogic issues
involved in how the language is made
real in the context of the classroom, how the language is a meaningful
experience for learners. NSs may be good informants
in knowing how members of their community actually use language, but they may
well not be good instructors, who
must know what contexts to set up in classrooms if learners are to experience
the language in ways which induce them to learn it.
7.
AUTHENTIC AND APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE
The
term function has been taken to
refer to language use in NS contexts, so one talks about the ‘authentic
functioning of language in naturally occurring contexts of use’, presumably
in NS contexts of use. If you define your objective in language teaching to be
to initiate learners into this mode of behaviour, into the way in which NSs
authentically, really, actually communicate in their own social contexts, then
of course the NS has the authority of being a participant in these contexts.
So if you think of communicative language teaching as involving the in-class
presentation of language which is as close an approximation as possible to
actually occurring use in NS contexts, then obviously the NS teacher has an
enormous advantage over the non-native speaker (hereafter NNS) as teacher.
But
the term ‘function’ also has reference to pedagogy, and here it has to do
with the activity of learning the language, not just using it; and learning
it, furthermore, in contexts which must relate to the learners’ reality, and
which may in most respects be entirely remote from those of normal NS use. If
you take the reality of learning into account, then you are likely to shift
your focus of attention from the definition of the objective of language learning (i.e., what has to be eventually
achieved, namely an effective pragmatic use of language close to that of NSs)
to the process of language learning
(i.e., how language has to function in the classroom to effectively develop or
activate learning in the students). Now, your primary concern is not with the
contexts of use outside the classroom, which are necessarily in somebody
else’s community, but the context of the community of the classroom itself,
which has to activate learning. And then the role of the NNS teacher comes
into its own: whereas the NS teacher knows a lot about the objective, the NNS
teacher knows a lot about the process, about the way language functions in the
learning process, rather than how it works in ‘real’ communication in
actual reality.
We
should emphasise that NNS teachers often have been through a language learning
process similar to that they are now seeking to induce among their students.
In monolingual classes, NNS teachers also know the mother tongue of the
students; they have a pedagogic competence in parallel with their
communicative and pragmatic competence of a special kind: the ability to use
language effectively in the classroom.
Teachers with such pragmatic pedagogic competence are able to use language
effectively and appropriately for the learning process—which is not
necessarily the same as using language effectively and appropriately in
‘normal’ contexts of use. The point surely is that language learning
consists of learning what it means to authenticate
language so that learners can make the language their own in various contexts
of use, including those of a classroom specifically designed to induce
learning. We might find it better to think not so much of authentic
as of appropriate language, and to
propose that appropriate language is what the learners can ‘appropriate’
to their purpose.
In
this view, pedagogic competence is what enables the teacher to set up
conditions in the classroom whereby this ‘appropriation’ can take place.
How the language is selected and presented, how it is made real for learners
in the classroom, may differ in many respects from the way the language
operates in real-life contexts of use. It makes no sense, therefore, to talk
about ‘authentic’ language in the classroom in an uncritical way, as if
the only language admissible in the classroom were that which is actually
attested in NS contexts, and conforms to NS norms of communicative behaviour.
Of course, as instruction proceeds and learning develops, the learners will
extend the range of authentication, and gradually approximate to the NS norms
which are deemed suitable to the purpose. But that is the goal
for the process; it is not the starting
point. We need to recognise that the classroom has to meet its own
conditions of what is appropriate for learning.
8.
THE DIFFERENT CONTEXTS OF LANGUAGE TEACHING
If
one thinks of the pragmatics of pedagogy, then it seems clear that the local
knowledge the NNS teacher brings to the context of the classroom is very often
more relevant than what the NS teacher brings to it. However, most English
language teaching materials, especially those which claim to implement a
‘communicative approach’, come largely from NS communities, and from very
specific teaching/learning conditions. The methods which are commended as the
most enlightened and up-to-date have probably been developed for private
language schools or for summer courses in Britain. Here we find classes which
are heterogeneous in respect to language
and culture, consisting of highly motivated learners who also have English
constantly available to them occurring in its natural surroundings outside the
classroom. Such students are immersed in ‘authentic’ language use almost
all the time. And these classroom conditions, for which no doubt a number of
the approaches and methods which have been proposed are appropriate, are
plainly not replicated in the world beyond the shores of Britain.
