Developing Intercultural Language Materials 1294445980, 9781032651354, 9781032651378, 9781032651385

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DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL LANGUAGE MATERIALS

Developing Intercultural Language Materials puts intercultural competence at the forefront of the learning agenda. It unpicks its underlying theory and provides a framework and practical methodologies for practitioners, provid‑ ing a toolkit for them to create their own learning materials and design their own classroom activities to nurture intercultural competence. This innovative book showcases some of the new ways language teach‑ ers in practice successfully integrate this essential skill into their curricula. Directions for further research, pulling out recurring threads in this book, such as critical pedagogy and cultural sensibility, offer opportunities for pro‑ fessional development. This research‑grounded and action‑oriented text is essential reading for language and cultural studies practitioners who want to help their students thrive in today’s multicultural world. Freda Mishan has over forty years’ experience in TESOL. Her research and publications are primarily in materials development, including the de‑ velopment of intercultural language learning materials, ESOL, and blended learning. Tamas Kiss works as an associate professor at Sunway University, Centre for English Language Studies, in Malaysia. He has been involved with lan‑ guage teacher education programmes in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, and South East Asia.

Research and Resources in Language Teaching Series Editors: Anne Burns, University of New South Wales, Australia and Jill Hadfield, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand

Research and Resources in Language Teaching is a groundbreaking se‑ ries that aims to integrate the latest research in language teaching and learn‑ ing with innovative classroom practice. Books in the series offer accessible accounts of current research on a particular topic, linked to a wide range of practical and immediately usable classroom activities. Critical Thinking Gregory Hadley and Andrew Boon Becoming a Reading Teacher Connecting Research and Practice Jane Spiro and Amos Paran Pragmatics in Language Teaching From Research to Practice Júlia Barón, María Luz Celaya and Peter Watkins Confident Speaking Theory, Practice and Teacher Inquiry Christine C. M. Goh and Xuelin Liu Developing Intercultural Language Materials Freda Mishan and Tamas Kiss

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Research‑and‑Resources‑in‑Language‑Teaching/book‑series/PEARRLT

DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL LANGUAGE MATERIALS

Freda Mishan and Tamas Kiss

Designed cover image: © Getty Images | wildpixel https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/multi‑cultural‑society‑ royalty‑free‑image/1294445980 First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Freda Mishan and Tamas Kiss The right of Freda Mishan and Tamas Kiss to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Names: Mishan, Freda, author. | Kiss, Tamas (Associate professor), author. Title: Developing intercultural language materials / Freda Mishan and Tamas Kiss. Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2024. | Series: Research and resources in language teaching | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023042192 | ISBN 9781032651354 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032651378 (paperback) | ISBN 9781032651385 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages—Study and teaching. | Teaching—Aids and devices. | Multicultural education. Classification: LCC P53.15 .M57 2024 | DDC 418.0071—dc23/eng/ 20231103 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023042192 ISBN: 9781032651354 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032651378 (pbk) ISBN: 9781032651385 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385 Typeset in Galliard by codeMantra

CONTENTS

Forewordxi xiii Series editors’ preface Acknowledgements xv Part I  From research to implications Introduction 2 Outline of the book  3 Intercultural competence in language teaching coursebooks 4 ‘Localisation’ 8 Section 1: Core concepts and influences  11 Contextualising intercultural competence  11 Towards a conceptualisation of ‘culture’  11 Culture, language, and identity  13 Intercultural communication and L2 identity  16 The context for intercultural competence  17 Multiculturalism, interculturalism, and nationalism 17 Education in the 21st century  20 The digital environment  22 Towards a conceptualisation of ‘intercultural competence’ 25 The role of affect and cognition in (intercultural) learning 28

1

vi Contents

Section 2: Analysing intercultural materials  35 Materials analysis/evaluation  35 Methodological frameworks  35 Content analysis  36 Critical discourse analysis (CDA)  37 Semiotic analysis  39 Section 3: Complex dynamic systems and intercultural learning 42 What are complex dynamic systems?  42 Types of systems  42 Characteristics of complex dynamic (learning) systems 44 Complex dynamic systems and education  47 Culture as a complex dynamic system  49 Intercultural learning in a complex dynamic system 50 A framework for the design of intercultural learning materials 52 Conclusion 57 Part II  From implications to application Introduction 66 Activity Set (A): materials evaluation tasks for practitioners 70   1. Evaluation checklists  71 Content analysis  72  2. Locally‑used materials 72   3. Enact: learn Languages through culture  74   4. ‘The Human Library’  75   5. ‘Class Human Library’  76   6. Semiotic analysis: levels of meaning‑making  77 Critical discourse analysis: working with texts  79   7. Texts from language coursebooks  79 Activity Set (B): learner activities for fostering (critical) cultural awareness  82  8. Greetings 82   9. Intercultural handball  83 10. ‘You’re late!’  84 11. Interpreting the visual  85 12. A picture paints a thousand words  87

65

Contents  vii

13. Culture iceberg  89 14. ‘Combo‑culture’  90 15. View through a different lens  92 16. Cooking class  94 17. Small cultures  95 18. Six degrees of separation  96 19. I DIVE  97 20. The Johari Window of culture  98 21. The ‘Smelly socks’ group  100 22. The Cultura project  101 23. Identity boxes  103 24. A‑land versus Zed‑land  104 Literature: the written and spoken word  107 25. The universal language of poetry  108 26. ‘Don’t sleep, there are snakes’  110 27. Story circles  112 28. Story exchange  115 29. Pop culture  116 30. Short films: directed viewing and thinking activity 118 31. Empathy museum website: ‘a mile in my shoes’  121 Learner‑generated materials  122 32. Memes  123 33. Comic strips  126 34. Cultural video exchange project  127 Activity Set (C): Materials development activities  130 Intercultural materials development: actualising the principles  130 35. Activity order  132 36. Deconstructing the materials design framework 132 Complex dynamic systems features: sensitivity to initial conditions  134 37. Using semiotic analysis  135 38. Reflection tasks  136 39. Organising content  136 40.  Working with initial conditions  137 Complex dynamic systems features: non‑linearity  138 41. Working with non‑linearity: categorisation  139 Complex dynamic systems features: dynamic change and feedback loops  140

viii Contents

42. Working with dynamic change and feedback loops: dynamic grouping  142 43. Working with dynamic change and feedback loops: the importance of input  142 Complex dynamic systems features: unpredictability and emergent learning  143 44. Working with unpredictability and emergent learning 144 Complex dynamic systems features: openness  145 45. Working with openness  146 Intercultural materials development: implementing the framework  147 46. Template for the design of intercultural learning materials 147 Activity Set (D) Adapting materials to fit cultural contexts 149 47. Materials adaptation template  150 48. Focus on intercultural awareness‑raising  151 49. Adapting a global coursebook  152 50. Repurposing coursebook visuals  152 Conclusion 154 Part III  From application to implementation Introduction 160 The status of intercultural competence skills in curricula worldwide  160 Principles for integrating intercultural skills in the curriculum 164  1. Prepare 164   2. Integrate intercultural learning  166   3. Introduce cultural content  166   4. Start with the learners  166   5. Understand the context  167   6. Be flexible  167   7. Be creative and develop learners’ creativity  167   8. Encourage/allow translanguaging in the classroom 168   9. Focus on process, not product  168 10. Use open‑ended tasks  168

159

Contents  ix

11. Create an environment based on openness and trust 169 12. Address the affective, not only the cognitive  169 13. Bring the world into the classroom  170 14. Move learning beyond the classroom  170 Integrating intercultural materials into the curriculum: Vignettes from the field  170 Context 1: Primary school  171 Context 2: Secondary school  178 Context 3: Tertiary level: English for academic purposes (EAP)  182 Context 4: ESOL/ESL/EAL  185 Context 5: Business English  191 Context 6: Teacher training  192 Classroom techniques for integrating intercultural skills 195 Conclusion 198 Part IV  From implementation to research Introduction 204 Intercultural competence training in teacher education 204 Research methods for investigating intercultural learning and materials  205 Action research  206 Observation 209 Questionnaires and surveys  211 Interviews 211 Focus Group Discussion  211 Tests 212 Content analysis  212 Critical discourse analysis (CDA)  213 Researching intercultural competence: areas of focus 213 Materials in use – how are intercultural materials used? 214 Project 1: Learner engagement with materials  216 Project 2: What do you see?  217 Project 3: It’s a matter of time  219 Cultural sensibilities  219

203

x Contents

Project 4: Researching gender balance in the classroom 222 Project 5: Creating cultural third spaces in the multicultural classroom  223 Critical pedagogy  226 Project 6: Critical pedagogy reflection: coursebook illustrations 228 Student‑developed learning materials  229 Project 7: Design of a learner‑generated materials project 232 Assessment of intercultural competence  233 Project 8: How competent are you?  234 Project 9: Reflection on assessing intercultural competence 234 Conclusion 237 Conclusion241 Index 245

FOREWORD

Not remotely concerned Nightly, the tanks in Iraq roll down my streets Spectres of African hunger haunt my inglenook Plague and pestilence assail me as I face Neat newscasters in suburban studios Each solemn smile an uncomfortable reminder Of man’s inhumanity to man And with one lazy click I can make it all go away Martin Eayrs, April 20221 Books are not written in a void. We are fully aware as authors that personal experience and cultural backgrounds will have shaped our thinking. Lay‑ ered onto this are national and global events that will have influenced our writing. In the case of this book, its writing has been overshadowed by two world‑changing events, a global pandemic and a war in Europe. The pandemic saw many millions of people worldwide isolating in their homes, working, transacting business, educating their children, and endeav‑ ouring to maintain social relationships with friends and family via electronic communication networks such as the application Zoom. The ‘Zoom phe‑ nomenon’ has been a critical feature of the pandemic; people have been obliged to resort to it, and have recognised its ease of use and employed it in ingenious ways. Such networks have been used for everything from stag‑ ing international choirs and concerts to conducting transnational business

xii Foreword

meetings, online schooling, and socialising with family and friends. An unforeseen consequence of the pandemic has thus been, paradoxically, in‑ creased and enhanced cross‑cultural communication on a global scale, albeit situated in the online environment. It could never have been imagined that this worldwide shift online and onto social media would mean that war would be abruptly thrust onto our screens, allowing us to witness its human impact at closer proximity than ever before. It has, what is more, added a grim dimension to Zoom’s repertoire; political and humanitarian appeals. It is of little consolation to us that this book’s core rationale, how im‑ portant intercultural understanding is to our welfare as a race, has been powerfully reinforced by having sprung from, and being situated within, these traumatic universal experiences. It is our sincere hope that the ideas in this book might make some small contribution to promoting an altruistic, globally concerned pedagogy.

Note 1 Reproduced with permission: ‘Not remotely concerned’ by Martin Eayrs   The Pity of War: The Poetry is in the Pity Collected and edited by Alan Maley PeacheyPublications.com

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

About the series Research and Resources in Language Teaching is a groundbreaking series whose aim is to integrate the latest research in language teaching and learn‑ ing with innovative classroom practice. The books are written by a part‑ nership of writers, who combine research and materials writing skills and experience. Books in this series offer accessible accounts of current research on a particular topic, linked to a wide range of practical and immediately useable classroom activities. Using the series, language educators will be able both to connect research findings directly to their everyday practice through imaginative and practical communicative tasks and to realise the research potential of such tasks in the classroom. We believe the series repre‑ sents a new departure in language education publishing, bringing together the twin perspectives of research and materials writing, illustrating how re‑ search and practice can be combined to provide practical and useable activi‑ ties for classroom teachers and at the same time encouraging researchers to draw on a body of activities that can guide further research.

About the books All the books in the series follow the same organisational principle: Part I: From Research to Implications Part I contains an account of current research on the topic in question and outlines its implications for classroom practice.

xiv  Series editors’ preface

Part II: From Implications to Application Part II focuses on transforming research outcomes into classroom practice by means of practical, immediately useable activities. Short introductions signpost the path from research into practice Part III: From Application to Implementation Part III contains methodological suggestions for how the activities in Part II could be used in the classroom, for example, different ways in which they could be integrated into the syllabus or applied to different teaching contexts. Part IV: From Implementation to Research Part IV returns to research with suggestions for professional develop‑ ment projects and action research, often directly based on the ma‑ terials in the book. Each book as a whole thus completes the cycle: research into practice and practice back into research.

About this book Educators are increasingly concerned with preparing their students for life in today’s globalised world, aware that language learning alone is not suf‑ ficient for intercultural understanding. This book offers pathways to creat‑ ing learning materials which nurture intercultural competence; openness to other cultures underpinned by insight into one’s own. Like all the books in this series, it moves from research to practice. It unpicks the intricate concepts of culture and the intercultural and uses them as the basis for its ‘framework for developing intercultural learning materials’, along with the theory of Complex Dynamic Systems  –  which accounts for that un‑ predictable transformation that we know as ‘learning’. This framework is implemented in the second part of the book to devise and offer a diverse range of intercultural learning activities. Along with activities for teachers to familiarise themselves with the concept, and ideas for developing their own materials, comes the centrepiece, a broad set of intercultural activities for classroom use. The logical next step, how to integrate intercultural objec‑ tives into the curriculum, is explored in Part III, and the book concludes with directions for researching interculturality in the classroom. We hope that you will find this series exciting and above all valuable to your practice and research in language education! Anne Burns and Jill Hadfield (Series Editors)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors and publishers acknowledge the following sources of copyright material and are grateful for the permissions granted. Part II, Figure 2.6 and Part IV, Figure 4.2: Page 90 of Headway Inter‑ mediate Students Book, 5th Edition, Soars, L and Soars, J. © Oxford Uni‑ versity Press, 2019. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. The poem ‘Not remotely concerned’ by Martin Eayrs, from the an‑ thology The Pity of War: The Poetry is in the Pity, edited by A. Maley © PeacheyPublications.com, 2022. Reproduced by permission of the author and publishers. The authors would like to acknowledge the support and feedback of the series editors, Anne Burns and Jill Hadfield. They are also grateful to the many respondents to the 2020–2021 in‑ tercultural materials research study. Particular thanks go to those who gave permission for their vignettes, materials, photographs, and/or sections of their publications to be reproduced in this book: Erzsébet Ágnes Békés, Michelle Benson, Julie Choi & Hayley Black, Sergio Durand, Anne Marie Kavanagh, Susan Schärli Lim, David D. Perrodin, and Muhammad Nazmi Bin Rosli. Freda Mishan would like to thank the University of Limerick Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics under whose auspices this book was conceived and its writing begun. Freda would also like to thank her co‑author, Tamas, for his insight and wisdom, and for much‑needed support at times when her enthusiasm

xvi Acknowledgements

waned. Freda is indebted to members of her family, her son Reuben, her husband Kevin, and her sister Rachel, for their endless encouragement and patience – and, as ever, to her late father and muse, Ezra (EJ Mishan). For his part, Tamas would like to thank his wife Hazel, an inspiration in many ways, and his co‑author Freda for their help and support. Both authors acknowledge the true inspiration for this book – the thou‑ sands of students in and from many different countries whom they have met, taught, and learned from over their years as teachers.

Part I FROM RESEARCH TO IMPLICATIONS

DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385-1

2  From Research to Implications

Introduction At the conclusion of the 2018 soccer (football) world cup, South African political commentator and comedian Trevor Noah caused some French outrage by quipping “Africa won the world cup”, alluding to the number of the French team’s players of African descent. Rebuked subsequently by the French ambassador that the players were French, Noah replied that this detracted from their African heritage and that French‑African duality was an essential part of their identity. In the Irish sitcom, The Young Offenders, the teenage hero Conor is talking to Linda, the black daughter of the school principal (who is white). He asks her “are you adopted?”. When she replies, in a native Cork accent “why are you asking?” he answers helplessly, “You… you look adopted”. Indeed, looks can be deceptive. When one of this book’s authors, Tamas, a native Hungarian, conducted a teacher training workshop in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2006, one of the participants asked him: “Are you British?” to which he replied “No”. Then came the surprising follow‑up question: “Are you sure?” Of course, he was certain he was not British, hav‑ ing been born in Hungary to Hungarian parents and holding a Hungarian passport. Only years later when he got his DNA tested to trace his ancestry did he learn that he is indeed 11% English. Such anecdotes illustrate the complex networks of multiculturalism in today’s world, and which are a lived reality for many societies. This is thus a world that is shrinking, not only superficially as a result of high‑speed travel but also due to the twin influences of accelerated global migration and social and mass media that ‘virtually’ knit together all cor‑ ners of the earth. However, while multiculturalism is a fact of life for many, genuine intercultural understanding between peoples and cultures lags be‑ hind these societal changes. Intercultural tensions, racism, and discrimina‑ tion are, unfortunately, still rife in societies around the world. Striving to overcome these to achieve social inclusion and integration depends on a ‘meeting’ of languages and cultures. In the context of societal diversity, un‑ derstanding and accepting different cultural norms – known as intercultural ­competence  –  is an essential skill in oiling the wheels of social interaction. This is particularly crucial today in countries finding themselves newly host‑ ing high numbers of diverse immigrant communities as a result of seismic geopolitical events of the last decade. In the context of the concerns of this book, teaching newcomers the host country’s language via learning materials that promote intercultural competence both recognises the normalisation of societal change and prepares learners for the experience of multiculturalism. At the same time, such training for students of second or foreign languages is essential to raise awareness and understanding of the differences and simi‑ larities between their culture/s and those of the language/s they aspire to

From Research to Implications  3

speak. In fact, it is the shortcomings in – and indeed shortage of – materials in this field that inspired this book, and which serve as its starting point.

Outline of the book This book is conceived as an intercultural materials development ‘toolkit’, a resource for intercultural materials development, offering both theoretical grounding and a practical guide to designing learning materials, to fulfil this perceived gap. It offers language practitioners the critical, research, and practical tools to develop materials situated within, and thus relevant to, their own contexts. It is seen as being used in diverse language teaching settings, ranging from monocultural groups learning a single second or for‑ eign language to learners from multicultural and multilingual backgrounds learning, perhaps, a third or fourth language. The four‑part structure of this book moves from theory to practice. The first part, Core concepts for designing intercultural materials, explores the theoretical concepts at the heart of the book, culture and intercultural com‑ petence. It seeks to reach contemporary and practical conceptualisations that can be used in the pedagogical sections of the book. Section 2 of Part I homes in on materials development itself, using as a route into this, materials evaluation frameworks such as content analysis and semiotic analysis. Section 2 concludes with a practical framework for the development of intercultural materials. This is based on principles drawn from the concepts presented in Section 1, intercultural competence and Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). CDST, we argue, offers a fresh look at intercultural learning and reflects current trends in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Part II, Developing materials for intercultural competence, is the practical heart of this book, the promised ‘toolkit’ for designing activities intended to foster intercultural awareness. Here the activities are staged, starting with ones for teachers/materials developers, intended to promote critical aware‑ ness of the content and pedagogy of existing published textbooks. The sec‑ ond stage offers intercultural awareness‑raising activities for both teachers and learners. The final stage offers principles, structures, and practice for teachers developing intercultural materials, as well as tips for adapting and exploiting existing textbooks. In Part III, Integrating Intercultural competence materials into the cur‑ riculum, we propose how intercultural activities of the type offered in Part II can be included in the curriculum in different contexts. In doing this, we draw on the experiences and examples of intercultural competence teaching in international situations. This is complemented with practical examples from the field of language teaching. These describe widely varying degrees

4  From Research to Implications

of institutional support for the teaching of intercultural competence skills in terms of materials and how these materials are integrated into the curricu‑ lum, and vignettes from an international research study carried out by the authors (2020–2021) serve to showcase innovative and creative pedagogical practice ‘on the ground’. The final part, Part IV, is both a conclusion and a beginning. Intercul‑ tural competence  –  ‘Where to go from here?’ explores directions for both academic and practitioner research in what is considered an urgent and bur‑ geoning area for materials development.

Intercultural competence in language teaching coursebooks The impetus for studying language within its cultural contexts came to the fore (in modern times at least) in the 1980s, with Byram’s work on an integrated language and culture pedagogy (e.g. Byram, 1994, 1997) and numerous publications in this area in the context of Modern Foreign Lan‑ guages (MFLs) in the pan‑European context. A seminal outcome of this work was the concept of ‘intercultural competence’ (IC) (a concept central to this book which will be examined below). Apart from its enormous im‑ pact in the field of cultural studies and beyond, this should have made for significant adjustments in cultural content and its treatments in language teaching materials. This has been seen to an extent in the academic realm and in high‑level curriculum design in some countries (such as Argentina, New Zealand, and some Scandinavian countries). But how far has it actu‑ ally effected change in the language teaching materials which are often the learner’s first glimpse into the target language culture? This can be examined via academic materials evaluation studies, such as ones discussed later on. However, it is as  –  if not more  –  important to consider the perceptions of coursebook users themselves. We believe that it is imperative that both teachers and learners are invited to voice their concerns and experiences about the cultural offerings within their language materials  –  particularly given language practitioners’ high dependence on published language teaching coursebooks. Teachers drive textbook use; they use their professional judgement to critically evaluate their materials, mediating and adapting them to fit their teaching context. McGrath (2013) reviews a body of published research that reveals what teachers like or do not like about materials and what they would like to see in them. Aspects that emerge from such studies reveal teachers’ commitment to critical evaluation of their materials, and how they see this as part of their professional duties. With respect to the treatment of culture in coursebooks, this is obviously context‑dependent. A frequent

From Research to Implications  5

complaint from teachers using global coursebooks in parts of the world that are distant from the cultural roots of such books is that they are not relevant to their learners and cannot meet local needs. Even where used in the (Eng‑ lish) context in which they are rooted, global coursebooks can be consid‑ ered by teachers as “culturally inappropriate and irrelevant” with inaccurate “representation of the world” (Norton & Buchanan, 2022, pp.  56–57). Teachers are critical of global textbooks whether they have the power to choose their own materials, or when the coursebook is set by ministries of education and the like; teachers show themselves to be well capable of criti‑ cally evaluating this material, as studies from places as diverse as Iran, China, Algeria, Egypt and Malaysia reveal. Like their teachers, language learners (particularly adults) have a healthy critical attitude to their learning materials – even though they are rarely consulted. A famous study conducted by McGrath (2006) eliciting learner images of English language coursebooks threw up everything from a Bi‑ ble, map, or helper to a barrier, sleeping pill, or devil. That coursebooks can be dull and predictable with inadequate treatment of cultural fac‑ tors (the latter voiced in an evaluation of an Iranian coursebook, Khoda‑ bande & Mombini, 2018) is a common lament of the learners constrained to use them. A contemporary shift towards learner‑centredness has seen some consultation of this neglected cohort, with a movement towards learner‑generated materials (see for example, Choi & Nunan, 2022 and Part IV of the book). Critiques from language coursebook users ‘at the chalk face’ can be seen to feed into the metrics for textbook treatment of culture. Karen Risager, who has conducted some of the most well‑known work on this area, sum‑ marises the ‘ground rules’ for this as follows: The writer(s) of the textbook must try to avoid representations of cul‑ ture, society and the world that are incorrect, outdated, overly simplified superficial or stereotypical, or socially culturally or geographically biased. On the other hand, positively: the writers should compose a textbook that is inclusive as well as power‑sensitive; it should include many coun‑ tries of the world. (Risager, 2018, p. 219) Let us then examine how well contemporary language coursebooks fit the positive and avoid the negatives in this regard. Starting with coursebook evaluation studies then, a number of comprehensive studies of language coursebooks have revealed not only inadequate but often ‘problematic’ coverage of culture and the intercultural. The overall findings of a study on German, French, Spanish, Danish, English, and Esperanto textbooks

6  From Research to Implications

by Risager (2018) were that the representations of culture in the textbooks were problematic in that they tended to homogenise, languages and com‑ munities, and had a limited focus on intercultural competence. The findings of an analysis of French, Arabic, and German language textbooks were not dissimilar; “nation‑state ideologies and tourism discourse prevail in how the textbooks imagine language learners and communities, and they fail to rep‑ resent the complex identities and cultures of language users and learners” (Uzum et al., 2021, p. 1). This type of oversimplified ‘touristic’ portrayal of culture is a critique often levelled at English language coursebooks. In the context of teaching a language such as English which is an international lingua franca it would be hoped that coursebooks steer clear of stereotyping and an over‑emphasis on English‑speaking cultures and highlight its lingua franca role, a mediator between different cultures and peoples. This brings us to a particular issue in language coursebooks from countries with colo‑ nial pasts, such as Britain, Spain, and France, which are notorious for their neglect, or even revisionism, of their histories. The only vestiges of Britain’s colonial past to be seen in typical ‘global’ ELT coursebooks, for example, are the (minority) non‑white populace found in them – with such figures tending to be middle‑class, with white‑collar jobs, and with few representa‑ tions of the working classes where many immigrants remain. A more omi‑ nous treatment of a colonial past can be perceived in the German textbook analysed by Uzum et al. (2021) which “mentions immigrants in Germany but does not discuss how people with a migrant background are embedded within the social networks of Germany, and ends up casting immigrants as perpetual others” (Uzum et al., 2021). Post‑colonialist attitudes are only one aspect of a broader, underlying issue in the teaching of language and the language coursebook. Even more than education in general, language teaching is never an ideologically neu‑ tral endeavour, and its textbooks are: Sociocultural materials, they are the products of complex, selective processes reflecting political decisions, educational beliefs and priorities, cultural re‑ alities and language policies. As such, language teaching and learning are not ideologically neutral practices; they are located within complex webs of political and historical contexts and sociolinguistic practices, all of which is mediated through the textual and visual world of textbooks. (Curdt‑Christiansen & Weninger, 2015, p. 1) Language teaching and the materials used for it are thus products of diverse and at times conflicting influences; the policies and ideologies of the coun‑ try in which the language is taught, the country where the materials are produced, and attitudes to the target language itself.

From Research to Implications  7

Given this ideological burden, it is perhaps, unsurprising that the produc‑ ers of language textbooks opt to play safe and pay only ‘lip service’ to the notions of culture, multiculturalism, and intercultural competence. Culture tends to be represented in superficial and simplistic terms as elements of ‘the three Ps’, cultural products (including art, literature, cuisine), practices (based on value systems, including aspects such as dress, behaviour, and rituals), and perspectives (value systems and ideologies which both influence and draw on the previous two).

The coursebook Headway produces a typical example: “‘Hi, I’m Erika Nord‑ strom. I’m Swedish. I live in Malmo in the South of Sweden. I’m a product quality manager for IKEA’” declares a young blonde woollen‑clad woman (Soars, Soars, & Hancock, 2019, p. 10).

As this example illustrates, this type of simplification represents an essential‑ ist view of culture  –  that people have a set of characteristics which make them what they are. Essentialism is particularly dangerous in the context of learning about other cultures. The perception that other cultures can be simplified into “an underlying common core set of values, beliefs, and behaviours in a given country” (Byram & Masuhara, 2013, p. 145) can lead, at worst, to ‘othering’ (“reducing a group of people to a negative stereotype”, Hol‑ liday, 2018, p. 17). Especially in the case of English language textbooks, it can cultivate a ‘Western’ perspective that implicitly denigrates non‑western countries and cultures. Texts on overseas charities in (often former‑colonial) countries which are quite common in English language coursebooks can (unwittingly) do this.

An example is in English File (2019, p. 20) in which a text on the Ugandan charity Adelante Africa describes how British and Spanish volunteers set up the charity, and pictures orphans, children of colour, together with its (white) British secretary.

Observing cultural treatment like this in language coursebooks (even, one might note, in ones for international markets) highlights how wary mate‑ rials writers need to be of risking patronising other peoples and cultures, or of any sort of “West versus the rest” discourse (the term is Holliday’s, 2019).

8  From Research to Implications

‘Localisation’ A practice that would seem to avoid such abuses is the producing of so‑called localised or local coursebooks. The rationale for ‘localisation’ is that locally produced books favour the ‘source culture’ (the region where the course‑ book is to be used) and can be more relevant to and culturally appropriate for the learners there (for a cogent argument, see Ates (2012) describing the production of three series of ELT books in Turkey). A half‑way house be‑ tween local and global coursebooks are ‘versioned’ editions of well‑known coursebook series, such as a Spanish and a Middle Eastern version of the coursebook Headway, published within and for countries other than ones where the target language is the L1. Further Reading Norton, J., & Buchanan, H. (2022). Versioning coursebooks. In J. Norton & H. Buchanan (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of materials development for language teaching (pp. 307–321). Abingdon: Routledge.

It might be pointed out that the terminology (‘local’) is itself somewhat patronising, implying that the default context for producing a language coursebook is solely the country where the target language is spoken as an L1. Indeed, this view might be held responsible for the advent of British and American‑published ‘global’ ELT coursebooks designed for the inter‑ national market with variable relevance to the different places in which they are used (for more on this, see Mishan, 2021). Language coursebooks have long been produced in cultures other than those where the TL is spoken, without controversy. Nevertheless, the internationalisation of English has meant that the need for the language is geographically widespread prompt‑ ing ‘localisation’ practices in the context of ELT coursebooks. The most successful examples are those produced by teams of local practitioners and experienced materials writers, sometimes under the auspices of the coun‑ tries’ ministries of education. There are many examples of this; Bolitho (2008) describes projects in places such as Romania, Russia, and Uzbeki‑ stan; a collaboration between the Tunisian ministry of education and the British Council to produce the Teaching for Success Tunisia coursebooks is reported in Rached and Zayer (2021), and Tomlinson and Masuhara (2017) give a summary of international examples. Localisation and versioning are not, however, without their own pitfalls. A fundamental issue is positioning the TL within the local culture in an au‑ thentic way. Situating a TL – such as English – within an L1 culture where

From Research to Implications  9

it is not a part of that culture, inevitably detaches it from its culture and can ultimately strand the language in “culturally neutral” territory (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015, p.  180). A case in point is Iran, where English is seen as an international language, “a vehicle for academic attainment and international communication” (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015, p. 189) but for socio‑political reasons, the preference is to distance the language from English‑speaking countries – so coursebooks tend to foreground in‑ ternational culture with “no allusion to a particular culture” (ibid.). The example of Iran brings us full circle to the covert socio‑political agendas un‑ derlying the portrayal of culture within L2 coursebooks mentioned earlier, which we come back to time and again in this book. Yet, even in the most localised and seemingly homogeneous contexts, the language classroom can be seen as a (inter)cultural space with learners rep‑ resenting a diverse array of subcultural affiliations while upkeeping, at the same time, a dominant culture to which they all belong. Therefore, even if culture is seemingly ‘neutralised’, intercultural learning and dialogue within the classroom, among the learners, reflects reality. This brief overview of the diverse positioning of culture within language coursebooks exposes the need for critical perspectives on culture within the materials we offer to our learners. It provides the springboard for the con‑ cept of ‘intercultural competence’ that is central to this book. Before we start, there are two important caveats to what we argue and what we present in this volume. The first is an inescapable paradox that no book on ‘interculturality’ can avoid – relativism. This is influenced, first of all, by its authors, by the pedagogies they have absorbed unconsciously, due to their backgrounds, and by those they embrace consciously as a result of their research and experience. At a deeper level lie their cultural back‑ grounds with embedded values, beliefs, and ideologies. We thus acknowl‑ edge that as authors, it is unavoidable that we will have projected something of our own selves on to what is presented in the book. These ‘selves’ involve mixed nationalities/ethnicities: one author is a British‑born Irish citizen with Jewish heritage settled in Ireland, and the other is Hungarian‑born and a Hungarian citizen, who has been living in Southeast Asia for over a dec‑ ade. His recent DNA analysis revealed that he is of a very mixed ancestry: East European, Balkan, Iberian, English, North‑West European, and Jewish (he may have an intercultural dialogue when he talks to himself). Second, the very matter of the book, language education, cannot be considered neutral, apolitical, or free from ideology (see, for example, Curdt‑Christiansen and Weninger (2015) Language, ideology and educa‑ tion). Textbooks written to teach language are themselves imbued with the ideology of the social, cultural, historical, and political contexts in which

10  From Research to Implications

they are produced, making them de facto sociocultural materials. As such, everything from the learning content to the teaching methodologies and discourses around language and culture are rooted in their sociocultural origins. This, goes, of course, for this book as well. A book, what is more, written in English, a language associated with colonialism, imperialism, and aggressive globalisation (see, for example, Linguistic Imperialism (Phillip‑ son, 1992) or The cultural politics of English as an international language (Pennycook, 2017)). We endeavour to overcome these delimitations by practicing what we preach in this book. Armed with (self) awareness and reflectivity, embracing a post‑positivist and essentially non‑linear approach, we attempt to reach beyond our cultural restraints, striving for objectivity, balance, breadth, and perspective.

From Research to Implications  11

Section 1: Core concepts and influences Contextualising intercultural competence Since Michael Byram proposed his seminal model of Intercultural Com‑ municative Competence (Byram, 1997), sparking a preoccupation with in‑ tercultural competence and, indeed, a veritable new field, the world and our understanding of culture and education have changed significantly; “Across the globe, migration, travel, business and international education are facili‑ tating face‑to‑face intercultural contact. Advances in technology (e.g. the internet, social networking sites) are also making it easier to link people virtually in different parts of the world” (Jackson, 2012, p. 1). Globalisation of business and education has further facilitated intercultural communica‑ tion, not necessarily between L1 speakers of a language and its L2 or foreign language users, but between people from different language backgrounds for whom an L2 – in most cases English – has become the lingua franca. As Matveev (2017, p. 4) says, “global communication transcends geographi‑ cal boundaries” and this links people closer to each other than ever before. With such influences in mind, in this section, we contextualise the notion of intercultural competence within what we see as the key contemporary influences upon it:

• Globalisation, multiculturalism, and nationalism • Education in the 21st century • Intercultural communication and L2 identity • The digital environment. We start, however, by exploring the concept underpinning the central con‑ cern of the book; the complex and fluid notion of ‘culture’ itself.

Towards a conceptualisation of ‘culture’ Conceptualisations of culture, of course, have filled books, and they vary widely in their scope and focus, depending in large part on the discipline in which they are applied (e.g. sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethnogra‑ phy, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics). For the purposes of this book, we seek to establish a contemporary understanding of culture that can act as a conceptual foundation for its focus, intercultural competence. Our concern here is therefore not to try to ‘define’ culture, but to explore the com‑ plex and dynamic relationships between culture, context, learning, and the individual. This seminal conceptualisation of culture, from the 1960s, makes a use‑ ful starting point. Goodenough (1965) saw culture as a personal cognitive

12  From Research to Implications

(and affective) representation of its constituents; “culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organisation of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their model of perceiving, relating, and otherwise in‑ terpreting them” (Goodenough, 1965, p. 36). That culture is within, rather than external to, an individual, makes it, in a way, perceptible through “the minutiae of everyday life” (Johnson & Rinvolucri, 2010, p. 8) such as our attitudes to time‑keeping, boarding a bus or waiting for service at a bank or hotel reception. How we perform such everyday practices varies from cul‑ ture to culture and reveals patterns of behaviour that are inevitably rooted in our culturally‑based values and beliefs about how things should be done. Trivial though they may seem, then, the minutiae of daily life are effectively cultural practices which expose the shared sets of values and ideologies that anchor a society. Some of these culturally‑directed rituals and routines are what Holliday terms ‘universal cultural processes’ (Holliday, 2019) – eat‑ ing, family interaction, and celebrating, for example. Using ‘universal cul‑ tural processes’ as a prism through which to ‘read’ a culture would seem to offer (one) authentic, accessible approach to reflecting on and characterising it in pedagogy, and this is trialled in some of the activities in Part II. Mak‑ ing the concept ‘accessible’ does not equate to simplifying or reducing it of course; no matter how wide or narrow a lens we use for our exploration of culture, it will reflect the same levels of complexity and fluidity. Indeed, fluidity would seem to characterise the cultures of today’s ever‑ac‑ celerating movements and intermingling of populations. Such patterns of movement definitively undercut any old‑fashioned, simplistic idea of ‘cul‑ ture’ based on heritage or nationality; a 2020 TV advertisement for HSBC bank (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFlnCLI1MDE) captures this contemporary conundrum: Where are you from? It’s a tricky one. Is it where you were born? Or where your parents were born? Or where your great great great … grandparents were born? Is the answer in your passport? Is it where you grew up? Could it be where you found yourself? Or is where your heart is? Perhaps the question is not where are you from – but where do you feel at home? So while concepts like nation, country, citizenship, heritage, ethnicity, lan‑ guage, race, and identity can all be seen as aspects of culture, they cannot be said to determine it. Just as we need language to portray our identity, lan‑ guage itself cannot truly express who we are due to its arbitrary and abstract nature. An aspect such as language, therefore, is one of the means by which

From Research to Implications  13

culture manifests itself, but there is no direct, single language culture corre‑ spondence. This is particularly demonstrated in a language such as English which operates in a global context, where it is used variously as a second language (e.g. India, Pakistan, Hong Kong), a first language (e.g. Britain, the USA), and a lingua franca within vastly diverse geographical areas and ‘cultural’ environments. The same can be said, of course, of other languages spread globally as a result of colonialisation and migration such as French and Spanish. The colonialism of yesteryear has today given way to the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation with its accelerated movements and intermin‑ gling of peoples. This has led to multiculturalism and multilingualism be‑ ing more the norm today than monolingualism/monoculturalism. This is complemented, in a way, by the ‘virtual multiculturalism’ of the online en‑ vironment: “today’s learners – especially those learning online – are exposed to too many cultural influences to be able to reduce their identities to na‑ tional origins, particularly given the growing multilingual and multi‑ethnic makeup of so many countries today” (Godwin‑Jones, 2019, p. 12).

Culture, language, and identity With the online environment in the mix, ‘deterritorialization’ as Kramsch (2014) calls it, means that elements like identity become increasingly fluid. They can no longer be defined in terms (solely) of national, cultural, or linguistic affiliation. Rather than something that can be roughly generalised along societal, geographic, or linguistic lines, then, culture is envisaged as intrinsically dynamic and hybrid: “culture is not a fixed, stable institutional reality that individuals belong to by virtue of having been socialised in it and that pre‑exists the individual” (Kramsch, 2014, p. 42). Linguistic and cultural identity become more and more a factor of individual choice and something that is constructed in relation to interaction with others, ideas, and values. In this complex web of relationships, connections are fluid and may change, contributing to the constant redefining the self as a cultural being. Hence, culture is always more than the component parts of which it is formed. Culture emerges from the many elements that contribute to its existence, and even these represent highly complex phenomena. This characterisation of culture appears to be at odds with traditional ones, particularly with how it is situated in the basic context of this book; lan‑ guage teaching. The general perception that drove the movement towards incorporating cultural studies into language education in the 1980s, was that there was a fundamental symbiotic relationship between the language

14  From Research to Implications

that we were teaching and ‘culture’, that needed to be taken into account. Hence, we have Byram, arguing from the cultural studies standpoint, that: Language is not simply a reflector of an objective cultural reality. It is an integral part of that reality through which other parts are shaped and interpreted … it follows that to teach language without culture is funda‑ mentally flawed and to separate language and culture teaching is to imply that a foreign language can be treated in the early learning stages as if it were self‑contained and independent of other sociocultural phenomena. (1991, p. 18) Meanwhile, going even further back, cognitive psychology had given us the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (the linguistic relativity hypothesis) (first published in Whorf, 1956) which conceived that language encodes culturally specific content and affects the way people think. In the words of its conceiver: “The world is presented as a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic system in our minds” (Whorf, 1956, p. 213). This would seem, at its most basic, the ultimate justification for incorpo‑ rating culture into language teaching. The language‑thought correspond‑ ence that Sapir‑Whorf posits, however, gets more slippery in the context of the multilingualism that is increasingly a characteristic of today’s world, as we have noted above. This is pursued in the discussions on multilingualism and multiculturalism later on. What is clear though from even this cursory look at how the lan‑ guage – culture relationship has been conceived over the years is that this very much depends on the (disciplinary) perspective. Where identity comes into the mix, it tends to be the sociological and sociocultural perspectives that we look to – as we see below. Further Reading Barkhuizen, G., & Strauss, P. (2020). Communicating identities. United King‑ dom: Taylor & Francis.

We have observed that simplifying cultural identity as a homogeneous and static concept based on nation‑state, ethnicity, geography, gender, language, etc. misrepresents what constitutes identity in today’s world. Recent con‑ cepts of cultural identity such as ‘cultural hybridity’, which refers to how linguistic, cultural or ethnic ‘mixing’ can lead to a new, hybridised cultural identity, are becoming increasingly appropriate to today’s mobile generation.