In
the vast majority of places in the world where English is taught, classes are
fairly homogeneous in respect to
language and culture, and teachers share that homogeneity. Indeed, their
teaching is in some degree a replay of their personal history, as they watch
the students going through the same sorts of process as they themselves have
gone through. This linguistic and cultural affinity between student and
teacher can develop a close comity, a sense of community and of security
through the sharing of attitudes, beliefs, values, and so on.
In
contrast, a NS teacher in Britain has a group of students from all over the
world—from Europe, the Arab countries, from Japan, and so on, with little or
no common linguistic and cultural affinity. The sense of community and
security needed to stimulate learning has to be created from scratch. This,
perhaps more than anything else, accounts for the development of the
humanistic game-playing which is so much a feature of English teaching in many
language schools in Britain. Its purpose is to compensate for the lack of
natural homogeneity, to contrive a sense of shared identity, shared purpose,
and so on. Students are coaxed into playing these games in order to develop an
ethos of togetherness. But in the vast majority of classes where English is
taught throughout the world, this ethos does not have to be so strenuously
contrived, because the essential conditions of communal sharing are already in
place. And even with the heterogeneous groups for whom these activities were
originally designed, attempts to establish such an ethos can have the contrary
effect of alienating some students because such attempts do violence to their
own cultural values.
9.
TRANSLATION
Those
who talk with most assured authority and the most influence about the
‘communicative approach’ when making recommendations or writing textbooks
are, for the most part, NSs, and often teach in NS contexts like Britain. And
it is also worth noting that these authorities rarely mention translation. This is hardly surprising, since translation would be
an odd pedagogic procedure in heterogeneous classes where there is no
linguistic and cultural common ground. And because translation is not
recommended, and because NS teachers enjoy enormous deference—basically, it
would seem, on the curious assumption that if they are expert in English they
must be expert in English teaching—translation does not figure in
discussions of language pedagogy (compare Bonačić, this volume;
Skela, this volume). But is there something about it which makes it
intrinsically unsuited to the process of language learning? The question does
not appear to have been given critical consideration. Yet on deeper
reflection, there would seem to be good reasons for recommending rather than
proscribing the use of translation in the classroom.
For
one reason, such use would be consistent with the general educational precept
that learning is the extension of what
is new from what is familiar. Translation relates the language to be
learnt to the linguistic experience the learners have already had, and can
thereby greatly reduce the threat of the new subject and help the learner to
appropriate the new language. It is entirely natural to make new experience
meaningful by referring it to conceptual categories drawn from previous
experience; and translation is, in this respect, the reflex of natural
learning. You might try to stop it, as generations of English teachers were
enjoined to do, but it has always been carried out covertly. It is such a
natural thing to do that students translate constantly whether teachers
acknowledge it or not, and trying to suppress it is pointless. Pedagogic sense
counsels us to exploit this natural advantage the students already have,
rather than try to deny them the use of it. Indeed, there is much more
artificiality in suppressing translation than there is in contriving
situations in the classroom which will key into the students’ reality,
bearing in mind that this reality has been inseparably implicated in the
experience of their own language.
10.
PRAGMATIC PURPOSE AND PEDAGOGY
As
we have already observed, recent discussions have stressed the importance of
‘authentic language’ and ‘natural learning’, often on the assumption
that they are much the same kind of thing. But authenticity
has to do with language as it is naturally used in NS contexts. It may not be
at all natural for students to use
this language in their learning. The teacher’s task is not to replicate some
other community’s ‘natural’ reality, but to set up activities which are
obviously contrived: tasks in the form of incomplete contexts specially
devised for the classroom. Such contexts will, quite naturally, elicit
language different from language occurring ‘naturally’ in the contexts of
NS use. In this sense, the language is bound to be inauthentic.