From Research to Implications  15

One such category is Third Culture Kids (TCK) or Global Nomads (GN), referring to children and young adults who have been exposed to new cultural experiences and raised in countries different from their ‘home’ cultures. We use inverted commas here as ‘home’ is a difficult con‑ cept to define for TCKs/GNs since when they return to their country of ­origin – ­sometimes referred to as ‘passport home’ – they often feel unable to fit in and find themselves on the edges of two (or more cultures) belong‑ ing neither here, nor there (Schaetti, 2015). They may be called ‘rootless’, ‘confused’, and ‘arrogant’ by some, but in reality, they usually have a much better and “deep understanding of the complexity of the human condition” (Schaetti, 2015, p.  799) than their ethnocentric peers who grow up in a fairly monocultural environment. The process of identity shift further complexifies how culture, identity, and language are connected to each other. Risager (2007, p. 15), for exam‑ ple, points out that in Central and Eastern Europe, “fertile ground can be found for ideas about the inseparability of language and (ethnic) culture” and thus language serves as a cultural identity marker. In other parts of the world, however, this would not be the case due to different histories both at the cultural and the individual levels. In Southeast Asia, for example, it is very common to find people with multicultural and multilingual back‑ grounds who have a more practical view of language. As a Peranakan (Chi‑ nese Malaysian) friend once explained, they used different languages for different purposes: Hokkien was used in connection with food and cooking, infused with loan words from other local languages; English was used to dis‑ cuss politics; and Malay was used for official business and most schoolwork. How they viewed the connection of language and culture was completely different from how, for example, a Hungarian would do. To summarise our exploration of the concept of culture so far, given the multiplicity of aspects that influence it and how far it eludes definition, it would seem easier to describe culture in terms of what it is not than what it is. We can no longer equate ‘culture’ directly (if we ever could) with as‑ pects like nation, country, citizenship, heritage, ethnicity, language, race, or identity in today’s increasingly multicultural and multilingual world. In‑ stead, culture is conceived as a fluid, dynamic, and even multiple concept which exists as much within the individual as external to them. This con‑ ceptualisation of culture has to be flexible enough to encompass the idea that multiple cultural, subcultural, and sometimes hybrid cultural identities can exist within one language community (and in one classroom) – as well as the converse. Culture, therefore, can perhaps best be conceived as an ever‑evolving process, a reflection of the living, shifting interplay of peo‑ ples, environments, geopolitics, and global relations. Conceiving culture like this, as something constantly regenerating in the ongoing globalisation

16  From Research to Implications

and internationalisation of today’s world, makes cultural awareness more important than ever in driving (intercultural) communication, education, international commerce, and other such elements of society. In the next sections, we look more closely at the phenomena that have led the ability/ies needed for intercultural communication – intercultural competence – to be such an important contemporary concern and we con‑ clude our working definition of it. However, one further aspect of identity needs to be explored first, given the pedagogical concerns of this book, and that is the identity of the L2 learner.

Intercultural communication and L2 identity The earlier discussion on the complexities of the relationship between iden‑ tity, language, and culture begs the question of how these operate in the development of learners’ L2 identity. L2 identity refers to the subtle shifts learners experience as they come to view themselves as L2 learners and ­speakers – and it is often seen as one of the measures of language learning success. It is also a gauge of learners’ developing intercultural communica‑ tion skills. There is no doubt that the experience of being exposed to other cultures, other ideas, and ways of thinking prompts an individual to reflect on their own values and positions in the world. As a Persian proverb says, ‘a new language is a new life’ (‫)یک زبان جدید یک زندگی جدید است‬, an opportunity to think, feel, and express oneself in new ways. Yet, shifting to and embracing a different, often more complex identity, is not a straightforward process. Research has shown that the development of an intercultural self “evolves from a way of understanding and acting that is egocentric, ethnocentric, and cognitively simple to one that includes a broader range of perspective” (Berg, 2015, p. 229). It is indeed not a simple process and is characterised, especially at the beginning, by denial, protesting against, and minimising differences be‑ tween the perceived ‘us’ and ‘them’ as most learners are convinced that the way they look at and interpret the world, i.e. through their own values and cultural filters, is the only true reality (Carr‑Ruffino, 2015). When they are prompted to think about and question these realities, they often feel uncomfortable as they may have to revise and reconsider ideas they have held to be true and unquestionable and even the core values underpinning their belief systems. The implications for activities such as those proposed in this book are that when working with materials that aim to develop learners’ intercultural competence, practitioners need to pay attention to the different values and perspectives students bring to the classroom. They need to be aware of the potential conflict learners may feel between the values and beliefs of their L1/C1 identity and their developing L2 identity. (See Part II activities such as 15 ‘View through a different lens’ and 20 ‘The Johari Window of culture’ for techniques for sensitive handling of this).

From Research to Implications  17

The context for intercultural competence Multiculturalism, interculturalism, and nationalism An ever‑shifting global population, migrating for economic, political, or humanitarian reasons, has made for an increasingly heterogenous world. Models for managing these immigration patterns have evolved over the years – as well as providing a fruitful area of contention for sociologists. In essence, “multiculturalism is a response – or a set of responses – to diversity that seeks to articulate the social conditions under which difference can be incorporated and order achieved from diversity” (Hartmann & Gerteis, 2005, p.  222). This was the conceptual framework for the multicultural model to emerge in the 1970s: Multiculturalism … defends the idea that the societal institutions need to provide the same degree of respect, recognition and accommodation to the identities of ethnocultural minority groups as they traditionally have to the majority group. In order to prevent the obligation or expectation that the minority speak the language of the majority, or adopt its cus‑ toms and lose their distinctiveness, multiculturalism favours all sorts of minority measures or group rights to protect and/or promote linguistic, ethno‑cultural and religious diversity. (Levrau & Loobuyck, 2018, p. 3) For how this traditional model of multiculturalism fared, we can look to two of the most well‑known examples, the United Kingdom and the United States. The UK has traditionally pursued an ‘assimilationist’ model of mul‑ ticulturalism, which is (theoretically) designed to respect incoming cultures while at the same time merging them into the host culture. This has resulted in an ‘uneasy’ multicultural and consequently multilingual society. There is a tension between acknowledgement of multilingualism at an institutional level – with leaflets being provided in different languages in social service offices for example – and a government requirement for a level of English proficiency for citizenship. It is interesting to compare this to the European position. As multiculturalism and multilingualism overtake monolingualism and monoculturalism in today’s world, as we noted earlier, “within multi‑ lingual Europe, a widespread assumption is that in a global society, mono‑ lingualism is a dangerous anachronism” (Torres & Tarozzi, 2020, p. 15). The American multiculturalist agenda, meanwhile, was born of a differ‑ ent exigency in the mid‑1960s, the challenge of racism and integration. Immigration reform to address this in 1965 resulted in high rates of im‑ migration over the following half century (with inevitable socio‑political consequences, see below). In America and elsewhere in popular discourse

18  From Research to Implications

today a common connotation of multiculturalism is a negative one, placing multiculturalism in opposition to social cohesion. This may hark back to a view of multiculturalism as a system based on an essentialist view of culture, which, by recognising diversity, highlights cultural difference. It has tended to be replaced (theoretically at least) by the so‑called intercultural model, which hinges on “social interaction, contacts between people of different backgrounds and shared membership” (Levrau & Loobuyck, 2018, p. 2) aimed at integrating migrants into the host culture, with ensuing citizen‑ ship. The model’s emphasis on the meeting of cultures and interpersonal contact is in line with our focus in this book. It is the intercultural model that has been the approach advocated in Europe, via directives from Euro‑ pean bodies such as the Council of Europe. European countries clearly need direction in this regard, due to accelerating accession – 12 countries have joined since 2004 almost doubling membership of the union – as well as geopolitical events that have seen unprecedented waves of migrations from outside and even within the continent of Europe. For successful models of interculturalism, one can look at an example such as Quebec, whose ‘harmonisation’ practices of accommodating di‑ versity have often been held up as “one of the most substantive models designed in a North American society” (Torres & Tarozzi, 2020, p. 12). The model held that newcomers to Quebec were to be “welcomed without being expected to assimilate to the majority culture as long as they accept certain basic conditions” (Kircher, 2014, p. 223). However, its success is often seen as a factor of Quebec’s secularism and its existing tradition of citizenship rights. The paradox of different models of integrating diversity is that they are developed within and in response to particular societal at‑ titudes which by their very existence dictate the models’ effective operation. Despite the success stories of Quebec, which portray the welcoming attitude of society in general, language teaching materials, written specifically for immigrants, seem to use a different approach. These textbooks are critical of how migrants are covertly encouraged to assimilate through redemp‑ tive narratives (Gulliver, 2010) which mainly portray success stories of as‑ similation and do not portray the difficulties or the negative experiences immigrants may face. In his research, Gulliver (2010) identified 40 stories that portray how newcomers settle down in Canada and found that stories which had an ambivalent or negative outcome were marginally represented. While this may be the case across Canada, through the discursive strategies used in these textbooks, the authors seem to legitimise success stories, while difficulties and failures are marginalised.

From Research to Implications  19

Models of integration have, moreover, been stress‑tested by the 21st century’s waves of migration. These have increased hostility towards the cultural pluralism embodied in the various models of multiculturalism, and fuelled nationalism. In the US, the anti‑immigrant stance of Donald Trump’s presidency between 2016 and 2020 saw fierce debates about the protection of borders and draconian anti‑immigration measures. Turning to Europe, the European Union was conceived as a panacea for the ills that nationalism had visited on Europe in the form of a world war. It is ironic that being part of such a union came to be felt by some with nationalist tendencies, as weakening national solidarity, diminishing self‑de‑ termination, and marginalising member states as being merely part of the EU ‘mega‑state’ (Duroy, 2020). The present‑day neo‑nationalism which we see in countries such as Hungary, Poland, and France is characterised as “informed by essentialist … ethno‑cultural and linguistic perspectives on identity” (Duroy, 2020, p. 994). (Neo)nationalism thus feeds on such per‑ ceptions of difference and ‘otherness’ to portray immigrants as some sort of societal threat. This emphasises the need for intercultural learning materi‑ als to be part of the education system to develop learners’ critical cultural awareness and enable them to differentiate between ideas and ideology. This perspective is vividly expressed by one of the protagonists in the novel Apeirogon (McCann, 2020), albeit referring to the ‘other’ here as ‘the en‑ emy’; “People [are] afraid of the enemy because they [are] terrified that their lives might get diluted, that they may lose themselves in the tangle of know‑ ing each other” (McCann, 2020, p. 279).

The result of neo‑nationalist social policy agendas influencing government policy is, of course, strong anti‑immigration policies of the type enacted in post‑EU Britain and elsewhere. While the early 21st‑century focus for this anti‑immigration stance was incomers from Muslim countries, a new and terrifying locus of neo‑nationalism emerged on the continent of Europe at the time of writing this book, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This situation is a far cry from the ‘mutual intercultural understanding’ embedded in the models of multiculturalism/interculturalism (ostensibly) framing societies in Europe and elsewhere as sketched above. In reality, this crucial ingredient is too often missing. In Britain, for example, despite the existence of linguistically and culturally ‘superdiverse’ cities, accounts of dis‑ crimination against people speaking languages other than English in public spaces are not uncommon and intensified from the time when Britain initiated its withdrawal from the EU in 2016 (Cooke, Bryers, & Winstanley, 2019).

20  From Research to Implications

“Some people don’t like when you speak Polish outside. My friend in the su‑ permarket was told to speak English when she was talking to her daughter” (from Cooke, Bryers, & Winstanley, 2019, p. 146). The media’s role in inciting intercultural mistrust is as irrefutable today as it has always been. Historically, we can look to examples such as the influ‑ ence of the press in driving antisemitic public opinion in the Dreyfus affair in 19th-century France, or the use of the media to propagate Nazi propaganda in 1930s Germany. The mistrust of ‘the other’ permeating the right‑wing British press that nailed the coffin of Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016, the anti‑Chinese resentment raised at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and today’s social media ‘echo‑chambers’ of racism, bring us right up to date. How intercultural misunderstanding is one root of intercultural mistrust is demonstrated by another contemporary example from Hungary. With the arrival of refugees from Syria in 2015, there were media reports (e.g. on the news sites hvg.hu or 444.hu) that food provided for them by the Immigration and Asylum Office was refused. The officers did not understand why the ‘ungrateful’ refugees would throw the food out and shout abuse at them – until it was pointed out that the canned poultry pâté contained ‘industrial bacon’ as one of its ingredients and which, thus, is forbidden food for the Muslim refugees.

Such episodes stem from a general ignorance about other cultures and a lack of skills/understanding of how to tackle intercultural encounters. While education may seem to be too facile a ‘get out clause’ for developing in‑ tercultural understanding and tolerance of diversity, it is a direct avenue of influence. Let us look at 21st‑century practices in education and examine their potential in this regard.

Education in the 21st century The end of the 20th century saw unprecedented changes in many fields of life due mainly to technological advancements and processes of globalisation as we emphasised earlier. Education is one of the areas which experienced reforms in its delivery practices and also a paradigm shift in general. Old educational norms of equipping students with functional literacy and nu‑ meracy skills, traditional lecture‑type delivery of content, and the fact that students should study in the confinement of the classroom were brought under scrutiny. The development of technology tools – not necessarily for educational purposes – prompted teachers to think about their applicability in their classrooms, taking learning to areas, both physically and virtually, where it has never been before.

From Research to Implications  21

Globalisation increased the movement of trained professionals across the world and politicians started to realise that a similar move would be ben‑ eficial for education as well. In the European Union for example, there was strong political will to improve student mobility. This resulted in the launch of the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS) programme, an initiative to expand the learning ex‑ periences of tertiary students beyond the borders of their own countries. The programme has been highly successful and, although there have been some variations in regional participation, it was extended in its scope. ER‑ ASMUS+ was launched in 2014 to include collaboration between students and institutions beyond the EU. With such increased student mobility – not limited only to EU programmes, but including other organisations (e.g. Fulbright, EdOdyssey, GoAbroad, etc.) and also geographical contexts, two phenomena that have an impact on intercultural learning increased in prominence are Transnational Education (TNE) and English Medium In‑ struction (EMI). TNE is the realisation that not all students are mobile; therefore, knowl‑ edge should be made mobile. By definition “the mobility of knowledge lies at the heart of TNE; it crosses, transects, and overcomes the parochialism and embeddedness of national education systems, to deliver educational programmes to students who are both culturally and spatially removed from home” (Waters & Leung, 2017). TNE thus refers to an educational setup in which learners are studying (sometimes virtually), in a different country from the awarding institution, but in an environment which is infused with the educational philosophy and practices of that institution. This means that although they may not leave their homes, they are immersed into a new cul‑ tural learning experience which is further accentuated by the fact that most TNE institutions offer their programmes in English via the mechanism of English Medium Instruction (EMI), the use of English to teach academic subjects in countries where the first language is not English. The broadest globalisation initiative for education is UNESCO’s (2014) framework  Global Citizenship Education  (GCED). GCED is intended to “empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world” (p. 14). This concern is reflected in global citizen‑ ship skills being given precedence as the first of eight characteristics defining ‘quality learning’ by the World Economic Forum (2020). The idea of global citizenship (GC) is far more holistic and abstract than national citizenship, with its legal and geographical boundaries. In transcend‑ ing national and cultural borders, the concept implies a critical perspective not only on language and culture but on the power dynamic between them, and the societal issues this creates. GC has been conceived as an ethos “a set

22  From Research to Implications

of ethical principles underscoring the connection between democracy, social justice, equity and solidarity” (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, p. 14). Thus, Global citizenship or Intercultural citizenship education extends far beyond what could at this stage be considered outmoded concepts of language and culture education: “GCE is an educative concept … grounded in the assumption that today people in the process of learning live in a global context and, even if in an unequal way, interact at a planetary level” (ibid., p. 11). These worthy educational aspirations have, inevitably, been taken up as ‘business opportunities’ as the tertiary education sector spotted the poten‑ tial of markets like China and the Middle East and did their utmost to attract people from there. Universities in Britain host thousands of Chinese students each year – a record 151,690 came to the UK in 2022 and over 125,000 came from India and Southeast Asia (Study in UK, 2023). The situation has been similar Europewide, with over 303,000 Chinese students reported pre‑pandemic, in 2015, in countries including France, Sweden, Germany, and Ireland (Xinhua, 2019). In the USA too, China is the number one ori‑ gin country for international students, representing 31% of all international students in 2016. This may, however, shift in the light of recent changes in the country’s educational and migration policies. In 2014, Chinese overseas students accounted for 14% of all international students in the world. However, the management of diversity and cultural differences in third‑level institutions appears, overall, to be inadequate. ‘Cultural prepa‑ ration’ offered to Chinese students in preparation for exchange to Britain, for example, is basically learning facts about the UK that have little cultural value for everyday life. Support for Chinese students at UK Universities, while improving as understanding has developed of the multiple problems they face including emotional, cultural as well as academic issues, remains insufficient (this is the conclusion of a 2006 report on universities in the UK, for instance). In other parts of the world, such as the USA, many universities do not provide adequate initiatives to sufficiently help interna‑ tional students adapt to life in a new country. Reports on the integration of international students into their new environment in places like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA suggest that lack of engagement be‑ tween international and domestic students remains an issue. In some situ‑ ations, international students still tend to socialise only among themselves, in monocultural groups, or as an international student body, thus not fully exploiting the intercultural potential of the overseas experience.

The digital environment As we have discussed above, one of the key drivers of globalisation is tech‑ nology. The first e‑mail was sent only 50 years ago by Ray Tomlinson

From Research to Implications  23

(O’Regan, 2018) and in that relatively short timespan, our communication patterns have changed tremendously. It is without doubt that the develop‑ ment and spread of information technology and digital communication has changed not only the ways we interact with each other but also how we un‑ derstand and enact cultures in our everyday lives. With the move to a more global cultural village, we have had to reinterpret what it means to belong to a cultural group. The boundaries between how we have understood ‘us’ and ‘others’ have been shifting as “representations of other cultures on the internet have made the foreign both more familiar and more stereotypical” (Kramsch & Uryu, 2012, p.  213). This has led to the creation of ‘third spaces’ or ‘third places’ where distinct national cultures do not exist any‑ more and hybridity is the norm. Communication technology has indeed brought the world closer to‑ gether and it has shaped how we use language in our everyday communica‑ tion. It has also had an impact on education and created opportunities for language learning to go beyond the physical boundaries of the classroom. The outside world is now available to learners in an instant and the internet has taken them to places where they have never dreamt of going – and to where some of them will never ever venture. This has brought about new educational formats, such as online intercultural exchange, “engaging lan‑ guage learners in interaction and collaborative project work with partners from other cultures through the use of online communication tools such as e‑mail, videoconferencing and discussion forums” (O’Dowd, 2007, p. 4). This way of learning offers students the opportunity to engage and commu‑ nicate with people from all over the world while they negotiate and partici‑ pate in knowledge construction. Moreover, online communication can lead to learners constructing an identity as a user of the second language beyond the classroom – as a global citizen, in other words. The idea of the internet as an intercultural space inspires educators in the field. Holliday (2016, p. 257), for example, sees the internet itself as a culture, “a place where culture is created and recreated”. Therefore, he goes on, it is not surprising that a new branch of ethnography, virtual ethnog‑ raphy, i.e. the study of the “sociocultural dimensions of the internet” is a thriving new field. If so, what does this mean for the language teacher? And for our context, what does it mean for intercultural communication? How will concepts like ‘cultural hybridity’ and ‘third places’ fit – and/or be af‑ fected by – the online environment? More prosaically, how can practitioners tap into the ‘natural’ multiculturalism of the online environment to nurture intercultural competence? Educators were not long in spotting the potential of social media plat‑ forms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, or Facebook which offer groupings based on common interests and a shared environment to any and all online

24  From Research to Implications

inhabitants. These have been seen, in fact, to offer virtual versions of the sort of aspirational ‘third spaces’ discussed above, where cultural hybridity is the norm. What is more, they are perfectly authentic, as Godwin‑Jones (2019, p. 12) argues, citing Benson and colleagues: In our real world and virtual lives, we are inevitably drawn into member‑ ship in small cultures that develop and dissolve spontaneously. Those groups can have influences—sustaining or temporary—on our values and behaviors […] Cultural norms and behaviors are not static and, in fact, in learning a new language, learners “may be modified by their ongoing engagement with target language cultures” in a bidirectional process. (Benson, Chik, & Lim, 2003, p. 24) The potential of the digital world to influence cultural perspectives would seem to be a reality, especially given the increased online presence of the current generation who go so far as to blend the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ in a continuous bidirectional feedback loop. This tendency was undoubtedly accentuated (at the time of writing this book) by months and months of online learning and other activity as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020–2021. Moreover, the online activity of this generation has transi‑ tioned markedly from the written word to visual representation, via artefacts like memes and short videos (hence the rise of the video‑sharing social net‑ working service TikTok during the 2020s). A crucial aspect of navigating the digital world, and one which as educa‑ tors we cannot neglect, is, therefore, (critical) digital literacy. Digital literacy was traditionally defined along the lines of “the individual and social skills needed to effectively interpret, manage, share and create meaning in the growing range of digital communication channels” (Dudeney, Hockly, & Pegrum, 2013, p. 2). However, the skill of evaluating online information critically was seen as essential considering the overload of information us‑ ers encounter, hence ‘critical’ digital literacy. In expanding it to fit this new environment, another change was that ‘literacy’ became ‘literacies’, to dis‑ tinguish it from its traditional conceptualisation as a static phenomenon. Going further, today’s (critical digital) ‘literacies’ are not merely skills of ‘consumption’ but ones of ‘production’, embracing online creativity  –  of everything ranging from language use to remixing, to creating avatars and gaming. The concept has nevertheless not subsumed the traditional idea of literacy which still seems to prevail in language classrooms, especially in foreign language classrooms, or ones that emphasise functional literacy such as writing for academic purposes. ‘Critical digital literacies’ can be broadly glossed as abilities to discern, evaluate, and understand as well as to create meanings encoded in the

From Research to Implications  25

different forms of media that make up the online environment. It is, in particular, the multimodal characteristics of this environment that have re‑ quired this extension of the concept of literacy. Multimodal online con‑ tent – in the form of audio, audio‑visual, graphic as well as text in multiple genres – delivers meanings on many different levels, as will be elaborated in the section on Semiotics later on. Such content contains sociocultural realities that “depict particular ideological and cultural values both overtly and covertly” (Kusumaningputri & Widodo, 2018, p.  51) and can only be accessible to learners if they are trained both in the skills of digital lit‑ eracy and have intercultural competence. Critical digital literacies, therefore, equip students working online with “the ability to travel across diverse com‑ munities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 4). As communication networks spread across and among global communi‑ ties, critical digital literacy has become an essential 21st century life skill; and given the normalisation of technology use in the classroom, there is a clear need for training in these skills across the curriculum at all educational levels. Critical digital literacy is just one in the armoury of skills required to function effectively in the increasingly globalised world we have portrayed here. It can be seen as part of an overarching skill set that we conceive as intercultural competence – which we pursue below.

Towards a conceptualisation of ‘intercultural competence’1 The theoretical concept at the heart of this book is interculturality, which can be understood as a process of critically interrogating (perceived) cul‑ tural differences (Holliday, 2019), that is, acquiring a critical awareness of our own and (an)other culture/s and achieving a positioning between them. In terms of skills, this is commonly described as intercultural com‑ petence, a concept that has been heavily theorised and described. Seminal early work in this area is Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural commu‑ nicative competence (ICC) (see Figure 1.1). This broke down intercultural competence as consisting of a combination of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discourse competences that enabled effective and appropriate communica‑ tion between people from different countries, cultures, and L1s. The ICC model sparked many others over the years, and itself has been endlessly interpreted and redefined, in particular, in recent years, to keep in step with the globalised world of increasingly multilingual populations that we have characterised above. As we noted there, this has seen the emergence of con‑ cepts such as intercultural citizenship, (e.g. Byram, 2014) global citizenship, and even ‘digital citizenship’, referring to increased habitation of that thriv‑ ing intercultural space, the internet. Indeed, the terminology around the

26  From Research to Implications

FIGURE 1.1 Model

of ICC (Byram, 1997, p. 73)

competences required for intercultural interaction has proliferated to the extent that over 50 different terms are now in use (Fantini, 2020). In the light of such evolutions in the terminology and concepts, there is clearly a need to re‑assess the notion of intercultural competence if we are to arrive at a useable, contemporary model that we can apply to the ­design of materials. Using Byram’s still‑influential 1997 ICC model as the ‘base‑ line’ (represented in Figure 1.1), if we look to its core, we find that ‘com‑ petence’ is comprised of what Byram terms ‘savoirs’ (from the French to know): a set of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and awareness relating to how we learn about cultures. Byram has always insisted on the centrality of the last ‘savoir’, (savoir s’engager) cultural awareness, or as he conceives it critical cultural awareness (CCA); “an ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of an explicit, systematic process of reasoning, values present in one’s own and other countries and cultures” (Byram, 2021). With a revision from its original definition to emphasise the importance of systematicity in evalu‑ ation, and that it is effectively an analytical skill, CCA remains symbolically

From Research to Implications  27

FIGURE 1.2 A+ASK

Model: Dimensions of Intercultural Competence (Fantini, 2009, p. 199)

and meaningfully at the heart of Byram’s model, illustrating that it is central to achieving intercultural competence. We see a similar foregrounding of cultural awareness in another much‑cited model, the A+ASK model (Fantini, 2009) (represented in ­Figure  1.2). Here we see cultural awareness (represented as ‘A+’ in the model) placed at the core of a symbiotic interaction between attitude (af‑ fect) (‘A’), skills (‘S’), and knowledge (‘K’) – these constituting dimensions of intercultural competence. Cultural ‘knowledge’ in Fantini’s model (as in that of Byram, 1997) refers to the cognitive domain, representing learning about and understanding of intercultural concepts (such as cultural norms, sets of values etc.) which are precursors to cultural awareness. Building up such knowledge calls on high‑level cognitive (thinking) skills such as analysing, interpreting, evaluating, and relating. This ‘cultural knowledge’, interacting with the affective domain makes for the sort of attitudinal char‑ acteristics such as respect, openness, empathy, and tolerance of difference which define cultural awareness. The concept of CCA thus figures at the core of seminal conceptual mod‑ els of ICC and is quite accessible as described within them. CCA would seem to be a feasible pedagogic goal, an essential first step towards the more comprehensive one of ICC. Focusing on developing this central skill sidesteps the language development dimensions of ICC and ‘critical cul‑ tural awareness‑raising’ is also more generalisable in terms of the educa‑ tional sphere. We thus propose a working definition of CCA drawn from the above discussions: A broadened knowledge and understanding of cultures, both one’s own and other people’s, and the capacity to analyse and perceive all of these objectively and non‑judgmentally.

28  From Research to Implications

CCA as thus described is quite an accessible objective for the activities in Part II. A couple of terminological notes; cultural awareness would seem to incorporate the notion of ‘criticality’ so it is implicitly equivalent to CCA, which emphasises the notion of an analytical approach more explicitly. As a commonly found companion term, intercultural awareness will be used interchangeably with cultural awareness, as it similarly refers to an apprecia‑ tion of correspondences between one’s own and other cultures. With the objective of raising cultural awareness as just defined, the activities proposed in the book do not have a specific focus on the language develop‑ ment dimensions implied in the broader concept of intercultural competence. This makes them more generalisable in terms of language proficiency level as well as educational sphere. Nonetheless, since the activities involve language interaction, this competence will of course be practised, and some suggestions will be made for layering on specific language practice activities. Having described what we mean by intercultural awareness, we will now look at the key pedagogical concern with regard to integrating its teaching into the (language) classroom, that is, that it touches the cognitive and af‑ fective ‘nerve’ far more than other subjects.

The role of affect and cognition in (intercultural) learning That learning involves (critical) thinking and some willing, active engagement is hardly news to teachers. Both cognition and affect are elements of motiva‑ tion, without which no learning can take place. Their role in education in gen‑ eral was schematised around the middle of the last century in what has become known as ‘Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain’ (Bloom, 1956) and as Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia’s ‘taxonomy of the affective domain’ (1964). The taxonomies categorised and ‘ranked’ thinking and affective processes and described what was involved at each level (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4).

FIGURE 1.3 Revised

Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain based on An‑ derson and Krathwohl (2001)

From Research to Implications  29

Valuing Resonding Receiving FIGURE 1.4 Taxonomy of the affective domain of learning (Krathwohl et al., 1964)

In the taxonomy of the cognitive domain, then, the capacity to ‘evalu‑ ate’ ranks more highly as a cognitive skill than merely ‘understanding’; and, significantly, creativity is ranked as the highest order thinking skill. It may seem unreasonable to place ‘understanding’ and ‘knowledge’ on the lowest two steps of the cognitive ladder. However, they are conceived not as sepa‑ rate levels operating in isolation, but as a sequence of processes that build and depend upon each other in an accumulative way. Thus, in the context of intercultural learning, we see knowledge about culture/s (the learner’s and those of others) being acquired and understood to the extent that this can be applied, analysed, and evaluated. The supremacy of ‘creativity’ at the top of the taxonomy is therefore that it deploys all the other cognitive skills and more, in producing something new. To put it in another way, Bloom’s taxonomy implies a non‑linear model in which subsequent stages are always more than the sum of the stages that precede them. Hence the importance attached to creative tasks in learning in general and, for our purposes, in intercultural learning. We acknowledge this and provide many examples of creativity in the activities in Part II, such as Activity 14, ‘Combo culture’ or Activity 22 ‘The smelly socks group’, and in particular in the section on learner‑generated materials. The same progression is true of the taxonomy of affective processes, de‑ signed to schematise how noticing (at the lowest level) progresses to response which can then lead to ‘valuing’, acceptance, and finally the topmost affective status, ‘characterisation’ – signifying openness or willingness to change. Although the taxonomies are depicted, discussed, and seem to be ar‑ ranged in a rather linear fashion here, this is slightly misleading. One may assume that ‘climbing’ the different levels is a one‑way avenue and students’ progress in a steady order from one stage to the other until they reach the top. This can be far from the truth. In reality, thinking and learning, both being complex phenomena, do not take such a direct path. There are

30  From Research to Implications

recurring cycles which require learners to revisit earlier levels; there are leaps in which certain levels are skipped only to return to at a later stage. Further‑ more, although the visual representations of the models put ‘creativity’ and ‘valuing’ at the top, it does not mean that the other, lower levels, are not equally as complex and important as those at the pinnacle. The two taxonomies have become cornerstones of educational curricu‑ lum design, functioning as educational objectives (their original purpose) and also concretised as sets of trigger words (‘analyse’, ‘rank’, etc.) for use in learning tasks. While the two taxonomies were developed and presented as separate entities, cognitive and affective processes of course ‘operate’ in tandem in the human mind, calibrated according to the task being tack‑ led. What is more, the taxonomies are a perfect fit for the description and analysis of the processes of developing intercultural awareness. They help rationalise what intercultural learning involves, allow us to gauge the rela‑ tive significance of the various processes, and alert us to potential sticking points in their progression. Therefore, they can be used as reference points for our thinking about, and planning for, intercultural learning. These in‑ sights, finally, can inform materials design (see Activity Set (C) in Part II). All this must necessarily be matched with our original conceptualisation of intercultural competence. We have seen the place of ‘cultural knowledge’ in seminal models of ICC (Byram, 1997; Fantini, 2009), which calls on cognitive processes. Layered into this, in both these models we have affec‑ tive processes; ‘savoirs’engager’ in Byram’s model and ‘attitude (affect)’ in Fantini’s. It is the interconnectedness or symbiosis of the two, cognitive and affective processes, that builds intercultural awareness. This is the ‘place’ where new cultural knowledge can be examined against prior opinions and prejudices and where one’s own cultural assumptions might be scrutinised and challenged. The power of the affective domain in particular in influencing cultural learning cannot be underestimated. For it is responses to cultural knowl‑ edge  –  accepting, valuing, empathising  –  that are core characteristics of intercultural competence/awareness. There are few educational domains where affect carries more weight. Unlike the study of some other disciplines, such as STEM subjects, intercultural learning reaches within the individual, risking personal sensitivities, challenging beliefs, or even, possibly, cultural identities. This is never more the case than in situations of cross‑cultural transition (‘acculturation’) which migrants undergo in a new host country. It is in these contexts that we see the true power of affect and cognition at play with respect not only to learning but to coping with cultural adaptation. In their comprehensive synthesis of research in this area, Ward and Szabó (2019) emphasise, as we have done, that affect and cognition ‘operate

From Research to Implications  31

interactively’, plus they add a third component, ‘behaviours’, as a key aspect of acculturation. While discussing the psychology of acculturation is rather beyond the scope of this book, we will briefly consider it with respect to intercultural learning – and interested readers are referred to works such as Ward and Szabó (2019). Chapter: Affect, Behavior, Cognition, and Development: Adding to the Alphabet of Acculturation (Ward & Szabó, 2019). The major theoretical approaches to [studying] “cultures in contact”… stress and coping, with their emphasis on the emotional responses to cross‑cultural transition; culture learning, with its emphasis on the acquisi‑ tion of culture‑specific skills and appropriate behaviors; cultural orientations and intercultural relations, with their emphasis on cognitions, how one sees one’s cultural self, one’s cultural group and other cultural groups, and the psychological and social consequences of these perceptions and cognitions; and developmental processes, with an emphasis on process‑in‑context, including how cultural orientations are learned and experienced (Ward & Szabó, 2019, p. 641).

The experience of migration and subsequent cross‑cultural transition varies enormously, depending on the individual’s circumstances. These can range from the most ‘benign’ migration, taking the opportunity for professional promotion, for instance, to the most distressing, fleeing a country at war. Any and all of these situations involve some level of individual anxiety as people confront their cultural and linguistic identities. The experience of an economic migrant is famously charted in Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation (1989) in which the young Eva struggles to reconcile her former ‘Polish self’ with the new English‑speaking identity she is adopting in the USA. The experience of refugees forced to abruptly re‑locate is unquestionably many degrees more traumatic. This has been heavily researched in the area of psychology (see Ward & Szabó above, for example) but also in the area of language teaching, where, in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Britain the ESOL sector has been the one ‘on the front line’ of coping with refugees and asylum seekers, most recently in the migrant waves of the past decade or so. In these countries, refugees have often to deal not only with the challenges of learning the language and adopting the culture but also with discrimination and even hostility from ‘local’ populations. The emo‑ tional toll this takes on the individual in terms of the effect on their cultural and linguistic identity is charted in accounts in published volumes in the area, such as Cooke and Peutrell (2019) and Mishan (2019). Conflict was a commonly reported emotion in these reports – mothers’ guilt at failing

32  From Research to Implications

to maintain heritage languages with children, for example, while forced to acknowledge that English fluency was what mattered in their new culture (Cooke et al., 2019). Being shamed when speaking their first language in public was another common experience (see some accounts of this earlier). These can often be coupled with the traumas of fleeing persecution and losing family, only to be further tortured by uncertainty about status in the host country. Young unaccompanied minors finding themselves in the UK are described by Idle and Ma (2019) as having ‘fractured’ identities; “we came here broken” says one young refugee (Ma, 2018). This is not merely their linguistic or cultural selves, but their very ‘selfhood’, “which is often multiply fractured and incomplete” (Idle & Ma, 2019, p. 162). It goes without saying that when teaching students with these back‑ grounds, there must be the strictest consideration of the techniques used in language and/or intercultural learning tasks. In Western contexts at least, the sorts of techniques deployed tend to default to ‘Communicative’ methodology. But CLT was born of Western traditions rooted in discourses of psychotherapy, which uphold emotional frankness and self‑disclosure. These made for techniques so recognisable to the approach, ‘personalisa‑ tion’ (often personal revelation) and ‘sharing’. ‘Personalisation’ activities are self‑evidently risky for students in refugee situations  –  at worst (inadvert‑ ently) causing them to revisit traumatic events and experiences. One ESOL practitioner, for instance, describes a refugee, estranged from her family, bursting into tears in a speaking examination when asked to discuss ‘holi‑ days’ (Grimes, 2019, p. 26). Such practices can simply be unfamiliar and un‑ comfortable to some cultures: “‘In Syria we tell our problems to the wall’” observed one student in an ESOL programme for refugees (Ćatibušić, Gal‑ lagher, & Karazi, 2019a, p.  298). Another potentially culturally sensitive aspect of such activities is that some of them may appear as ‘games’, clashing with cultural expectations of teaching and learning formats. Ćatibušić, Gal‑ lagher, and Karazi (2019b), for example, report ESOL student feedback that their teachers’ Communicative approach was perceived as too “happy clappy” (p. 147). Respect for students’ personal situations and for their cultural pedagogi‑ cal conditioning, their expectations of conduct and practice in the learning environment, is therefore paramount. As portrayed by Krashen long ago (1985), a notional ‘affective filter’ can be seen to control learning, in that only when the student is ‘at ease’ (conceived by Krashen as a ‘lowered affec‑ tive filter’) can learning take place. Evaluating the cultural appropriateness of an activity for their students is as much at the teacher’s discretion as gaug‑ ing whether a task fits their language proficiency level – and is, if anything, more important. Over‑solicitousness with regard to proficiency level, in fact, risks “impoverishing the learning experience” (Tomlinson, 2008, p. 319). It

From Research to Implications  33

has been a long‑held criticism of language teaching coursebooks that they tend to equate language proficiency level with intellectual ability: “many materials, especially those developed for linguistically low‑level learners, un‑ derestimate the intellectual and emotional maturity of their target learners” (ibid.). In so doing, this practice risks failing to stimulate the higher order, critical thinking skills portrayed in Bloom’s taxonomy as so vital for learn‑ ing – and all the more so for fostering intercultural awareness. More worry‑ ingly, it risks missing the opportunity to take account of prior knowledge, “the totality of the experiences that have shaped the learner’s identity and cognitive functioning” (Cummins et al., 2005, p. 38), which plays such an essential role in all learning, and in intercultural learning in particular. It is no coincidence that the sorts of activities successfully used in even the most sensitive of learning situations – such as with the young refugees in Idle and Ma’s account mentioned above – build on prior knowledge and deploy the topmost thinking skill, giving the learners “opportunities to choose what aspects of their stories they want to share, through the use of creative arts” (Idle & Ma, 2019, p. 164). Achieving appropriate intellectual challenges is only one of a number of issues with the published language teaching materials commonly used in lan‑ guage and culture and ESOL classrooms. Books destined for international markets, such as so‑called ‘Global’ ELT coursebooks, insist on retaining tra‑ ditional Communicative practices, although these are manifestly unsuitable to many contexts in which they are used, as illustrated above. On the other hand, they are scrupulously sensitive to textual content. Materials designed specifically for ESOL, catering to the migrant demographic described ear‑ lier, tend to do this by skirting around the issue, sticking to practical sup‑ ports for these learners in areas such as shopping, education, local transport, neighbourhood, health, family and so on (drawing on the main official re‑ source for ESOL in Britain, Excellence Gateway, n.d). As for international coursebooks designed for English language teaching, the tongue‑in‑cheek acronym, PARSNIP (politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, ‘isms, pork) was coined to represent topics that ELT coursebook publishers deem ‘taboo’ to avoid upsetting cultural sensitivities in their target markets. Practition‑ ers using their own materials also need to beware of cultural sensitivities. A teacher in Malaysia, for example, was re‑posted from his school in 2021 for using a Halloween‑themed lesson; a British school teacher was arrested in Sudan in 2007 for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear ‘Moham‑ mad’ (“‘Muhammad’ teddy teacher arrested”, 2007). This leads teachers in contexts like this to ‘self‑censor’ so as not to risk o ­ ffence – or, indeed, punishment. The downside of such ‘censorship’, however, whether in published or teacher‑produced materials, is effective sterilisation of classroom discourse.

34  From Research to Implications

This has been much critiqued in the literature on language coursebooks (see, for example, Akbari, 2008; Kiss & Mizusawa, 2018; Mishan, 2021). In terms of our concern here, the interplay of affect and critical thinking with intercultural learning, the very topics that are thus suppressed are, arguably, those with the greatest prospect of building cultural knowledge, stimulating critical thinking, and sparking affective response. It is clearly a question of balance – ‘over‑protecting’ students can be seen as inhibiting the develop‑ ment of a broader, critical worldview, which is surely the overall objective of education. What is more, with ever‑expanding global penetration of the internet and mobile phone services, this generation of students is getting to experience the world far more widely (albeit vicariously), via the digital environment.

From Research to Implications  35

Section 2: Analysing intercultural materials In the first part of Section 1, we established working definitions for the core concepts underpinning this book. Here we look at how to analyse whether  –  and how successfully  –  these concepts underpin the materials that we use in the language classroom. In this section, then, we describe the basic techniques that can be used for the analysis and evaluation of language teaching materials. We discuss some key terminology before we look at the most common approaches to evaluation.

Materials analysis/evaluation The professional literature which investigates language teaching materials uses the words ‘analysis’ and ‘evaluation’ rather liberally, especially when it comes to the cultural content or interculturality in materials. Although these terms seem to be interchangeable, upon a closer examination we can see that there are some points that set them apart. Here we adopt Weninger and Kiss’ (2015, pp. 51–52) interpretation of the terms. According to them, materials analysis “is concerned with identifying general trends using differ‑ ent theories as the framework of investigation, while evaluation is situated in the practice and context of the language teacher to offer practical and im‑ mediately applicable answers”. Their definition echoes Tomlinson’s (2012) classification, which suggests differentiating between local and universal cri‑ teria when analysing a textbook. The local criteria, he argues, are directly linked to the educational context in which teachers work with a particular group of students, whereas the universal criteria are applicable when specific target users are not identified. In a similar vein, Littlejohn (2022) identifies materials analysis as an exercise that is general in nature and which focuses on materials ‘as they are’ and not on their possible applicability as a teaching tool in a particular educational context. Therefore, while both processes are important and may use similar tools, they have different objectives. While practicing classroom teachers may be more concerned with evaluation, re‑ searchers tend to focus on analysis. Here we describe analytical frameworks that are used to evaluate and analyse language teaching materials and their cultural components in particular.

Methodological frameworks There are many published studies that focus on investigating language teaching materials from a cultural perspective. These may employ a vari‑ ety of techniques and strategies, use multiple theoretical frameworks (or none at all), and represent different views in their definition of culture. Not

36  From Research to Implications

surprisingly, there seems to be a lack of cohesion and connectivity in the field, which can be best referred to as ‘eclectic’. However, when we look at the literature published in the past 20 years, we can identify three general trends. These are: content analysis, and critical discourse analysis, which are language‑based analytical tools, and semiotic analysis, which studies how the combination of linguistic and visual signs create potential meanings em‑ bedded in materials. While the first appears to be the most practical for classroom teachers, the other two also offer meaningful insights, especially in terms of how visual and language materials are used to promote a certain ideology, and how learners might make sense of a particular constellation of task(s), texts, and activities.

Content analysis Content analysis, as the name suggests, is looking at the content of materials and it can cover many different aspects. Most studies that use content analy‑ sis as their methodological framework look at materials as representations, examining “the conceptual structure that a text invokes in particular read‑ ers, the worlds they can imagine, make into their own, and consider real” (Krippendorff, 2013, p.  66, original emphasis). In other words, content analysis is usually a critical approach, and it looks at what reality is presented to the language learner. This is indeed a very important task. Byram and Esarte‑Sarries (1991, p. 180) argue that language teaching materials should represent “culture as it is lived and talked about by people who are credible and recognisable as real human beings”, rather than present an ‘ideal’ world that is far from reality. The general approach for those who use content analysis is usually quan‑ titative in nature. The person who conducts the analysis tries to categorise texts and visuals into distinctive units, usually along nation and culture boundaries. For example, a study by Yamanaka (2006) aimed to identify direct and indirect references to countries represented in ELT textbooks in Japan. Adjectives such as Japanese served as the category head under which any mention of artefacts, famous people, etc. associated with Japan were col‑ lected. When the categorisation was completed, a frequency count was used to determine which country, i.e. ‘culture’, was dominant in the textbook. Matsuda (2002) also used ‘nationality’ in her research to find out what types of people were portrayed as English speakers in Japanese EFL textbooks. What we can see from these two examples is that they use culture as na‑ tion culture, which is indeed very common in studies that employ content analysis. The reason is perhaps the simplicity and straightforwardness this solution offers. Looking at culture as a static and easily classifiable phenom‑ enon allows its treatment as numbers and renders it countable.

From Research to Implications  37

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) Similar to content analysis, Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is widely used across social sciences as a research methodology to understand how texts and discourses contribute to the creation of social realities. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is a variety of approaches and techniques that researchers use in order to uncover ideologies hidden (or not so hidden) in text and discourse. The key assertion that CDA scholars make is that language is never neutral; it serves the purpose of maintaining the power of certain groups and by critically analysing it, it is possible to understand how it is used to maintain dominant ideologies. An example of how it is done is illustrated in Gulliver’s (2010) study on 40 stories in 24 ESL textbooks for immigrants/newcomers in Canada. He first coded the stories according to three major themes: immigrants are (a) successful, (b) not successful, (c) or the outcome of their assimilation is a mixture of success and failure. He discovered that the stories tend to feature positive assimilation as legitimate narratives, whereas negative or ambivalent outcomes are marginalised (Weninger & Kiss, 2015). Another example of using CDA to examine how culture  –  and inter‑ cultural communication  –  is treated in textbooks is the work of Kiss and Rimbar (2017). They examined one unit of work from a locally produced ELT textbook published in Malaysia. The unit, Unity in Diversity, was meant to promote multicultural and racial harmony by offering examples of how various communities live together peacefully. However, the research‑ ers discovered that the texts only portrayed the three dominant races in the country: Malays, Chinese, and Indians. The numerous other ethnic groups co‑existing in the country were not mentioned and were generally invisible in the textbook. Furthermore, on closer examination, it was pointed out that Malay cultural practices, i.e. those of the dominant race in the country, were explained in detail, whereas other cultures were treated off‑handedly. See the following excerpt, for example: The food served was of course halal but no beef was served either. The children performed cultural dances as part of the event. It was refreshing to see a cross‑cultural performance in which Malay, Chinese, and Indian dances were performed by children. There was a Chinese girl in baju kurung, doing a Malay dance, Malay and Indian kids doing the Chinese fan dance, and a Chinese boy dressed up as a king doing an Indian dance. (‘Unity in Diversity’, Lim, 2010, p. 136) First of all, the authors argue that the only non‑English words in the unit are of Malay or Arabic origin. In the excerpt above, ‘halal’ means food prepared

38  From Research to Implications

according to Muslim law, and ‘baju kurung’ refers to a traditional Malay costume. Second, other culture’s costumes and traditions are not named and only mentioned in the most generic terms. For example, the Chinese fan dance is not named, neither is the Indian costume. In sum, CDA looks at how language is used, and what words are selected to represent ideas (and ideologies) that the writer would like to support. As Kramsch (1993, p. 128) says, “each word chosen by the author is selected at the expense of others that were not chosen”. The following example is taken from Greta Camase’s (2009) work on a Romanian textbook written in the 1980s; she took the position that these textbooks contained intercultural discourses  –  as could be expected from foreign language textbooks. She used intertextuality at two levels: she pro‑ vided background information on the wider, sociocultural context in which the coursebooks were written (i.e. Ceaușescu’s communist Romania) and also looked at how texts were constructed.

OVER‑REPRESENTATION OF ROMANIANS First, a sense of superiority materialises simply by counting the number of texts directly glorifying Romania. Out of a total of twelve readings, seven praise Romanian history, geography, literature/authors, people, and land‑ marks, and two texts briefly appreciate some of the same matters in other countries. To begin with, the examples below are excerpts from the texts di‑ rectly describing Romanian culture: history, people, countryside, literature, and science.

Excerpt 1: Romanian history And as I grew up and started reading History textbooks I took the brush and dipped it into the national heroes’ blood and put red on the flag of our country’s victories (Unit I, The Colours of Our Country, p. 15). In Excerpt 1, the history of Romanian people is presented as a succes‑ sion of victories accomplished by national heroes. The metaphor of a brush dipped in blood painting the flag emphasizes the spirit of sacrifice that is for‑ ever remembered in the red of the Romanian flag. The Romanian flag’s colors (blue, yellow and red) are important symbols of the socialist ideology and are very often referred to. Red represents history and the national heroes’ blood as in the example above, yellow is the symbol of wealth in the crops and fields, and blue represents the clear sky and the Black Sea. Besides heroes, wealth and peace, the textbook praises the Romanian people’s qualities.

From Research to Implications  39

Excerpt 2: Romanian people First the country… then there are the Romanians themselves, a very hospita‑ ble people pleased you came to see them and anxious to show friendliness. (Unit II, The Romanians, p. 36). Praising the Romanians, Excerpt 2 displays an example of the punctua‑ tion the authors of the textbook make use of often: the ellipsis. Within the text, the literary meaning of the ellipsis may be interpreted as if the audi‑ ence/reader were given some time to dream, to imagine. The text itself seems to be the main character of the story (as there is no author to begin with) and it is weaving a paradisiacal image. While the country’s description is meaningfully replaced by the ellipsis, the description of the Romanians is made very explicit by the use of the adjectives: hospitable, pleased, and the collocation – anxious to show friendliness. (Camase, 2009, pp. 67–68)

Semiotic analysis A recent framework for the analysis of cultural content and intercultural learning materials is semiotic analysis. Scholars who choose this form of analysis argue that language teaching materials should be viewed as signs that represent reality. They also add that materials can only be understood if texts, both linguistic and visual, and tasks are treated as one unit which guides the learners’ meaning‑making processes. Semiotic analysis identifies three basic elements of semiosis: the object, the sign, and the interpretant (see Peirce, 1980). The sign stands in the place of a physical object or an abstract idea whereas the interpretant is the mental image or understanding that is formed on the basis of the object‑sign rela‑ tionship. In other words, it is the translation of the sign in the mind of the observer, and to make it more complicated, the interpretant itself has the potential to become a sign itself, triggering further processes of semiosis. Thus conceived, semiotics can be understood through a very common example. Someone sees smoke. In this example, smoke is a sign, whereas the object it points to is fire. In this case, there is an indexical relationship between the sign and the object. However, there is no guarantee that every‑ one would interpret smoke in the same way, which means that many inter‑ pretants are possible, based on the observer’s personal experiences, cultural references, and general knowledge of the world or the context in which they happen to be. Smoke coming through the chimney of a European home may be interpreted as the warmth of home, whereas smoke twirling towards the sky in the morning at an African village might indicate that breakfast is

40  From Research to Implications

cooking. Therefore, we can say that the meaning a sign carries always resides in the person who does the interpretation. This is not different from how students work with intercultural materials. When learners look at textbooks they may see the same visuals or read the same text; however, the meanings they generate through their inter‑ action with these resources could be vastly different. Yet, there are some commonalities. As Kiss and Weninger point out (2017) there are three lev‑ els of meaning‑making: the universal, the cultural and subcultural, and the individual.

As an example of semiotic analysis, we present Kiss and Weninger’s (2013) analysis of a page from the Oxford University Press textbook Engage. They describe a page from Unit 4: Disaster! (Manin et al., 2011, p. 38). The top half of the page is occupied by a textbox that contains two large images of scenes from the movie 2012, as well as a summary of the film’s plot (about 13 complex sentences long), with the title of the movie also appearing in large font. In one image, placed as the banner of the text‑ box, we see a man (played by American actor John Cusack) who is car‑ rying a young child on his back, both looking intently in one direction in the middle of what looks to be a snowstorm. The second image on the left and under the banner shows a small propeller airplane flying in a city with skyscrapers collapsing around it. There are three tasks following the text, all three focusing on checking students’ comprehension. (Kiss & Weninger, 2013, pp. 22–23) The authors explain that students in these activities are not free to create their own meanings although it is very likely that the visuals and the texts the ma‑ terial presents would prompt a chain of semiosis, i.e. interpreting the images as signs with meanings that relate to their own lives and experiences. In their engagement with the semiotic resources present in this activity, learners are not free to create meanings. It is possible that the learners saw the movie and may want to share what they think about it. They might also recognise the actor and link him to another movie, e.g. ‘Map to the Stars’ which earned Cusack the ‘Best performance by an actor in a supporting role’ award at the Canadian Screen Awards in 2014. Maybe some of the learners are aviation fans and would identify or discuss the aeroplane seen in the picture. How‑ ever, as Kiss and Weninger (2013) argue, this would not happen unless the

From Research to Implications  41

teacher elicits and encourages such discussion and meaning‑making about the materials at hand. The first task following the text instructs learners to ‘Read and listen to the article. Check which natural disasters are in the movie’. Thus any previous unguided meaning‑making through connotative links is now firmly redirected towards a focus on denotational content: what the text is about. Such denotational work is the purpose of the other two tasks on the page, where students are asked to put sentences in order and then to answer a set of comprehension questions. Although the text and visuals may be classified as examples of American culture (as they are based on a Hollywood movie), they would probably not be seen as cultural informa‑ tion as the text itself is not an explicit passage about a cultural product, practice or figure. We also want to note that there are no activities in the following three pages that relate the text or the topic to culture. (Kiss & Weninger, 2013, p. 23) In order to exploit the cultural learning potential of the materials, the learn‑ ers’ engagement with the text should start with unguided semiosis which al‑ lows them to interpret visuals and texts without the restrictions a pedagogic task may impose and which would probably guide them towards denotative meanings. If it is the movie students are interested in, then they – with the teacher’s guidance – move beyond the denotative meanings as they engage with a cultural object (movie) and the textbook images serve as icons rather than have a simple indexical role pointing to vocabulary presented in the textbook that students need to master. Such a focus would allow an open discussion that has the potential to unearth the learners’ cultural beliefs in connection with the text/images and thus it would provide a possibility for the cultural meaning potential of the material to be explored.

42  From Research to Implications

Section 3: Complex dynamic systems and intercultural learning In the first section of Part I, our core concepts, culture, and intercultural competence, were set in their contextual and theoretical backgrounds. Sec‑ tion 2 proceeded to cover another area essential to the concerns of the book, methodology for evaluating intercultural materials. In this section, we propose a particular perspective on intercultural learning through the lens of complex dynamic systems (CDS). We conclude by amalgamating this with theoretical aspects from the previous sections to forge a framework and principles for developing intercultural materials.

What are complex dynamic systems? James Gleick (1987, p. 5) in his seminal work on complexity theory – then called chaos theory – states that “chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being”. What else could describe intercul‑ tural learning  –  or any learning for that matter  –  better than this quote? In education, we are concerned with processes that shape minds and help the development of ideas, rather than products and states. Although in re‑ cent years standardised assessment has definitely steered education towards product‑oriented practices, the essence of learning lies in the process itself. Since the early 1950s complexity theory, also referred to as complexity science, chaos theory, CDS theory, complex adaptive systems theory, au‑ topoietic systems (biology), non‑linear dynamical systems (mathematics), and dissipative structures (chemistry) (Davis & Sumara, 2008) has gained popularity in many different fields (Stanley, 2009), including education, for example through the work of Davis and Sumara (2005, 2007, 2008, 2012), Doll (2008), and in applied linguistics, pioneered by Diane Larsen‑Freeman (see e.g. 1997, 2012). As Shihui and Shaodong (2012, p. 82) state, “[t]he 21st century is called the century of complexity science” in education. As Davis and Sumara (2005, p. 315) explain: Education and complexity science share one important theme: They are both focused on the pragmatics of complex transformation. They both ask: How can we induce change when dealing with and embedded in unruly phenomena and systems?

Types of systems On closer examination, we can find four distinctive systems in our world. There are simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic systems. Simple sys‑ tems have very few agents – people, objects, concepts, etc. – that interact

From Research to Implications  43

with each other in a limited, pre‑arranged manner. There are simple rules that regulate how they operate, and they produce predictable outcomes. Clarke and Collins (2007) offer the analogy of a billiard ball travelling on the table; if we know the origin of the ball, the force with which it was hit, the direction of movement, the friction between the ball and the table, then we can calculate exactly where it will come to rest. Complicated systems contain a much larger number of agents that can inter‑ act with each other in multiple ways. This increased number of agents and inter‑ action, paired with the possibility of different connections and patterns, make a complicated system more difficult to predict. However, with time and enough data, one may make intelligent guesses about future outcomes and identify trends (or orders) that the system is likely to follow. Both simple and compli‑ cated systems obey a ‘central organizer’, a force which sets the rules for interac‑ tion between the agents and controls how that interaction should take shape. You might have seen a marching band performing in a stadium where the musicians walk in a neat formation. Suddenly, however, the formation breaks and they start to criss‑cross each other’s lines, walk in different directions only to merge again as a unit. Such choreography is carefully planned by their conductor/choreographer and has been practised for hundreds of hours before a perfect performance. Now compare this with a flock of starlings. These birds fly in a neat formation – similar to the marching band in our ex‑ ample – with each bird keeping the same distance from its immediate neigh‑ bours. Suddenly a bird of prey appears and the flight pattern is disrupted, sending the birds into a spectacular array of formations of swirling shapes as they try to escape from the predator. The difference between the examples is that nobody tells the birds what to do and it is impossible to predict which way the flock (or birds which break off the mass) would fly. There is no central organiser and this (partly) makes this system complex and dynamic.

Just like complicated systems, CDS also contain many variables and unlim‑ ited interaction between their agents. However, as we explained in the ex‑ ample above, they do not require a central organiser to run themselves: they self‑organise. This means that they are highly unpredictable; order appears unexpectedly from the result of agents continuously changing through their interaction with each other. Finally, we should mention chaotic systems. These have many variables and agents with unlimited interaction between them. These systems, in con‑ trast to complex systems, do not have the ability for self‑organisation, there‑ fore they never settle into or show orderly behaviour. They are too dynamic to store information that would lead to patterns and, eventually, some order.

44  From Research to Implications TABLE 1.1  A summary of systems

Order

Complexity

Chaos

Simple systems

Complicated systems

Complex dynamic systems

Chaotic systems

Few variables (agents) Limited interaction Predictable outcomes Central organisation

Many variables (agents) A variety of interaction Outcomes are difficult to predict Central organisation

Many variables (agents) Unlimited interaction patterns Unpredictable outcomes (emergence) Self‑organisation

Many variables (agents) Unlimited interaction patterns Unpredictable outcomes (with no emergence) No organisation

Characteristics of complex dynamic (learning) systems There is a certain number of characteristics that can be used to describe CDS, including learning systems that comprise knowers and knowledge (Davis & Sumara, 2007). We adopt the terminology used by Larsen‑Freeman (1997, 2012) to describe complex phenomena, although there is a variety depend‑ ing on how the concept was adopted in different disciplines. Therefore, when talking about CDS we will use the following terms: ­dynamic, com‑ plex, non‑linear, emergent, unpredictable, sensitive to initial conditions, open, self‑organising, feedback‑sensitive, and adaptive. In the following we will briefly describe these terms and illustrate them with examples from lan‑ guage teaching and learning that are presented in the text boxes below. A learning community is always characterised by dynamic change. As students learn and interact with ideas they change. Their schemas, i.e. pat‑ terns of thought that help organise new ideas and information, expand, and how they create meanings evolves using previous knowledge and cre‑ ating new connections that help them recall what they have learned. In‑ dividual students in the community will act differently according to their mood, physical health and well‑being, their motivational levels, and the ever‑changing relationships in the community. CDS, as the name indicates, are, well, dynamic. The agents in the sys‑ tem – which can be people, objects, molecules, ideas, etc. – interact with each other and, as a result of this interaction, they are constantly changing, reorganising themselves. The system strives to achieve equilibrium, but it will never reach it, it will never settle into order. Should it become stable, it would cease to be a complex dynamic system. Constant change is therefore one of the significant characteristics of CDS.

From Research to Implications  45

A possible way to illustrate the dynamic change in a learning system could be through language learning motivation. Motivation is a concept that is based on a combination of willingness to learn and the effort that one invests in learning. It is also influenced by a multitude of factors (both motivational and demotivational) originating from the language learner (e.g. psychological and physiological factors, such as mood or physical health) and from the en‑ vironment, which includes both the classroom and the broader social/cultural context in which the learner is situated. Happiness, feedback from teachers, a sunny day, meeting friends, a good grade, etc. can all contribute to a higher state of motivation, whereas feeling tired, sick, getting negative feedback from peers, a fall out with friends could dampen the learner’s will to study. While language learning motivation can be seen as generally stable over a period of time (e.g. comparing learners’ motivational levels at the begin‑ ning and at the end of a term or semester), it can dramatically change on a daily basis between completely motivated to completely demotivated (Kiss & Pack, 2023). This means that in the motivational system, change is con‑ stant and the system will never reach a stable and extreme state of motiva‑ tion, i.e. being ultimately motivated or demotivated. In the first case, it is not possible to say that a learner cannot be more motivated than a particular level, and therefore, the potential for change is always present. In the second case, in an ultimately demotivated state, we cannot talk about a motiva‑ tional system anymore; the system ceases to exist.

Complexity refers to the apparently limitless connections agents can make and maintain, in a seemingly unorganised pattern. Simply having a signifi‑ cant number of agents with multiple and ever‑changing interaction patterns make the system complex and unpredictable. The connections are non‑lin‑ ear, organised in a network where information can travel between the agents following multiple routes. This also allows feedback loops, which means that as information is passed on from one agent in the system to other ones, it gets back to where it started and has an impact on the point of origin as well. To illustrate complexity and unpredictability, think of any lesson that you have taught or observed. How many different elements contributed to the way that particular lesson turned out? Is it only the students and the teacher? The materials? The time of the day? The weather? The lesson the students had before or after? A mobile phone that started ringing in the mid‑ dle of the class? As you can see there are a myriad possible factors that can

46  From Research to Implications

impact the learning process and although you may have the same lesson plan and materials, no two lessons will ever be the same. Such complexity in education makes learning outcomes difficult to determine; it is simply impossible to say what each and every student will learn. What they actually take away from the lessons is unpredictable.

Non‑linearity also leads to other interconnected phenomena. CDS produce outcomes which are larger than the sum of the parts that make them. There‑ fore, order can emerge unpredictably from interactions; this is called emer‑ gence, a state when the system displays and holds a particular order, or pockets of order, for a while before it dissolves into a more chaotic state again. The fact that order can emerge in the system points to self‑organisa‑ tion, as it happens without the presence of a central controller or a com‑ mand that could govern it. Probably one of the simplest ways to illustrate the concept of emergent learn‑ ing is through a game called ‘straight to cross, cross to straight’. 8–10 players sit in a large circle, and at least 2 of them know the rule that the other players need to work out. One of the players needs to pass or throw a ball to another player and calls out any of four possible positions: straight to cross, cross to straight, straight to straight, or cross to cross. The rule is actually very simple; the calls are determined by the position of the legs of the player who has the ball and the one to whom it is passed. If the legs are crossed (even at the ankles) the ball moves from ‘cross’ to either a similar position of ‘cross’ or to ‘straight’, if the other player’s feet are placed on the floor next to each other. As the game gets going, players are trying to work out the rules by making different random calls which are either approved – if the leg positions match the call – or rejected by the ones who know the rules. After a few calls, some players think that they have discovered an order, a pattern in the game and indeed, some moves seem to satisfy the rule they work out by observation. However, more often than not, their theory does not hold, and they are forced to come up with a new hypothesis based on what they see. In other words, order (and in this case un‑ derstanding) seemingly emerges from a random number of interactions and moves, only to disappear and give space to another pattern. In language learning, Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings’ Dogme ELT approach illustrates emergent learning very eloquently (see for example, Thornbury, 2013; Thornbury & Meddings, 2001, 2009).

From Research to Implications  47

Finally, we should discuss openness and adaptability. Openness refers to the fact that CDS are capable of incorporating new agents into their struc‑ ture. They acquire new agents from other systems with which they interact. They change and are being constantly changed by other dynamic systems in which they operate or which operate inside them. However, this interde‑ pendency of systems should not be imagined as a hierarchical relationship. They reflect a fractal structure, which shows self‑similarity and nestedness (see Mandelbrot, 1982). This suggests that such systems cannot be un‑ derstood by a typical Newtonian, reductionist approach of breaking down something to component parts. Each level of the system shows just as much complexity as the previous one. What happens when a new student joins a class in your school? How do the other students react to the newcomer? There will be those who wel‑ come him/her and those who will keep their distance. In any case, the new student has the potential to impact the existing social patterns within the group by joining some and staying out of certain groups. By doing so, they have the potential to link small groups of students who may not have been linked to each other previously and, at the same time, they can also sever connections between others. The whole class and the smaller groups are complex structures and systems just as much as the individual students that make them.

Adaptability refers to the possibility of the system changing itself in response to its growth (that links to its openness), and interaction with other systems. New connections are forged within its structure, and agents may change their roles and functions depending on new demands. In a well‑working complex dynamic system, there is always a surplus which guarantees the op‑ eration of the system even when some agents are non‑operational or when established connections are severed. Since the system is sensitive to initial conditioning, it is essential that it changes and adapts to new challenges and changing environments.

Complex dynamic systems and education Unlike in hard sciences, complexity theory in the social sciences is used as a metaphor to explain phenomena that are hard to understand and exam‑ ine through other conceptual frameworks. The idea of using metaphors for

48  From Research to Implications

describing educational phenomena is not new, as Davis and Sumara (2008) explain. We have long been using references to students in terms of a mys‑ tical bestowal (e.g. “She’s gifted. He has little talent.”), luminosity (e.g. “He’s brilliant. She’s a little dim.”), speediness (e.g. “She’s quick. He’s a lit‑ tle slow.”), acuity (e.g. “He’s sharp. She’s a little dull.”), and a capacity (e.g. “She’s got lots of smarts. He’s lacks potential.”). When we examine the characteristics of CDS and reflect them on an edu‑ cational context it is difficult not to see the uncanny similarities that would warrant further and deeper study. For example, any educational scenario is sensitive to initial conditioning. The same lesson, taught by the same teacher using the same materials would yield completely different learning experiences when it is taught to two different student groups, or to the same group but at different times (first lesson in the morning as opposed to a lesson just before the lunch break), or when it is delivered after a tiring physical education lesson, or when the students have a difficult test in the next period. It is also unpredictable what individual students learn in a lesson, regard‑ less of the learning outcomes teachers set. As individual learners – each a complex dynamic system of cells and molecules on a physiological level, and a similarly complex system as far as ideation and knowing are con‑ cerned – interact with the teaching materials, their peers, and the teacher, different understandings and insights will ‘emerge’ and there is no knowing how these are formed in relation to personal interests, prior knowledge, af‑ fective and cognitive factors, etc. As learners interact with each other – or are just present in the classroom – they impact other learners and the teach‑ ers as well. These undoubtedly are related to the concepts of non‑linearity, self‑­organisation, sensitivity to initial conditions and feedback loops, and adaptability. Similar examples would be easy to find in readers’ own practices, we are certain of that. Therefore, we wish to emphasise the idea that educational practice and learning – including learning IC – is better understood through the lens of CDS theory than through a reductionist, Newtonian model that insists on breaking down complex phenomena into their components in order to understand how they work. We believe reductionism is not only impossible when it comes to learning systems, but it is counterproductive. For exam‑ ple, when we consider the relationship of a knowledge production system (knowers) and the connection they have with the knowledge we may see the “dynamic and reflexive relationships” (Davis, 2008, p. 53) between the two. Knowers are physical entities, while knowledge is an ideational system. Yet, Davis (2008) argues that although they are very different, they are

From Research to Implications  49

also inseparable from each other. Through the interaction of these two sys‑ tems “they are enfolded in and unfold from one another” (Davis, 2008, p. 53). We will not understand how intercultural learning takes place if we ignore the ‘knowers’ and will also not get better insights if we purely focus on ‘knowledge’ itself. Therefore, models that try to represent intercultural competence as individual‑oriented lists and trait concepts that dwell in the individual learner only, cannot realistically capture the complexities of inter‑ cultural knowledge systems.

Culture as a complex dynamic system There have been many different models of IC, intercultural learning, etc.; some of which were discussed in the section defining intercultural compe‑ tence. The problem with these models is that they tend to look at compe‑ tencies as discrete learning objectives to be mastered, and once all these are learned, intercultural competence is achieved. We argue that this sepa‑ ratist view does not reflect the complexities of learning and the complexi‑ ties of the learner. Therefore, we would propose a new approach which relates cultural learning and intercultural competence to CDS and reflects our understanding of learning in the 21st century. Furthermore, we argue that modelling, or rather, interpreting a model is somehow going against complex phenomena. Models, by nature, are reductionist and they tend to simplify and generalise. Therefore, how could they be used to illustrate very complex and dynamic phenomena? Furthermore, culture viewed as a complex phenomenon should be imagined as a network of interacting, interlocked complex systems. Furstenberg (2010, p.  329) describes it as “a highly complex, elusive, multi‑layered notion that encompasses many different and overlapping areas and that inherently defies easy categorisation and classification”. As an open and dynamic system, culture is bound to take on informa‑ tion, practices, and customs from other cultures it is interacting with, and other cultures are also influenced by its own features. The extent to which it happens depends on the strength of the influence and the individual members of the culture/community at which level the ideational and the physical systems interact. When an idea or practice seems attractive and useful for the community (perceived as having social or financial benefits or potential to improve present conditions), it is taken on, perhaps not in its original form, but adapted to be acceptable to the practices of its new context.

50  From Research to Implications

One example for this is how Christmas is celebrated in Japan, by adopting some of the commercially beneficial practices of the holiday, i.e. decorating shopping malls in festive colours, Christmas markets, Christmas light shows or the exchange of gifts, without the slightest hint of the religious origins of the holiday. Some unique Japanese traditions have even been added, like eating strawberry shortcake (advertised as ‘Christmas cake’) or having a meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken (Joy, 2018).

Adaptability is thus a prominent feature of cultures. Those that are not ca‑ pable of changing as a response to new conditions and influences cease to exist, as we have seen throughout history, or their development becomes much slower than the cultures around them. Some cultures disappear com‑ pletely, like the Aztecs or the Anasazi, or their development is minimal, if any (think of the Amish in the United States, or some of the Penans in Sarawak, Malaysia). Cultures are also sensitive to initial conditions, as we have seen how small changes can lead to huge cultural landslides in societies around the world, testified by revolutions of many kinds, from cultural and political alike. The Arab Spring of the early 2010s, or the introduction of ‘Rock and Roll’ in the 1940s to 1950s had a significant impact on society and culture, yet both of these started off with a few individuals seeking something new – individual human rights and democracy, and an expression of individuality through music and fashion. The impact of these two fairly different movements can both be described by non‑linearity: a network structure and being more than the sum of their constituent parts. The small changes individuals started in their different contexts had disproportional results and impact on the world in which we live today. Therefore, it seems safe to claim that cultures are non‑linear and also unpredictable. Traditions change, events unfold, and trends and fashions take hold not in a predictable, well‑defined order, but in a more chaotic, yet self‑organised manner. In other words, as we concluded in the section on culture above, culture emerges from the ac‑ tions and thoughts of members of a community.

Intercultural learning in a complex dynamic system This idea is not as radical as it may seem at first glance. The literature on ICC is already dotted with references which indicate that intercultural learning should be considered as a complex dynamic system, though the concept and the terminology are not used explicitly. Yang and Fleming (2013, p. 301), for example, claim that for Chinese EFL learners “making sense of films and

From Research to Implications  51

TV series produced in the USA and the UK is a complex process”. Even Byram (1997) talks about his model in a way that resembles CDS thinking. He points to the inevitable nature of self‑organisation of learner knowledge without a central controller when he writes: [the] four aspects of interaction across frontiers of different countries, knowledge, attitudes, skills of interpreting and relating, and skills of discov‑ ery and interaction can in principle be acquired through experience and re‑ flection, without the intervention of teachers and educational institutions. (Byram, 1997, p. 33) The characteristics of nested complex systems can also be noticed in Byram’s (1997) description of ICC. CDS theory holds that complex systems are open to information and impetus from other systems they are interacting with. It also claims that these interactions impact the participating systems as they all react to initial conditioning and operate feedback loops through‑ out their network structure. Byram (1997, p. 33) clearly explains this when he writes: “Knowledge and attitude factors are preconditions, although I shall argue that they are also modified by the processes of intercultural communication”. Finally, he acknowledges that intercultural learning is a non‑linear phe‑ nomenon when he argues that the “relationship between attitudes and knowledge is not the simple cause and effect often assumed, i.e. that in‑ creased knowledge creates positive attitudes” (Byram, 1997, p. 35). As we discussed earlier, non‑linearity refers to emergent phenomena being more than the sum of their components, thus order – in this case positive inter‑ cultural attitudes  –  will not emerge automatically with added knowledge. Learning is no doubt a complex and dynamic process. More recently, we see other studies that are more explicit in their discussion of intercultural learning as a complex dynamic phenomenon. Strugielska and Piątkowska (2018, p. 114) claim that “(inter)culturality and competence will be characterised as dynamic and emergent phenom‑ ena”, and they propose a two‑tier system model in which they define macro and micro levels. They further argue that compared to the micro level, the macro level sees “a complexity emerging from its two donor categories, will be viewed as a whole which is less complex and more unified than its parts”. While we give credit to the authors for acknowl‑ edging interculturality as dynamic and emergent, we suggest that their definition contains an element of Newtonian reductionism. Simply put, CDS have a fractal structure which reflects the same levels of complexity throughout the system. Therefore, a CDS cannot be considered as hier‑ archical by any means.

52  From Research to Implications

A framework for the design of intercultural learning materials Earlier in this chapter (see Table 1.1) we discussed different types of systems and their characteristic features with the intention to introduce CDS to the reader. We argued and illustrated through different examples how learning, and intercultural learning in particular, are best described as a CDS which therefore calls for learning materials that allow and promote such learn‑ ing processes. In order to recap, let’s look at the different types of materi‑ als – from a systems perspective – and briefly summarise how they facilitate intercultural learning. We present two major principles on which intercul‑ tural learning materials can be developed: the level of cultural complexity they introduce and the certainty of ‘knowing’ they require from learners (Figure 1.5). Simple learning materials support a teacher‑centred approach to learn‑ ing which focuses on the transmission of cultural facts and knowledge (usually from the big ‘C’ category  –  Culture). They provide information exclusively about the target culture and present it in the form of ‘nation culture’, ignoring colourful cultural varieties that may exist. Learning is

FIGURE 1.5  Intercultural

systems

learning materials across different types of learning

From Research to Implications  53

considered as predictable and learning outcomes lend themselves to stand‑ ardised testing; there is one correct answer to questions. Complicated learning materials introduce more learner engagement, although learning is still teacher directed. There are other cultures intro‑ duced in the materials and students may be asked to discuss their interpre‑ tations of the information presented in the materials. Therefore, it is more difficult – but not impossible – to predict learner answers and design tests that measure their knowledge. These materials also allow for the develop‑ ment of skills and attitudes. Complex learning materials are student centred, and although the instructions guide learners on how to complete tasks, learning is self‑­ organised, and knowledge, together with skills and attitudes, is treated as an emergent phenomenon. These materials facilitate self‑reflection, the re‑examination of concepts previously considered ‘known’, and encourage learners to consider alternative explanations of (inter)cultural phenomena. They prompt the students to consider subcultural and hybrid cultural iden‑ tities and focus on the process of cultural learning, rather than determining a product that can be easily tested. In other words, they allow the develop‑ ment of critical intercultural awareness. Finally, chaotic learning materials may have the potential for promot‑ ing intercultural learning, but it only happens accidentally. There is no in‑ tentionality in facilitating intercultural learning; it happens, if at all, as a by‑product of other learning objectives. Therefore, such materials do not intentionally steer learners towards developing intercultural knowledge, skills, or attitudes. It might seem paradoxical to propose an intrinsically complex and un‑ predictable system as the basis for a guiding framework. However, we maintain that a CDS perspective is an authentic reflection/description of the way interactions occur in language and intercultural classrooms. Incorporating a CDS approach into an intercultural learning materials design model as below, illustrates how it ‘jigsaws’ with principles of inter‑ cultural learning discussed earlier to serve as an overarching pedagogical framework. We noted earlier that this concept intentionally avoided a language learning focus, but acknowledged that it would be a factor in many of the contexts where CCA would be taught e.g. language learning class‑ rooms. We have thus included a set of broadly defined educational objec‑ tives: ‘communicative and interpretive skills’, along with crucial drivers of learning that we discussed above – ‘cognitive and affective challenge’. Table 1.2 below gives the framework for the design of intercultural materials.

Educational Objectives

Intercultural learning Objectives

  1 Make connections between cultures • Cognitive and affective challenge   2 Foster a comparative perspective • Communicative and interpretive skills   3  Exploit cultural universals   4 Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others)   5 Reflect on and question cultural assumptions

Techniques

Why? (CDS rationale)

a Prompt learners to critique, question, probe, analyse, investigate cultures and cultural phenomena

   i Prevent a learning system from reaching equilibrium that leads to the fossilisation of knowledge

b Use multiple resources and tasks that promote learning

ii Allow self‑organisation of knowledge and knowing

c Be open‑ended and flexible

iii Tolerate unpredicted and unplanned learning outcomes

  6 Encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours   7 Provide opportunities to share d Ask learners to present and showcase their individual or experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures collective understanding of intercultural phenomena   8 Develop respect for cultural differences   9  Build bridges between cultures 10 Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures

iv Provide opportunities to capture emergent learning

54  From Research to Implications

TABLE 1.2 Framework for the design of intercultural learning materials (An earlier version can be found in Mishan, 2023)

From Research to Implications  55

A sample intercultural activity, ‘The Johari Window of culture’, is pro‑ vided below to illustrate how this framework works ‘in action’. The activity is then deconstructed to pinpoint how it is derived from the model.

The Johari Window of culture Rationale/Theory The Johari Window is named after the two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, who developed the technique to offer a framework that helps people understand the limits of their self‑awareness. The concept is also known in foreign language teaching through the work of Gertrude Moskow‑ itz (1978) who, in her book titled Caring and sharing in the foreign language class, considered the Johari Window a useful way of encouraging students to build a more accepting classroom atmosphere by getting to know each other better. She wrote: “Through the process of giving and receiving information about ourselves and each other, warmth and closeness develops” (p. 18). The Johari Window uses four quadrants, or windows, to map out what we know or do not know about a person, or what they know about them‑ selves. In the intercultural classroom, this technique allows learners to dis‑ cover more about each other’s cultures in a safe and controlled way. The four windows in the model are called: Arena (Open area), where easily identifiable and visible features of culture are located, Façade (Hidden area) contains information about a culture only known to ‘insiders’, Blind spot, which refers to certain habits, behaviours, or other aspects of a culture obvi‑ ous to outsiders, but not necessarily known by insiders, and the Unknown, which is usually left empty, unless students have access to information previ‑ ously not known to them

Things they know Things they don’t know FIGURE 1.6 

Things I know

Things I do not know

1: Arena (Open area) 2: Façade (Hidden area)

3: Blind spot 4: Unknown

The Johari Window of culture

Procedure This activity works well in multicultural groups, but it is also appropriate in groups that share a common cultural background. 1 Ask learners to work individually and write down five things about their own culture that they consider important in making them who they are.

56  From Research to Implications

2 Ask learners to get into multicultural groups of around four. Distribute copies of the Johari Window of culture to each group, who then discuss each culture in turn and fill in the templates according to the information being shared, and according to what they already know. They focus on Windows 1–3, but obviously, they leave Window 4, ‘Unknown’, empty until the plenary stage. 3 In plenary then, the groups pool what they have learned about each other’s cultures to complete Window 4. Students can also offer their own individual insights for this window; for example, one student may say, “We Turkish people consider Japanese food tasty/strange/interesting/ bland/etc.”. If working with a monocultural group, pick a culture that the students need to explore. The procedure is then the same as above, except that it probably falls to the teacher to provide further information that students may put into their ‘Unknown’ window.

An analysis of the activity Deconstructed in terms of key operative principles from the framework, the activity may be seen to fulfil several of its intercultural learning objectives:

• Objective 4: Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others)

• Objective 5: Encourage participants to reflect on their degree of knowl‑ edge of and assumptions they make about another culture

• Objective 7: Encourage participants to share and empathise with others’ experiences

• Objective 8: Develop participants’ respect for another culture • Objective 10: Create and work within a ‘cultural third space’ As students engage in the learning task  –  both individually and then in groups – they are encouraged to reflect on their own knowledge (e.g. what are the five most important things from their own culture that make them who they are) and assumptions they make about a particular culture as they discuss and compare each other’s assumptions, impressions, stereotypes, and knowledge. In fact, they are required to move beyond stereotypical and cli‑ chéd images when they try to articulate and explain their understanding of someone else’s or their own culture and they are likely to arrive at an individ‑ ual or collective understanding that they need to present to their classmates.

From Research to Implications  57

During the task students need to probe and find out what others know or think about a particular culture, how they know it, and how this knowledge can be validated through other information and sources. This discovery of how knowledge is constructed is not limited to others; students also need to question their own knowledge and beliefs, how and what they understand about others and otherness. Therefore, the activity makes use of the follow‑ ing techniques:

• Technique a: Probe to find out what participants know and don’t know about their own and another culture

• Technique d: Require learners to present and showcase their individual or collective understanding of other culture/s.

From a CDS framework perspective, it can be seen that the learning which takes place during the activity is as varied as the students who are par‑ ticipating in it. It is simply impossible to predict what meanings they will create individually and in their small groups as they discuss cultures among themselves. This is largely because we do not know what prior experiences they have had, what knowledge and assumptions they hold and are willing to share with their partners. Therefore, teachers need to accept that there might be unexpected and unplanned learning emerging from the activity that can take their lesson in directions that they never imagined it could go. Learning is not given to the students; it emerges through discussion and reflection, and it organises itself as the students understand and explore ideas. It is seen not as a product, but as a fluid process that is unlikely to set into any predetermined moulds. Therefore, it is important that some of this learning is captured for later use in the classroom – and the Johari Window activity provides that by capturing emergent learning.

Conclusion In this first part of the book, we have laid out the context of its central concern, introducing and analysing core concepts, notably culture and in‑ tercultural competence. We have situated them within a global 21st‑­century landscape of ever‑shifting populations and increasing transition to the digi‑ tal in every sector of society  –  illustrating, we hope, that competence in intercultural interaction has never been more critical than today. The peda‑ gogy of intercultural competence was also addressed – from how it features in coursebooks to the challenges and concerns with respect to fostering it in the classroom.

58  From Research to Implications

The second part of Part I comprises means of addressing the issues raised in the first; proposing methods for analysing materials designed to promote intercultural competence and, at the end, our own framework for designing such materials. This framework forms the conceptual base for the activities presented in Part II of the book to which we now turn.

Note 1 This section draws on Mishan, 2023.

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Thornbury, S., & Meddings, L. (2001). Using the raw materials. A Dogme ap‑ proach to teaching language. Modern English Teacher, 10(4), 40–43. Thornbury, S., & Meddings, L. (2009). Teaching unplugged: Dogme in English lan‑ guage teaching. Peaslake: DELTA Publishing. Tomlinson, B. (2008). Conclusions about ELT materials in use around the world. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), English language learning materials: A critical review (pp. 319–322). London: Continuum. Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language teaching, 45(2), 143–179. Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2017). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. John Wiley & Sons. Torres, C. A., & Tarozzi, M. (2020). Multiculturalism in the world system: Towards a social justice model of inter/multicultural education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(1), 7–18. UNESCO. (2014). Global citizenship education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century. Paris: UNESCO. Uzum, B., Yazan, B., Zahrawi, S., Bouamer, S., & Malakaj, E. (2021). A compara‑ tive analysis of cultural representations in collegiate world language textbooks (Arabic, French, and German). Linguistics and Education, 61, 100901. Ward, C., & Szabó, Á. (2019). Affect, behavior, cognition, and development: Add‑ ing to the alphabet of acculturation. In D. Matsumoto & H. C. Hwang (Eds.), The handbook of culture and psychology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waters, J. L., & Leung, M. (2017). Trans‑knowledge? Geography, mobility, and knowledge in transnational education. In H. Jöns, P. Meusburger, & M. Heffer‑ nan (Eds.), Mobilities of knowledge (pp. 269–285). Cham: Springer. Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2015). Analyzing culture in foreign language ­textbooks: Methodological and conceptual issues In X. L. Curdt‑Christiansen & C. ­Weninger (Eds.), Language, ideology and education: The politics of textbooks in language education (pp. 50–66). London: Routledge. Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. World Economic Forum. (2020). Schools of the future: Defining new models of educa‑ tion for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum. Xinhua. (2019). Europe opens its arms to Chinese students. China Daily.com.cn. Retrieved from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/19/WS5d09d5c2a3103d bf143291cc_1.html Yamanaka, N. (2006). An evaluation of English textbooks in Japan from the viewpoint of nations in the inner, outer, and expanding circles. JALT Journal, 28(1), 57. Yang, L. H., & Fleming, M. (2013). How Chinese college students make sense of foreign films and TV series: Implications for the development of intercultural communicative competence in ELT. The Language Learning Journal, 41(3), 297–310.