But that does not prevent it from being appropriate.
Our
main point—and this is a commonplace in pragmatics—is that you cannot
really talk about ‘authenticity’ at all without regard to purpose. All discourse can be said to be ‘contrived’ in that it
is designed to suit some need or other. An international conference, for
example, is ‘contrived’ in this sense: planned, organised, managed so as
to bring people together to further a common purpose; it is not a naturally
occurring group of people. The context is contrived to seek optimal conditions
for discussing what participants want to discuss. For example, the discussion
which formed the basis of this chapter was not one we would naturally have
had. It was expressly set up; we had a brief to talk to. And we contrived to
be as clear about certain issues we had identified as significant to the
general purpose of the conference at large.1 These are all
constraints we imposed upon ourselves, because we had identified a purpose
which encouraged us to do so.
Exactly
the same pragmatic argument applies to the language classroom. Contexts are
contrived as appropriate to purpose, and in this case the purpose is the
inducement of language learning. It is difficult to understand why this
pedagogic practice should be regarded as ‘unnatural’—as intimidating, or
as denying the language learner’s rights, or as interfering in the natural
process of language learning.
11.
PERSUASION AND CRITICAL APPRAISAL
We
have suggested that there has been a tendency on the part of NNS teachers of
English to accept an orthodoxy which comes from an entirely different
teaching/ learning context and whose validity depends upon those contextual
conditions. Perhaps the orthodoxy is readily accepted because of the
unwarranted deference accorded to NS teachers based on a confusion
of linguistic with pedagogic competence. If teachers were to adopt a more
critical stance, they would be less likely to fall prey to such orthodoxies
and more likely to evaluate ideas and practices by the criterion of
appropriateness to their own classrooms. This takes us back to the notion of
the mediation with which we began.
What applied linguistics can contribute to language pedagogy is a set of
theoretical bearings on critical evaluation. It can develop a critical sense
on the part of teachers. It can get them to recognise that all practice is in
some way informed by theory and so is in some way determined, or at least
greatly influenced by, attitudes and beliefs; that practice is, ultimately,
ideologically based and cannot be otherwise.
From
this point of view, the purpose of applied linguistics is to make the teacher
aware of the partiality of ideas,
whether these are made explicit in theoretical statement or are left hidden
and behind the scenes in actual practice. And they are partial in two senses.
In one sense, such ideas can only deal with a part of reality, for they deal
in generalisations and cannot therefore capture ‘the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth’. Theories are approximations; they may seek to be
precise in their own terms, but their own terms are necessarily abstract
idealisations. Theoretical ideas are therefore partial in a second sense: they
are always loaded, or prejudiced, representative of a particular perspective
on things, a particular intellectual disposition. By exploring this
partiality, applied linguistics can make its major contribution to language
teacher education. It can, on the one hand, make teachers aware of ideas about
the nature of language, about how it is used, learned, and taught, thereby
providing you with conceptual bearings on what you do. But on the other hand,
it can develop in teachers a healthy scepticism, an awareness of the specific
cultural provenance and the particular partiality of these ideas, so that you
can draw upon them without being dictated
by them, and can refer to them
without deferring to them.
This
service is highly important in view of the often baleful influence of powerful
ideas which are granted extreme deference and privilege because they come from
people who claim authority. Teachers have so often been persuaded into
accepting ideas without subjecting them to critical appraisal. These are not
only ideas which hold a plainly theoretical status, but also ones which parade
under a practical guise. People who talk openly in theoretical terms are easy
for teachers to identify as outsiders from a different domain. But there are
others who claim insider status by talking in practical terms of pedagogic
technique, where the theory, so to speak, goes underground.