Part II FROM IMPLICATIONS TO APPLICATION

DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385-2

66  From Implications to Application

Introduction In Part I, we justified this book’s focus on intercultural competence as a vital skill in today’s multicultural world, examining the theories, concepts, and influ‑ ences underpinning it. From the concept of intercultural competence, we ex‑ tracted a working pedagogical definition as ‘critical cultural awareness’ (CCA). As the teaching of intercultural competence falls within the sphere of language teaching, we made a brief assessment of its coverage in language teaching publications, then outlined materials evaluation methods for language teach‑ ers to do the same. The pedagogy of intercultural competence was described through the lens of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST). Together with our working definition of CCA, CDST underlies our proposed framework for the development of intercultural learning materials which we implement in this, the practical section of the book (to see how, see Table 2.1 below). Part II is laid out as four sets of materials, one for learners and three for practitioners. The practitioner sets are considered essential preparation for teachers, taking them through the ‘cultural awareness‑raising journey’ which is a prerequisite for leading learners through a similar course of learn‑ ing and discovery. Set (A) consists of materials evaluation tasks for practi‑ tioners, using methods suggested in Part I, i.e. content analysis, semiotic analysis, and critical discourse analysis. This is intended to raise awareness of the intercultural potential of existing coursebooks (or other ready‑made materials). This is followed by the main materials set, Set (B), which con‑ sists of cultural awareness‑raising tasks for use in the intercultural classroom. Set (B) also includes a couple of subsets; literature: the written and spoken word, and learner‑generated materials. Set (C) returns to the practitioner, offering practice in designing intercultural materials, modelled on the activi‑ ties presented in the previous two sets and on the principles of the intercul‑ tural materials development framework proposed in Part I. The final set, Set (D), is also oriented to the practitioner, pointing out the rationale for and means of adapting materials to fit different cultural contexts. Table 2.1 illustrates the use of the framework for intercultural materials development in guiding the design of the learner activities in Set B. It shows how the intercultural learning objectives as given within the framework are used within each of the learner activities (Activities 8–34). While each in‑ dividual activity does not fulfil each and every objective, using combina‑ tions of the many activities here will see the philosophy underpinning the framework enacted. The framework learning objectives are likewise stated in each activity; for instance, in Activity 8 ‘Greetings’, the intercultural learn‑ ing objectives are (1) Make connections between cultures and (2) Foster a comparative perspective.

From Implications to Application  67 TABLE 2.1 Framework for intercultural materials development: learning objectives/

activities

Intercultural learning objectives

Activity

1 Make connections between cultures

8 Greetings 12 A picture paints a thousand words 15 View through a different lens 16 Cooking class 17 Small cultures 18 Six degrees of separation 20 Johari Window of culture 22 The Cultura project 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange 8 Greetings 15 View through a different lens 16 Cooking class 17 Small cultures 20 Johari Window of culture 22 The Cultura project 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 25 The universal language of poetry 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 15 View through a different lens 16 Cooking class 23 Identity boxes 25 The universal language of poetry 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 29 Pop culture 31 Empathy museum 32 Memes 33 Comic strips

2  Foster a comparative perspective

3  Exploit cultural universals

(Continued)

68  From Implications to Application TABLE 2.1  (Continued)

Intercultural learning objectives

Activity

4 Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others)

9 Intercultural handball 10 You’re late! 12 A picture paints a thousand words 14 Combo‑culture 15 View through a different lens 16 Cooking class 17 Small cultures 20 Johari Window of culture 22 The Cultura project 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 29 Pop culture 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange 10 You’re late! 11 Interpreting the visual 12 A picture paints a thousand words 19 I DIVE 21 The ‘smelly socks’ group 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 25 The universal language of poetry 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 28 Story exchange 30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 32 Memes 34 Cultural video exchange 13 Culture iceberg 15 View through a different lens 31 Empathy museum 5 Class human library 16 Cooking class 20 Johari Window of culture 21 The ‘smelly socks’ group 22 The Cultura project 23 Identity boxes 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 29 Pop culture

5 Reflect on and question cultural assumptions

6 Encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours 7 Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures

(Continued)

From Implications to Application  69 TABLE 2.1  (Continued)

Intercultural learning objectives

Activity

7 Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures

30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 32 Memes 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange 10 You’re late! 12 A picture paints a thousand words 14 Combo‑culture 15 View through a different lens 16 Cooking class 20 Johari Window of culture 21 The ‘smelly socks’ group 22 The Cultura project 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange 10 You’re late! 16 Cooking class 18 Six degrees of separation 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange 16 Cooking class 17 Small cultures 20 Johari Window of culture 21 The ‘smelly socks’ group 22 The Cultura project 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 25 The universal language of poetry 26 Don’t sleep, there are snakes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 29 Pop culture 30 Short films 31 Empathy museum 32 Memes 33 Comic strips 34 Cultural video exchange

8 Develop respect for cultural differences

9 Build bridges between cultures

10 Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures

70  From Implications to Application

Before we move onto the activities, a couple of practical notes. First, terminology: in line with contemporary materials development literature (e.g. Mishan & Timmis, 2015; Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2017) by ‘materi‑ als’ we refer to ‘pedagogical activity’ – which may or may not include other resources such as texts, pictures, realia or multimodal resources. The terms materials, activities as well as tasks (used in its ‘weak’ form) are thus used more or less synonymously. Second, carrying out the activities: the loci for the activities suggested here range between the face‑to‑face classroom and hybrid learning i.e. involving an online element, and most of them can be conducted fully online if desired or required. This is an acknowledgement of the normalisation of internet use in our classrooms as in everyday life – it is regularly used by two‑thirds of today’s global citizens according to 2021 statistics (World Internet Us‑ ers Statistics, 2022). The place of technology in our lives took a quantum leap due to the global COVID pandemic of 2020–2021 which, as noted earlier, catapulted interactions in everything from business to entertainment, leisure as well as education, online. The videoconferencing platform Zoom emerged out of relative obscurity. It went from 10 million to 300 million us‑ ers between December 2019 and April 2020 (Business of Apps, 2021) to act as a great leveller during the pandemic, traversing societal, socio‑economic, educational, and international spheres. It was a lifeline to all of these during these circumstances and was exploited in myriad ways thanks to the ingenu‑ ity of its users. This embracing of technology vindicated long‑held claims by some educators and interculturalists about the potential of the online envi‑ ronment as a keenly authentic intercultural space as noted in Part I. Some activities specify the use of particular digital/online applications or websites, and/or use the sorts of devices owned by most students at the time of writing – smartphones, iPads, tablets, and laptops etc. It is impor‑ tant here to add the caveat that technology in general evolves incredibly quickly, giving apps, websites, and devices a notoriously short shelf‑life. Last but by no means least: all the activities proposed here need to be carried out with the discussions on the role of affect and cognition in in‑ tercultural learning, presented in Part I, very much in mind. It must be remembered that while the overall objective of the activities is to sensitise learners to aspects of their own and other’s cultures, how teachers encourage learners to reflect on these itself has to be done with the utmost sensitivity.

Activity Set (A): materials evaluation tasks for practitioners The activities in this and the other practitioner sets, Sets (C) and (D), are devised for use either by teacher trainers or by individual practitioners. Some lend themselves better to a teacher training situation as they involve group

From Implications to Application  71

discussion, while others are more introspective. The activities in this first set are aimed at raising practitioners’ awareness of the intercultural potential of the teaching materials they use, such as coursebooks or other ready‑made materials. The activities offer practice in implementing the various materials evaluation methodologies described in Part I Section 3, content analysis, semiotic analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Some of the activities in this set could, finally, be used with (probably more advanced) adult learners, at the teacher’s discretion – activities suitable for this are flagged.

1. Evaluation checklists Introduction

Checklists have frequently been used to guide teachers in their evaluation of published materials. Some only contain a few items, whereas others can be very extensive. The checklist used here (Byram & Masuhara, 2013) has been specifically designed to measure any materials’ potential to develop learners’ intercultural competence. The basic categories in the checklist, i.e. knowledge, awareness, attitudes, and skills, refer to Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural competence (as discussed in Part I). Procedure

Choose a piece of material from a coursebook you are familiar with. Look at the checklist and consider to what extent (1 – not at all, 4 – very much) the material would support learners in the areas given in Table 2.2. below. TABLE 2.2  Evaluation checklist: Criteria for evaluating materials for intercultural

education

Area Knowledge

Awareness

1

2

3

4

Discover the diversity of cultures (theirs and others) at different levels (e.g. individual, community, nation) Understand the historical backgrounds of diverse cultures (theirs and others) Understand the social backgrounds of diverse cultures (theirs and others) Become aware of assumptions, values, and attitudes of the self and others beneath utterances and behaviours Reappraise what they take for granted in the light of how others from different cultures may see them (Continued)

72  From Implications to Application TABLE 2.2 Continued

Area Attitudes

Skills

1

2

3

4

Treat cultures including their own in a relative or decentralised way Be open when interpreting what they see and read without being judgemental Be emphatic Be wary of stereotyping Retain their identities and acknowledge those of others Interact effectively with people from different social groups Learn about the cultures of various social groups Interpret perceived differences within historical and social contexts Assess situations sensitively Identify options for preventing or solving cultural conflicts Acquire appropriate language from exposure to language in use in various cultures Acquire effective language use from purposeful opportunities to use it in various cultural contexts

Adapted from (Byram & Masuhara, 2013, p. 151).

Content analysis 2. Locally‑used materials Introduction

As we said in Part I, content analysis is a quick and often reliable tool to get a general idea about cultural biases materials may carry. Content analysis most often, but not in all cases, relies on quantifying what you see in the materials to draw conclusions about them. For example, if a picture shows a Ferrari next to a Mercedes, the analysis may conclude that the material equally represents both Italian and German cultures. It can focus on the representation of cultures, ethnicities and races, social classes, gender, and so on, and cultural products either from the small ‘c’ cultures of everyday life, or the big ‘C’ cultures of arts and history.

From Implications to Application  73

Procedure

Look at the materials you are currently using and consider the following ques‑ tions. The questions are grouped around different focal points of investigation.

Gender a What is the balance between the genders in the materials? b How many gender identities are represented in the materials? c What jobs do female/male characters usually have in the materials? What are these? d Are there any jobs where the writer uses gender as a qualifier e.g. ‘a fe‑ male doctor’? e What roles do female/male characters play in the stories in the materials (main character vs supporting character)?

Cultures a What major nation cultures are represented in the materials? How are they represented? Through products, events, people? b Are there any subcultures represented in the materials (e.g. bird watch‑ ers, gamers, Peranakan Chinese in Malaysia)? c Is the material monocultural or multicultural in its representation of peo‑ ple, events, and artefacts?

Ethnicities and races a How ‘colourful’ is the material, i.e. how many races are represented? Which races are these? b Is there a predominant group (racial/cultural) represented in the mate‑ rial? Which one is it? Why do you think this is the predominant group? c Is there any representation of different ethnic groups (either majority or minority groups) in the materials?

Social class a Do characters in the book come from the same social class, and have the same socio‑economic background? b Is there a particular social class that dominates the materials? Can you explain why? c How would you describe people holding different jobs in the book e.g. doctors as opposed to cleaners? Do they come from a particular social class, race, and ethnic group?

74  From Implications to Application

3. Enact: Learn languages through culture Introduction

This activity uses content analysis techniques to critically evaluate an EU‑funded website designed for language and culture learning, Enact: Learn languages through culture (Enact, n.d.). The principle on which Enact is based is that universal activities such as walking, cooking, music, dance, and creative arts projects like making posters, masks, and photogra‑ phy are all activities that, when shared in a multicultural group, can promote intercultural learning, understanding, respect, and empathy. Enact offers what it calls ‘language learning through culture’, in the form of task‑based ‘culture‑specific’ activities such as origami, making Turkish shadow‑puppets or Chinese lanterns, with the objective of fostering “intercultural and inter‑ generational social cohesion and understanding through a two‑way knowl‑ edge system” (from the Enact web page). On the one hand, these activities may be taken ‘at face value’ and used with learners as they are set, as task‑based activities which can be used for intercultural learning, language learning, or both. From another perspec‑ tive, however, they may be seen as classic examples of stereotyping of the type that we would be wary of – in which case, they may still provide a useful trigger for considering a critical approach to the representation of culture. Procedure

1 Browse the Enact website and consider whether the ‘culture‑specific’ ac‑ tivities presented on the site: • Celebrate cultural differences? • Serve to perpetuate stereotypes? • Act as early‑stage introductions to intercultural difference? 2 Building on ‘stereotyping’, discuss its abstract basis, ‘essentialism’. As described in Part I, essentialism refers to the reducing of culture to its visual manifestation; artefacts like food, festivals, dress, etc. Through an essentialist lens, ‘cultural activities’ such as those featured in Enact and the sort of ‘multicultural events’ commonly held in language schools and universities – where people from different cultural backgrounds showcase their cuisine, music, national dress, and so on – can be seen as favouring stereotyping; exoticising and exaggerating cultural ‘difference’ in what Holliday calls “boutique” multiculturalism (2019, p. 140).

From Implications to Application  75

3 Look at this extract from the novel ‘The Committed’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen which expresses such a view: Staging a cultural show [is] really an acknowledgement of one’s infe‑ riority. The truly powerful rarely need to put on a show, since their culture [is] always everywhere. (Nguyen, 2021, p. 63) 4 Consider/discuss whether you agree with this viewpoint. 5 If you consider that the site is appropriate as a cultural learning tool, do one or a selection of the following: • Evaluate the ready‑made task‑based activities on the site with a view to using them in your own teaching context. • Devise different cultural learning activities using these materials. • Avail of the ‘Create’ facility on the website to create materials for your own teaching context.

4. ‘The Human Library’ Introduction

The human library is quite literally ‘a library of people’ who ‘readers’ can ‘borrow’ in order to hear their story. The library states: “Every human book from our bookshelf, represent a group in our society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diag‑ nosis, belief, disability, social status, ethnic origin etc.” (Lorentzen, 2019). The library tagline ‘unjudge someone’ explains its rationale; to enable peo‑ ple to meet others from stigmatised groups or ones who are discriminated against, and who they may not normally have access to, in order to help them gain insight and understanding into the group/s. Its aim is therefore peda‑ gogic, to improve understanding of diversity, and it is used in sectors such as second and third‑level education, medical training, and civic engagement. Groups represented, as shown on the website, include the homeless, people with autism, HIV and bipolar disorder, refugees, soldiers with PTSD, and alcoholics. The website offers photographs, extracts from these people’s sto‑ ries, why they are included, and the stereotypes and discrimination they face. The objective of this activity is to critically evaluate the ’Human Library’ as a learning resource, using content analysis (or other analytical methods). The task is conceived for practitioners and teacher trainers but could be used with more advanced and/or adult learners.

76  From Implications to Application

Procedure

1 Access and browse the centralised human library website https://hu‑ manlibrary.org/ (Lorentzen, 2019) and/or its national sites which are linked from there. It is a good idea to engage with one or more of the ‘human books’ to get a sense of how the library works. 2 The site presents as its ‘human books’, people, and their stories, from groups who may be disadvantaged, mistrusted, discriminated against, and stereotyped. • Consider to what degree it succeeds (or has the potential to succeed) in improving understanding of diversity. • Consider whether/to what degree it runs the risk that classifying peo‑ ple within such groupings might reinforce stereotyping. • Consider the pros and cons of using the human library with learners at second/third level (one of its stated functions). If you estimate that the human library could be a useful resource to enhance learners’ awareness and understanding of diversity, design some procedures for its pedagogical use. A sample is offered below.

5. ‘Class Human Library’ Introduction

The following activity is built on the ‘Human Library’ concept, asking the intercultural learners to consider other points of views, to develop empathy towards others and otherness. In terms of the intercultural learning objec‑ tives this activity is aligned with the following: (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures. Procedure

1 Explain the concept of ‘The Human Library’ (see the introduction to Activity 4 above) and tell students that they are going to compile a ‘class human library’. 2 Give the students some time to browse the website https://humanli‑ brary.org/ and suggest they engage with one or more of the ‘human books’ to get a sense of how the library works. 3 Get them to write questions on what they would like to find out from their ‘human book’.

From Implications to Application  77

4 Suggest that they invite people from different cultures for interviews (face‑to‑face or via a communications app such as Zoom). You the teacher may prefer to screen their suggestions first to ensure their fit, or even source people for this part of the activity. 5 Get students to conduct and transcribe each interview. 6 Ask them to upload it as one ‘book’ in the class’s human library. 7 Encourage the class to browse the ‘books’ their classmates have added to the library. 8 The reflective stage involves exploring and evaluating the human library created. Ask learners to compare and contrast the stories and discuss in groups or in plenary; • • • •

What differences were there between the stories, and what similarities? Did the stories confirm their expectations of the ‘book’ subject? Did anything surprise them? Which story/ies did they like, and why?

9 Discussion (in plenary): • What do they feel they have learnt from the experience of interviewing subjects? • How have the ‘books’ in the library itself contributed to their aware‑ ness and understanding of diversity? Note: The ‘Class Human Library’ task can be classified as a learner‑gener‑ ated material too, as it is the learners who provide and generate input for the learning process, so as such it could equally have been placed in the learner‑generated material sub‑section in Activity Set B.

6. Semiotic analysis: levels of meaning‑making Introduction

We earlier noted the preference of today’s youth for the visual, enacted on digital platforms and their use of the online environment as a creative mul‑ timodal playground. The abundance of audio‑visual and graphic material found there – photographs, videos, memes, and so on – while not originally designed for pedagogy, can be harvested for cultural learning. Especially if interpreted via semiotic analysis (described in Part I), such materials have enormous potential for raising cultural awareness by surfacing cultural sche‑ mas, exposing cultural assumptions and, in multicultural groups in particu‑ lar, expanding cultural knowledge. We will refer here to textbooks as the most often used and standardised teaching material which, as we argued in Part I, are in constant need of

78  From Implications to Application

adaptation and contextualisation in order to make them appropriate for a particular learner group (see also Activity Set (D)). Textbooks usually con‑ tain both textual and visual information, the latter in the form of pictures, graphics, and text boxes that draw the learners’ attention to particular in‑ formation. The images are usually used to illustrate the texts (highlighting characters, events, actions, and particular vocabulary items). When students work with the materials and perceive them as signs, representations of cer‑ tain ideas, practices, and realities, they interpret and make meaning of them in ways that take them on a complex journey of thoughts and feelings. During this process, meaning‑making happens at three levels when inter‑ acting with materials: global, cultural/subcultural, and individual (Kiss & Weninger, 2017). In this activity, semiotic analysis is suggested in two stages: first, for teachers so that they can experience it firsthand, and second, for students. (1) Exploring the self

Since most teachers share the same sociocultural/cultural context(s) with their learners, unless they are working with migrant students or as an expa‑ triate teacher, one way to predict how students may react to the materials is to explore how you yourself would interpret them. Procedure

1 Select for analysis a piece of material or materials from a textbook used in the teaching context. 2 Look at the images and texts in the selected textbook materials and ask yourself the following questions: • What are the first three words that come to your mind when you look at the images/texts? Write down these words. • What do you feel when you look at the images/texts? Are you curious, excited, happy, sad, nervous, anxious, etc.? Write down your reaction. • How do you think your students would react to these images/texts? Would their reaction be different or similar to yours? Try to explain your answer. • Based on your recorded answers, how would you approach using these materials for teaching intercultural communication in the classroom? How would you introduce the topic, i.e. what connections would you use to other topics/events/objects/etc. that your students might be familiar with? How would you manage their feelings (either similar to or different from yours) to fuel their energy towards learning? If they are curious, how would you use that to promote learner autonomy? If they are indifferent, how would you entice their curiosity?

From Implications to Application  79

(2) Exploring your learners Procedure

The procedures are similar to (1) where you as teachers explore your own meaning‑making processes but they are now used with students. As pre‑ viously, use for analysis material/s from a textbook used in the teaching context. 1 Ask students to look at the material and write down the first three things that come to their mind. These can be either put on the board as a mind map and/or spidergram or shared in smaller groups. 2 Discuss the meanings by eliciting explanations from students and ask them to explore any similarities or differences that may occur. Similarly, you can ask them what feelings they have when they look at the mate‑ rial; do they feel curious, excited, nervous, happy, sad, etc.? The answers students provide will enable you to have a better understanding of how they relate to certain materials and identify some of their core values and beliefs that could be used when teaching intercultural communication. It also provides you with ideas on how to exploit the teaching material and any further material which contains similar images/texts or topics.

Critical discourse analysis: working with texts 7. Texts from language coursebooks Introduction

Sometimes culture or cultural bias can be hidden in the text itself. This is when critical discourse analysis can illuminate how texts are used to influence their readers. Teaching materials are cultural artefacts that carry a particular worldview and values that reflect the dominant ideology of the context in which they are produced. This is often referred to as the ‘hidden curriculum’ (see for example, Cunningsworth, 1995; Garton & Graves, 2019; McGrath, 2013), a socialisation process that is not part of the officially defined content in curriculum documents and advocates “a particular way of life, a particular understanding of the world” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 178). The following two sample CDA activities (Procedure 1 and Procedure 2), present excerpts from a textbook, each with follow‑up questions. Note: The activities might be used with higher level learners as well as a means of encouraging them to think critically about the learning materials they are asked to use.

80  From Implications to Application

Procedure 1

Look at the text from a Malaysian textbook (Lim, 2010, p. 136) below and answer the questions. Last week, the apartment community where I live showed the spirit of Muhibbah still exists. The residents of the apartment organized a Malam Muhibbah to celebrate their unity amid the diversity. What was most pleas‑ ant to note was the care given to ensure that various cultural sensitivities were respected. The programme started at 8 p.m., out of respect for the prayer times of the Muslim community. The food served was of course halal but no beef was served either. The children performed cultural dances as part of the event. It was refreshing to see a cross‑cultural performance in which Malay, Chinese and Indian dances were performed by children. There was a Chinese girl in baju kurung doing a Malay dance, Malay and Indian kids doing the Chinese fan dance and a Chinese boy dressed up as a king doing an Indian dance. Residents dined together in the spirit of neighbourliness.

a What is the text about? b What cultures are represented in the text? c Do you think there is equal representation of the cultures you have listed as your answer to question (b)? Justify your answer? d Underline all non‑English words in the text. Can you tell what language they are from and what they mean? e Is there a balanced representation of the cultures mentioned in the text? Is there a culture that is more dominant than the others? Procedure 2

Look at another text from the same source and answer the questions.

Malaysia is a unique country in many ways it is a multiracial nation with diversified culture, customs and religions. The people have been enjoying peace, harmony and unity in diversity since independence. It would not be wrong to say that Malaysia has become the model or rather the envy of many countries, especially those with a multiracial composition. We

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Malaysians can take pride in this. However, we should not be complacent but to continue to nurture and reinforce this strong bond of “one for all, all for one”. This is reflected in the country’s celebration in conjunction with his 50th anniversary, when in the midst of fireworks and flag waving, a prayer for continuous peace and unity among its races and religions was said. Malay‑ sia’s Premier also used his anniversary speech, made in the midnight hour of the nation’s birth, to voice pride in the country’s record of religious toler‑ ance and social interaction. “We must take care of our unity and we must be ready to destroy any threat which may affect our unity,” said the Prime Minister to thousands of Malaysians who had turned up in the capital’s main square to celebrate the occasion. In Merdeka Square, as helicopters sprinkled the crowd with powder in the red, white, yellow and blue colours of the national flag, thought of whatever religious and racial tension gave away to a party of harmonious atmosphere. Thousands of dancers, a choir of around 2300 teachers and 1000 drummers performed patriotic songs, watched by Malaysia’s King and Queen and dozens of foreign dignitaries. The leaders of Asian countries also gathered on the podium to watch the celebrations, which included a fly‑past by Malaysia’s Russian‑made jet fighters. Conspicuously present at the Merdeka celebration were foreigners, most of whom were tourists who included the national day celebration as part of their itinerary. “It’s wonderful to be in a country that is so rich in customs, traditions and religions. The people are warm, friendly, and very hospitable. What marvels me is the peace and unity among the various races. There is much to be learnt for the people of my country”, remarked a tourist. “I’ve been to Malaysia a number of times,” said another tourist. “I often choose this country as my destination not only because of its rich flora and fauna and culture, but also because of the colorful celebrations of their cul‑ ture and religions. I’m particularly impressed by the open house concept, in which other races will come together to celebrate as one big family. I have attended open houses during Hari Raya Puasa, Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Christmas Day. The spirit of harmony and unity is at its best during these wonderful occasions. When I told my folk back home about my experience, they not only marvelled at it but pledged to come to Malaysia to see it for themselves”.

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“I am happy to live in Malaysia. There is peace and harmony here,” remarked an ethnic Chinese schoolteacher, who came to the Square with her five‑year‑old daughter and husband, who flew a small Malaysian flag from his baseball cap. “As you can see, in terms of peace and stability, we are much better off than many of our neighboring countries, not to talk of countries, not to talk of the world. All this would not have been possible if there was no unity in the country. We must therefore preserve it at all cost”. (Lim, 2010, p.138)

a What is the text about? b Is this an authentic text, i.e. written for a purpose other than language teaching? What evidence do you have to support your answer? c What ideology do you think the writer promotes? Why do you think they would like to do so? d How do you think students would react to this text? Why?

Activity Set (B): learner activities for fostering (critical) cultural awareness As we have emphasised throughout, personal and cultural sensitivities of learners are paramount in engaging in intercultural (and admittedly any) learning activity. Because culture is such a sensitive area, it is particularly important when planning intercultural learning to build up learners’ trust and confidence in the process. As well as this, building intercultural aware‑ ness requires staging, in a similar way to building up language competence. The first (the main) set of activities below are therefore (roughly) ordered to develop intercultural awareness step‑by‑step, starting with exploring un‑ derstanding of the notion of culture in general before gradually introducing activities that probe a more personal level.

8. Greetings Introduction

Even the simple words used as greetings in different languages have differ‑ ent meanings and give cultural clues. This activity is a good ice‑breaker. It acts as a simple and useful ‘entry point’ for thinking about language and culture. While it works best in multicultural and/or multilingual groups, it

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also demonstrates how multilingual even the most superficially ‘monolin‑ gual’ group can be. Intercultural learning objectives: (1) Make connections between cultures. (2) Foster a comparative perspective. Procedure

1 Ask learners to work in small multicultural/multilingual groups. 2 Individually, each learner thinks of and notes down the words used as a greeting in all the languages that he/she knows (e.g. ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ in English, ‘‫ ’السالم عليكم‬in Arabic). 3 The group then compile a list of all the greetings they know collectively. 4 They then consider the meanings of the greetings. For instance, ‘good morning’ in English wishes the interlocutor a good day/morning, while ‘‫ ’السالم عليكم‬in Arabic means ‘peace be upon you’ and ‘‫ ’שלום‬in Hebrew means ‘peace’. 5 In plenary, pool all the greetings on the board. The number of different languages represented might well be surprising and should draw learners’ attention to how multilingual the group is. 6 Finally, ask the learners to point out any particular meanings of the greet‑ ings they have come up with, and discuss any cultural clues the greeting offers about the language/culture.

9. Intercultural handball Introduction

This activity is intended to act as a lightweight way to initiate thinking about different cultures and to elicit learners’ (superficial) cultural knowledge. Ide‑ ally, the students stand in a large circle for this activity so that they can toss a ball or beanbag to each other. Alternatively, learners can remain at their desks and nominate each other. Intercultural learning objective: (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). Procedure

Explain the procedure, which is that one student nominates another by throwing the ball/beanbag to him/her and naming a country. The receiver

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has to say one thing s/he identifies with that country. Then s/he throws the ball/beanbag to another student, calling out a country, and so on. A sample dialogue might go as follows: Student 1: (throwing ball to Student 2) Italy. Student 2: Pasta. (throwing ball to Student 3) Saudi Arabia. Student 3: Oil. (throwing ball to Student 4) China. Student 4: Communism. (throwing ball, etc.) Teacher awareness and control are important in this game. The use of coun‑ tries rather than nationalities is to avoid the risk of stereotyping if the latter were used. This is not to say that the game might not evolve in that direc‑ tion (Student 4’s response might already signal a subtle shift), so the teacher needs to be on the alert if this extends to negative stereotyping. From the teacher‑as‑materials‑developer viewpoint, the identifications students make can form useful starting points for other intercultural activities.

10. ‘You’re late!’ Introduction

The objective of this activity is to raise learners’ awareness about how rela‑ tive even deceptively simple concepts like ‘being early/late’ are to people of different cultures. As intercultural communication involves both verbal and non‑verbal cues, the use of space and time are important non‑verbal codes to consider in an interaction. As Adler and Rodman (2006, p. 178) explain, in a culture … that values time highly, waiting can be an indicator of status. ‘Important’ people (whose time is supposedly more valuable than that of others) may be seen by appointment only, whereas it is acceptable to intrude without notice on lesser beings. This activity works best in multicultural groups. Intercultural learning objectives: (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (9) Build bridges between cultures.

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Procedure

This works well if the list below is read aloud by the teacher, pausing be‑ tween each item. (This list itself is unavoidably culturally determined. The teacher may wish to adjust it to fit their own cultural context.) 1 Ask learners to write down times (8 o’clock, 7.30 etc.) according to their concept of the following: • • • • •

You were late for work You arrive early for your 9 o’clock meeting (or class) You arrive late for your 9 o’clock meeting (or class) The shops are open late tonight You are invited for dinner to some friends • What time would they tell you to come? • What time would you arrive?

• The train is late (by how much?) • You are invited to a party • What time would the host invite you? • What time would you arrive? 2 Ask learners to team up in groups, ideally something like three people from different countries/cultures, and compare the times they have noted. 3 Ask the groups to discuss: • What they can learn about concepts of time in different cultures. • How these different concepts of time might have potential for inter‑ cultural (mis‑) understanding. 4 In plenary, brainstorm what the groups have come up with. 5 Extend this to the discussion of other cultural concepts that might have the potential for intercultural (mis‑) understanding (for example, ges‑ tures, modes of dress).

11. Interpreting the visual Introduction

There are many triggers for intercultural exploration in the language class‑ room that teachers should be on the alert for that are not in themselves explicitly ‘about’ culture. The most salient of these are the types of visuals

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described earlier – pictures, graphics, and especially photographs. While lan‑ guage coursebooks are full of illustrations, it has been pointed out that these are inadequately exploited, often serving merely an illustrative or even deco‑ rative purpose (see, e.g. Hill, 2013). Yet photographs carry a wealth of cul‑ tural information that is there to be uncovered. What is more, as has been pointed out in the section on semiotics in Part I, we interpret visual images according to the schemas that we have created through cultural, learning, and personal experiences. One image may tell a different story to different people, especially if they come from different cultural backgrounds. It is therefore valuable to capture learners’ semiotic engagement with the visuals; their individual interpretation through their individual cultural and experi‑ ential lens. This means that an image serves first and foremost as a stimulus. It can prompt discussions that go in any number of directions depending on the individuals participating and can promote ‘cultural learning’ drawn not only from the image itself, but from the individuals reacting to it; it is the learners who create cultural meanings in the language classroom by a complex process of interpreting, relating, and evaluating, therefore the meanings are not predetermined by the materials that they use. In the fol‑ lowing activity, adapted from Mishan (2023), we will explore how visuals can be used for intercultural learning. Intercultural learning objective: (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. Procedure

What is presented here is more of a ‘template’ for exploiting visuals wher‑ ever encountered, whether in the coursebook, authentic material, or realia. These prompts might be employed as what are often called ‘teachable mo‑ ments’, where the practitioner takes unpredicted/unplanned opportunities to open out class discussion; in this case, in the direction of discovering ‘hidden’ cultural information. A sample photograph is used here with an example of the types of prompts that the teacher (or indeed the learners) might generate in order to guide response, discovery, and evaluation. Some of the elements of the I DIVE activity (Activity 19) can be seen to be at play here, with learners encouraged to move from observing to interpreting and evaluating. Sample prompts for this photograph (Figure 2.1):

• What is the relationship between the four people here? • What is the hierarchy/power dynamic/s between them? • How would you interpret their body language?

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FIGURE 2.1 

Photograph for interpretation

Source: www.pexels.com

• Does there appear to be differentiation or segregation between race, cul‑ ture, gender or age?

• What is the socio‑economic class of these people (is this the same for all

of the individuals?) • What does the setting say about wealth in this society? • Compare and contrast what you see in the photograph with a meeting in your own society. • Compare and contrast other elements in the photograph with your own society. Encourage learners to express their responses and attitudes to the photo‑ graph and/or the figures in it, and to justify these.

12. A picture paints a thousand words Introduction

Staying with the visual, this activity homes in on the idea of cultural interpre‑ tation. We interpret visual images according to the schemas (cultural sche‑ mas included) we have created through learning and personal experiences. Therefore, it is not surprising that one image may tell a different story to

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different people, especially if they come from different cultural backgrounds and our interpretations of images would generally fall into three broader categories: (a) universal meanings, (b) cultural and subcultural meanings, and (c) individual meanings (Kiss & Weninger, 2017). Universal mean‑ ings are generally shared across cultures based on signs that are interpreted similarly all over the world. For example, a smile will be generally consid‑ ered a sign of a happy/friendly person. Cultural and subcultural meanings on the other hand are anchored in the common histories and experiences of particular groups and are not shared broadly beyond the boundaries of these cultural entities. Finally, individual meanings are personal; they are created as a response of the individual’s cognitive and affective processes as they interact with the image. In a way, these meanings are unpredictable as each individual has different personal histories, psychological traits, and personalities. The rationale for using visuals as an intercultural activity is to openly discuss meaning‑making processes and recognise that meanings we create are both culturally and personally bound. We can only understand how one reacts to an image, and in the broader sense to any kind of information or event, if we understand how these relate to our own cultural selves. This activity, therefore, allows learners to share and discuss their own cultures based on what they are about to share and reveal to others. It also encour‑ ages comparisons and collaborative meaning‑making that implies openness and acceptance towards otherness. Intercultural learning objectives: (1) Make connections between cultures. (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. Procedure

1 Give the learners an image that depicts a particular cultural practice or tradition. For example, it could be a picture of the Indian Holi festival, or the Hungarian Busójárás (Culture Trip, 2017). Of course, there are many other possibilities here. A valuable image repository is UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2022). One image can be used with the whole class, or a different image may be given to each group. 2 Ask learners to get into groups of four or five. (If a different image is be‑ ing used with each group, give each their picture, otherwise project it to the class/hand out copies of it).

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3 Give learners five minutes to work individually and write down as many things as they can that come to their minds when they look at the image. They can use words, short phrases, or full sentences. 4 When the time is up, ask them to share with their groups what they have written. They will need to explain to each other meanings that are not commonly shared – encourage them to ask questions to probe and ex‑ plore the ideas as a group. 5 In plenary, groups then share the meanings they have talked about with the class – this is especially fruitful if each small group has been working on a different picture.

13. Culture iceberg Introduction

The metaphor of culture as an iceberg, nine‑tenths of it ‘hidden’ under‑ water and only one‑tenth visible externally – in aspects like clothing and behaviour  –  has been much‑used (some would say, over‑used) in teach‑ ing about culture. Originally attributed to Weaver (1986), the iceberg model is nevertheless very useful in the early stages of cultural and inter‑ cultural learning. Asked to consider which aspects of culture come above and, more importantly, below the waterline of the culture iceberg, obliges learners to consider the roots of the more superficial aspects of culture they are aware of. Intercultural learning objective: (6) Encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours. Procedure

1 Explain the general idea of the activity, an iceberg as a metaphor for culture, etc. In plenary, brainstorm some ‘aspects of culture’ to act as starting points (e.g. dress, cuisine, language, values), but only to the point at which the students have got the idea of what is meant. It is more use‑ ful for them to come up with others themselves as they complete their iceberg model. 2 The main part of the activity is best done in small groups. Ask one mem‑ ber of each group to draw a large outline of an iceberg, with the waterline marked. 3 Ask learners to work in their groups and mark aspects of culture (the ones brainstormed and others) either above or below the waterline.

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FIGURE 2.2 

Sample culture iceberg

4 Once models are completed, pool the groups’ ideas in plenary. Show a blank iceberg model on a board/whiteboard etc. and ask the groups to suggest where they have placed various aspects of culture. This should produce both a large number of ‘aspects’ of culture, as well as debate as to where some of them are positioned. For instance, is language above, below – or perhaps on – the waterline? (Figure 2.2 shows a sample ‘cul‑ ture iceberg’ thus produced). 5 From a materials development viewpoint, eliciting the learners’ ideas of what constitutes culture, ‘aspects of culture’, provides an important data‑ base of learner knowledge to act as starting points for other intercultural activities, such as those offered here.

14. ‘Combo‑culture’ Introduction

We have already discussed the concept of the internet as an authentic in‑ tercultural environment, a virtual ‘third space’. We note that this prospect is somewhat dampened by the risks of asking learners (particularly young adults) to surf online without the necessary critical digital literacy which many have not (yet) acquired, so this type of activity would need to be at the teacher’s discretion. One aspect of technology that has been explored in the context of lan‑ guage pedagogy, is its potential for creativity. Creativity is, of course, the topmost of the critical thinking skills discussed in Part I as being so essential

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for learning, utilising, and building on all the other higher order thinking skills – the abilities to apply, analyse and evaluate knowledge. Creative tasks are commonly set in intercultural activities, partly because they go beyond individual cultures to a ‘neutral zone’ – as this task illustrates. This activ‑ ity (adapted from Mishan, 2023) has as its chief objective, the building of intercultural knowledge and openness to cultural diversity. It deploys important digital literacy skills such as searching and evaluating and invites creative skills in designing an imaginary composite culture using attributes from others. Intercultural learning objectives: (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. Procedure

The interactional parts of this activity can take place in the face‑to‑face classroom or via videoconferencing (e.g. Zoom, Skype, MS Teams) or mo‑ bile Apps (e.g. WhatsApp, FaceTime), or in blended mode, depending on circumstances. 1 Set the task by informing learners that they are going to build an im‑ aginary composite culture, using as building blocks, selected character‑ istics from other world cultures. To structure this, a good first stage is to use an image like the ‘culture iceberg’ to identify and list ‘elements’ of culture – dress, language, cuisine, for example above the waterline; aspects like gender roles on the waterline – and ‘hidden ones’ like values and beliefs below it. (The full ‘culture iceberg’ activity can be found as Activity 13). 2 Ask learners to work in groups of two, three, or four. The first stage of their task is to research these cultural elements in different world cultures. Encourage students to use their existing knowledge of other cultures as a starting point; for instance, one might recall reading about an Amazo‑ nian tribe that had no specific words for direction (i.e. left or right). The group or one group member might research this to discover that this is in fact the Pirahãs (described in Daniel Everett’s book Don’t sleep, there are snakes, 2008), and then decide if they would like this as a feature of their culture. As for cuisine, they may, perhaps, consider vegetarianism, influenced by religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. 3 Once the group has built up their ‘combo‑culture’ based on chosen elements from different world cultures they have researched, ask them to name it and introduce it to the rest of the class as members of that

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cultural community. This is intended to build up an ‘empathy’ with their created culture. Other classmates are encouraged to ask questions and perhaps even challenge from the perspective of a member of their own combo‑culture. 4 Reflective stage, in plenary: • Pull together what students feel they have learnt from this activity and whether/how it has developed their cultural awareness; so as well as building up knowledge of other world cultures, to what degree has this task helped in opening up, challenging, or changing perspectives or assumptions about other cultures – or indeed, their own? • Encourage students to reflect on and describe the experience of ‘step‑ ping into the shoes’ of a member of an unfamiliar cultural community.

15. View through a different lens Introduction

As noted in activity 14 and elsewhere, we conceive of the internet as an authentic intercultural environment, a virtual ‘third space’. While a ‘normal‑ ised’ part of our lives today, negotiating it for educational purposes involves cyber‑safety constraints. One tried and trusted platform that is commonly used in culture and language learning is Facebook, where secure private groups can be created on which learners can interact together safely. Hence the numerous studies using Facebook and similar platforms to develop learners’ intercultural competence via ‘controlled’ projects such as twinned group/class ‘cultural/language exchanges’. Participating in online intercul‑ tural communication without this control, “in the wild” as Thorne (2010, p. 144) calls it, is unquestionably more authentic and can lead to “deeper cultural insights” (Godwin‑Jones, 2019, p. 20); but it takes us up against the cyber‑security issues just mentioned. It also requires a level of digital literacy, which we looked at in Part I, skills such as interpreting and critically evaluating information sourced online (often in different media, graphic, video, audio, as well as text) – the latter ability is itself, usefully, a part of CCA. The deft use of technology should not be confused with genuine digital literacy, however, so the degree of autonomy in online searching, along with language proficiency level (if the language being used is a second or other language) is clearly at the teacher’s discretion. This task activates reflection on one’s own culture (‘making the familiar strange’) by offering a view through a different cultural lens. Intercultural learning objectives: (1) Make connections between cultures. (2) Foster a comparative perspective.