We have in mind here certain authors of published materials, resource books, textbooks, or articles in teachers’ journals, recommending activities, tasks, or techniques which have been tried out and supposedly validated in practice. These activities, it is asserted, ‘work in the classroom’. Notice the use of the definite article: ‘the classroom’, the generic classroom, with the implication that all classrooms are essentially the same. It is important to recognise that this, for all its apparent concern for practical reality is, in effect, a generalisation with a large theoretical claim. It is a claim, furthermore, which is highly suspect and not likely to find much empirical support in the reality of actual classrooms. What the claim amounts to is that a set of activities which has been found to be effective, or even very effective, in a particular classroom, in one particular context of instruction, will be equally valid and effective in other
contexts.
As we indicated earlier, these contexts are very often those in Britain—in
Acton, Brighton, Canterbury, or wherever—where the types of teacher and the
types of student, and the relationships possible between them, are totally
different from what we find in the majority of cases where English is taught
worldwide.
Of
course these activities should be noted and examined to see how far their
potential relevance can be realised in different contexts. But their relevance
must result from such examination,
not just be assumed as self-evident in advance. It would be just as unrealistic
to suppose that ideas can transfer directly across particular contexts in the
practical domain, as to suppose that they are transferable between the domains
of theory and practice in general. In both cases, we have to recognise
partiality and therefore the need for mediation to establish relevance, just
because it is all too easy to be persuaded by apparent authority.
And
the purpose of applied linguistics, as we have presented it here, is to
question such authority, to develop an attitude of positive scepticism based
on an understanding of the nature of theory, and to develop a critical
awareness of its relationship with practice. We have argued that language
pedagogy is essentially a pragmatic activity entailing a principled,
theoretically informed contrivance of conditions which are locally effective
for learning. Thus, the mediation of applied linguistics is a dialectical
process: it seeks to show how practice makes reference to theory, and where theory can be made relevant
to practice. Seen in this way, applied linguistics is not peripheral
to language teaching but crucial to
its development as a professional enterprise.
1
And the editing of the text for this volume was a further contrivance
(editors’ note).
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R. de. (1994). Function and form in language theory and research. Functions
of Language, 1, 163-200.
Beaugrande,
R. de, Firbas, J. & Widdowson, H.G. (1994). Round table on functional
linguistics. Vienna English Working
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Jakobson,
R., & Halle, M. (1956). Fundamentals
of language. The Hague: Mouton.
Medgyes,
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A. (1994). Few big rules or many small rules? Plenary lecture at the 28th
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Widdowson, H.G. (1990). Aspects of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2
————————————————————————————————
THE
INTERCULTURAL COMPONENT IN TEACHING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Meta
Grosman
Faculty
of Arts
University
of Ljubljana
This
chapter contemplates the intercultural dimension of teaching and learning a
foreign language and proposes more ethnographically oriented approaches to
promote intercultural sensitivity as a key factor in communicative competence.
An alternative method is then outlined for learners who cannot afford to
acquire their competence by studying abroad and benefiting from the immersion
and direct observation of phenomena in the target culture. At least at the
university level, such alternative curricula call for a prominent
intercultural component specially designed to develop the learners’
awareness of intercultural contexts and their implications, such as potential
shifts and losses of meaning. The learners deepen their understanding and
equip themselves to help their own future learners develop a similar
awareness.
1.
THE NEW EUROPE
In
the new Europe that aspires to closer economic and political integration,
knowing several languages and learning foreign languages have been clearly
recognised as major prerequisites (e.g. Ager, 1993; Buttjes, 1991; Byram,
1993). The Council for Cultural Cooperation within the Council of Europe
(1988, p. 21) attaches the highest importance to improving the ability of
Europeans to communicate with each other and envisages far-reaching objectives
for foreign language learning:
to
promote the development of ‘autonomous’, that is to say, free, self-aware
and self-reliant but socially responsible European citizens; conscious and
proud of their cultural heritage but informed and accepting with regard to
that of others, moving toward a European identity; able to defend their own
rights and interests, but respectful of those of others.
The
new demand for intercultural communication should also contribute to
preserving and developing the European heritage of diversity in culture and
language. The Council’s (1989, p. 5) programme in Language
Learning for European Citizenship formulates the following widely quoted
objectives:
(a)
to facilitate the free movement of individuals;
(b)
to further understanding between peoples through personal contact;
(c)
to improve the effectiveness of European co-operation; and
(d)
to overcome prejudice and discrimination.
To
assist these complex objectives, foreign language learning must encompass more
than the acquisition of a merely functional ‘communicative competence’
consisting of basic vocabulary and grammar and of predetermined themes and
structures, as defined by the ‘threshold level’ ironically encouraged by
the new European interest in foreign language learning. Communicative
competence must also include the capacity to communicate efficiently with
people coming from different cultures and holding different culture-specific
expectations, and in situations that are more complicated than tourist visits
or practical business transactions. Such competence must enable and support complex interlingual and intercultural discourse. Only then can the
citizens of Europe welcome and advance multicultural
diversity as the richest action
space for actualising the full
potential of human beings, and for integrating
alternative modes of human knowledge and experience (Beaugrande, 1997).
The
conceptualisation of such an intercultural competence is a result of the
growing awareness that the contacts between various languages inevitably
involve even more complex contacts between respective cultures, which may give
rise to conflicting experiences and may challenge the monocultural identities
of cultural insiders. Such competence can obviously not be taught or acquired
on the premise of narrowly ‘linguistic’ concepts of language and language
acquisition that disregard the social and cultural contexts of language use:
the impact of concrete pragmatic situations upon the learners participating in
them. Consequently, cultural content and diversified prospects for presenting
it have been attracting more and more attention.
The
time seems auspicious for highlighting the intercultural
dimension in foreign
language teaching, one of the most frequently discussed didactic topics today
(e.g. Borrelli, 1991; Kane, 1991; Grosman, Ed., 1997; chapters by Mahkota and
Rosini, this volume). But defining intercultural communicative competence and
its prospective components is problematic. Meinert Meyer (1991, p. 137) offers
this definition:
Intercultural
competence, as part of a broader foreign speaker competence, identifies the
ability of a person to behave adequately and in a flexible manner when
confronted with actions, attitudes, and expectations of representatives of
foreign cultures. Adequacy and flexibility imply an awareness of the cultural
difference between one’s own and the foreign culture and the ability to
handle cross-cultural problems which result from the differences.
Intercultural competence includes the capacity of stabilising one’s
self-identity in the process of cross-cultural mediation, and of helping other
people to stabilise their identity.
This
definition may serve as a valid starting point for a critique of those
cultural studies, now much in practice, which rarely go beyond the mere
presentation of a foreign culture. A major factor is the design of English
textbooks that are targeted at learners all over the world and thus pay no
attention to the contacts with the learners’ own culture and linguistic
community (cf. Phillipson, 1992; Seidlhofer & Widdowson, this volume).
Such books completely disregard the interaction between cultures and its
impact upon the participants in communication.
However,
Meyer’s definition does not effectively reveal or describe the components of
such a competence, and certainly raises more questions than it answers. For
instance, can ‘adequate behaviour’ or ‘flexible manner’ be expected to
result automatically from the awareness of cultural differences? What
constitutes the ‘ability to handle cross-cultural problems’, or ‘the
capacity of stabilising one’s self-identity’? The complexity of such
questions emerges only when we examine concrete factors in such behaviour and
its preconditions. Such factors include:
(a) the pressure to conform to foreign patterns of behaviour and acquire, or submit to, foreign patterns of thought as prefigured in the language;
(b)
the extent to which we should teach foreign forms of discourse and insist on
their production by foreign language learners (Kramsch, 1993, p. 44);
(c)
the ratio within intercultural communicative competence between the knowledge
of foreign language patterns and discourse versus the ability to produce them
appropriately;
(d) the rights of the foreign language speakers to express their own attitudes and native linguistic behaviour.