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(3) Exploit cultural universals. (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). (6) Encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours. (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. Procedure

1 Ask the (intercultural) class to compile a list of festivities common to all their cultures; this list might include weddings, birthdays, national, or religious festivals. 2 Members of the class then get into pairs representing different cultures. Each pair then chooses to research online into one festivity – but in their partner’s culture. For example, the pair may choose to find out about weddings in each other’s cultures. 3 The ‘research’ step involves searching online on any platforms or social media available to the learners or that the teacher considers appropriate. Learners work independently researching their chosen festivity and com‑ pile their understanding of what happens in this festivity in their partner’s culture. For example, this may include collecting information in various media, videos, photographs, and, depending on their proficiency level and the teacher’s objectives for the activity, may involve them writing an outline. (The teacher may wish to prepare a guide for this stage). 4 Once students have collected their information, ask them to reassemble in their intercultural pairs and exchange the information they have dis‑ covered (this can be face‑to‑face or via videoconferencing/Apps). Again, the teacher may wish to offer instructions as to how this should proceed bearing in mind the dual aim of the activity. For example, each student may be asked in turn to describe their understanding of how the festivity proceeds in their partner’s culture. In this scenario, while Student One listens to Student Two describing a wedding in Student One’s culture, this should stimulate the latter to reflect on this ‘view through another lens’. It will also probably prompt them to want to react to Student Two’s understanding – to ‘correct’ it, to comment on or query it. 5 Reflective stage, in plenary: • Encourage students to reflect on what they feel they have learnt by this activity; how it has challenged or changed perspectives or assump‑ tions about their own cultures – and those of others. • Encourage them to think about how the activity has opened out their perspectives on their own and others’ cultures and how it has illus‑ trated the sorts of erroneous assumptions that can be made. • Help students recognise connections and universals in the festivals –  for instance, in all cultures, a wedding involves many cultural conven‑ tions (although these vary), a level of formality and feasting.

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16. Cooking class Introduction

Cultural ‘universals’ are a frequent starting point for learning about other cultures and there are few aspects more universal than food and cooking. Talking about food and cuisine are thus practically a default for learning something about other cultures and few language coursebooks are without their unit on these. It is easy to fall into the essentialist trap here, however; better intercultural understanding arises from actually interacting with food preparation – where situations permit of course. This activity is based on those used in a project called ‘Heart and Parcel’ run for women from migrant com‑ munities in Manchester, UK, which includes classes combining cooking with ESOL (reported in Tremayne, 2019). The classes involve cooking dishes from the women’s different backgrounds and are ostensibly for language learning. They are very successful in that regard, with a lot of interesting vocabulary learnt, but the aspect focused on in this activity is the positive interactions and intercultural learning that takes place in such a process. As an additional note here, cooking is just one of many activities that, when shared in a multicultural group, can promote intercultural learning, understanding, respect, and empathy. The web App Enact described in Activity 3 draws on similar principles, offering ‘language learning through culture’ in the form of tasks based around culture‑specific activities such as making a ‘red envelope’ for the Chinese New Year or a traditional Russian salad. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.  (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.)   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures.’ Procedure

Ideally, this activity should take place in a kitchen with cooking facilities. If a kitchen is not available, dishes can be chosen that do not require cooking (such as salads, dips, and some cakes). Some ingredients can be prepared in

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advance and brought into the class (such as rice, couscous, and boiled eggs). Food preparation implements such as bowls, forks, knives, and whisks need to be provided, or students may be able to bring their own. 1 If possible, give each student a ‘turn’ to introduce a dish from their own background. For their allotted turn, each student brings in the ingredi‑ ents for their dish. Ideally, they will bring enough for all the other stu‑ dents to prepare the dish under their guidance. Alternatively, the student prepares the dish, demonstrating and explaining it to the others. 2 Encourage/elicit interaction (although this tends to arise naturally), such as questions about the ingredients that may be unfamiliar to some stu‑ dents (“‘Celeriac’ was new to everyone” says Tremayne, 2019, p. 178), the names of the processes (e.g. chop, whisk), discussion about when and where this dish is usually served and so on. 3 The class ends with the students eating the food together – “a key part of the experience” as Tremayne emphasises (2019, p. 179). All stages of the ‘cookery class’ promote interaction, intercultural under‑ standing, and respect, with the aim of broadening intercultural knowledge and uncovering universals  –  while being a sociable, enjoyable, bonding experience.

17. Small cultures Introduction

This activity, adapted from Mishan (2023), draws on Holliday’s notion dis‑ cussed in Part I; he defines “small cultures” as “cultural environments, small social groupings or activities wherever there is cohesive behaviour” (Hol‑ liday, 2019, p. 3). The objective of the activity is to start learners thinking about how social groupings work, their norms and conventions, and to spark thought and discussion of the latter in a broader societal context. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others.) (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Ask learners to work individually and to think about social groupings they belong to, which can also include online groups (e.g. Facebook,

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WhatsApp). Ask them to draw/represent each group as a circle, with in‑ tersecting circles where the groupings intersect. For example, they might belong to a social group of parents but also to a group of walkers, with the two groupings intersecting. 2 Ask learners to think about the ‘unwritten’ conventions of each group‑ ing (what they do/talk about, and what they don’t do/talk about). For example, ‘parents’ may talk about their children, school and holidays, and perhaps their own jobs in relation to these but they tend not to talk about politics or personal relationships. 3 When they have completed their diagrams, ask the learners to share them with one or two classmates and discuss the groupings and the conven‑ tions that they have established in relation to them. 4 In plenary: • Ask learners to share some of these norms and conventions with the whole class (these might be noted on a board). • Ask the class to think about these in the context of their own socie‑ ties/cultures as a whole. For example, if they have established that the ‘small cultures’ of parents and of walkers both avoid talking about politics, does this suggest some sort of norm in their own culture?

18. Six degrees of separation Introduction

Many are familiar with the concept of ‘six degrees of separation’ to de‑ scribe how interconnected our lives are, and some may also know that the term originates from the social experiments of Stanley Milgram (1967) who asked random people to send a letter to a person – a complete stranger – in Boston by using only personal connections. The experiment showed that on average the letters reached their target in about six steps, hence the name six degrees of separation. Since then, the small world problem hypothesis has been adapted to many fields and become the basis of games, for example, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, in which actors and actresses are given a Bacon number. Kevin Bacon has the number zero and if someone worked with him in a movie then their number is one. The higher the num‑ ber becomes, the more distant they are from the actor. This task aims to raise students’ awareness of the importance of intercul‑ tural communication by emphasising the connectivity, largely enhanced by digital technologies, among people. Intercultural learning objectives: (1) Make connections between cultures. (9) Build bridges between cultures.

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Procedure

1 Allocate students in small groups. 2 Give each group the name of a well‑known person, an actor/actress, musician, politician, artist, activist, scientist, etc. You may choose people who are from their own cultural context, but you should also include some who represent a different culture, race, and ethnicity. 3 Students try to establish connections to these personalities by using the principles of six degrees of separation, searching for people they know who may know someone who can take them closer to the target person. At first, most students will probably claim that they don’t know anyone who could connect them to a famous person. Therefore, we suggest you demonstrate the activity using yourself as an example and showing the process of linking one personal connection to another. 4 When students complete the task (and some may be unable to), ask them to think about who they could connect to and who they could not, which cultures these people come from, and what the experience tells them about their (intercultural) connections to other people. 5 Ask follow‑up questions that probe students’ willingness to discover and connect to other cultures, for example: • Do you have friends from other cultural groups? • Are you willing to interact with people from other cultures? • What techniques and strategies do you use to learn about and discover new cultures?

19. I DIVE Introduction

The acronym I DIVE (Impact, Description, Interpretation, Values, Eval‑ uation) represents an intercultural activity tool presented by Schärli-Lim (2020) that is an adaptation of the classic D‑I‑E (Description, Interpreta‑ tion, Evaluation) framework (e.g. Bennett, Bennett, & Stillings, 1977). Central to the I DIVE activity is interpretation, getting people to dif‑ ferentiate what they actually see (description) from what they think it might mean (interpretation). The main purpose of the I DIVE activity in intercultural training is that it aids in raising awareness of subjectivity and helps in analysing and interpreting cultural perceptions. The activity is very effective in showing how quick we are to interpret instead of tak‑ ing the time to describe first and allow for different interpretations and evaluations Intercultural learning objectives: (1) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.

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Procedure

1 As outlined above, this is a whole group/class activity and requires the use of an ambiguous object or photograph. 2 Pass the object/photograph around the class, encouraging each member to say something about the object. 3 (It is important that the teacher allows students enough time to do so and uses simple, non‑leading prompts like ‘say what this is’). 4 Write these responses into the appropriate column in a table (on an (in‑ teractive) white or black board) consisting of five I DIVE columns (Im‑ pact, Description, Interpretation, Values, Evaluation) – but leaving the headings of the columns empty. 5 After their ideas are exhausted, ask the students if they can guess the headings of the columns. 6 Elicit the ‘correct’ column headings and fill them in on the table. 7 Explain the five categories and perhaps give a handout listing them. 8 Once the concept is thus understood, the students can repeat the proce‑ dure in smaller groups or pairs, this time perhaps in greater depth, using another ambiguous object or photograph, and the interpretations gener‑ ated can be shared with the class. (Adapted from Mishan (2023) and presented with permission from Su‑ san Shärli-Lim.)

20. The Johari Window of culture Introduction

The Johari Window is used in language learning as a useful way of encour‑ aging students to build a more accepting classroom atmosphere by getting to know each other better. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.)   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

The Johari Window uses four quadrants, or windows, to map out what we know or do not know about a person, or what they know about themselves.

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Things they don’t know

Things they know

Things I know

FIGURE 2.3 

Things I do not know

1: Arena (Open area)

3: Blind spot

2: Façade (Hidden area)

4: Unknown

The Johari Window of culture

In the intercultural classroom, this technique allows learners to discover about each other’s cultures in a safe and controlled way. The four windows in the model are called: Arena (Open area), where easily identifiable and visible features of culture are located, Façade (Hidden area) contains infor‑ mation about a culture only known to ‘insiders’, Blind spot, which refers to certain habits, behaviours, or other aspects of a culture obvious to outsiders, but not necessarily known by insiders, and the Unknown, which is usually left empty, unless students have access to information previously not known to them (see Figure 2.3). This activity works well in multicultural groups, but it is also appropriate in groups that share a common cultural background. (The activity also ap‑ pears in Part I where it illustrates the principles of CDS working within an intercultural activity.) 1 Ask learners to work individually, writing down five things about their own culture that they consider important in making them who they are. 2 Ask learners to get into multicultural groups of around four. Distribute copies of the Johari Window of culture to each group, who then discuss each culture in turn and fill in the templates according to the information being shared, and according to what they already know. They focus on Windows 1–3, but obviously, they leave Window 4, ‘Unknown’, empty until the plenary stage. 3 In plenary then, the groups pool what they have learnt about each other to complete Window 4. Students can also offer their own individual in‑ sights for this window; for example, one student may say, “We Turkish people consider Japanese food tasty/strange/interesting/bland/etc.”.

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If working with a monocultural group, pick a culture that the students need or want to explore. The procedure is then the same as above, except that it probably falls to the teacher to provide further information that students may put into their ‘Unknown’ window.

21. The ‘Smelly socks’ group Introduction

The objective of this activity is to raise awareness about differences of per‑ ception and the importance of context when making value judgements, i.e. of the relativity of judgements. It examines the idea of prejudice by getting learners to label themselves as something unpleasant and asking them to justify this label. It encourages learners to think critically and to seek contex‑ tual explanations. By asking learners to create a specific group characteristic for themselves, it also promotes bonding. Intercultural learning objectives:   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

This activity works best where the class members are familiar and comfort‑ able with each other. 1 Ask learners to work in groups of six to eight (or smaller, depending on the class size). 2 Each group agrees on what would be a socially unacceptable trait that they have in common; such as, for example, ‘we’ve all got smelly socks’ (which may not, of course, be true). Groups give themselves a name (in this case, ‘the smelly socks group’). They then decide together why this trait is a ‘good thing’. For example, ‘Our guard dogs need to know where we are. We are a very self‑sufficient group and want to keep outsiders away’. 3 Each group then presents themselves to the whole class, giving their group name and justifying why their common trait is a positive thing. Other classmates can challenge the group, obliging the group members to think critically and creatively to justify themselves.

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(This activity is adapted from ‘Smelly Foot Tribe’ in Hadfield’s (1992) Classroom Dynamics).

22. The Cultura project Introduction

The Cultura project (developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Tech‑ nology) aims to help learners understand and appreciate the differences in values and attitudes that various cultures can carry. The original project involves two groups of intermediate or advanced‑level students who com‑ municate using asynchronous online forums as most of the project activities takes place offline, in their respective classrooms. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

The students first generate materials in their L1 (or in the language that is used as the medium of education in their context) by (a) doing a word as‑ sociation task (b) a sentence completion activity and (c) providing answers on how they would behave in a hypothetical situation. These materials are shared with their partners who are learning the L1 of their counterparts as an L2 or foreign language. The reason for using the L1 for materials pro‑ duction, as (Bauer et al., 2006, p. 35) explained, is that: (1) it eliminates possible dominance by a group or individuals with respect to differing proficiency levels in the foreign language (L2) and puts all students on an equal linguistic footing; (2) it enables students to express their views fully and in detail, formulate questions and hy‑ potheses clearly, and provide complex, nuanced information because they are not bound by limited linguistic abilities; and (3) it enables the creation of student‑generated authentic texts, which serve both as L2 input for the foreign partners and new objects of linguistic and cultural analysis.

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However, it is possible to divert from this set up as has been exemplified by a recent intercultural exchange project between Sunway University (Ma‑ laysia) and the University of Miskolc (Hungary) where students in both groups used English for the project. Although the medium of instruction is English at Sunway University, not all students come from an English‑speak‑ ing background, they have home languages that range from Bahasa Malay‑ sia, Tamil, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, or any other of the 130 plus languages spoken in this multilingual and multicultural country. Students at the Hungarian university use English as an L2 for their studies and generally share the same mother tongue, Hungarian. 1 As the first step in the activity, give students a word prompt and ask them to write down words that come into their minds in connection with the prompt. For example, the word family may have different cultural con‑ notations in the context the project is carried out. 2 Compile the students’ responses on a word list showing frequency or possibly, in a word cloud that visually represents frequency data. 3 Share the responses with the collaborating partners who compare and analyse them through a guided reflection and discussion process in their classroom. Of course, the students are also invited to offer their individ‑ ual interpretations and thoughts on the online platform. This encourages them to realise that even universally shared concepts such as family may have different interpretations in cultures across the globe. 4 In the second step of the activity, learners are required to finish an incom‑ plete sentence. It is perhaps best to keep the prompts within the general topic that the first step provided. In the Sunway‑Miskolc project, where the stimulus in step one was ‘family’, the following prompts were used: • Same‑sex marriage is/should … (because) • The most important member(s) of a family … • Family members should … 5 Once they have completed the sentences, the students look at them in their respective country/culture groups to see if there are any patterns emerging. In other words, they look at how homogeneous or heteroge‑ neous their own cultural group is. 6 They then look at sentences provided by their partner group and try to identify trends and explore the perceptions of relationships and roles that may be present in the culture(s) they are investigating. 7 As the final stage, present students with a hypothetical situation (which may potentially be a conflict situation). For example, if we remain with the topic of ‘family’, possible situations could be: • You are queuing up at the cashier in the supermarket when a mother in front of you slaps their child quite violently. What do you do?

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• Your friend explains that they need to quit university to support their elderly parents. How do you react? • You are at a family gathering and the elderly aunts/uncles are all asking you when you are going to get married and have children, while you would like to continue your education and focus on your career first. (The prompts are not necessarily fully‑fledged to allow for more interpre‑ tation from the students.) 8 Ask students to discuss how they would act, and what they think about the situation or the character/s described in it. 9 Again, after they have given their answers, the groups compare how their partners would choose to react in such situations and how that compares to the answers they have come up with. All the steps require a structured reflection and discussion that can take place in the classroom or online. (Inter)cultural learning slowly emerges from the authentic information students provide. The activity should reveal to students the fact that overall nation cultures are made up of a colourful fabric of smaller cultural representations, even in seemingly monocultural contexts.

23. Identity boxes Introduction

Identity boxes are based on the artist Joseph Cornell’s concept ‘shadow boxes’ which consisted of one box divided into nine smaller boxes, with each figuring an aspect of one’s personality (in one of Cornell’s examples, there is in one box a bird symbolising freedom, in another a bunch of roses symbolising love, and so on). The concept has been adapted for use in ESOL contexts as a “safe and controlled way” for learners to “share in‑ formation about themselves” (Idle & Ma, 2019, p. 169). Asking learners to produce their own ‘identity box’ provides them with the opportunity to share only what they want others to know about themselves. It also allows them to ‘distance’ themselves from the process, by asking them to draw images (or collect from online sources) for their identity box. It is also, of course, creative, engaging high‑level cognitive skills as well as triggering the positive affective factors associated with creativity. Note that teachers should be prepared for gender identity to come up here, depending on the age/cultural background of the group. Teachers may wish to pre‑empt this, or they may wish to prepare for how to deal with it should it arise.

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Intercultural learning objectives: (3) Exploit cultural universals. (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures. Procedure

1 Produce a template for the identity box (one large box divided into four or nine segments). This can be done as a paper template and distributed to learners or shared online. 2 Ask learners to work individually and fill each of the smaller boxes with aspects of their identity that they are happy to share. This can be what or who they identify as, or what they feel identifies them. For example, they may identify as a parent (mother/father), or they may identify themselves via their job, via sports or hobbies they engage in, and so on. (Teachers may like to show an identity box they themselves have created as an ex‑ ample, and to display their own willingness to share.) 3 After learners have filled their boxes, ask them to consider if any of these aspects of their identity is/are culturally determined. For example, do they identify as a mother  –  rather than a parent? Or do they identify themselves primarily via their job? And if so, is this culturally determined? 4 Learners then partner with one other person from a different culture (depending on the make‑up of the class). The dyad share their identity boxes, discussing and explaining what they identify as, and what of these, they consider is culturally dictated. 5 In plenary, encourage students to share the general ideas the activity has stimulated (not individual identities) for discussion and reflection.

24. A‑land versus Zed‑land Introduction

Underpinning this book is the idea that it is the distances (differences) between cultures (or at least, people’s perceptions of these) that form the greatest obstacles to intercultural understanding, tolerance, and indeed, peace. Infused in our principles for intercultural materials development as represented in the materials framework is the belief that it is only by sharing experiences and endeavouring to empathise with (people from) other cul‑ tures that we can broaden our cultural horizons and develop intercultural competence. The idea of this activity is to artificially create the well‑known phenomenon of ‘culture clash’ and encourage participants to reflect on this

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experience in ways that promote a greater understanding of, and more open attitude towards cultural differences. ‘A‑land versus Zed‑land’ is conceived as an extended role‑play whereby participants are assigned to one of two fictional cultures (‘A‑land’ or ‘Zed‑land’) which have distinct behaviours based on their contrasting norms and value sets. It uses a role‑play format as a means of ‘distancing’ partici‑ pants from their own cultures and avoiding offence. (It is acknowledged, however, that role‑playing may not fit the pedagogies of certain cultures so this activity is to be used at the teacher’s discretion.) For learners to be comfortable role‑playing, they need to be familiar with each other, so this activity is best used at a mid to late stage in the course. It can be used in the face‑to‑face classroom or online. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

The first part of the procedure requires the teacher to create two role cards, one describing a set of cultural behaviours in A‑land and the other describ‑ ing a set of cultural behaviours in Zed‑land. Reproduce the culture role cards according to the numbers in each group; each A‑lander receives an A‑land card and each Zed‑lander a Zed‑land card. Sample role cards are given below, but the teacher may wish to produce their own, as the depic‑ tion of the fictional cultures themselves can be said to be culturally dictated (i.e. by the culture of their creator).

A‑LANDER CULTURE A‑land is a very hierarchical society. There is a broad range of social classes and when interacting with someone new, it is important first of all to es‑ tablish which class they belong to. This will dictate how they are addressed and the level of respect they are shown. In A‑land, the type of work peo‑ ple do decides their class. For example, builders, street and office cleaners,

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garbage collectors, and train/bus drivers are the highest class (as without them, society would not function). Doctors and nurses belong to the next class, followed by teachers. People working in the entertainment industry, the media, and sport, such as actors, news reporters, and soccer players are in a lower class, with lawyers and business people making up the lowest class of all. This strict class system means that A‑landers’ spoken interactions tend to be rather formal. Apart from establishing what class the other person is in, A‑landers tend to avoid personal questions and they keep to neutral topics (like the weather, TV shows, etc.). Personal space is important, and they try to avoid eye‑contact.

ZED‑LANDER CULTURE Zed‑land society has very ‘flat’ hierarchies. All jobs and professions receive equal respect, as they are all seen as contributing to the overall functioning of society. Zed‑landers are therefore very easy‑going and unreserved. They ask personal questions quite directly (about age, religion, marital status, work, salary, etc.). Zed‑landers tend to stand close to their interlocutors, use a lot of body language (gestures, smiling, etc.), and make direct eye‑contact as much as possible.

1 Tell the class that they are going to do a ‘culture role‑play’ (It is advisable to avoid the term ‘culture‑clash’ at the start, as this is a phenomenon that will emerge during the role‑play). 2 Split the class into two groups, A‑landers and Zed‑landers. The two groups need to work separately for the first part of the activity, so break‑ out rooms should be provided for virtual classrooms and ample class‑ room space for face‑to‑face lessons. 3 The two groups familiarise themselves with their culture role cards (A‑land or Zed‑land). Encourage the groups to discuss the cultural be‑ haviours of their assigned group but to try to adopt them uncritically (at this stage). Suggest that they ‘practice’ their behaviours among their own group before the next stage, where they encounter the other culture. 4 Each member of the two groups now pairs up with a partner from the other culture. Ask the pairs to interact with their partners according to their assigned ‘cultural behaviour’ using as a prompt for the interaction, a visual cue such as a photograph shown on‑screen in the classroom, or

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shared online if the activity is being done virtually. Give a time limit for the interaction (e.g. between five to seven minutes). 5 When they have finished their interactions with the member of the ‘other culture’, the cultural groups reassemble in their own culture groups to discuss how the interaction went. The teacher may need or wish to fa‑ cilitate here, guiding participants towards describing ‘culture clash’ and realising the impact of cultural differences. 6 Reconvene in plenary: • Ask learners to relinquish their adopted roles and discuss and reflect on the experience of culture clash: how did they feel? What did they feel towards their partner? • Learners may also wish to share their own experiences of culture clash at this stage. • Encourage learners to reflect on how culture clash can be alleviated or avoided. • Guide them towards openness and tolerance of cultural difference and a recognition that cultural values and behaviours are relative concepts.

Literature: the written and spoken word Materials in this section encompass ‘literature’ in its broadest sense, includ‑ ing not only the traditional written word but also the spoken word. Hence the activities involve using film, rap music, an online library and museum, storytelling, and, of course, ‘Literature’ (‘with a capital L’). What is consid‑ ered to be ‘Literature’ varies widely from culture to culture, intra‑culturally and over time. Nevertheless, some form of literature exists in every culture, so it is a valuable universal genre to use as a starting point when seeking to illustrate commonalities between cultures. Furthermore, stories themselves can make readers feel affinity with people from unfamiliar cultures. As the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe put it: Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in the story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do – it can make us identify with situations and people far away. (Bacon, 2000) Literature is axiomatically creative. Using it for learning therefore has the added value – if used strategically – of sparking in our learners the creativ‑ ity that is the pinnacle of critical thinking, as we have discussed earlier. The activities in this section contain some ideas for this.

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25. The universal language of poetry Introduction

Of the literary genres, poetry (like storytelling, see Activities 27 and 28) exists in some form (written or spoken word, or song) in every society. The paradox that it is a form universally used to express highly personal emotion is a useful entry point for the development of intercultural sensitivity in our students. The activity described here, adapted from an activity in the companion website to Mishan and Timmis (2015), can function as a template for the use of a poem for intercultural learning. Since its language is such an integral part of a poem, some language focus is usually important; a short language focus activity for this poem is offered below. The poem used here illustrates universal human emotions such as wonder or bemusement – but with adjust‑ ments to the prompts, the activity can be transferred to other poems. Intercultural learning objectives:   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Ask learners to work in small groups to discuss the following: • • • • •

What is a poem? What are the conventions/rules for writing a poem? List the sorts of subjects that poems can be about. List the sorts of subjects not suitable for poetry. Can anybody write a poem?

2 Read the poem aloud to the class or ask a student to do so. ….Poem…. What a wonderful bird the frog are. When he sit he stand almost. When he hop he fly almost. He ain’t got no sense hardly. He ain’t got no tail hardly neither When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost. Hardly! (Anonymous)

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3 Give the students the choice of responding (individually) in one of the following ways: • Draw the ‘frog’ from the poem (think about what colour it is, how big it is, what shape it is, etc.). • Describe the ‘frog’ from the poem (where is it, what colour is it, how big is it? etc.). 4 Ask them to share their drawing or description with a partner or the whole class if they wish. 5 Ask learners to discuss the following in small groups: • What is the writer’s response to the frog? • How does s/he feel about the frog? • How do you know? • Who do you think wrote the poem (age, gender, where was s/he from?) • Why do you think s/he wrote the poem? 6 Language Focus • Ask learners to work individually to paraphrase the poem in their own words. • When they have completed their paraphrase, ask them to consider: 1 When they paraphrased the poem, did they change any of the words (vocabulary, grammar)? 2 Analyse what they changed and why. 3 Compare the ‘paraphrase’ with the original poem. Which do they prefer and why? (Students might share their paraphrases to discuss these questions if they wish). 7 Ask learners to choose • EITHER something from their own culture that might be unfamiliar to someone from another culture • OR something from another culture that they have experienced as unfamiliar to them. • Then write a poem, prose poem, or draw a picture to illustrate this. 8 Working in plenary, build on the learners’ responses to the activity as a whole to elicit the idea that feelings/reactions such as wonder, bemusement, delight, empathy, curiosity, and laughter (drawing on the language the learners themselves used) are universal human emotions which illustrate what we have in common as humans, regardless of our culture.

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26. ‘Don’t sleep, there are snakes’ Introduction

The objective of this activity, adapted from an activity in the companion website to Mishan and Timmis (2015), is to stimulate reflection on the relationship between language, culture, and thought. One of the best‑known conceptualisations of the relationship between language and thought was the principle of linguistic relativity, commonly known as the ‘Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis’, discussed briefly in the section on culture in Part I. In essence, this theorised that language determines and limits the way speakers perceive and think. While much debated in psychol‑ ogy and philosophy, the theory appeals to language teachers who can see the extension of this to ‘cultural relativism’, in which different cultures have different conceptual ‘schemata’, different ways of conceptualising and even experiencing the world. This relationship between language, culture, and thought is intriguingly illustrated in this episode from Don’t sleep, there are snakes, a book by missionary and linguist Daniel Everett (2008), who went to live with a remote Amazonian tribe, the Pirahās, in the Brazilian jungle. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

This activity works well if learners come to the reading extract ‘blind’ so that the language/culture relationship is realised inductively. 1 Tell learners that they are going to read* a short extract from the book Don’t sleep, there are snakes, by missionary and linguist Daniel Everett who went to live with a remote Amazonian tribe, the Pirahās, in the Brazilian jungle in order to learn their language. (*Alternatively, the teacher can read the extract aloud and give the learners the reading text afterwards.)

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READING EXTRACT In this extract, Everett has had a craving for salad, unknown in the Pirahās diet of rice, beans, fish and wild game. After a two‑month wait, the missionary plane has finally brought him the makings of a salad. That evening, I sat down to my first taste of lettuce, tomatoes, and cab‑ bage in six months. Xahóápati walked up to watch me eat. He looked bemused. ‘Why are you eating leaves?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you have any meat?’ The Pirahās are very particular about foods and they believe, as we do to some degree, that the foods you eat determine the person you become. ‘Yes, I have a lot of canned meat,’ I assured him. ‘But I like these leaves! I have not had any for many moons.’ My Pirahā friend looked at me, then at the leaves, then back at me. ‘Pirahās don’t eat leaves,’ he informed me. ‘This is why you don’t speak our language well. We Pirahās speak our language well and we don’t eat leaves.’ He walked away, apparently thinking that he had just given me the key to learning his language. (Everett, 2008, p. 209)

2 Ask learners to work individually to • Imagine the scene. • Draw a picture or find an image/images online that represents how they visualise this scene. 3 Show the traditional representation of ‘culture’ as an iceberg nine‑tenths hidden under the waterline (see Figure 2.2., and see Activity 13 for the full culture iceberg activity). Ask learners to work in small groups to: • Situate ‘language’ and ‘food’ on the iceberg model according to the Pirahās’ philosophy. • Expand from ‘food’ to other aspects of culture that might also fit with what Xahóápati says. • Think of some other examples of concepts, ideas, or words that only exist in a specific culture (for example, the concept of siesta in Spanish).

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4 Group or plenary discussion: • Think about the relationship between language, culture, and thought. • Is language influenced by culture? Does this relationship determine how people think about, and even experience the world?

27. Story circles Introduction

The idea of story circles was conceived by the interculturalist Darla Deardorff as a method of promoting intercultural awareness through participants from diverse backgrounds sharing their stories and experiences. The concept has been developed into a full‑blown methodology described in Deardorff’s Man‑ ual for developing intercultural competencies: Story circles (2019) published by UNESCO. The rationale for the method is that sharing and reflecting on personal experiences in (multicultural) group settings encourages people to recognise similarities as well as differences across cultures thereby promoting communication and collaboration across diversity and seeding curiosity. On an individual level, the activity empowers participants to achieve ownership and enrichment from within their own experiences. At the same time, re‑ counting personal experiences can clearly be emotionally taxing – a drawback but also a strength in terms of potential for learning as described in Part I. Part of the popularity of the story circles concept as a methodology is its versatil‑ ity. As well as its use with multicultural groups of learners, story circles can be used in teacher education; to awaken teachers to the scope of exploiting intercultural differences in the classroom for instance, and/or as a means of building connections and relationships within the teacher‑trainee group itself. Like many of the activities we present here, story circles work as well online as face‑to‑face. In whatever mode or whatever type of group story circles are used, the skill of the facilitator is paramount, requiring sensitivity and empa‑ thy. The facilitator needs the ability to gently prompt and encourage, as well as to tactfully ‘monitor’ the groups in action when telling their stories. S/he also has a central role in modelling storytelling (see below). It is essential that the activity is clearly explained to the participants, that they are comfortable with it, and that they are given the opportunity to ‘opt‑out’ if not. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.

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  (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Explain the aim of story circles, viz., to help develop intercultural skills such as understanding, awareness, and tolerance of different cultures. 2 Explain that this activity requires participants to share some of their own stories with others and that the story they opt to share may be as ‘per‑ sonal’ or not, as they wish. 3 Tell students that they will be provided with, or asked to select, ‘a topic’ for their story (see suggestions in Story Prompts box) and an outline for telling it. The story outline (see suggestions in Story Outline box) may be used at the facilitator’s discretion; s/he may wish to tweak the prompts depending on language proficiency level or indeed, the story topic chosen for the session.

STORY PROMPTS (Facilitator or participants choose ONE topic for the session)

• Describe a positive interaction you have had with a person who is differ‑

•

• •

•

•

ent from you (age, gender, culture, nationality, religion, etc.) and what made this positive? What did you learn about yourself/the other person in that experience? Describe a memorable experience you have had with a person who is different from you (age, gender, culture, nationality, religion, etc.) and what made this memorable? What did you learn about yourself/the other person in that experience? Describe a cultural misunderstanding you have had. What did you learn from this? Describe a time when you realised you believed in a stereotype (about a nationality, culture, or group) and this was proved untrue. Describe what happened. Describe someone you know or know of (personally or in the media, from history, etc.) who you feel can get along with people from many dif‑ ferent groups (cultures, nationalities, religions etc.). What is it that helps this person get along with others? Describe an experience when you felt supported by a community (of friends, family, colleagues, and neighbours). How did the community demonstrate its support?

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STORY OUTLINE • • • • • • •

Where and when did this story happen? Who was involved? What happened? Differences/misunderstandings/conflicts (if any). Your thoughts (and those of the other person/people involved). Your feelings (and those of the other person/people involved). Your actions (and those of the other person/people involved).

Result/resolution/remaining issues?

  4 Model telling a personal experience.   5 Depending on the size of the class and on the mode, participants can work in small groups (e.g. three to seven) in (virtual) breakout rooms.   6 Learners remain in their groups until the debriefing in plenary at the end.   7 Ask each group to elect a ‘timekeeper’, who will keep each story to a time limit such as three to five minutes.  8 Each member of the group in turn then shares their story with the group. (The facilitator is advised to give the groups ‘space’ so as not to intrude or impact the power dynamic.)  9 Once all the stories have been told, ask participants to think about the most memorable point of each story they have heard (this stage is known as a flashback). 10 Participants share their ‘flashbacks’ of each story with the other mem‑ bers of the group. 11 Debriefing (see Debriefing Prompts box): depending on timing or at the teacher’s discretion, this can start in the smaller groups and then move to plenary.

DEBRIEFING PROMPTS • What common themes, if any, did you hear in the stories? • What do you want to explore further after hearing these stories? • What did you learn about yourself from this experience of sharing stories and hearing those of others?

• How has this experience helped you develop understanding and empathy?

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• What are some of the insights you have gained that will help you relate better to those who are different from you?

• How will this affect your behaviour with and towards those who are dif‑ ferent from you?

The reader is referred to Deardorff’s story circles manual for more in‑depth exposition of the methodology, and further classroom ideas. Deardorff, D. K. (2019). Manual for developing intercultural competencies: Story circles. Abingdon: Routledge.

28. Story exchange Introduction

Like the story circles above, this activity (adapted from Mishan, 2023) uses the universal human practice of storytelling to develop intercultural compe‑ tences and understanding. The activity is based on the concept from Nar‑ rative 4 (Narrative 4, 2022) which conceives storytelling as “the one true democracy… it goes across borders, boundaries, gender, wealth and race” (Colm McCann, Narrative 4 co‑founder). Narrative 4 uses the idea of story exchange “to foster empathy among diverse populations and turn that em‑ pathy into action”. The modus operandi of Narrative 4 is that people with very different stories – for example, from different (opposing?) political, so‑ cial, or religious backgrounds – come together to share their stories in such a way as to create empathy and break down barriers. It works by two such people exchanging their own personal stories (face‑to‑face or via email/ social media). Then they take on the other person’s story and retell it in the first person, as their own. This has the effect of making them empathise and identify with their partner far more deeply than if just listening to the other’s story. i.e. by ‘stepping into’ each other’s stories people can feel their true impact. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.

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 (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Transferring this to the intercultural classroom, first of all, ask students to think of a story from their own lives which they are happy to share with others. 2 Ask learners (from different cultures if possible) to pair up and then tell each other their ‘stories’ in turn. (They can be given a framework or even a theme, depending on their proficiency level). 3 Reconvene in plenary in a circle formation if possible. Ask each learner to retell the story that their partner has told them in the first person. (At the teacher’s discretion, a more intimate interaction pattern may be used such as swapping partners and retelling the story from the first partner to the new one.) 4 This next reflection stage (in plenary) is essential to nurture respect and foster intercultural learning. Ask learners to think about and express what they experienced as they told their classmate’s story. Prompts for this might include: • • • • •

What did you feel? What did you learn? Did anything surprise you? Did anything in the story connect with you? What was the take‑away that you will build on?

5 An optional final debriefing can be done in different ways at the teacher’s discretion. Ask learners to write their overall reflections on the experience of story‑swapping on sticky notes and post them on the classroom wall or board for others to browse, for example, or post on a class social media platform or group if available. Alternatively, this final reflection can be done orally in plenary or in pairs or groups.

29. Pop culture Introduction

Using pop culture in the language and the language arts classrooms as a vehicle for learning has been generally accepted, although not all genres

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receive equal attention or preference. Some are somehow neglected due to their unique and perhaps controversial style of expressing messages. Rap music, which is “often associated with vulgarity and gangster culture” ­(Rimbar, 2019, p. 31) is usually a genre educators steer away from as it is “ungrammatical and thematically problematic … decidedly not the stuff of the English classroom” (Weinstein, 2006, p. 270). Yet, rap expresses deeply rooted social issues and cultures that offer an avenue to explore subcul‑ tures that students are less likely to be exposed to in mainstream teaching materials. Intercultural learning objectives:   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Ask students what they know and think of rap songs and the culture they represent. Most likely they will mention violence, crime, black cul‑ ture, drugs, and similar themes. The first stage of the activity is therefore meant to get students thinking about stereotypes they may have about rap artists or the cultures they represent. 2 Give students the extracts from rap songs by Coolio and Eminem and from poets known for their slightly unconventional and playful work such as e. e. cummings and Langston Hughes (Rimbar, 2017) provided in the box. Students need to identify which text is from which genre, they do not necessarily need to use the name of the authors.1

(a) ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you (b) ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I take a look at my life and realise there’s nothing left

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(c) ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free (d) ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ Some white and some black; don’t matter what colour All that matters we’re gathered together To celebrate for the same cause no matter the weather

3 Give students the lyrics of Coolio’s rap song Gangsta Paradise (1995)  –  and/or the song/video clip can be played to allow a multi‑ modal analysis. Song and lyrics available from: https://genius.com/ Coolio‑gangstas‑paradise‑lyrics. 4 While they read the lyrics, ask the learners to identify the social issues the song is built on. These include: respect, education and unemploy‑ ment, fitting in, social injustice and discrimination, and the culture of violence. 5 Ask students to think about which of these would be key issues in their own cultures and how/whether they are expressed by artists, singers, and performers. 6 Get them to think about the differences and similarities between the American rap song and their own artists’ work. 7 Finally, students might be encouraged to reflect on how the issues in the song can become mainstream political movements (such as the Black Lives Matter movement).

30. Short films: directed viewing and thinking activity Introduction

A technique for using short films in the intercultural classroom is the di‑ rected viewing‑thinking activity (DVTA), based on a similar concept as the Directed Reading‑Thinking Activity (Stauffer, 1969), but instead of using a written text, it uses video or film, either extracts or short films, as the basis on which it is built. In the DVTA activity, the teacher selects critical points in the story/film where they stop playing the clip and ask three questions that aim to engage students in the meaning‑making process:

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• What do you think (about the story, setting, characters, etc.)? • What makes you think that (i.e. what verbal or non‑verbal information triggered that thought)?

• What do you think will happen next and why? It is important that the students’ schemas, cultural knowledge, and values are activated before viewing the video in instalments as this is an essential el‑ ement of the meaning‑making processes in which the students are engaged. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

The following activity is used with permission from Yeo (2024). He describes the sequence of a DVTA based on the short film EMI (Ancelin et al., 2009) which is an animated short film telling the story of a father and a daughter who get in a car accident, although this is not revealed in the beginning of the film. The story shows an allegory of life and death as the father does not allow her daughter to meet death and takes her place on the ship that travels to the afterlife. 1 Pre‑viewing activity: The class is asked about the best present they have received. It is expected that students will associate a gift with tangible objects and will probably overlook non‑tangible signs of affection, how time, attention, touch, or a hug can all be considered as presents one can give to loved ones. 2 Part 1: 0:00 Opening credits – 2.26 Fade to white. This part of the video sets the scene, showing the main character (the man) sitting and holding a present. The man looks sad in the film and the teacher can probe stu‑ dents’ interpretation of the situation by eliciting why they think he looks sad although he has a present in his hands. This is followed by questions about the setting of the film. Although there is a lack of visual clues, the

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architecture resembles those of European railway stations. Other ques‑ tions at this stage can focus on characters; who is the lady, who is the girl, and what is the role of the cat that appears in the film? 3 Part 2: 2:26 Flashback of the accident – 3:41. The arrival of the ship. Al‑ though the accident is now shown in the film, the students’ understand‑ ing of cinematic conventions will help them understand what happens in the film prior to the introductory scenes. This will probably prompt them to readjust their original assumptions about the narrative of the story. With the arrival of the ship through the fog, the teacher can draw the students’ attention to the setting again, which symbolises a place of transition. The teacher can also focus on the cat, which by now is estab‑ lished as a dominant character in the short film: does it know something that the girl (and the viewers) don’t know? What does it know? 4 Part 3: 3:41 The invitation – 4:29. The girl is about to step forward. This is the part where the teacher can help learners empathise with the girl in the story. This can be done by asking open‑ended questions that prompt different responses. One such question could be to ask directly: How would you feel if you were the girl? A new character appears in the film at this stage; a man in a uniform. Who is he? Is he good or evil? What does he want? As this is a decision‑making point in the film, the characters are shown at the foot of the ramp leading up to the ship. Students can be asked if they would go up the ramp to face/meet the man. 5 Part 4: 4:25 The girl’s father arrives just in time – 6:26 Fade to white. At this part, the father pushes his daughter behind himself and walks up the ramp himself. The soundtrack of the film changes and returns to the opening scores. In the background, a heartbeat and a ventilator can also be heard, then a sustained tone of a flatline. This could be an emotionally loaded moment for learners as they realise what is happening in the story. Probing questions can be asked that concern how they feel, what they know, and what they think they know at this point. 6 Part 5: 6:24 Back to reality – 8:29 Closing credits. This part serves as the epilogue to the film. The students are asked to interpret the gestures and the body language of the characters in a short exchange between the girl and the nurse. The film ends with the sentence: “The greatest gift you can give is the gift of oneself” – in French. At this point, the teacher can also draw the students’ attention to the title of the film, EMI which is understood as the name of the girl, but is also an acronym for the term ‘Experience de Mort Imminente’, i.e. near‑death experience. 7 Post‑viewing activities. This is the part where intercultural learning takes place. The students with the teacher’s guidance can discuss archetypal myths and imagery to evoke their beliefs about the afterlife in their own and other cultures and the metaphor of death as a journey. Such discussion

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might be easier for students in the western world as they can use their cul‑ tural schemas (e.g. the Greek myth of Charon, the Ferryman, who would convey the spirits of the dead across the river Styx to the Underworld) while students from other cultures may interpret such metaphors with some difficulty. “As these bodies of knowledge were conceived and primar‑ ily developed within a western context, their applicability to non‑western contexts is questionable” argue Sung and Pederson (2012, p. 163). Yeo (2024) also suggests that students can “resist these ideologies and meta‑narratives by doing research on death rituals and different versions of the afterlife in different global cultures, including their own”. Such work can help students leave behind an ego‑centric attitude to otherness and learn how different communities regard death, loss, and grief through beliefs, rituals, and myth – which is a universal human experience. In this aspect, the material can also connect to one of the Global Issues the United Nations (2022) has identified: Ageing.