A
challenging outlook on these factors can be derived from H.G. Widdowson’s
(1993, p. 7) description of linguistic proficiency:
You are proficient in a language to the extent that you make it your possession, bend it to your own will, assert yourself through it rather than simply submit to its form. It is a familiar experience to find oneself saying things in a foreign language because you can say them rather because they express what you want to say. You feel you are going through the motions, and somebody else’s motions at that. Real proficiency is when you are able to take possession of the language and turn it to your advantage. […] So in a way, proficiency only comes with non-conformity, when you take the initiative and strike out on your own.
The
necessity of integrating language learning with cultural learning in order to
promote intercultural competence is clearly established today. The means for
doing so, however, are far less clear. Most authors favouring learner-centred
pedagogy recommend proceeding from the learner’s own culture and
building upon similarities with the target culture and upon culturally
familiar content. But these authors rarely provide precise or workable
descriptions of how to take into account the learner’s own culture, or how
to determine similarities between cultures.
Educational
objectives accepted in most European countries emphasise offering insight into
the target culture, cultivating the learner’s openness, and promoting
intercultural understanding and tolerance. Frequently, these objectives also
recommend encouraging a positive attitude toward the speakers of the target
language and a sympathetic approach to the target culture and civilisation.
Such objectives call for enhancing the learners’ sensitivity to different
cultures, and for enriching the beliefs and knowledge schemata they have
already acquired and identify with in their own culture. This process would
promote the realisation of the relative and socially constructed nature of
their own culture and culturally bound expectations—and eventually of the
relativity and constructedness of all cultures (cf. Berger & Luckmann,
1967).
Here,
further questions arise. Can and should positive attitudes be encouraged or
taught, even when the learners might resist them? Experience shows that
learners may resist the attempts of teachers simply trying to make learners
absorb their own enthusiasm for the foreign language and culture, especially
when the foreign language is a requirement rather than an elective. Also, some
learners, at least in the beginning stages, may want to maintain a less
involved and more detached attitude toward what they experience as unfamiliar;
or may be still uncertain about their own cultural identity; or may mistrust
as unrealistic the presentation of foreign culture in their textbooks being
superior to the learners’ own culture. (I have seen textbook illustrations
of ideal families with two children and a pet, no conflict anywhere,
aggressively disfigured by Slovene learners.) Positive attitudes presuppose
that teaching can reliably make the intercultural component interesting and
challenging.
The
full complexity of this approach can be appreciated from descriptions of
actual projects for teaching foreign languages by establishing a ‘sphere of
interculturality’ (Kramsch, 1993, p. 205). These projects reveal a wide
range of questions and factors which may determine one’s choices when the
teacher actually tries to put into social practices the conception of
language within culture instead of merely supplying information about
cultures. Such practices require situating the foreign culture in relation to
one’s own and thus presuppose an elaborate reflection on both cultures and
their relationship to language, plus a profound knowledge of one’s own
culture and of the processes of its social construction. Otherwise, learners
may feel threatened by demonstrations that their own universe is far from
inevitable while experiencing an alternative symbolic universe (cf. Berger
& Luckmann, 1967, p. 108).
Intercultural
encounters and communications that aspire to a true understanding of meaning
rather than mere interchanges of words are highly and unavoidably complex.
This complexity may explain why discussions of interculturality are often
rather theoretical. Speculations are advanced about such concepts as
‘intercultural pedagogy’ (Borrelli, 1991, p. 275), and the processes of
interculturally oriented foreign language learning as important tertiary
socialisation necessitated by our global circumstances. Some pedagogical
objectives for advanced learners also seem rather idealistic, naturally far
easier to postulate and discuss theoretically than to transfer into
pedagogical practice. For Ager (1993, p. 77), advanced learners of a
degree-level education in foreign languages should not only know how to speak
and what to say—where, when, to whom, and why. They should also be
self-conscious of their own interculturality, understanding intellectually the
processes involved, while examining and critically assessing their own
personality shifts ensuing from the recognition of, and respect for, the
culture of the other.