31. Empathy museum website: ‘a mile in my shoes’ Introduction

This resource turns on the universality of affect, specifically, empathy. As we have stressed, empathy is key to growing intercultural awareness and understanding, and this is the focus of the project, ‘A Mile in My Shoes’ (Empathy Museum, n.d.), a real, ‘roaming’ exhibition, duplicated as an on‑ line presence. ‘A Mile in My Shoes’, is, to quote from the webpage, “a shoe shop where visitors are invited to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes – lit‑ erally. Housed in a giant shoebox, this roaming exhibit holds a diverse collection of shoes and audio stories that explore our shared humanity”. With a recorded story from the wearer of each pair of shoes, participants can actually put on the shoes and walk in them, listening to the story, or, if online, click on the image of the shoes and hear the owner recounting their story. Stories come from the likes of migrants, refugees, war veterans, farm‑ ers, and lawyers, and they expose the gamut of human experiences “from loss and grief to hope and love” (from ‘A Mile in My Shoes’ webpage). The use of these ‘universals’ in intercultural awareness‑raising clearly has great potential. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (3) Exploit cultural universals.

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  (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

The website and stories might be used in a number of ways. Teachers of student groups from migrant backgrounds might wish simply to listen to the stories themselves in order to sensitise themselves to the experiences of their students. This would also be a good idea if intending to use the stories with the students, in order to check for material that might upset the sensi‑ tivities of individuals by recalling negative experiences. At their discretion, therefore, teachers may proceed as follows: 1 Ask students to listen to some of the stories and share reactions with a partner or group. Asking learners to relate to the stories and find com‑ monalities, even if tenuous, can help to raise awareness of the universality of human experiences. 2 Ask students to retell the stories in pairs/groups following techniques suggested in Story circles (Activity 27), Story exchange (Activity 28) or, perhaps using a social media platform (e.g. WhatsApp) to provide some distance. 3 In plenary, encourage students to reflect on what they have learnt from encounters with these stories using such prompts as: • Share something new that you have learnt from the stories. Share something that surprised you. • To what extent did these encounters expand your horizons about peo‑ ple from diverse societal groups and in what ways? Note: The Human Library (Activities 4 and 5) has a similar function to that of the Empathy museum described in this activity, and it can, at the teacher’s discretion, be used in similar ways.

Learner‑generated materials This set of activities calls on student creativity, all too frequently under‑ex‑ ploited in the (language) classroom. As we noted in Part I with refer‑ ence to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills, creativity is considered to be where critical thinking is at its peak. The activities here for the most part

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involve the digital environment, given the number of applications support‑ ing content production available there.

32. Memes Introduction

As digital affordances see societies move inexorably towards the visual away from the written word, it is important that pedagogy keeps pace with this. Students are quick to spot teachers who are tardy in their uptake of tech‑ nology but tend to respond well when the teacher (at least tries to!) meets them in their own digital space, as it were. Used on social media, a ‘meme’ is an image or photograph with a short, added caption to effectively make a (humorous) cartoon: their succinct use of language has seen them called the modern‑day haiku. Images favoured in memes are well‑known figures such as a politician or media personalities, children, and animals. It is significant for our purposes that the origin of the term is “an element of a culture or sys‑ tem of behaviour” (“Memification,” 2016) passed on by imitation. Asking learners to generate memes that make some inter/cultural point thus com‑ bines both its original and contemporary functions. Memes are an excellent genre for getting students to think critically and creatively and express their ideas succinctly. They will doubtless be familiar with memes as they prolifer‑ ate on social media. Teachers using this activity need to be aware, however, that while memes are intended as humorous, they can often be culturally insensitive, playing on stereotypes, etc. Given this characteristic and the fact that it requires browsing online, this activity is not recommended for learn‑ ers under 18. As with any activity that sends learners online to work, a clear pedagogical structure and objective are essential to keep focus. This activity can be done face‑to‑face or online. It requires learners to use a smartphone or an Ipad, tablet, etc. as they need to download a meme generator application. Meme generator apps are continually being developed so it is impossible to futureproof suggestions for them. One current at the time of writing is https://imgflip.com/memegenerator (Imgflip LLC, 2022). The teacher may prefer to give learners the option of using a meme gen‑ erator of their choice. Intercultural learning objectives:   (3) Exploit cultural universals.   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures.

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Procedure

1 Tell learners that in this activity, they are asked to generate an ‘intercul‑ tural meme’. 2 As a first step, present a ready‑made meme (teacher‑produced or sourced online) with an intercultural theme as an example. Elicit reactions to the meme, discuss it briefly according to the students’ interest in the topic, and point out the function of memes as humorous, thought‑provoking artefacts. The activity branches here, we offer two procedures, one exploiting the sample meme, and the second that can be used with any meme. Procedure 1: Sample meme

1 The meme in Figure 2.4 plays on simplifying cultural diversity and ste‑ reotyping cultures. Suggested prompts to provoke a class discussion on stereotyping might include; • Is stereotyping always reductive? • Could forming stereotypes be seen as part of developing intercultural awareness?

FIGURE 2.4 

Sample ‘cultural’ meme

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2 Ask learners to follow up on the theme of stereotyping and find a meme that uses it as the source of ‘humour’. 3 Guide them in critically analysing the stereotype – what cultural traits does it play on (if any), and of course, to what degree could it be con‑ sidered offensive? As noted above, memes are by their nature ‘edgy’ so teachers (and learners) will need to be comfortable confronting ones that are potentially offensive and sensitive in their handling of them. 4 Pursuing this theme, ask learners to work individually or in pairs/small groups to create a meme that counters stereotypes/stereotyping. 5 Suggest that they source a photograph from an online resource bank (such as Google Images) or from their own mobile phone photo libraries. 6 Tell them to download a meme generator offered by the teacher (see sample given above) or to use one they are familiar with, to write a cap‑ tion for the photo, creating a meme on this theme. 7 Ask learners to share their memes with the class (via their social media platforms, institutional virtual learning environment, etc.) and to discuss their message and impact. Procedure 2: general meme creation activity

1 The alternative procedure is to present any sample meme (such as the one in Figure 2.4) mainly as an example of this genre, but without ex‑ panding discussion on its message. 2 The objective of this activity is to allow students to explore their own areas of (cultural) interest; preparation for this could start by brainstorm‑ ing. This is usefully done via a ‘mind map’, on an interactive/white board or a chalk board or using an online app. A prompt such as ‘culture and diversity’ or ‘multiculturalism’ could be used, depending on themes that might have emerged in class, to elicit related concepts (e.g. ‘prejudice’ ‘tolerance’ etc.) from the learners. 3 The next stages progress as in Procedure 1; give learners links to one or two meme generators currently on offer (see sample above) or ask them to select one of their choices. 4 Ask them to work individually or in pairs/small groups to source a pho‑ tograph from an online resource or from their own mobile phone photo libraries with the potential to work as a meme with an inter/cultural theme, drawing ideas from the mindmap. 5 In their pairs/small groups, learners invent a caption for the photo and then create a meme using the meme generator.

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6 Ask learners to share their memes with the class (via their social media platforms, institutional virtual learning environment, etc.). 7 A final reflection stage might ask learners to consider issues such as the influence of social media on promoting intercultural understanding – or prejudice.

33. Comic strips Introduction

Like the activity above, this one exploits the visual orientation of today’s learn‑ ers. It is based on the same principles and rationale, situating itself in today’s learners’ ‘comfort zone’, the online environment. While also using an online application, this activity harks back to the more traditional and familiar visual mode of the comic strip. Comic strips have historically been used for social and political comment and satire. Like memes, comic strips are perfect media to promote critical thinking and creativity. Students will be familiar with this genre too and should find it a natural locus for expressing their ideas. They should also find it easy to get to grips with the online cartoon generator rec‑ ommended for this activity, ‘MakeBeliefsComix’ (Zimmerman, 2006–2021), which is useable on a mobile device or laptop. As the activity involves work‑ ing online, it is not recommended for students under 18. As noted in other activities where learners work online, it is important that the teacher explains the objectives and provides a clear pedagogical structure. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures. Procedure

1 Tell learners that in this activity, they will be asked to generate a comic strip on an intercultural theme. 2 As a first step, present as an example, a ready‑made comic strip (teacher‑produced, sourced online, or the sample offered here) with an intercultural theme. The comic strip here is based on the theme ‘lan‑ guage and identity’ (Figure 2.5).2

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FIGURE 2.5 

Comic strip on theme ‘language and identity’

3 As with the meme activity, in preparation for students creating their own, brainstorm (inter)cultural themes for the cartoons. Alternatively, the teacher may wish to use a theme that has been discussed in class or one that is part of the syllabus, to prompt the brainstorming. The theme of the sample comic ‘language and identity’, for example, might prompt concepts such as ‘multilingualism’, ‘culture and language’, or ‘isolation’. The brainstorming can be conducted as a ‘mind map’, on an interactive/ white board or a chalk board or using an online app. 4 Give the learners the link to ‘MakeBeliefsComix’ (see above) or give them the option to use a comic strip generator that they are already fa‑ miliar with. 5 Ask the learners to work individually or in pairs to create a cartoon to express their chosen concept. They may wish to make it in the form of an activity for their peers, leaving blank thoughts or speech bubbles as in the sample. 6 Ask learners to share their comic strips with the class via their social me‑ dia platforms, institutional virtual learning environment, or in printed form. 7 If the students’ comics have blank speech/thought bubbles, these can be exchanged around the class for completion, followed by interactions about the utterances/thoughts students have come up with. 8 The final reflection stage can work on two levels; asking learners to (a) consider the power of humour for social and political commentary and (b) expand on the (cultural) concepts they have included in their comics.

34. Cultural video exchange project Introduction

As we have seen, using visual materials and multimodal texts in the class‑ room can prove to be a treasure trove of intercultural learning activities. However, as the other activities in this section have demonstrated, we are not restricted to the use of materials that are ready‑made; we can get

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learners to produce texts that serve as the basis for intercultural learning. One possible activity for this can be a video exchange project between dif‑ ferent groups of students who not only learn about another culture through the exchange but also need to reflect critically on what culture is, and what their cultural identities are – including subcultural and hybrid cultural rep‑ resentations – during the tasks. It is important to note – based on our own personal experiences – that students need a lot of guidance at the beginning of the project in under‑ standing what culture and sub‑culture are, or to think about their own cul‑ tural identities and memberships. We also found that students who live in a multicultural context tend to introduce subcultural identities, traditions, and practices (e.g. festivals, food, language, etc.) rather than presenting a nation‑culture view of themselves. Yet, this may be different in the readers’ own contexts. Intercultural learning objectives:   (1) Make connections between cultures.   (2) Foster a comparative perspective.   (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others).   (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions.  (7) Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures.   (8) Develop respect for cultural differences.   (9) Build bridges between cultures. (10) Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures.

Procedure

1 Tell students they will be asked to record a short, two to three‑minute video introducing one aspect of their cultural identity. As a first step, discuss ideas and constraints such as: • Given the time limitation, they will need to think about what par‑ ticular aspect of their culture they can present in a way that the audi‑ ence not only understands but also can learn from. They may choose to talk about a national culture (e.g. what it is like to be Malaysian) or a sub‑culture (e.g. what is it like to be a Chinese Malaysian) or even what it is like to be a member of a subcultural group that tran‑ scends political borders, e.g. being a gamer, an athlete, or a ballet dancer. • Students need to consider what their audience may know about the culture they represent. Ask them to think about what information

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could be considered universal (and thus understood without much ef‑ fort) and what would be specific to the culture (i.e. need explanation). • They also need to think about the language they use that may be cul‑ ture‑specific (e.g. in the form of jargon, slang, vocabulary borrowed from other languages, etc.). 2 Here there are two options: • Ask students to work individually with partners from another cultural context Or • Organise the class into small groups (four to five students), which works well if the class is big. If students are working in small groups, their first task can be to view each other’s videos and select one that they think best represents a particular culture and which is informative and interesting for the audience, i.e. for students from a different cultural context. 3 Students then upload their videos to an online platform (e.g. the institu‑ tion’s VLE, class Facebook page, or WhatsApp group) which can also serve as a forum for their work and discussion. 4 The first task they are asked to perform is a DVTA in which they watch each other’s videos and answer a series of questions (see also Activity 30 on directed viewing). These question prompts can be listed on the online platform or class board. • What do I know? Based on the video you have watched, what is it that you have learnt about the culture introduced? Did the video provide any new information? Did you learn anything new? • What do I think I know? Is there anything that was not presented in the video explicitly, but you think you have learnt about the culture/people that was introduced? Here you can rely both on elements of verbal and non‑verbal commu‑ nication, the messages that the speaker intentionally or unintentionally communicated (or you think they communicated) in their video. • What would I like to learn about? Based on the video you may want to learn more about the culture (aspects of the culture) the video presented. What are these areas? What are the issues, practices, habits, artefacts, etc. that you would like to learn more about?

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• What questions do I need to ask to learn about these? Think of three questions (at least) that you would like to learn from the other students of the area you would like to learn more about. (Ask learners to list these questions on the online platform and watch that place for answers.) 5 Encourage students to view other videos not just the one their partner shares with them. They also need to keep an eye on the questions posed by their peers in the online forum. Encourage them to take their discus‑ sions further individually or as a group. 6 The activity closes with an individual reflection activity in which the learn‑ ers are encouraged to consider how their intercultural awareness/compe‑ tence has developed (or not) as a result of participating in the tasks.

Activity Set (C): Materials development activities Intercultural materials development: actualising the principles Readers will recall that the intercultural learning principles put forward in Part I drew on theories and models of what constitutes intercultural com‑ petence and integrated the idea of promoting intercultural learning as a complex dynamic system; that is, as an evolving system in which learners create their own meanings and categories of knowledge. A model synthesis‑ ing these principles was proposed as our intercultural materials development framework in Part I. As it is central to this section, it is reproduced here for convenience (Table 2.3). Our principles as stated in the framework, and the emphasis on respect for the sensitivities of the learner lead us to characterise intercultural materials development as learner‑led. In other words, the starting point for developing intercultural materials in any given context needs to be the students. A teach‑ er’s first step is therefore to try to gauge their students’ degree of intercultural awareness and knowledge and their openness to expanding on these. Insight into students’ cultural contexts and their interests is also essential, and this is something teachers tend naturally to acquire. Establishing all this allows the teacher to tailor the materials to be relevant, useful, and appropriate to the individuals in their class and the class as a whole. Some of the early activities in learner Set (B), such as the culture iceberg (Activity 13) and intercultural handball (Activity 9) would be ‘cheap and cheerful’ ways for teachers to gauge their learners’ cultural awareness and get some idea of the concrete ‘aspects of culture’ (such as dress, food, conventions, value systems) that their learners are aware of, and which teachers can then build on in their own materials.

TABLE 2.3  Framework for the design of intercultural learning materials (An earlier version can be found in Mishan, 2023)

Intercultural learning objectives

Techniques

Why? (CDS rationale)

• Cognitive and affective challenge • Communicative and interpretive skills

1 Make connections between cultures 2 Foster a comparative perspective 3 Exploit cultural universals 4 Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others) 5 Reflect on and question cultural assumptions 6 Encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours 7 Provide opportunities to share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures 8 Develop respect for cultural differences 9 Build bridges between cultures 10 Work within the ‘third space’ between cultures

a Prompt learners to critique, question, probe, analyse, and investigate cultures and cultural phenomena b Use multiple resources and tasks that promote learning

i Prevent a learning system from reaching equilibrium that leads to the fossilisation of knowledge ii Allow self‑organisation of knowledge and knowing

c Be open‑ended and flexible

iii Tolerate unpredicted and unplanned learning outcomes

d Ask learners to present and showcase their individual or collective understanding of intercultural phenomena

iv Provide opportunities to capture emergent learning

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Educational objectives

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35. Activity order Introduction

As we noted at the start of Activity Set (B), we have presented the activi‑ ties there to carry students through from a non‑intrusive introduction to cultural awareness to more demanding activities that delve into cultural mo‑ res, attitudes, and behaviours to a progressively deeper and personal level. Here we suggest an awareness‑raising task which encourages practitioners to think about the organising principle/s of the learner activities as a set, in preparation for developing their own intercultural materials or, indeed, intercultural courses. Procedure

1 Analyse the activities in Set (B) (or a selection of them), maintaining the order in which they are presented, in terms of the different aspects of culture that are focused on. 2 Think about the progression of the activities in terms of incremental per‑ sonalisation. For example, it might be noticed that the first activity that focuses on individual cultures is ‘View through a different lens’ (Activity 16) about ceremonies in different cultures which safely distances students from any threatening personal intrusion. Activity 17 ‘Small cultures’ is a closer step towards personalising, encouraging learners to think about their own social/cultural groupings as microcosms of broader societal structures. 3 Think about applying this sort of progression to intercultural learning materials you use in your own course, or re‑ordering your materials from least to more personalised, if applicable.

36. Deconstructing the materials design framework A simplified, adapted framework for intercultural materials design drawn from our intercultural materials design principles is presented here. In this task, practitioners are asked to analyse a selection of the activities in Set (B) to deconstruct how they evolved from the framework in order to see how its principles and objectives are realised in activities This is seen as a first step towards teachers using the framework principles to underpin the design of their own intercultural materials. An early activity (Activity 12 ‘A picture paints a thousand words’), has been done as an illustration (Table 2.4).

TABLE 2.4  Deconstructing the intercultural materials design framework

Activity 12 ‘A picture paints a thousand words’

Intercultural learning objective/s

(1) Make connections between cultures. (4) Deepen knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others). (5) Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. (8) Develop respect for cultural differences. To recognise that meanings we create are both culturally and personally bound ‑Cognitive challenge Communicative and interpretive skills Cultural practices, traditions Image/s depicting a particular cultural practice or tradition, e.g. a picture of the Indian Holi festival, or the Hungarian Busójárás 1 Individual: Learners write down reactions to image 2 Group (4–5): Groups share and discuss reactions to image 3 Plenary: Groups pool and discuss reactions to image/s Learners probe, analyse, investigate cultural phenomena Learners present their individual or collective understanding of intercultural phenomena (cultural practice/s)

Educational objectives Aspect/s of culture Resources (e.g. none, text, image, multimodal resource, object/realia) Step‑by‑step interaction patterns and task

CDS techniques

Activity number

Activity number

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Framework

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In the next part, we will look at intercultural materials design from the perspective of complex dynamic systems and offer some thoughts on how CDS characteristics can be incorporated in the materials you design. More specifically, we will provide activities that are responsive to (a) sensitivity to initial conditions, (b) non‑linearity, (c) dynamic change and feedback loops, (d) unpredictability and emergent learning, and finally (e) openness.

Complex dynamic systems features: sensitivity to initial conditions As we discussed in Part I, Section 3, complex dynamic learning systems are sensitive to initial conditions which can determine the course of learning in the classroom. These can include many internal and external factors to the learning community or to the individual learners. Such factors can range from conditions in the school, such as the time of the lesson (first period of the day as opposed to the last session before the lunch break), the lesson students have before or after their class (e.g. they may have a math test in the next period), what they experience in their private lives (e.g. they are grounded for not do‑ ing their chores at home, reunion with a relative they have not seen for a long time), to their schemas and existing values and beliefs about the world, in‑ cluding different cultures. How students feel, whether they are tired or rested and their moods would also influence how they think and learn at any given time and how motivated they are to be engaged with the materials teachers present in the lesson. It is, therefore, very important that we are aware of the ‘initial conditions’ on which we build intercultural learning activities. Tapping into the initial conditions on which intercultural learning is to be built provides teachers a chance to understand where their students are in terms of values, knowledge, beliefs, their sensitivity to certain issues. They can also learn what tensions, if any, are lying dormant in the classroom that can erupt if content and prompts are not chosen carefully, or simply how best to group their learners for future activities which may require competition or collaboration from the learners. The activities here, which generally work as readiness or warm‑up activities, also provide important learning opportunities for students. They can learn not only about their peers, perhaps understand them better, but also about themselves and who they are, and why they be‑ have in certain ways. Therefore, activities that explore initial conditions in the classroom also satisfy two of the intercultural learning objectives in our frame‑ work for the design of intercultural learning materials (Table 2.3): 1 Reflect on and question cultural assumptions. 2 Provide opportunities to share experiences and emphasise with (people) from other cultures.

From Implications to Application  135

In materials design terms, what we need to think about are activities that provide a lead‑in or warm‑up to tasks that follow. The overall educational aim of these tasks, therefore, is to prepare the learners for the learning that follows, to activate their schemas, to prepare them both cognitively and affectively to work on a particular topic and with each other. They also help teachers in their decisions concerning the follow‑up stages of the lesson and in their materials adaptation “to maximize the appropriacy of teaching materials in context, by changing some of the internal characteris‑ tics … to suit our particular circumstances better” (McDonough, Shaw, & Masuhara, 2013, p. 67). In the following, we offer a selection of tasks that could be used to tap into and explore the initial conditions for intercultural learning. These operate on both cognitive and affective levels and could also be used as stand‑alone activities in the classroom. Some of these have a clear intercultural focus, while others address more general educational concepts.

37. Using semiotic analysis Introduction

As we described in Part I and illustrated in Activity Set (A), semiotic analy‑ sis can provide an insight into the learners’ meaning‑making processes and offer an insight into their cultural values, beliefs, and knowledge (see for example, Activity 6 ‘Semiotic analysis: levels of meaning making’). Semiotic analysis thus works very well to gain an idea of where the learner’s intercul‑ tural journey starts at the beginning of a lesson that is built on intercultural materials. As the stimulus for the activity, choose any visual material, but a photograph works best for eliciting short responses. For this activity, choose one depicting a cultural artefact or practice, or simply an everyday life scene from the culture of choice. 1 Share the photograph (on‑screen, on the white/blackboard, or as a handout). 2 Give learners some time (a minute or two) to reflect on what they are seeing. This is done individually. 3 Ask learners to provide a word or a phrase that comes to their minds when they look at the image. 4 Elicit these and pool them, displaying them on the white/blackboard or on a poster in order to record ideas. 5 Take mental notes of any patterns, stereotypes, or sensitivities that stu‑ dents offer and adapt the following tasks as fit.

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38. Reflection tasks Introduction

In this activity, students are asked to provide a longer response to inter‑ cultural stimuli which for this activity can be either visual, textual, or mul‑ timodal. The answers provided in this task are usually more in‑depth than the ones students come up with in the semiotic analysis activity (Activity 37 above). This is achieved here by providing students with more time to think about their answers and also with an index card (or slip of paper) on which to record their responses. Procedure

1 Display an intercultural prompt (a photograph, drawing, short text, video clip, etc.), showing this on‑screen or in print, depending on the mode. 2 Hand out material for students to record their responses; the size of the paper usually indicates the length of the answer. Although answers can also be collected electronically, the activity works better as a physical pa‑ per and pen exercise. 3 Organise students into small groups where they can share and compare their responses and identify any patterns, similarities, or differences in their answers. 4 Ask students to report back to the whole class after sharing. 5 Take mental notes of any patterns, stereotypes, sensitivities that students offer and adapt subsequent activities as fit.

39. Organising content Introduction

How students make sense of and organise content can offer valuable insight into what they think of a particular culture, how they see others and them‑ selves, or what they value most. The content they work on can be varied, depending on the focus of the materials they introduce. Procedure

Select one or a series of these: 1 Categorisation, using different parameters. For example, learners are asked to put items into different categories according to their own

From Implications to Application  137

knowledge of them. A good ‘starter’ for this in intercultural learning would be to simply get students to map their knowledge of certain cul‑ tural conventions by using categories of ‘I know’, ‘I don’t know’, and ‘I am not sure’. Statements or questions like ‘Is Halal food different from Kosher food?’ act as good prompts for this. 2 Categorisation focusing on cultural practices. Use prompts such as ‘Guests can enter a Hungarian home with their shoes on’ or ‘I can serve both alcohol and soft drinks at my party when some of my guests are Muslim’. Learners are asked to put these into categories such as ‘culturally acceptable’, ‘cultur‑ ally not acceptable, but tolerated’, ‘culturally unacceptable’ behaviour. 3 Ranking is also a possible task here. Students can be asked to rank cer‑ tain items in order of importance, relevance, or usefulness. Activities and cultural practices that show membership of a particular cultural or ‘small culture’ group could be ranked for relevance, for example. (The concept of ‘small cultures’ is Holliday’s (Holliday, 2019, p. 3), see Activity 17). For this, prompts might include ‘You know you are British/Hungarian/a Gamer/a Bird Watcher/etc. if you ….’. Other ranking tasks would get learners to arrange certain items related to culture (straightforward ones might include food, music, or sport) on a cline (e.g. I hate  –  I don’t like – I don’t mind – I like – I love)

40.  Working with initial conditions Introduction

Now that we have introduced why it is important to explore the ini‑ tial conditions that may determine the shape of emergent intercultural learning, we suggest some practical tasks to experiment with them in the classroom. 1 Use any one of the learner activities in Set (B) from Activity 8 to 34 above with a class you teach. You need to choose the activity or the input students will be working with based on the topic you would like to cover for intercultural learning. Take note of the learners’ responses to these activities and think about the following questions: • Based on their responses, how prepared are your students – both cog‑ nitively and affectively – to engage with the materials you have pre‑ pared for them? • How can you adapt your materials to cater to the needs reflected by your students’ answers? Do you need to omit certain parts? Do you need to provide input before the task?

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• If there is, what does this tell you about their (a) readiness for learning and (b) willingness to participate in the activities you have prepared for their lesson? • How would you adapt, if at all, the materials you have planned to use in light of the information you collect about the learners? 2 Activities 37 and 38 above are examples of ones that explore what your students bring to the lesson on any particular day. Design a different activity that could elicit information about your students’ values, knowl‑ edge, and beliefs about a particular culture or probe their emotional and mental readiness to engage with intercultural learning materials.

Complex dynamic systems features: non‑linearity Non‑linearity in complex dynamic systems refers to the characteristic that these systems represent more than the sum of their component parts. Such a principle can easily apply to intercultural learning which aims to help learn‑ ers move beyond the memorisation of factual information about a particu‑ lar  –  and usually nation  –  culture. Therefore, successful learning is more than what has been taught. Furthermore, we understand from CDS theory that learning is a complex process which is not a straightforward and simple concept. In most cases input, i.e. what the teacher presents (information) or demonstrates (skills) will not necessarily lead to direct intake, i.e. what the students learn. Intercultural learning takes its own course and does not follow prescribed avenues; it usually runs a course which has lots of twists and turns within the highly interconnected network of knowledge, values, and beliefs. We have argued earlier that intercultural learning materials should allow students to both personalise and vocalise their learning in the classroom and as such, encourage them to connect and relate to each other’s experiences and understanding of themselves and others. Such connections not only in‑ spire them to get to know each other but also facilitate the creation of links between many different concepts, interpretations, and ideas. In short, the ability to form multiple connections among the components that contrib‑ ute to learning – students included – enriches the system and provides ideal conditions for new knowledge or awareness to emerge and self‑organise. Therefore, when we design intercultural learning materials that incorporate the principle of non‑linearity, we acknowledge that knowledge and knowing are both individual and collective and that personal voices are the basis of collective understanding. This, however, is only possible when we create an open and safe learning environment that is built on trust and respect and where the teacher’s voice

From Implications to Application  139

is only one of the legitimate and validated sources of information. The basic pedagogic principles that would allow this are the use of tasks which build on collaboration, rather than competition, and tasks that are open‑ended in that they allow a variety of possible answers. We demonstrate these in action through an activity we learnt from Nicholas Lee (Sunway University, Centre for English Language Studies) which is similar to the ‘Organizing content’, Activity 39, we presented earlier.

41. Working with non‑linearity: categorisation Introduction

This activity is based on the concept of collaborative learning where stu‑ dents learn to respect and accept other people’s views and realise that the same concept can be viewed from different perspectives. They also learn that although their ideas might be different, it does not mean that one is better than the other – although as a community, they may prefer certain answers more than others. Procedure

1 Bring in a selection of objects to the classroom, such as objects from the office, which could be standard office supplies, trinkets that are used to decorate the place, or some items that visitors bring as presents or leave behind accidentally. It is useful if the objects are all different from each other. Alternatively, you can also use a picture that depicts various objects. 2 Allocate students to small groups and ask them to come up with dif‑ ferent categories they can use to group the objects. It is important that they work on a poster paper that can be pinned to the wall or on white board which are visible for all in the classroom. Making their work vis‑ ible allows taking the competitive element from the task where students would try to safeguard their answers rather than share them with other learners. 3 After a set time limit of five to ten minutes (depending on the level of learners and the number of objects), students share their ideas with the whole class. More unique categorisations will most probably require some explanations, whereas some common patterns  –  the same idea across most groups – will also emerge. It is important to acknowledge every possible idea and avoid dismissing them right away and that students are encouraged to do the same. When

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they do not agree or do not understand why their peers suggest a particular categorisation, encourage them to probe by asking questions and request‑ ing explanation from the group that proposed it. They can also challenge the concept by pointing out exceptions to the rules or difficulties in assign‑ ing the objects (e.g. one object can fall into different categories). At the end of the sharing stage, students can vote on what grouping they consider the most unusual, creative, practical, etc. 1 How can you adapt this categorisation activity to have more focus on intercultural learning? 2 What other tasks or materials do you use to build trust in the classroom? How can you modify them to cater to intercultural learning?

Complex dynamic systems features: dynamic change and feedback loops Dynamic change is a characteristic feature that essentially defines complex dynamic systems and it describes the process in which agents (things, ideas, people, etc.) appear, disappear, and reappear in the system, and the fluidity by which these agents are connected to each other. Some connections are more stable than others, some are severed and new ones are formed as the learning system evolves. In fact, it is a dynamic change that allows new learn‑ ing to emerge as it promotes the reorganisation of components within the framework of the system. When we provide conditions for dynamic change, we prevent the fossilisation of learning and – probably – the formation of stereotypes about cultures and people the learners get acquainted with. One of the sources of dynamic change in the learning system is the in‑ troduction of new input in the form of ideas and resources. These have the potential to offer new knowledge, influence the learners’ opinions and beliefs, or prompt them to question their current understanding of cultural phenomena. However, it is not only the content that can induce change but the type of input that is used in the classroom. There is a range of potential sources that can be used to provide new input, for example, short videos, pictures, newspaper articles, websites, textbooks, and so on, not forgetting of course about the learners and the knowledge, opinions, and experiences they bring to the classroom. Another way of facilitating dynamic change in the classroom is by al‑ lowing new connections to be formed. This can be done by varying the learning modes (individual, pair, small group, whole class) and also the way in which students form small groups or pairs. It is typical in any class that learners usually arrange themselves in groups that have been formed at the

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beginning of the school year. Some students may have known each other previously, some are friends, and some simply work together because of their close proximity in the physical classroom space. However, we can fos‑ ter interaction among students who do not usually choose to work together by using either random or deliberate grouping techniques (see Procedure 1, Activity 43 below). The reorganisation of student connectivity in the classroom allows learn‑ ers to get to learn about and from each other. Yet connections in the learning system do not exist only at the social level; they are present at the cognitive and affective levels as well. Therefore, during intercultural learning, it is important that students are provided with opportunities to revisit concepts and ideas that were previously discussed in the course and to reinterpret them in the light of new information or new experiences. We suggest that when you design intercultural materials you explore and exploit possible connections between new and previously discussed topics or concepts and design tasks that would ask the learners to gain awareness of complex issues by considering their broader context. This can be done by asking probing questions that aim to explore relationships between newly learnt and already known concepts and also by allowing a spiral progression in your intercul‑ tural course where some key concepts are touched upon again and again as learners progress through materials. Closely connected to the concept of dynamic change are feedback loops. This depicts information travelling across the learning system through various connections, then returning to its origin and changing it as a final result. This concept is best exemplified by the flight of a flock of birds. Each bird keeps a distance from and reacts to movements made by neigh‑ bouring birds. When one bird reacts to a predator and changes its course, all its neighbours also change their flight pattern and ultimately, the bird which has originated the system change needs to adjust its own position to the new formation that evolves through a dynamic ripple effect through the flock. In the learning system, feedback loops occur naturally, but they can also be facilitated through the introduction of (guided) reflection tasks. These tasks take the newly learnt intercultural knowledge as their starting point and ask learners to discover how it is related to other pieces of knowledge, values, and beliefs they hold. Reflection tasks can conclude in an open discussion where “ripples of learning reverberate throughout the room and bounce back altered, changed and sometimes amplified” (Clarke & Collins, 2007, p.  166). It is expected that by the end of the reflection task, students re‑evaluate what they have just learnt and form personally relevant and individual meanings.

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42. Working with dynamic change and feedback loops: dynamic grouping Procedure 1

This is a fun random pairing activity done with the use of strings. 1 If there are an even number of students in the classroom, cut half as many strings (of about 70–80 cm in length) as there are students. 2 Hold the strings in your hand by grabbing the middle, so that the loose ends fall from the hand at either side. 3 Ask the students to each grab one end of a string. 4 When all of them have their string, let go of the middle, and students who hold the different ends of the same string will work together, after they have worked out who is connected to whom. 5 Deliberate grouping of students can be based on many different fac‑ tors, including gender, language ability, interest, ethnicity, previously ­expressed views or preferences, etc. Procedure 2

1 Consider the possible student grouping arrangement in Activity 14 ‘Combo‑culture’. The instruction says: “Ask learners to work in groups of two, three or four”. How do you think the learning outcome, or the way students work, would change (if at all) in the different grouping sug‑ gested? What does this tell you about materials design? 2 Think of a learning group you have worked with or currently working with. How would you group your learners for Activity 17: ‘Small cul‑ tures’? The instructions ask learners to first work individually and map out the social groupings they belong to. Then they think about the un‑ written conventions of these groups before they “share them with one or two classmates and discuss” their work with them. Would there be a different outcome if you group your students randomly or deliberately? Should instructional materials suggest how you group the learners and point out the benefits/drawbacks of different arrangements?

43. Working with dynamic change and feedback loops: the importance of input Introduction

This activity is based on the idea that new input to the learning system helps students form new meanings based on what they already know and what

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they have just learnt. Furthermore, a variety of inputs not only creates more interesting lessons, but it also prevents the formation of repetitive learning activities in the classroom. Procedure

Select three of the activities presented in Activity Set (B) and identify what sources of information they use as input, then consider what other input source can be used to achieve the same intercultural learning objectives. One is given to you here as an example (see Table 2.5).

Complex dynamic systems features: unpredictability and emergent learning Unpredictability is another feature of complex dynamic learning systems and it is a result of interaction of components or agents. Since learning is sensitive to initial conditions and is non‑linear, small changes (like the introduction of a new idea, artefact, a new learner, etc.) can create disproportionate outcomes, as we discussed in Part I. When we design intercultural learning activities we need to acknowledge that learning outcomes cannot be clearly set, and it is perhaps better to have a ‘pedagogical intent’ which is “negotiated through the interactions brought forth, acknowledged, and responded to by the various members of the classroom community” (Clarke & Collins, 2007, p. 167). Even if the learners are not fully autonomous and decision‑making is somewhat dominated by the teacher, it is still difficult to predict how indi‑ vidual learners will interact with the topics and the learning materials at hand. Through their individual experiences, beliefs, values, and knowledge they per‑ ceive cultural learning materials differently and such perceptual differences act as filters in their meaning‑making. Therefore, it would be naïve to expect that each learner would have the same intake in an intercultural classroom. Although complex dynamic systems run their own course without the di‑ rection of a central controller (self‑organisation), and learning emerges seem‑ ingly randomly, it is possible to have a certain control over the direction TABLE 2.5  Sources of input

Activities

Input source

Alternative input source

Activity 14: ‘Combo culture’

The internet

Other members of the class

a) b) c)

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such learning takes. In intercultural learning, certain stereotypes, deeply rooted cultural values, biases, and other factors can all act as attractor states towards which learning may tend to settle. The teachers’ task, therefore, is to recognise what attractor states may exist in the learning system and then to introduce new input (ideas, resources, experiences) which can move learning towards a more desired state. As complex dynamic systems are open to new input, this is not a difficult task; what is challenging, however, is to figure out what input is needed.

44. Working with unpredictability and emergent learning Introduction

In order to facilitate learning, instructional materials should allow learning that emerges from the interaction of system components, i.e., ideas, beliefs, values, and of course, the learners. Instead of having fixed answers that usu‑ ally fall into correct and predetermined categories, intercultural materials should offer open‑ended tasks where a variety of answers are possible. In Activity Set (B) every single activity was based on this principle. What stu‑ dents learn in these activities is largely unpredictable. Or is it? Can teachers guide learning towards certain desirable outcomes? In Activity 7, ‘Texts from language coursebooks’, in the critical discourse analysis section Working with texts, we offered an example text from a Ma‑ laysian English language coursebook (Lim, 2010). Procedure

1 Look again at the text and select an intercultural learning objective from Table 2.3, framework for the design of intercultural learning materials, that you think you could achieve with the input text. You might choose, for example, the objective ‘encourage exploring beneath the surface of cultural behaviours’. 2 Design an open‑ended task that would help you achieve the objective and lead to intercultural learning. Consider what other input (resources, experiences) you need to provide for the learner to be able to achieve the objective, besides the text that has already been given. 3 Stay with the text, task, and any potential additional input you have decided upon. Keep in mind that individual learners may come up with very different meanings, ideas, and beliefs based on the learn‑ ing experience your materials have provided so far and their own life experiences.

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4 Collect all different answers on the whiteboard (or any other visual plat‑ form) without being judgemental, keep in mind that some of the answers may be unexpected and unusual. 5 Consider what meaning you would like them all to take on board. How can you steer their learning towards that? How can you encourage them to recognise patterns in their answers or combine some to create a com‑ pletely new meaning?

Complex dynamic systems features: openness Openness in a complex dynamic system refers partly to the ability of the system to grow by taking on new components and also to the fact that com‑ plex systems have a nested structure, i.e. they contain systems within systems which interact and react with each other in a dynamic way. The easiest way to understand this concept is if you think about any learner group that you are working with. The group that you start with is somehow different from the group that finishes the course in that they have new connections among themselves, they  –  hopefully  –  have changed their thinking, beliefs, and gained knowledge as the course has been progressing over the semester. Therefore, depending on the changes within the individual learners’ cogni‑ tion, the group as a whole will act and behave differently as they progress through their academic journey. One possible activity to map how the learners’ membership in different cultural groups could potentially contribute to their thinking, values, and be‑ liefs is through the activity ‘Small cultures’ (Activity 17). This activity asks learners to think about how the social and cultural groups they belong to in‑ tersect each other and how some of the unwritten rules of the group and the roles they play in them would/could influence their behaviour in other social settings. For example, you can be a student and a teacher at the same time, a parent and a child, you can be an environmentalist who happens to teach English (and a member of the ELT Footprints social media group), and so on. Of course, we should not forget that the learners are also influenced by input from outside the learning context which the teacher does not have much control over. Especially important to mention among these sources are the media (both traditional and social) which promote particular ideolo‑ gies and try to influence their audiences in certain ways. Therefore, it is im‑ portant that any intercultural teaching material should incorporate current and relevant issues in order for students to make sense of and be informed about the world they live in. In other words, as a principle for intercultural materials design, materials should be open to incorporate any current (and relevant) issues that are important in your context.

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45. Working with openness Introduction

The tasks below ask you to consider how you can design materials that offer a framework in which current events and issues can be incorporated. Procedures

1 Look at Activity 20, ‘The Johari Window of culture’. How could you incorporate any current (cultural/social) issue currently trending in your context into the framework of the existing task? How can you promote discussion and raise critical awareness in the classroom and at the same time keep an open and constructive dialogue when discussing sensitive issues? 2 Choose an image from current media posts that depicts a current event that has inter(cultural) significance in the society where you work. De‑ cide how you may want to exploit the material for intercultural learning. 3 Consider the following poem by Malaysian poet and writer Malachi Ed‑ win Vethamani (2016), which showcases the everyday realities of multi‑ cultural Malaysia: the coexistence of different races and languages, and its rich food culture, and mixed‑race marriages, relationships. Design an intercultural learning task based on the poem, but also incorporate a so‑ cial issue that is relevant in your own cultural/work context.

IT WAS A WONDROUS SIGHT It was a wondrous sight! A sight for national unity watchers. He eating fried mee with chopsticks And she, nasi lemak with fingers. The young man skilfully manoeuvred the chopsticks without letting slip a strand. The young woman expertly coordinated her hands and mouth getting every grain in. The meal almost over They make plans to tell their parents.

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Intercultural materials development: implementing the framework 46. Template for the design of intercultural learning materials Introduction

We have used our framework for the design of intercultural learning materials (Table 2.3) in multiple ways in the activities described in this part of the book. Here, we synthesise these to offer a flexible intercultural materials develop‑ ment ‘template’. Through the use of the activities in the learner Set (B), readers will probably have extrapolated the types of media, modes, inputs, prompts, strategies, techniques, and interaction patterns that can work together to cre‑ ate material for use in the intercultural classroom. The activities we presented also demonstrated how the overarching principles of the framework could be applied; viz. the importance of encouraging learners to critique, question, probe, reflect, analyse, and (collectively/individually) showcase their learning in ways that help deepen their understanding and knowledge of other cultures and their own, and develop respect and empathy for these. The activities presented in Set (B) will also have illustrated the impor‑ tance of careful sequencing within an activity; broadly this requires tasks within it to progress from the practical (often pair or group interaction) to garnering personal response and on to a final open, and collective, reflective stage. The following template serves to effectively pull all this together, offering an overarching model or ‘one‑stop shop’ for ideas and formats that go to develop a piece of intercultural learning material. Procedure

1 Profile your learners and your teaching context (this may not be required if these are very familiar to you) to act as criteria for what would, or would not, be appropriate as input, process, interactions, etc. in the ma‑ terial. Consider such factors as: Learners’ Age/s Gender/s L2 proficiency Cultural/multicultural background Needs and wants Interests and tastes

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Geographical context Class size Curriculum objectives (If available the institution’s curriculum or textbook objectives can guide the selection of input material and subsequent stages of the activity). 2 Select an input or prompt as a ‘starting point’ for the activity that is suit‑ able for your context, learner profile and course objectives, one that you consider will go towards fulfilling some of the intercultural learning ob‑ jectives given in the framework (making connections between cultures, fostering a comparative perspective, etc.). This starting point may be a concrete input from any of a variety of media that have been used in the Set (B) activities such as a photograph, a meme, a cartoon, a short piece of literature, a news report, a song, or a short video. It may also be simply an interaction or a process such as brainstorming or categorising. Note that, as a CDS principle, the ‘starting point’ also serves to create initial conditions for learning. 3 Consider the sorts of questions and issues the selected starting point raises. A useful principle here is that these should be authentic to it, i.e. the questions should emerge ‘naturally’ from the prompt/input – rather than the questions/issues being dictated by a language learning objec‑ tive. A good example is the questions surrounding the rap song used in Activity 29, Pop culture, which free learners to talk about the most salient feature of the rap, its power as social commentary (rather than guiding them towards listening for certain language, etc.). 4 Consider how you might elicit reactions to these questions/issues from your students. Through direct questions or prompts? By eliciting these from the students? In a scaffolded, guided way, for example filling in a box or a template (as in ‘The Johari Window of culture’, Activity 20)? 5 Sequence the activity. For this, consider the level of personalisation you feel is appropriate to your learners and the task: • One technique that was used in some of the Set (B) activities was pro‑ tecting learner sensibilities by ‘distancing’ the learner from the mate‑ rial (see for example, the A‑land/Zed‑land role‑play in Activity 24 or ‘Combo culture’, Activity 14). Another is by moving online and using communications apps (Zoom, WhatsApp, etc.) for all or part of the lesson. • Typically, the task is sequenced to probe progressively deeper into learners’ reactions (as appropriate) and then ‘pan out’ to gather the responses of the group. ‘Identity boxes’ (Activity 23), for example, ask

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learners to create their own personal identity box, then share this with a partner – but at the final group/plenary stage, to share only general reflections on the activity. 6 Consider what sort of interaction pattern/s is/are suitable for the activ‑ ity, and what mode (i.e. individual, dyad, group, plenary, fully online, hybrid). 7 Outcome/s: it is particularly important for intercultural learning ac‑ tivities to provide mechanism/s for suitable ‘closure’ of the activity so as to ‘capture’ emergent learning. How will you access the group’s collective understanding? Many of the activities in Set (B) end with reflection in plenary. Activity 28 ‘Story exchange’ is a useful example here, itself offering a range of debriefing options; learners can write their overall reflections on the experience (of story‑swapping) on sticky notes and post them around the classroom, they can post their reflec‑ tions on a class social media platform or group if available, or they can participate in a more traditional final reflection orally, in plenary, in pairs or in groups. 8 Teacher reflection: An ideal methodology for teachers to reflect on the success of their developed material is action research. The classic iterative structure of action research, a cycle of observation, critical reflection, and modification, is perfectly suited to materials development. It offers practitioners a formula for reflecting on classroom trialling of a piece of material, adapting it if and however deemed necessary, and returning it to the classroom. Indeed, we will see action research coming to the fore in the concluding parts of this book.

Activity Set (D) Adapting materials to fit cultural contexts Any time a teacher uses a coursebook in the classroom, they mediate it; the material is rarely if ever delivered ‘verbatum’ from a coursebook without some teacher intervention. While such mediation occurs naturally and un‑ consciously, materials adaptation is planned. Materials are typically adapted to better fit learner groups and/or a learning context, in terms of age‑, level‑ or cultural‑appropriacy, or focus. Pinpointing what or how to adapt any given piece of material requires two important analytical steps: first, profiling of the learners and the teach‑ ing context: second, evaluation of the materials. A useful evaluation proce‑ dure for our context is given in Table 2.2 in Activity 1. On the basis of the outcomes of this analysis, teachers might typically do one or more of the following with respect to the existing material:

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• Select, • Reduce, • Modify, • Reorder, • Substitute, • Supplement, • Extend, • Repurpose. Such changes can apply to:

• Language (the language of instruction, explanations, examples, the lan‑

guage in exercises and texts, and the language learners are expected to produce). • Process (forms of classroom management or interaction stated explicitly in the instructions for exercises, activities, and tasks, but also the learning styles involved). • Content (topics, contexts, cultural references). • Level (linguistic and cognitive demands on the learner). (McGrath, 2013, pp. 62–63) Given the focus of this book, the sort of adaptations we propose in the fol‑ lowing activities aim to enhance the potential for cultural awareness‑raising in teaching materials practitioners choose, or have to use.

47. Materials adaptation template Introduction

This activity offers a template for adaptations which can be used and reused to tailor materials to any context. It incorporates the two analytical steps described above, profiling the learning context and evaluating the materials with a view to adaptation. Procedure

1 Profile your learners. For this, you can use the profiling criteria offered in Activity 47 (materials design template), viz: Consider such factors as: Learners’ Age/s Gender/s

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L2 proficiency Cultural/multicultural background Needs and wants Interests and tastes Geographical context Class size Curriculum objectives 2 From a coursebook used/prescribed in your teaching context, select a unit or part of a unit that has some intercultural or cultural component. Evaluate the suitability of your chosen material to this learner profile; how suitable is it to each aspect of the profile? For example: • Is the material of the appropriate language proficiency level? • Is the material age‑appropriate? • Does the material fulfil (aspects of) the learning/course objectives? 3 How well do the materials foster intercultural awareness? For this, we refer back to our evaluation checklist in Table 2.2, Activity 1. 4 The findings of the previous steps (2 and 3) can now feed into the ad‑ aptation of the material. These can involve any or a selection of the ad‑ aptation measures described earlier (Selecting etc.), with respect to the language, proficiency level, procedure, or content. 5 If possible, pilot your adapted material with a class and reflect on its suc‑ cess. Does it need further adaptation, if so, what? Arriving at a success‑ ful adaptation of materials is often a cyclical process, adopting the sort of action research methodology suggested above, viz., a cycle of critical reflection on the effectiveness of the adapted material, subsequent modi‑ fication, further trialling, and so on.

48. Focus on intercultural awareness‑raising Introduction

One criticism we have made in the book is that the enormous potential for language and cultural learning from the texts and images within course‑ books is too often under‑exploited, or not exploited at all. The next three activities address this.

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Procedure

1 Select from a coursebook, an activity/content that offers cultural infor‑ mation but that you consider does not adequately exploit it to promote learners’ intercultural awareness. 2 Consider an adaptation that would enhance this – for example, a change to the procedure (such as working in groups rather than individually), modifying the questions or prompts, supplementing with another text/ visual for comparison, etc., supplementing it with another task, or a com‑ bination of these.

49. Adapting a global coursebook Trial the sequenced procedure in Activity 48 above on this extract from a unit from an internationally used global coursebook (Figure 2.6).

50. Repurposing coursebook visuals Introduction

This activity pulls together a number of strands that figure in the book – (combatting) essentialism, use of the visual/semiotic analysis, and the importance for learning of engaging creativity. The activity involves ex‑ tracting visuals from a coursebook and exploiting their potential for inter‑ cultural learning, calling on learners’ cultural knowledge and creativity. Procedure

1 Choose one or a selection of the photographs in the extract from Head‑ way (Figure 2.6). 2 Examine the degree to which each photograph is an integral part of the learning material; • What is its role in the learning material? • Is it an essential part of the learning material? • Does it serve exclusively to illustrate a language point? • Is it treated superficially? • Is it merely illustrative? • Does it present stereotypes (culture, gender, etc.) or stereotypical practices?

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FIGURE 2.6 Extract

from: Headway Intermediate Student’s Book, 5th Edition, 2019, p. 90.  Reproduced with permission

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3 For each chosen photograph, add an activity or activities which exploit its potential for cultural awareness‑raising; any perceived stereotyping might be used as a starting point. (Refer also to Activity 11, ‘Interpreting the visual’ for sample treatment.) In addition to Step 3, or alternatively: 4 Consider invoking learner creativity. Sample learner tasks might include looking at one or two of the photographs from this coursebook extract and choosing one or a selection of the following (individually or in groups): • Infer what has happened in the situation shown in the photograph. • Is this situation culture‑specific (i.e. would it only happen in the coun‑ try where the photograph was taken?) • Would this situation be a typical one in your culture? • Compare the situation shown to a similar one in your own culture. • Write the backstory of one of the people featuring in the photograph. • Write the prequel or sequel to the photograph (what led up to the situation shown? What happened as a result of this situation?) • Create a meme or a comic strip based on one or a selection of the photographs (see Activities 32 and 33). This treatment might be an integral part of a lesson, or some of the tech‑ niques might be used in unplanned ‘teachable moments’, where a course‑ book photograph catches students’ interest, for example.

Conclusion The importance of fitting teaching materials to their cultural context is one of the core concepts underpinning this book. The series of activities pro‑ vided in this part, particularly those aimed at the practitioners themselves (Sets A, C and D) will, it is hoped, provide the tools and sharpen CCA to the extent that practitioners feel confident in selecting and adapting the learner tasks, Set (B), according to their learner profiles and teaching situ‑ ations – and indeed, devise their own original tasks using the materials de‑ velopment principles and practices we have put forward. Like learning itself, materials development is a dynamic process (another leitmotif of this book), materials are never static but spring to life off the page (or screen) as learn‑ ers and teachers mediate, interpret, and interact with them – and with each other. We thus anticipate that the materials here will evolve as they are used, be tweaked to fit different cultural contexts, and will spark other ideas. And we hope that this will see a growing repository of materials for intercultural learning shared within and among the international community, in the di‑ verse situations in which they are used.

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Notes 1 (Answers: (a) poetry, e. e. cummings: [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]; (b) RAP, Coolio: Gangsta’s Paradise; (c) poetry, Langston Hughes: Let America be America again; (d) RAP, Eminem: Mosh). 2 “I’m not filled with language anymore, I don’t really exist” is a quotation from Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman (1989, p. 108).

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Godwin‑Jones, R. (2019). Riding the digital wilds: Learner autonomy and informal language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 8‑25. Hadfield, J. (1992). Classroom dynamics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, D. (2013). The visual element in ELT coursebooks. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching (2nd ed., pp.  174–182). London: Bloomsbury. Hoffman, E. (1989). Lost in translation. London: William Heinemann Ltd. Holliday, A. (2019).  Understanding intercultural communication: Negotiating a grammar of culture. Routledge. Idle, J., & Ma, L. (2019). Motivating unaccompanied minors in the ESOL class‑ room. In F. Mishan (Ed.), ESOL Provision in the UK and Ireland: Challenges and opportunities (pp. 155‑175). Oxford: Peter Lang. Imgflip LLC. (2022). Meme generator. Retrieved from https://imgflip.com/ memegenerator Kiss, T., & Weninger, C. (2017). Cultural learning in the EFL classroom: The role of visuals. ELT Journal, 71(2), 186–196. Lim, J. C. (2010). STPM Pre‑U MUET coursebook. Subang Jaya: Pustaka Sarjana Snd. Bhd. Lorentzen, N. (2019). The human library. Retrieved from https://humanlibrary. org/ McDonough, J., Shaw, C., & Masuhara, H. (2013). Materials and methods in ELT: A teacher’s guide (3rd ed.). Chichester: Wiley‑Blackwell. McGrath, I. (2013). Teaching materials and the roles of EFL/ESL teachers: Practice and theory. London: Bloomsbury. Memification. (2016). In Ipsos Encyclopedia. Milgram, S. (1967). The small world problem. Psychology Today, 2(1), 60–67. Mishan, F. (2022). Materials for intercultural language Education. In B. Tom‑ linson (Ed.), Materials development for language teaching (3rd ed.). London: Bloomsbury. Mishan, F. (2023). Towards intercultural competence: Materials for raising inter‑ cultural awareness. In B. Tomlinson, (Ed.),  Developing materials for language teaching (3rd edn, pp. 412‑509). London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Mishan, F., & Timmis, I. (2015). Materials development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Narrative 4. (2022). Students have stories to tell, we give them the Mic. Retrieved from https://narrative4.com/ Nguyen, V. T. (2021). The committed. London: Corsair. Pennycook, A. (2017). The cultural politics of English as an international language. London: Routledge. Rimbar, H. (2017). Rhythm and poetry: Where lit and pop culture collide. Paper pre‑ sented at the iELT‑Con 2017. The 21st Century Classroom: ELT Practices & Innovations, Georgetown, Malaysia. Rimbar, H. (2019). They call this (c)rap! IATEFL Slovenia Magazine, Winter Is‑ sue(75), 31–33. Schäerli‑Lim, S. (2020). HubICL contributor spotlight: Susan Schäerli‑Lim on I DIVE. HubICL Hubbub: Intercultural Learning Hub Newsletter. Retrieved from https://hubicl.org/newsletter/october2020 Stauffer, R. G. (1969). Teaching reading as a thinking process. New York: Harper & Row.

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Sung, K., & Pederson, R. (2012). Critical practices in ELT as a project of possibili‑ ties or a banal discourse. In K. Sung & R. Pederson (Eds.), Critical ELT practices in Asia: Key issues, practices, and possibilities (pp.  153–169). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. The United Nations. (2022). Global Issues. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/ en/global‑issues Thorne, S. (2010). The intercultural turn and language learning in the crucible of new media. In S. Guth & F. Helm (Eds.), Telecollaboration 2.0: Language and intercultural learning in the 21st century (pp. 139–165). Oxford: Peter Lang. Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2017). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. John Wiley & Sons Tremayne, D. (2019). Vignette 3. ESOL outside the traditional classroom setting: Heart and Parcel – combining dumplings and ESOL. In F. Mishan (Ed.), ESOL provision in the UK and Ireland: Challenges and opportunities (pp.  177–179). Oxford: Peter Lang. UNESCO. (2022). Intangible cultural heritage. Retrieved from https://ich.un‑ esco.org/en/home Vethamani, M. E. (2016). It was a wonderous sight. In Complicated lives. Kulala Lumpur: Maya Press. Weaver, G. R. (1986). Understanding and coping with cross‑cultural adjustment stress. In R. M. Paige (Ed.), Cross‑cultural orientation. New conceptualizations and applications. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Weinstein, S. (2006). A love for the thing: The pleasures of rap as a literate practice. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(4), 270–281. World Internet Users Statistics. (2022). Retrieved from https://internetworldstats. com/stats.htm Yeo, D. (2024). The Directed Viewing‑Thinking Activity (DVTA) as critical peda‑ gogical strategy in the language classroom. In J. Joseph Jeyaraj, T. Kiss, & D. Perrodin (Eds.), Critical pedagogies in English language learning and teaching: Foundations, practices, and possibilities. Pulau Pinang: USM Press. Zimmerman, B. (2006–2021). MakeBeliefComix. Retrieved from https://makebe‑ liefscomix.com/

Part III FROM APPLICATION TO IMPLEMENTATION

DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385‑3

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Introduction In Part I, we looked at the theories associated with intercultural competence and its pedagogical application. In Part II all this was given practical imple‑ mentation in sets of activities to foster learner intercultural competence and to assist teachers in developing materials for this. Here in Part III we go on to examine how intercultural activities can be and are being integrated within language or language and cultural studies curricula in different inter‑ national contexts. To do this, we move from the general to the specific. We start with a brief overview of how intercultural competence is currently covered in educa‑ tional curricula in different parts of the world. This is complemented by an international survey we carried out to collect information about how prac‑ titioners integrate intercultural skills development on the ground. Moving on to the specifics of teaching these skills, we offer general principles for in‑ tegrating them into the classroom. In the last section, we go on to illustrate how these play out in the field in a range of educational contexts presented as vignettes from our survey with which, we hope, readers can identify. This part ends by drawing together the types of techniques practitioners use to integrate intercultural activities into their teaching, in the form of a ‘quick reference’ table.

The status of intercultural competence skills in curricula worldwide CURRICULUM VERSUS SYLLABUS? The ‘curriculum’ refers to the philosophy, objectives, implementation and (often) assessment of an educational programme. The ‘syllabus’ is the practical realisation of the curriculum. It refers to the teaching materials and the methods used to deliver them.

As we have noted previously, intercultural competence is a relatively new concern for (language and culture) pedagogy. How it integrates into the curriculum varies widely from country to country, as it depends on the importance attributed to it in national education curricula/syllabi, teacher training in it, and resources allocated to it. In Europe, the influence of the 2015 Paris Declaration promoting citizenship and the common values

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of freedom, tolerance, and non‑discrimination through education, saw a greater focus on intercultural competence and intercultural dialogue in the second level language curricula of about two‑thirds of European coun‑ tries. There was less emphasis on these at the primary level; only half of the 46 countries surveyed for one European report (Eurydice Report, 2016, p. 8, in Kavanagh, 2013, p. 98) mentioned ‘respecting other cultures’ in their primary level curricula. A further concern was that even if they were included in the curriculum, intercultural competences were paid consider‑ ably less attention than the development of linguistic and communication skills. An EU report on Languages and Cultures in Europe (Europub‑ lic sca/cva for DG Education, Training, & Culture and Multilingualism, 2007, p. 53) concluded that “the curricula demonstrate a tendency to em‑ phasise linguistic competence and communication skills at the expense of intercultural competence”. One obvious reason for this is that students are assessed primarily in terms of language proficiency. This tension between language skills and intercultural objectives turns up time and again in the findings of the international survey we carried out (see below). Even in other countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Pakistan where multiculturalism and multilingualism are integral to society, we see a similar lack of full commitment to including intercultural skills in their national education curricula as well as a tendency to view them as language learning issues. In Singapore, where bilingualism is ‘the corner‑ stone’ of the educational system, ‘culture’ does feature in the Singaporean 21st‑century framework for primary and secondary education (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2010) within the acronym PACC, which repre‑ sents four foci for developing effective language use; Purpose, Audience, Context, Culture. The English language syllabus nevertheless emphasises linguistic skills with seemingly little focus on the intercultural aspects of this bilingual society. Secondary school English language classrooms ­(catering to a mix of English L2, L1, and EFL learners) tend to be exam‑ ination‑centred, focusing on functional literacy, routine procedures, and standardisation. The English language curriculum in Malaysia likewise pri‑ oritises language competence with only minor attention to intercultural skills. In Pakistan, at third level, “the focus of functional English courses is not to develop intercultural awareness” (Respondent to intercultural teaching survey, Participant 40, see below). While there is a greater level of autonomy in private institutions and third level teaching institutions, it is clear that, internationally, there are varying levels of commitment and attitude to teachers integrating the teaching and learning of intercultural competence into their syllabi.

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The problem appears to be the difficulty of fitting the complex and dy‑ namic knowledge‑base and competencies that intercultural communication entails into linear and highly compartmentalised curricula. Simply put, there is usually no school subject called ‘Intercultural communication’ in most primary and secondary educational systems. Its lack of formalised presence implies that educational policy makers struggle with: a. Creating a subject which incorporates knowledge areas and competen‑ cies across a variety of established fields. b. Formally assessing competence that is context‑dependent and fluid. c. Acknowledging that how critical intercultural awareness emerges is rela‑ tive to the individual learners as it involves both the cognitive and affec‑ tive domains. As a result, intercultural learning is often spread across the curriculum and added as an ‘extra’ to existing subjects, basically relegating it to being less important than that of the content into which it is integrated. This un‑ even status of intercultural competence teaching within education curricula means that there is a broad range of practices in terms of when, where, how or, indeed, whether intercultural skills are featured. Formulae for this vary depending on the educational level and sector. To gather empirical information on the status of intercultural skills teach‑ ing ‘from the chalk face’, we ran two international surveys online in 2020 and 2021 which asked language and culture teachers about their own situ‑ ations and practices. These surveys threw up case studies from a wide range of settings which illustrated a huge variety of practices with regard to the ways intercultural skills are taught, the materials used, and how these are integrated into curricula, across the spectrum of proficiency levels and edu‑ cation sectors. In the later section, Integrating intercultural materials into the curriculum: Vignettes from the field, we present case studies from across the globe situated across the spectrum of educational settings, from primary to third level education, teacher training as well as dedicated language learn‑ ing institutions. As might be expected from a survey on an international scale, the respondents’ thoughts, principles, and techniques for teaching and in‑ tegrating intercultural skills were diverse and innovative. Here we en‑ deavour to assimilate these together with principles expressed in theory in Part I and demonstrated in practice in Part II into a useable set of fourteen principles to guide the integrating of these sensitive skills into the curriculum.

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BOX 3.1 THE 2020–2021 INTERCULTURAL SKILLS SURVEY The Survey Methodology The survey was circulated in March 2020 and April 2021 via a Google Form to social networks and discussion lists internationally and gathered a total of 43 responses from 16 different countries. The respondents were asked about their language curricula and whether these included multicultural ob‑ jectives and materials that supported these. They were asked about any sup‑ plementary intercultural teaching materials they developed and used and how these succeeded in the classroom. The findings were collated into a database and the quantitative and qual‑ itative data generated were analysed. Quantitative data was extracted to answer the core question in this sur‑ vey, i.e. the number of respondents whose language curriculum included intercultural competence. The variety of teaching materials respondents used was also analysed quantitatively, particularly the number of different publications used. Quantitative analysis also gave the range of proficiency levels taught across the respondents’ contexts, and the diverse learner de‑ mographic, in terms of age, background, and the degree of multiculturalism and multilingualism. The qualitative data was explored via thematic analysis. The core concept ‘inter/cross‑cultural’ emerged in various forms together with features asso‑ ciated with the intercultural such as (inter) cultural awareness, stereotyp‑ ing, and identity. A range of resource‑related concepts also emerged such as ‘materials’, ‘texts’, ‘visuals’, and ‘creativity’. The participants in the study are anonymised and referred to as P1 (‘Par‑ ticipant 1’) and so on, except in the vignettes where permission was ob‑ tained to supply the name and context, as well as the content of the vignette in each case.

A brief summary of our findings The 43 respondents came from 16 countries broken down as follows: the UK (4) Hungary (3), Malaysia (3), Mexico (3), Pakistan (3), Australia (2) Ger‑ many (2) Ireland (2) Thailand (2) and one respondent from each of the fol‑ lowing: Armenia, Canada, Poland, China, Philippines, Switzerland, Tunisia, and the USA.

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75% of the respondents said that their curriculum did contain intercultural competence among its objectives. Around a fifth specified that they are teaching in multicultural and multilingual environments such as Malaysia, the USA, and Australia. Student profiles varied from ones in such multicul‑ tural environments to ones in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) contexts of which there were four, Britain, Germany, Australia, and Ireland. Students in these places included refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers from all over in the world: Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Central America, Eastern and Western Europe. The age‑range of the students was between 12 and 70 years being taught within educational levels ranging from primary through tertiary (these in‑ cluded private language institutions) in classes of between 10 and 50 stu‑ dents (averaging around 20). Language proficiency levels covered the full gamut of CEFR levels from A1 to C2.

Principles for integrating intercultural skills in the curriculum 1. Prepare As we stated there, the learner activities in Part II (Set C) were arranged and presented in order from general ‘cultural knowledge’‑type activities, which are relatively undemanding in terms of personal investment, to pro‑ gressively more personalised and challenging ones. This is based on the understanding that intercultural awareness‑raising is necessarily a gradual process that involves building up learners’ trust and confidence. This type of progression is key to integrating intercultural activities into the cur‑ riculum and needs to be borne in mind while applying any and all of the recommendations suggested in this part of the book. A staged approach is particularly important when using activities which require affective in‑ volvement – such as Activity 28 – Story exchange, or Activity 31 – Empathy museum – as these may take an emotional toll on learners. Careful moni‑ toring of learner reaction to such tasks might lead teachers to increase or decrease their frequency (using one every other lesson for example) and/ or intersperse with activities that allow more learner distance from the material (such as Activities 8–15). A second point is that the use of any and all of the Part II activities is strictly at the discretion of the teacher; constraints of the context and the curriculum, which we explore later, may well influence selection. This ‘class profile checklist’ which we proposed in Part II (Section D, Activity 47) can be used to profile the students and their learning context and capture any curricula constraints.

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Class profile Learners’: Age/s Gender/s L2 proficiency Cultural/multicultural background Needs and wants Interests and tastes   Geographical context   Class size   Curriculum objectives

This profile should enable the teacher to assess how receptive the learners will be to intercultural activities in general. To measure learner prepared‑ ness to engage with these in any given class, the ‘motivational gauge’ in Figure 3.1 can be used following the steps below. 1 Ask learners to indicate their present level of motivation using this gauge. 2 Ask them to give a short explanation for their choices. For example, if it turns out that most students are not motivated because they have just had a difficult science test, then it would be better to set aside a few min‑ utes of the lesson to discuss the test and how they feel, after which the real work can resume in the classroom. The gauge can also be used to see how ready students are to discuss certain sensitive topics that the materials may contain.

FIGURE 3.1 Motivational

gauge

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2.  Integrate intercultural learning Intercultural learning is not a stand‑alone activity  –  this can be seen in some of the vignettes presented later on, for example in Vignette 3.1 or Vignette 3.4 where the activities include language learning objectives. It is best integrated with other language development aims or soft skills (e.g. critical thinking, creativity) when brought into the classroom. There are two possible approaches here: (a) making intercultural learning a primary focus and allowing other skills development in the background, or (b) plac‑ ing intercultural learning in the background to allow learners to notice, and become aware of certain aspects of successful intercultural commu‑ nication, learn about others and otherness. While the first option is more structured, the second option allows for ‘accidental’ learning, reflecting the unpredictable nature of intercultural learning that we promoted in our framework in Part I.

3.  Introduce cultural content While we agree that intercultural communication is a skills‑based approach and it has moved away from presenting aspects such as cultural identities as content, we also maintain that some knowledge – in line with Byram’s (1997) ‘savoir’ – is useful for learners when they learn about others and oth‑ erness. While some argue that presenting cultures in this manner can easily lead to the formation of stereotypes and that it may have a harmful effect on learners, we take the position that learning about a culture about which the students have no prior knowledge requires an entry point: bits and pieces of information that serve as a starting point for learning and which can and should be modified as the learners are exposed to new information and shape their own thinking and understanding through critical and reflec‑ tive tasks, as presented in Vignette 3.7 which is effectively critical discourse analysis. Providing information about culture can help the learners identify similarities and differences between their own and the other culture and prompt them to question their own understanding of culture, identity, and values – including their own and those of others.

4.  Start with the learners Although it may sound like a common‑sense principle, cultural learning should start from where the learners are, and what they know. In some cases, due to the isolation of some learners in rural communities, this is not much. Yet, building on the learners’ experiences and knowledge of the world, teachers can find ground on which new knowledge and understand‑ ing can be built. As Samuel Johnson, the British playwright wrote, good teaching is when “new things are made familiar, and familiar things are

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made new”. Following this line of thinking new cultural phenomena can be introduced through knowledge that is familiar to the learners, and they should also be encouraged to look at what they know about their own culture and values with fresh eyes and an inquisitive attitude, rather than accepting them as they are. For example, the Ghostbuster movie theme in Vignette 3.1 was introduced to students who had not seen Hollywood blockbusters, through the concept of ‘pontianak’ movies of Southeast Asia, in which the story revolves around a female ghost, usually one with flowing, long, black hair in a white dress. As the students were familiar with such movies, often played on Malaysian and Indonesian television channels, the teacher could connect the known to the unknown with relative ease.

5.  Understand the context Learners in different contexts are influenced by the broader sociocultural and educational context in which they live and study. Therefore, it is essen‑ tial to understand what expectations they may have of intercultural learning, the role of teachers and learners, what are their motivations for developing intercultural awareness (and how this can be developed), what experiences they bring into the classroom, and what their perceived needs are. This is clearly shown in Vignette 3.2, which describes the culture clash between Thai and international learners. Only when teachers are aware of the affor‑ dances and limitations of the contexts they work in can intercultural skills development be fully integrated into the curriculum.

6.  Be flexible It is not enough to understand the context in which intercultural learning is to take place, teachers need to be flexible in their approaches to navigate the learning environment in order to provide meaningful educational expe‑ riences for their students. Flexibility means adjusting techniques that have worked in other contexts, or giving them up completely and adopting new ones. It means selecting and adapting teaching materials according to what is possible and what is not, what is ‘safe’ and what is not in order to make sure that no harm is done to learners (or teachers). It also means not follow‑ ing a set of teaching material slavishly, but changing it, even omitting parts or bringing in new materials to promote learning.

7.  Be creative and develop learners’ creativity Creativity is an essential skill for teachers and students alike. It helps when designing new intercultural learning materials, obviously, but creativity points a lot further than this. It is essential that teachers help their stu‑ dent become more creative in order to see their world (and that of others)

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in a new light. Creativity encourages them to make new connections, to see things differently, to take risks and explore, to initiate dialogue with others even when they may lack linguistic resources, and to improvise when they do not know how to bridge cultural divides. To learn more about how to develop creativity in the lesson, Maley and Kiss’ (2018) comprehensive guide could offer some useful ideas.

8.  Encourage/allow translanguaging in the classroom Translanguaging is “a practice that involves dynamic and functionally inte‑ grated use of different languages and language varieties, but more impor‑ tantly, a process of knowledge construction that goes beyond language(s)”­ (Li, 2018, p.  15). It allows learners to use whatever means they have at their disposal to express their cultural identity and to make meanings, and communicate with others – either by using language, or by using a combi‑ nation of design elements, including visual, spatial, audio, etc. A rather nice example from the field is Vignette 3.6 where students prepare ‘language portraits’ using both linguistic and visual elements, in the form of colours, icons, and shading, in order to encourage them to “reflect on their multilin‑ gual identities and promote language awareness” (P22).

9.  Focus on process, not product Closely connected to the previous principle which emphasises the ‘process of knowledge construction’, learning intercultural competence is a process of ‘becoming’, rather than the study of ‘being’. When incorporating it into the curriculum, teachers need to focus on skills development as a process, rather than providing the students with factual information about a target culture and turn the learning experience product oriented. Besides skills, awareness raising is also a crucial component of intercultural learning, am‑ ply demonstrated in Vignette 3.4 where the teacher makes students realise the assumptions they make in intercultural encounters. Therefore, it is also important to emphasise that intercultural competence lends itself better to formative assessment, i.e. assessment that aims to give students feedback on how they are performing  –  with the aim to help them improve their skills  –  rather than summative assessment which aims to measure compe‑ tence defined according to certain standards.

10.  Use open‑ended tasks Tasks in which there is no definite answer or solution to a problem are better fitted for intercultural learning than tasks which require a particular

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answer. Open‑ended materials allow learners to explore and express their ideas, beliefs, and values and usually generate a wide array of student con‑ tributions. Therefore, using open‑endedness as a principle allows learning to be co‑constructed and to take a route that is best suited for a particular student population. In such circumstances, learners need to navigate among different opinions and ideas, sometimes conflicting, sometimes complimen‑ tary, and negotiate with their peers until arriving at a mutually agreeable conclusion.

11.  Create an environment based on openness and trust Intercultural learning involves negotiating values and beliefs, sometimes openly discussing topics that are taboo in a certain society. Instead of sweeping these under the carpet and pretending that they do not exist (the usual PARNSIP topics, see Part I), teachers should create a classroom en‑ vironment where sensitive topics can be openly discussed and students can freely express what they think without fear of their ideas being ridiculed or laughed at by others. Intercultural learning means that students need to abandon their ego‑centric views and this opening up can make them feel vulnerable. Therefore, creating a safe zone is a must when incorporating intercultural learning in the curriculum.

12.  Address the affective, not only the cognitive As we discussed in Part I, the affective domain in developing intercultural competence has a crucial role, especially in connection with working on at‑ titudes towards otherness and overcoming feelings of fear and uncertainty when operating in new cultural encounters. Affect also has an impact on cre‑ ating trust in the classroom and re‑examining one’s own values and beliefs. One would think that once you have created a classroom based on openness and trust, developing intercultural competence would be simple. But teaching is far from simple. There is the tension, always, between acceptance and interference. It is a matter of timing, of knowledge. And it is a matter of the heart. Your heart and the heart of each and every individual student. (Mamchur & Apps, 2009, p. 119) Therefore, materials which involve work on the affective dimension of cul‑ tural learning, for example, tasks which are based on literature, contribute significantly to the learning process, as our respondent P20 describes in her experiences in a mostly monocultural secondary school context.

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13.  Bring the world into the classroom As some students may not have the means to travel and interact with oth‑ ers beyond the immediate contexts where they live, try to bring the world into their classroom by exposing them to a multitude of peoples, languages, cultures, etc. This can be done by using real‑life materials, realia, videos, and other visuals, and even inviting guests to the classroom. The internet and internet‑based communication platforms offer a plethora of opportunities for teachers to connect with other learners in different cultural contexts, or with people from their own country who belong to different sub‑cultural groups (businessmen, scientists, activists, etc.). Furthermore, the students’ own life experiences can serve as materials for learning, as described in Vi‑ gnette 3.5 which shares a moving account of a learner opening up and tell‑ ing their story to their classmates and the teacher in an online class.

14.  Move learning beyond the classroom One way to maximise intercultural learning is to allow students to explore ideas and content beyond the classroom. Project work is especially useful for this aspect as it allows learners to explore and work with materials for which classroom time would be insufficient. The students are engaged in autonomous learning which enhances their agency and engagement in the learning processes. The learning and understanding they arrive at can be shared with other learners when they present their projects in class. Using the digital skills we talked about in Part I, learners can engage in projects such as Activities 14 ‘Combo culture’, 15 ‘View through a different lens’, and 34 ‘Cultural exchange project’ in Part II, all of which involve online resources. Researching and compiling projects in this way gives learners op‑ portunities to virtually roam beyond the classroom and then share their discoveries with their peers. Vignette 3.3 also offers a glimpse into how learning can be extended beyond the confines of a lesson.

Integrating intercultural materials into the curriculum: Vignettes from the field Our aim in this section is to showcase the broad range of approaches, strat‑ egies, techniques, and alternatives that fellow practitioners use in their in‑ tercultural skills teaching. While the scenarios we present are necessarily selective, we believe these real‑life examples are useful in offering possibilities and practical solutions for incorporating intercultural learning and materials in actual classroom situations. Although not explicitly stated in every case, many of the principles given above can be seen to underpin activities de‑ scribed in the vignettes and those in Part II.

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In order to provide the reader with an organised and relatively easy‑to‑fol‑ low structure, we arrange these examples mainly along educational contexts, i.e. primary, secondary, and tertiary, and we further distinguish between those that come from multicultural and monocultural settings. While we are aware that the chances of an educational context being purely monocultural are slim, given the learners’ and the teachers’ many possible sub‑cultural and hybrid cultural identities, we use these terms broadly to indicate that the presence of multi‑ethnic, multilingual learners in certain contexts is more likely than in others. Another reason for arranging the vignettes in this or‑ der is to show the reader how learners’ age, maturity, the ability for com‑ plex thinking, and language proficiency would determine how intercultural learning materials can be incorporated into the syllabus. Each of the six educational contexts discussed below – primary, second‑ ary, tertiary, ESOL colleges, private English for specific purposes (ESP) col‑ leges, and teacher training – contains information about the typical learners, the (English/language) curriculum/materials they are covering, how in‑ tercultural competence teaching slots into this and the materials used for it. The context is ‘brought to life’ through the voices of teachers from our survey (and elsewhere) sharing their experiences, perceptions, and sugges‑ tions for integrating intercultural skills into teaching.

Context 1: Primary school As mentioned earlier, primary school language curricula are the least con‑ cerned with covering intercultural aspects of language learning – the primary level curricula of only about half of European countries contain intercul‑ tural awareness objectives, with the focus mainly on the traditional language skills. Primary school syllabi tend to be constituted of prescribed textbooks which usually contain (necessarily) age‑appropriate and rather superficial information about the TL culture and require elaborating if a teacher wants to encourage more in‑depth intercultural insights. Awareness of this short‑ coming, and how teachers deal with it, emerges in the multicultural primary context described below. Monocultural

As we have noted before, multiculturalism is more common in societies today than monoculturalism and in fact, it is hard to identify any society as such. Nevertheless, in countries where multiculturalism is only a recent phe‑ nomenon, educational ethos can lag behind cultural shifts – and this can be seen in the case of primary schools in Ireland. While the Irish primary school curriculum enshrines intercultural values; “It encourages them to appreciate

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the interdependence of individuals, groups, and communities, and it pro‑ motes an understanding of and a respect for the cultures and ways of life of peoples throughout the world” (Primary School Curriculum, 1999, p. 50), there remains a tension between this newly multicultural ethos and the ear‑ lier monocultural one. This is illustrated in a representative study reporting on three primary school case studies – not from our own survey but part of a PhD study (Kavanagh, 2013,reported on here with permission).

The researcher, Anne Marie Kavanagh, provides case studies of three pri‑ mary schools in Ireland, describing the ethos of each school and the model of intercultural education each adopts. The schools in Case Study 2 (CS2) and Case Study 3 (CS3) are what would be considered traditional Irish pri‑ mary schools, under the patronage of the Catholic Church, with an ethos “underpinned by RC [Roman Catholic] doctrine, traditions and practices” (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 169). By contrast, The Case Study 1 (CS1) school is one of the – as at the time of writing – 96 ‘Educate Together’ schools in Ireland. Educate Together schools are equality‑based and co‑educational (tradition‑ ally, Irish primary schools were single‑sex schools). In a newly multicultural Irish society, all primary schools have multicul‑ tural populations to an extent; data given for CS2 indicated that it had 50% ethnic minorities while it was 25% in CS3. This leads to the ethos of these schools being somewhat conflicted, typifying the “tensions faced by Catho‑ lic primary schools which seek to promote inclusive policies that welcome students of all religious creeds and none while simultaneously safeguarding their Catholic ethos” (Devine, 2011, in Kavanagh, 2013, p.  221). The CS1 school on the other hand, has a fully inclusive ethos, shaped by the Educate Together curriculum which “affords an opportunity for whole school com‑ munities to embrace the reality of what it means to live out the ideal of learn‑ ing together to live together” (Educate Together, 2004, p. 8, in Kavanagh, 2013, p. 98). Without this inbuilt curricular intercultural ethos, teachers in the other two schools seem to struggle. Expressing how she sees intercultural educa‑ tion, one CS3 teacher muses “I suppose exploring other cultures, mainly through Geography and possibly through religion and maybe certain things like the Chinese New Year if you could work different cultures into different areas of the curriculum” (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 247). What is more, the teach‑ ers in CS3 state that: They do not intentionally incorporate an intercultural dimension into their teaching. Rather they maintain that at a content level, its inclusion is incidental and forms part of the taught curriculum only when it appears

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in textbooks or following a yard or classroom incident when issues of respect or prejudice need to be addressed. (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 307) It is the textbook then that provides content for intercultural teaching in these (and many) primary schools. In her analysis of textbooks used for his‑ tory and geography teaching in the schools, Kavanagh notes: While all textbooks contain some visual images which reflect the diverse nature of Irish society and the ‘developed’ world, the images remain pre‑ dominately of white people in westernised clothing. Moreover, in chap‑ ters which represent diverse religions, the Catholic religion is privileged over other religions, which in turn are portrayed as exotic and as cel‑ ebrated by people ‘different from us’. (ibid., p. 255) She laments a lack of inclusivity or of recognition that problems like short‑ age of food are not exclusive to the ‘developing’ world. It is telling that her textbook analysis concludes with even stronger criticism than we have lev‑ elled at language teaching books; “textbooks are more likely to reproduce than challenge racism and racist ideologies” (Bryan, 2012, in Kavanagh, 2013, p. 47). Moving away from the textbook, at the other end of the scale, the case studies throw up some really innovative and creative strategies for fostering intercultural learning. In the Educate Together school (CS1) staff members are encouraged to take risks and to experiment with new methodologies. In keeping with multicultural best practice, a wide variety of interactive teaching methodologies are employed, including circle time, thinking time, play, cooperative group work, station teaching for literacy and numeracy, off‑campus fieldwork, classroom visitors, blogging, story, poetry, debate, project work, cooperative games, digital learning and drama activities such as hot seating, freeze‑framing, conscience alley, and role play (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 107). Going even further, this Educate Together school works at a macro level to integrate intercultural learning: Human Rights Month is integrated into most subjects during the month of October. The following provides some examples of the types of activities that take place during the month: the teaching of Human Rights Programmes (published by Amnesty International) such as ‘The Right Start’ (Junior & Senior Infants [ages 4–6 years]), ‘Lift Off’ classes

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(1st‑3rd classes [ages 6–9 years]) and ‘Me, You and Everyone’ (4th‑6th classes [ages 10–12 years]); Human Rights themed assemblies; educa‑ tional visits/visitors, distribution of child‑friendly UN Convention of the Rights of the Child posters; participation of local, regional and national projects promoted by agencies such as Irish Aid [and] Amnesty. (Kavanagh, 2013, pp. 149–150) One intercultural activity reported in CS2 and which seems to be universally embraced in primary schools (and indeed at other educational levels) is the holding of an ‘intercultural day’. The CS2 school sent out invitations to par‑ ents in their L1s, and activities were suggested by the pupils themselves to include dance, song, poetry, and dressing up in national costume. While in‑ tercultural days like this can be perceived as exoticising, trivialising and even abnormalising cultural diversity (we mooted this in Part II), on balance, they can be a very successful and enjoyable “celebration of cultural diversity” (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 205) for pupils at this level.