Practical
realisations can seek to develop interdisciplinary approaches and ethnographic
methods and techniques for sensitising learners to the differences in the
target culture and to the constraints of their own socio-culturally
constructed concepts and experiences. Ethnographic approaches appropriately
encourage the learners to abandon the common notion that cultural learning
means acquiring a set of knowledge about the culture. Instead, learners are
stimulated ‘constantly to question the source of their knowledge and in
doing so’ ‘to interrogate their own assumptions about observed cultural
difference’ (Roberts, 1994, p. 3) By rela- tivising, learners are induced
‘to see their own and others’ worlds’ as ‘socially constructed and not
natural’; the ability to see everyday life as cultural practice also deepens
their understanding of cultural difference and their sensitivity toward their
own views and behaviour.
Similar
ethnographic approaches have been proposed by a variety of authors (e.g.
Buttjes, 1991; Byram, 1993; Kane, 1991; Zarate, 1991). Such approaches
motivate learners to become aware of their attitudes to the target culture and
to change them, as well as to reflect upon their own culture. In contrast to
the attitude of traditional textbooks, the mere representation of the elements
from the target culture during language learning is not expected to have an
automatic positive impact. Learners should be brought into direct contact with
the target culture by spending a year abroad as a required part of their
language studies, thus intensifying their involvement with the foreign culture
while enhancing their foreign language competence. However, whether the
educational impact of direct cultural contact will be positive or negative is
difficult to predict, depending on individual factors and events that may not
be subject to control. As a rule, learners are encouraged to observe and
participate in the foreign culture, but doing so is hardly likely to result
from preliminary instruction that merely recommends how to observe the culture
and how to keep diaries about your observations (cf. Zarate, 1991). Since the
learners cannot leave behind their native cultural knowledge and expectations,
the neutral or culturally innocent observation of foreign cultures is an
unrealistic project. Direct contacts with the foreign culture may lead not to
tolerance and understanding, but to intolerance and misunderstanding among
immature or unstable learners, who have not been sufficiently prepared for
their encounter with the foreign culture and so sense frustration and a loss
of security. They cannot open up to the new and different experiences and do
not appreciate the need to try perceiving through the eyes of such a foreign
culture and temporarily bracketing their own perspective. Their foreign stay
ends in disappointment and intolerant criticism of foreign practices, as we
have observed among some of our colleagues after visits to the USA. We should
make explicit provisions for some cross-cultural awareness-raising during
foreign visits.
Even
so, ethnographic approaches remain dependent upon programmes with
international university exchanges. In newly established nations, such as
Slovenia, the demand for qualified speakers of English with university degrees
is so large in many fields, such as teaching and translating, that organising
a year abroad in an English speaking country for all our learners is totally
out of the question. Only rarely can they visit an English-speaking culture,
and only for a short time. Sometimes even university teachers have not had a
chance. In this situation, the university programme of English studies has the
duty of enabling learners to acquire, in the course of their regular education
in the home country, the intercultural awareness that will be required in
their professional work. This duty is strongest for future teachers of English
at all levels, as foreseen in our newly defined educational objectives for
both primary and secondary schools in Slovenia, where the development of
intercultural awareness and tolerance is expressly stipulated.
Obviously,
teachers of English who have not acquired intercultural awareness themselves
cannot assess its importance for their own teaching, and still less can they
successfully implement such objectives. This prospect sets firm priorities for
emphasising intercultural communicative competence within our new university
programmes of the future. Such programmes for English must present a clearly
defined intercultural component and provide the methods for implementing it
during instruction in various subjects. Otherwise, the teaching of English
culture, literature, and language will merely retain the traditionally
established methods of transmission.
The learners should develop their capacity to consciously perceive the different features and the different circumstances that make cultural differences visible, above all in comparison to the learners’ own cultures and its artefacts. For instance, in reading J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, students need to go beyond automatically seeing the relations between Holden and his parents in terms of their own culture-specific expectations based on Slovene family relations and beyond criticising the family for not being sufficiently loving. Students need more detailed information about American parents and families