This portrayal of intercultural skills teaching in primary schools in Ireland is not necessarily representative of that in other hitherto ‘monocultural’ so‑ cieties  –  but it will hopefully correspond to experiences in some similar contexts. Multicultural

It is interesting that even multicultural settings, where you would expect teaching intercultural skills to be important, seem to suffer similar con‑ straints as at the primary level elsewhere. It tends to be up to teachers them‑ selves to add or exploit the cultural dimension. This is illustrated in the practice of two Malaysian primary school teachers in our survey. I am teaching in a rural school with a class size of 12 pupils. As I am teaching in a Chinese (SJK) school [Chinese Medium Public Primary School], I need to use the multicultural – multilingual context for my pupils. The current KSSR [Malaysian Primary School Standard Curricu‑ lum] is more into the school context or grammar‑wise context. It does have limited speaking and listening activities and … is adequate enough for the learners’ needs. However, the learners should learn more because language learning has no boundaries. Textbooks do not provide these issues. Using material outside the textbook will draw learners’ attention to study the context. (P6)

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The teacher therefore supplemented the textbook with resources such as photographs from Life, a National Geographic publication, and online vid‑ eos, adapting these into listening and reading activities of a suitable level, while integrating a focus on the cultural content: “I adapt and adopt videos from the internet and make them into listening and reading activities. Then I also integrate the extra knowledge and incorporate some of the grammati‑ cal context based on the video or topic taught” (P6). Another teacher in the same context described how the prescribed text‑ books do ‘expose’ pupils to different cultural practices and products but the treatment of them is very superficial and time constraints prevent exploring the topics more deeply. The textbook and workbook contain topics on different nationalities and their food. The outlined skills in these topics are to ask about personal information such as where one is from and what language they speak. The pupils also get exposed to different flags, national celebrations and cultures from other parts of the world. For example, there’s a topic on Independence Day celebrations in different countries. (P30) Yet, as the compulsory material used in the Malaysian primary English classroom is an international coursebook, some of the cultural content is not accessible to learners who come from rural areas. Even seemingly simple concepts and words, such as ‘a bus’ might prove to be challeng‑ ing for teachers to explain when learners do not understand these in their mother tongue. Sometimes teachers need to deal with two unknowns in their classrooms: the language itself and the concepts that are introduced through language. One example offered by a teacher is a coursebook unit introducing the different rooms of a house (e.g. living room, bedroom, dining room, attic, and cellar, etc.) in a rural Sarawak school where the majority of students live in a long house, i.e. a long building that houses a whole village, with a shared communal area from which individual family rooms open. This is not a unique problem; it can be seen in many similar contexts where a global, international language textbook is adopted for rural pri‑ mary school use. Learners in these settings may lack the life experiences that would help them process and understand the cultural content such materi‑ als offer. As is often the case, a balance needs to be struck between expos‑ ing learners to new experiences and knowledge while helping them make sense of new information through what they already know. No wonder, one teacher said that their ideal material is “something that is very learner friendly and related to their culture; it also must be very flexible for the teacher to change it to according to the situation”. Furthermore, besides

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adapting the existing materials, teachers need to design their own to facili‑ tate intercultural learning. It is possible to address this problem when teachers build their lessons on three principles that are exemplified in many of the activities in Part II:

• First, the starting point should be what the students already know – im‑

plicitly or explicitly  –  either through formal learning or their own life experiences. • Second, the material should present an element of fun, it should gamify learning, introduce a friendly competition, etc. which would allow learn‑ ers to be more open and experiment with ideas and thoughts in the learn‑ ing process in a light‑hearted way. • Finally, the material should be open‑ended. In other words, learners should be able to create meanings that are not prescribed by the material or the teacher and formulate their own understanding of what they are learning. The following vignette is from Malaysia, the teacher is using the pre‑ scribed international English textbook with primary school pupils in rural Sarawak. The focus of the unit is adjectives and the topic it uses is mon‑ sters. The teacher, Muhammad Nazmi Bin Rosli, decided to change the context and turn his classroom into a lookalike scene from the Ghostbuster movie set. Although very few of his students had ever seen or heard of the movie, they were all familiar with ghost stories and ghost movies from popular Malaysian and Indonesian television productions (Figure 3.2). It is important to point out that intercultural learning is not the main objective of the lesson; due to the students’ language abilities and their age, the teacher only provides an opportunity for the students to assume a culturally different role/identity in the classroom. Through role‑playing and modelling, he is working on raising the learners’ awareness of cultural differences (in clothes, language, actions) that his students are generally not exposed to outside the classroom walls and therefore lays down the founda‑ tions for intercultural learning in a safe and enjoyable way.

FIGURE 3.2 Teacher

Muhammad Nazmi Bin Rosli of Malaysia and his primary school students in a Ghostbusters themed lesson

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Vignette 3.1 Multicultural primary school, Malaysia Teacher Muhammad Nazmi’s lesson plan and commentary (­presented with his permission):

“If there’s something strange In your neighborhood Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” Let’s learn adjectives from Ghostbusters! Induction stage The teacher introduces himself as a Ghostbuster member and is looking for a new protege in this Ghostbusters affair. Students watch ‘Proton Pack compilation’ (Ghostbusters weapons) video taken from YouTube. The video is full of scenes where Proton Pack is used against different kinds of ghosts. There, the teacher pauses at the ghost scenes, and the students de‑ scribe the ghosts with adjectives, slimy, big, long, spiky, and others. This part is important to refresh their memory about adjectives and also to introduce students to Ghostbusters, because it is confirmed that my students don’t know how to use adjectives they already learned. Presentation stage Students will be introduced to various monsters and ghosts. (Teacher’s personal collection action figure ‑ if the teacher doesn’t have one, a printed picture would work too.) Besides getting acquainted with monsters, students practice using ad‑ jectives with familiar words; long tail, sharp fang, glowing eyes. The teacher also explained the system of adjective usage to the students. Lots of new words are being introduced here. Practice stage Students sitting in mixed abilities groups. Each group will receive a ‘Ghostbusters Civilians Report’.

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In that report, the public wrote the description of the monster using adjectives, e.g. “The monster has got sharp claws.” Each report has four lines to describe the monster, but no name of the monster is stated because this is something they do not know. Each group will guess which monster is described in the report. Then students get a DIY water gun/proton pack to shoot the monster. Here student leadership will be monitored too. How they handle pride etc. To shoot the monster, the team has to agree on the appropri‑ ate angles. I did this activity in a few rounds. Ready to get a little wet. hehehe. Production stage Advanced and Intermediate students will be given the task of answering adjective questions in sentence form and fill in the blanks. (Filling the Lizard and the Hobgoblin profile) from the textbook. Struggling students will also fill the “Ghostbusters Archive” board with the help of the teacher. Students need an appropriate adjective for each monster. Closure Teachers congratulate students on qualifying for the Ghostbusters team. The teacher continues to compare the strength difference between monsters. Subliminally, s/he also teaches adjectives for comparative and superlative. Muhammad Nazmi Bin Rosli, Malaysia At the primary school level, therefore, it would seem that intercultural awareness‑raising is dependent on the interest and will of the teacher to either develop and exploit the materials in the prescribed textbook or add supplementary intercultural materials to it. Bearing in mind the constraints of level and age‑appropriacy, the ‘starter’ activities in Part II, Activity 8 – Greetings, Activity 9 – Intercultural handball, etc. would be a good fit for primary school pupils.

Context 2: Secondary school Secondary school syllabi rely even more heavily on prescribed textbooks than primary school ones, as they are examination‑oriented at this level. As with their primary level counterparts, language learning textbooks tend

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to stick to superficial facts and visual representations about the TL culture and it is up to the enterprising teacher to build on this, if such flexibility is permitted and time allows. Subjects like Citizenship on the British schools’ curriculum (with various equivalents in other countries such as CSPE (civic, social, and political education), on the Irish secondary school curriculum) contain age‑appropriate materials on diversity and the need for “mutual re‑ spect and understanding” (Department for Education, 2014, p. 229), but again, these often require creativity and supplementation by the teacher, as described in the first monocultural situation below, set in Hungary. Sec‑ ondary school language syllabi usually include works of literature, though, and how the cultural content of a novel is exploited in one such syllabus is described in the next situation, English as an additional language (EAL) in Ireland. Monocultural

Bearing in mind what we said above, that few societies today are truly mono‑ cultural, this secondary school teaching situation in Hungary was neverthe‑ less described by one of our survey respondents as such. Calling his pupils “urban (capital city), monocultural, socially heterogeneous”, this teacher is teaching the Hungarian Matura examination and using the prescribed textbook Matura Leader Plus (Mitchell & Malkogianni, 2016). Although the respondent claims that intercultural skills are included in the curricu‑ lum, there seems little focus on them and the book is examination‑oriented. Nevertheless, there is clearly teacher autonomy – which the respondent en‑ courages others to make the most of – and opportunities to develop critical thinking skills which are of course important tools for attaining intercultural understanding: [The book] really covers the materials for the B2 level exam. The vocabulary revision is perfect (words, collocations, idioms, phrasal verbs). The read‑ ing and listening comprehension tasks need to be practised more as there aren’t enough tasks. However, I really admire the communication‑based tasks so the texts and the tasks help students develop critical thinking skills, too. My advice for other teachers would be not to cover only the book strictly, feel free to assign the tasks for students to do on their own and feel free to be creative to use extra materials on the same topics. (P36) Once again, therefore, we see teacher recognition that creativity and sup‑ plementation are the key to developing the skills needed for intercultural learning in pupils of this age‑group.

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The next monocultural teaching situation describes the use of literature for developing intercultural skills. TL Literature, as we illustrated in a num‑ ber of activities in Part II, encapsulates the culture of the TL in imaginative and engaging ways. At its best, it transports the reader into another culture so that they ‘experience’ the perspective of ‘the other’. Here we see how literature covered in the Irish Junior Certificate (JC) English examination (taken in Year 4 of secondary school) is used with secondary level newcom‑ ers to Ireland not only to prepare them for the examination but to familiar‑ ise them with their new host culture. Newcomer pupils in Irish secondary schools are offered EAL classes and these are often taught by trainee teach‑ ers on post‑graduate masters teaching programmes. This is the context for this account of the use of one of the set books on the JC syllabus, the novel Foster by Claire Keegan. The teacher trainer (the survey respondent, P20) recounts that the student teachers prepared tasks which focused on “raising awareness of aspects of Irish culture … involving the learners in making cul‑ tural comparisons with their own and other cultures in areas such as family structures and relationships, religion, local customs, and rural/urban life”. The respondent concludes: The student teachers reported back on the success of the use of the ma‑ terials/tasks highlighting aspects such as pupil engagement, language learning opportunities, the types of inter‑cultural insights gained, and they also gauged the success of the materials/tasks as examples of good practice for the integration of language support and subject content. The findings were positive and showed there were obvious affective, linguistic and cultural benefits for the pupils. (P20) Most secondary level English examination syllabi include literature and this example shows how this can be exploited on multiple levels when used with newcomers to the country. Models for activities suggested in the section on literature and the spoken word in Part II (Activities 25–30) can be usefully applied to secondary school language syllabi that include literature, with Activity 25 (the universal language of poetry) being a good example of in‑ tegrating a language as well as a cultural focus. Multicultural

When it comes to multicultural secondary contexts, it seems that teachers feel the need to develop their own materials, perhaps as a response to the perceived lack of or inappropriateness of commercially published materials. The consensus is that “it’s easier to plan a logical and smart lesson if the

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material is developed by the teacher” because “students relate to the ma‑ terial, as it is prepared with the knowledge of the students’ age and level” (P35), as well as with an understanding of the sociocultural context in which it is used. Since we argued earlier that materials that develop intercultural communication should be built on what students bring into the classroom in terms of their prior knowledge and experiences, it is easy to see that find‑ ing common grounds and thus a starting point in a multicultural (and often multilingual) context is not an easy task. Therefore, more often than not, teachers need to rely on their local knowledge in order to design materi‑ als – by acknowledging their differences and similarities – that help learners develop their intercultural communication skills. In our survey, there were three respondents from multicultural urban contexts in Malaysia. The similarities, however, stop here as there are sig‑ nificant differences between the students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and attitudes to learning. While one of the examples, let’s call it School A, where P8 is working, is what one could categorise as an elite school with a small class size and hand‑picked, gifted and talented learners, the other two schools, School B (P10) and C (P11) are serving a low‑income community, with significantly larger classes than School A where atten‑ tion to individual students and opportunities for whole class discussions are limited. It is perhaps not surprising that although the teachers feel the need to develop materials to meet their learners’ needs, P10 and P11 focus more on language development, citing that their materials do not “give enough practice for you to achieve the objectives in terms of developing the needed skills” (P10) or that their aim is “mainly the development of language skills, rather than intercultural competence” (P11). This is in stark contrast with P8, in whose class  –  with higher language ability students – the focus is on “identity, layers of identity, stereotypes/bias/ prejudices, perceptions, communication, obstacles to communication, in‑ tercultural communication” with the aim of “raising intercultural aware‑ ness, understanding different points of view, fostering tolerance, being able to communicate successfully” (P8). From the above, we may draw the conclusion that learners’ language proficiency, their academic and life goals, and future plans, e.g. whether they see themselves furthering their studies, possibly in a foreign context, would determine their teachers’ efforts to incorporate intercultural learn‑ ing in their lessons. It is possible that in a multicultural environment, basic intercultural communication skills are taken for granted; skills learners need to navigate everyday life encounters with their classmates and other mem‑ bers of the community are learned early on in an informal setting, especially when the “school is multicultural & multilingual: different races, speaking at least 2–3 different languages” (P11).

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Context 3: Tertiary level: English for academic purposes (EAP) At tertiary level, there are fewer curricula constraints on materials, teach‑ ers tend to have more autonomy regarding the textbooks they choose and how they use them. However, there are even more complex issues at play in international language learning contexts as we will see here. With the globalisation of English, EAP and ESP are seen as essential sub‑ jects in third level higher institutions all over the world, especially ones where students may be preparing to live, work or study abroad in an Eng‑ lish‑speaking country, not to mention those where English is the medium of instruction (EMI). One crucial element of such courses is intercul‑ tural awareness‑raising as there can be very different cultural traditions dictating anything from structuring a research article or funding proposal to relating to peers and tutors from or within other countries. Different traditions of learning, however, include attitudes to critical thinking and intercultural skills. This can lead, ironically perhaps, to ‘culture‑clash’ in countries where EAP is most in demand e.g. the Middle East, Southeast Asia/China, and Thailand. The perspectives of Western teachers, coming from contexts where critical thinking and the intercultural are important skills in teaching and learning can influence their perceptions of their stu‑ dents’ attitudes to these. A Western teacher’s frustration at what they per‑ ceive as a resistance to engage in critical thinking reveals as much about the teacher’s cultural entrenchment as their students’. The perception of students in countries such as China, Thailand, Iran, and Japan can be that intercultural competence itself, or at least the concern for it, is a very Western concept, imposed by a ‘Western teacher’. An example of this pedagogical ‘culture‑clash’ comes from Thailand, in this report from an English EAP teacher revealing culturally-influenced per‑ ceptions and expectations of his students and their responses to ‘Western’ pedagogy.

Vignette 3.2: EAP, Thailand The English proficiency level of Thai adults is consistently rather low, even though English is taught as a foreign language from primary level in Thailand. When it comes to producing anything in English, Thai adults tend to procrastinate and then gravely react at the last moment. Studies have shown that these behaviours of procrastination leading to panic and apprehension are possibly linked to foreign language anxiety. In an effort to reduce the anxiety of using English as a foreign language with our master’s and Ph.D. level students, the textbook Academic

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Writing for Graduate Students was chosen because it is a comprehen‑ sive easy‑to‑use, user‑friendly text. Studies have shown that students feel more anxiety when faced with either pronouncing English or hav‑ ing to choose the most appropriate vocabulary. The language used in the text is rather simple, so for our students to feel comfortable with the language in the text, they are able to peruse each unit prior to class and translate any unknown vocabulary. Next, Thai students, even adult Thai students, tend to be submissive followers. They tend to act only when commanded or directed by the instructor, and negatively react if they feel a sense of misunderstanding. Since adult Thai students are not autonomous learners, continually reminding the student to pre‑read the unit prior to class is taxing on the instructor. Next, studies of sec‑ ondary and tertiary level Thai students have shown that the English teacher must lower their expectations concerning the students produc‑ ing tasks in English. International students, even adult students from local Southeast Asia nations, have stronger study and work ethics, and higher English proficiency levels than their local Thai counterparts. The Thai culture has a deeply rooted sense of ‘face’ so English teachers must be aware not to cause any public offence. Thai adults have been known to react to any perceived public offence suddenly and aggressively. In or‑ der for Academic Writing for Graduate Students to be used successfully with adult Thai students in tertiary classes, the instructor must keep in mind the lackadaisical cultural attitude of the adult Thai students. Even though this text has been found to be one of the better texts to use with adult Thai students, encouraging the students to prepare for the upcoming class by pre‑reading the units is one of the most daunting tasks of the instructor. One piece of advice would be for the writing instructor to lower expectations for the adult Thai students. If there is a class with all adult Thai students, the instructor must be incredibly careful when calling on Thai students to answer questions about the text. If the class is mixed with international and Thai students, then the instructor would be better off only calling on international students to avoid any unintentional perceived public offence. David D. Perrodin, Thailand, (P32) Another facet of this ‘culture clash’ between students in Asia and the Middle East and their tutors is the all‑encompassing emphasis on examinations in these countries. The frustration of one practitioner in China, for example, at a student’s disinterest in intercultural skills in his EAP course – “I don’t need to know this” – is representative (P44).

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Another practitioner teaching in China describes the gap between the objectives of the materials used (EAP materials from the book Macmillan Academic Skills) and the students’ own perceived needs: I think on the whole much of the materials failed to engage the stu‑ dents. Most of them have no interest in foreign cultures. This is a sad but true fact. And almost all of them are not interested in topics like CSR [corporate social responsibility] and sustainability. I often found the students had no interest in these topics, some had feigned interest. Also, the coursebooks failed to engage them. What they are interested in is passing their exams, and here all teaching in the classroom inevitably follows the assessments. It’s a catch‑22 situation. There is a big difference in what Chinese students are interested in and what might be suitable for western students. (P42) In the Chinese situation, the same respondent (P42) lamented that even contemporary multimedia supplementary material such as TED talks failed to enthuse the students. What comes out of these findings overall is the difficulty of designing truly universal intercultural materials that will operate successfully anywhere and everywhere. Ideally then, materials should be designed within and for each specific context drawing on teach‑ ers’ familiarity with their students. This would include their students’ pedagogical backgrounds, their learning styles and tastes as well as their perceived needs (which are, as this example shows, examination‑oriented in certain contexts). The materials development model and activities in Set (C) in Part II offer useful and flexible frameworks to act as starting points for designing intercultural materials to fit into particular teaching contexts. One format for integrating intercultural seminars into university EAP/ ESP programmes that has been successfully used in EMI institutions in Spain is the PEER formula. This three‑step method, Prepare – Engage – Evalu‑ ate  –  Reflect (Holmes & O’Neill, 2012), echoes a number of the inter‑ cultural activities we have suggested in Part II. PEER requires students to prepare – identifying in themselves any prejudices or stereotypes they may hold about people from other cultures, engage with peers from another culture (within the classroom environment), evaluate this interaction, and finally critically reflect on how the interaction may have challenged their (cultural) assumptions (Aguilar, 2018). (Taking into consideration our dis‑ cussions above about differing pedagogical traditions, this methodology might be context‑limited of course.)

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Further reading on this technique: Aguilar, P. M. (2018). Integrating intercultural competence in ESP and EMI: From theory to practice. ESP Today, 6(1), 25–43.

Context 4: ESOL/ESL/EAL As we discussed in Part I and indeed, as is one of the justifications for this book, movements of peoples between and across continents have seen a burgeoning of the language teaching sector teaching migrants. This field is known diversely as ESOL in the UK and Ireland, ESL (English as a second language) in the United States, and New Zealand and EAL in Australia. EAL is used in Ireland too but specifically referring to the secondary level. ESOL/ESL is most commonly taught in state‑supported colleges, we pre‑ sent here vignettes from some of these contexts to illustrate how intercul‑ tural competence is situated within the curriculum, how it is taught, and the materials and activities used. ESOL in Ireland

Our first vignette is set within the Irish ESOL context. ESOL prepares learn‑ ers who can be refugees, asylum seekers, or economic migrants, for life within the new host country, in this case, Ireland. Adults wishing to study ESOL in Ireland tend to go through local third level colleges known as Education and Training Boards. Familiarisation with the host culture is obviously important for these learners; in this vignette, we see how the practitioner uses a publica‑ tion specifically designed to teach about culture in the Irish context.

Vignette 3.3: ESOL, Ireland The Irish Culture Book 3 Elementary/Pre‑Intermediate [CEFR level A2] is a book of activities designed to teach ESOL students about many aspects of Irish culture and is perfectly suited to the learning objec‑ tives related to culture in the Irish ESOL Level 3 course (A2). It is an excellent resource for exploring Irish culture, covering a range of stimulating topics connected to its different aspects, and very suitable for use in a multicultural class. As well as learning about Irish culture my students also developed their speaking skills and improved fluency. We had many lively discussions as the book is full of interesting and thought‑provoking activities that gave my students many opportunities for comparative reflection on their own cultures and helped develop

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cross‑cultural awareness. The 12 themed units cover areas such as Irish food, music, weather, how Irish people communicate, legends, sports, etc. Every unit has lots of colourful images and includes colourful fonts in various styles. There is more than enough material in each unit and a teacher can pick and choose what is suitable for their learners. Another great feature was the links to extra online resources on the associated website, www.irishculturebook.com. My students enjoyed the exercises, authentic reading material, listen‑ ings, and problem‑solving activities. These gave them many opportuni‑ ties to discuss a variety of topics relating to Irish culture as well as take part in comparative discussions which fostered further reflection on as‑ pects of their own culture. The exercises and discussions gave learners a better understanding of Ireland and its people. They had many op‑ portunities to think about the many areas of Irish culture and also lots of possibilities to improve their language at the same time. Michelle Benson, Ireland, (P25) As is clear from these remarks, a key concern of this practitioner was to help her ESOL students to assimilate into the host culture. She was aware that the book was constrained within its cultural context, not only in terms of its content, but of its approach; “I think this book is most suitable to Western language students” (P25). The practitioner observed, furthermore, that by its nature the book offered little direct exposure to other cultures –  “I would like to have seen more examples from Africa and the Arab world” (P25) – and thus less opportunity for building intercultural skills. This resource book was only one of the many ESOL resources used in this teaching context. Another was the core ESOL textbook in Ireland, The Big Picture. This uses a situational approach, with texts, dialogues, and pictures of settings such as the doctor’s surgery, shops, social services of‑ fice, and primary and secondary schools  –  but has little overt training in cultural skills. Interestingly, even within this quite specific teaching context, the teachers draw on one of the global EFL coursebook series, the Cutting Edge Series (Moor, Cunningham, & Crac, 2016) (Benson, 2019). This format, a general EFL coursebook constituting the core of the sylla‑ bus but supplemented with context‑specific intercultural skills training ma‑ terials, seems to be a common one, as we see in the next vignette. ESOL in the UK

Our next vignette is set in a similar context, a further education college teaching migrants – this time in the UK – but it illustrates a more direct approach to fostering intercultural competence via a resource specifically designed for this. The resource book Cross‑Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief

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Encounters with Cultural Difference (Sorti, 1994) offers dialogues to prac‑ tise dealing with intercultural miscommunication such as stereotyping and challenging cultural assumptions. Each dialogue features an American and someone from somewhere else in the world. The practitioner describes his methodology for using these in the classroom.

Vignette 3.4: ESOL, UK Students are placed into pairs (from different cultural backgrounds). Each pair is given a different dialogue from the book and together they have to work out what misunderstanding has occurred and why. Teacher monitors to provide assistance as necessary. Each student in a pair takes one of the two roles and in their pairs they practise speak‑ ing the dialogue out loud. In turn, the pairs perform their dialogue for the rest of the class who have to work out why a misunderstanding has occurred. The teacher distributes teacher‑produced dialogues for students to study and discuss misunderstandings. This is followed by a class discussion about cultural assumptions and their significance in conversation. In pairs, students then explain assumptions that underpin their culture, an understanding of which would help their interlocutors. This is followed by whole class feedback. Finally, students (in pairs or small groups) write their own dialogues, featuring a misunderstanding between a British person and someone from another culture… this can really open some students’ eyes to the assumptions they make (P23). The practitioner puts the fact that this is an American book to good use: “Using the book outside of the US there is the danger of drifting into American stereotypes (but this in itself could be a useful springboard for intercultural discussions/work in the classroom)” (P23). The material is supplemented with teacher‑produced resources, including dialogues that include non‑American speakers. As in the Irish ESOL context, this material is supplementary to the (same) core textbook, Cutting Edge. These two cases from the UK and Ireland illustrate very typical ESOL and EFL teaching situations. In both, a global ELT coursebook constitutes the core of the syllabus but practitioners supplement this with what they perceive as essential intercultural skills teaching, using dedicated supple‑ mentary published resources or teacher‑designed ones. ESOL online

The global COVID pandemic of 2020–2021 effectively propelled face‑to‑face teaching online for months at a time. This pushed teachers into

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creative ways to use the online environment and helped consolidate and normalise the use of the virtual environment in education in general. The sector woke up to the fact that teaching international groups of students was vastly simplified (and cheaper!) when students could log on remotely. While the teaching of intercultural skills had always been viewed as restricted to intimate, carefully teacher‑guided face‑to‑face situations, the advantages of distance became clear. The option of switching on or off video and/or au‑ dio on the communications platform, allowing students to effectively ‘hide’ whenever they felt the need, led, ironically perhaps, to greater intimacy and sharing. This is well illustrated in the next vignette:

Vignette 3.5: Online ESOL class, UK Women’s Group ESOL Class, London 2020 (Adapted from ­Mishan, 2023) It’s another boiling day. Lockdown summer 2020. I’m running out of ideas for the class. Teaching on Zoom, I’ve never done it before, how can I get the class alive, fun, and learning again? Bring back the life and vibrancy that makes this women’s group a fantastic class to teach. Over to them, I think, over to them. So, after fulsome hellos, welcoming each other one by one, enquir‑ ing after family, checking on mutual friends, asking again if we are all well, exchanging handy cooking tips, etc., I go right in. I pick the most positive and outgoing student I have to kick off this weekly slot which will, I hope, encourage them to speak more fluently and effortlessly in this language, a language which is not the one they hold closest, but is one they strive week after week to learn. I ask her to tell us something about her life – anything, really, which she has not told us before and she is happy to share. She begins. She talks about what happened in her family in her native Pakistan when she was very little, what effect it had, and how it makes her feel. Everyone is quiet but yes, they are all listening: I look at their kind faces on the screen. Lovely women, mostly from Afghanistan, but they are settling here in the UK now. They have been together as a group for about four years and are comfortable with each other. I am an incomer, having been with them as a teacher for just over two years. We used to meet twice a week for 90  minutes of ESOL in London in a big room shared with another class, several children, and tea, cake, and fruit. Such fun. Now Zoom. How confused we all were and how subdued.

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But now the woman, normally so buoyant, was telling us her rather sad story in a matter‑or‑fact tone. We were connected by our devoted attention to her, our hearts, I’m certain, all reaching out to hug her once she stopped. We couldn’t, of course, hug her, but we gave her a respectful silence which I eventually interrupted to thank her for her trust in us, and for her willingness to share. And, I added somewhat reluctantly, her excellent English. But, after all, it was an English class! I asked the other women to ask her questions or give comments. They all said something. Each week, for several weeks, until the end of that term, the women took turns to talk. It was always the best part of the lesson. ESOL practitioner, UK. The practitioner here appended this type of intercultural ‘familiarisation’ session to each weekly lesson, over the course of the term. Her deft use of the online environment to foster learners’ intercultural experience discreetly and sensitively offers another useful option for integrating IC skills into the curriculum; exploiting the online environment. As with the use of Identity texts which we move on to next, intercultural activities of this intensity need to be done on a staged basis.

EAL in Australia

Where intercultural skills training is most required is self‑evidently in geo‑ graphical contexts which are themselves multicultural. One such environ‑ ment in our survey was in Australia where the respondent described teaching in a private language school to beginner level learners from refugee and migrant backgrounds. That “the learners primarily live in public housing in inner city [Melbourne]” and “are from low socioeconomic backgrounds with histories of disrupted schooling” (P22) seem to have been the impe‑ tus for the development of an innovative cultural awareness‑raising activity. The concept of ‘Identity texts’ was developed to fit within the Australian EAL framework for SEE (Skills for Education and Employment) AMEP (Adult Migrant English Program) and Skills First programmes. Identity texts, as their name suggests, address one of the defining yet elusive aspects of culture discussed in Part I, identity. (The procedure for using the similar ‘­Identity boxes’, is described in Part II Activity 23). Identity texts are designed for use in multilingual classrooms. The ac‑ tivity involves asking learners, often with low levels of L2 proficiency and

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literacy, to visually represent their linguistic repertoire in a language portrait which can be written, spoken, visual, musical, dramatic, or combinations of these. The identity text serves to “hold a mirror up to students in which their identities are reflected back in a positive light” (Cummins et al., 2015, p.  557). It is identity‑affirming which is particularly important in certain sociological contexts, where students’ languages, cultures, and religions are, or have been devalued. This vignette describes the procedures and objec‑ tives of identity text creation as used in classes of migrants and refugees with low language and literacy.

Vignette 3.6: EAL, Australia We used identity texts including language portraits and learning tra‑ jectory grids which are student‑centred, multimodal, and interactive. The identity texts encourage learners with low levels of language and literacy to share information quickly about their linguistic and cultural backgrounds using different modes of colours, cultural icons, drawings, and shading to visually represent their linguistic repertoire. The identity texts proved to be powerful tools for students with limited language and literacy skills as they allowed students to use their resources to share information about themselves. The aim of both the ‘language portraits’ and ‘language learning tra‑ jectory grids’ is to encourage learners to visually portray their multi‑ lingual practices and to share information about their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. These texts can be used for many teaching aims, but we used them to help teachers better get to know their learners. We also wanted to encourage learners to reflect on their own and oth‑ ers’ linguistic resources. Additionally, these texts were used as language teaching tools to teach language features of colours, emotions, and verbs as well as being a prompt for writing short sentences about stu‑ dents’ linguistic practices. The texts aim to help students realise and appreciate their own and others’ linguistic identities. The classroom teacher pre‑taught language features and modelled sample identity texts using their own experiences before students cre‑ ated their own texts. The identity texts included language portraits and language learning trajectory grids. The language portraits involve learners visually por‑ traying the languages that they believe make up who they are. Students are provided with a blank portrait and are encouraged to use different modes of colours, cultural icons, drawings, and shading

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to visually represent their linguistic repertoire. The portraits encourage learners to reflect on their multilingual identities and promote language awareness. The language learning trajectory grids involve learners plot‑ ting historical events, practices, and emotions onto a chronological grid. Learners create a timeline with places that they have lived, their educational experiences, and their emotions at different points in time. On the horizontal axis, students create a timeline of places and events, and on the vertical axis, students plot emotions for each event, from low (sad), to high (very happy). Learners choose the events and experi‑ ences to plot on their grids, and this creates opportunities for learners to reflect on their language learning journeys and to celebrate their ex‑ periences with others. These identity texts are activities that all students can participate in, and they are particularly useful for teachers to better get to know their students. Language features of emotions, colours, and verbs were taught prior to students creating their own identity texts. I modelled an example of my identity text, starting with the ‘language portrait’ with the class, explaining that these were the languages that made up who I was. Stu‑ dents were then given a blank template of a portrait and encouraged to use various colours, drawings, cultural icons, etc., to create their own portrait. These were displayed in the classroom and shared with the class. As a way of modelling the ‘language learning trajectory grids’, I drew a grid on the board and plotted six chronological events on the hori‑ zontal axis that were significant to my learning journey. I then plotted emotions on the vertical access to reflect how I felt about my learning at each moment in time. Students were provided with a simple grid and encouraged to plot their own language learning journey. During this process I encouraged students to share information by asking simple questions including where they have lived, when they started learning languages, and why it was a good (or not good) experience. The grids became a tool for future language teaching lessons, as well as a prompt for writing simple sentences about the students’ learning journeys. Julie Choi/Hayley Black, Australia, (P22).

Context 5: Business English Teaching business English is a strong commercial area, particularly since English is often the lingua franca of international business transactions where communication is intrinsically intercultural (Pullin, 2015). It is there‑ fore a situation where intercultural skills are – or should be – integral to the

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programme. Business English colleges tend to be private institutions where there are generally more resources and opportunities for practitioners to de‑ velop their own in‑house material. Intercultural Business English: Working in Asia is one such example, designed by one of its freelance teachers for use in a private business English school in Germany. The course is finely tuned to the needs of each learner group by supplementing the in‑house material after consultation with each client to find out their aims and objectives: [It was] developed specifically for German learners who needed to im‑ prove their business communication skills to work with clients and part‑ ners in Asia. The materials are based on the experience gained working as an in‑house language trainer with various multinationals, observing countless meetings and negotiations, and have been used in courses over a number of years. All the activities in the book are based on real‑world examples and feedback from learners who have to work internationally… Learners appreciate materials which reflect their real life needs. (P26) In a similar Cross‑cultural Business Communication course for multicultural students reported by survey participants teaching in Poland, the focus was on developing cultural awareness “outsmarting cultural shock, increasing cultural intelligence and navigating cultural differences” (P12). The teacher used her own exercises as well as materials/games developed by other in‑ terculturalists, emphasising the value of games for intercultural learning: “Games allow students to understand better different types of values, ways of thinking, ways of learning … they always work perfectly showing differ‑ ences even better when the group itself is multicultural” (P12). Teaching contexts like these showcase the teaching of intercultural skills, being in a situation where such competence is the entire focus of the cur‑ riculum. This tends to be the case only in what are effectively training situa‑ tions in private institutions catering to business or commercial clients. These types of courses are often arranged to take place in‑house in multinationals for example.

Context 6: Teacher training One of the key messages of this book is that integrating intercultural materi‑ als into the curriculum is not just a question of inserting a few activities about other cultures into the syllabus. In Part I, we offered the materials evaluation technique critical discourse analysis for practitioners to use to help them se‑ lect intercultural teaching material that they felt appropriate for their learners in terms of how it presented other cultures as well as their own.

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Critical discourse analysis empowers the reader to examine intercultural (or indeed any) material with a critical eye and read between and beyond the lines of the ideology that underlies it. In the words of the writer of the following vignette: When learning English, either as a second or foreign language, the cur‑ riculum tends to reproduce a euro‑centrist view. To reproduce this view means to show only one side of the story, it is teaching a monocultural course. By listening to or reading the other side of the story, the course can actually become intercultural. (P13) In this vignette, set in a teacher training institution in Mexico, the teacher encourages the trainees to take a critical discourse analysis stance when read‑ ing an adapted version of the text, the “Inuit women’s manifesto”. It is significant that the text the teacher has selected, from Quebec, is suitably ‘distanced’ from the students’ own context, allowing them to do this ‘at a remove’ as it were.

Vignette 3.7. Teacher training, Mexico The material is a lesson that focuses on getting students [trainee pre‑school teachers] to rethink underrepresented ethnicities in Mexico and other countries. Besides, it highlights the lack of voice that some of these minorities have had in telling their own struggle for recogni‑ tion. The target language is a review of the imperative. The input text is an adaptation of the “Inuit women manifesto”. There is a small in‑ troduction so learners know who the Inuit were and where they lived. Because it is a manifesto, the target language was easy to find and then practice. After doing some grammar‑oriented activities, learners get more involved in how the message is written. I designed a model based on discourse analysis levels and techniques based on Gee’s definition of critical discourse analysis. There are three tasks based on the three levels proposed by Gee. There is an upper‑level meaning task where learners do a literal analysis of the language in the text. The second one is a situated‑meaning task where students relate the language to the context in which it was written or uttered. Finally, there is a criti‑ cal discourse analysis task where learners highlight personal or political features of the interactants, and implications of their status, gender, or ethnicity are analysed. The analysis of who wrote and why the message was written in this way makes students more aware of how language

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can be used by different cultures to resist power and get a voice in their own issues. At the end, students had to write their own manifesto about their own context. One of the course’s plans is to get students to be more aware and critical of intercultural affairs. When learning English, either as a second or foreign language, the curriculum tends to reproduce a euro‑centrist view. To reproduce this view means to show only one side of the story, it is teaching a monocultural course. By listening to or reading the other side of the story, the course can actually become intercultural. I take the view that intercultural awareness cannot be possible if students are not aware of the historical power imbalances that have existed for a long time. Understanding the other means understanding their struggles and their problems. It is moving away from discussing a visit to Disn‑ eyland to discuss about social justice. The aim of this lesson is to bring global issues to the classroom critically in order to challenge learners’ biases and challenge some privileged perspectives. I used this lesson when I had to review the imperative. I found that as the grammar point was quite easy, I could use the lesson to promote other abilities I find enormously important for future teachers like re‑ spect for diversity and understanding of the struggle for recognition and voice that some underrepresented peoples suffer in other parts of the world. I thought that by showing them an example from faraway countries they could easily relate to the recognition problems that some of them are suffering in Mexico. As a novel materials writer, I have de‑ veloped a new model to write reading or listening materials that aims at highlighting how through language, underrepresented minorities can challenge the current status quo. The design of the materials is based on discourse analysis techniques and principles. I had to soften and scaf‑ fold the tasks to make them achievable for my learners. I thought the lesson was going to be a bit hard to relate to. However, my students immediately felt they had things in common with the Inuit and came up with very interesting final products. All of them had to write their own manifesto about their background. The manifestos showed they had developed intercultural competence as they were able to understand the Inuit struggle for recognition and transfer the principles of the mani‑ festo to their own context. I am proud to say that the material I used was successful. There might be a number of reasons why it went well, but I can think of at least three factors. The first is that the material focused on the story of misrecognised people like the Inuit. I am inclined to believe that most of my students come from backgrounds where they have felt this way.

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Mexico is a country where they are commonly racialised and classified as a lower class. The teacher job is not normally recognised anymore, the new economic order makes these occupations look like they are not very productive as the salaries are not really big. All of these factors make my students feel they are not really worthy. By seeing a com‑ parative misrecognised ethnicity in their book, some of them found the courage to write a manifesto against Western beauty stereotypes, for example. The second reason was that the tasks were exciting. My students have told me that they find it tiring and monotonous to do fill‑in‑the‑gaps tasks and that they like doing critical thinking‑oriented tasks. The discussion that followed the third task of the lesson made a lot of them really keen on learning more about the subject. The third reason was that they always felt guided in the lesson. Even if the tasks asked them to carry out complex thinking activities, they were always given options and/or examples so they knew what they had to do. I also made sure that the instructions were clear enough for everybody and at the end all of them went well. ... I would definitely suggest us‑ ing materials that encourage students to challenge their own biases or that challenge the status quo. As language teachers, we are supposed to give a clearer idea of the target language culture we teach. In this case, English has become the language of the world (The Inuit manifesto was originally written in English), a language that unites or confronts dif‑ ferent cultures. It is our duty to give everybody in this world a voice to discuss their issues and to show our students that intercultural compe‑ tence is not only about understanding meal times in the UK, it is about becoming a critical actor of the global society where we live, a citizen that is aware of the imbalances and injustices that are suffered by people that might not look, think or speak the same as me. Sergio Durand, Mexico, (P13). While our activities in Part II were not given an explicit language focus – that they are flexible and dynamic was integral to their design – this vignette is an example of the successful integration of a language focus (the imperative) with, in this case, a critical cultural purpose.

Classroom techniques for integrating intercultural skills These situations/contexts together with other findings from our survey and the literature on intercultural teaching practices internationally, throw up many diverse classroom techniques and activity types; role plays, games, and

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so on. While all are recognisable communicative teaching strategies, they are particularly ‘tried and tested’ for intercultural skills training. For quick reference, we have summarised these in Table  3.1. This shows where the technique was used in the vignettes above and in Part II activities. This is supplemented with commentary in places on where it was used elsewhere in our survey and in practice published elsewhere. TABLE 3.1 Summary of techniques for integrating intercultural skills teaching

Technique: role plays and games Part II Activity 24 A‑land vs Zed-land 14 Combo culture (partially) Part III Vignette Vignette 3.1. Multicultural primary school, Malaysia Vignette 3.4. ESOL, UK Commentary Role plays and dialogues are clearly valuable for intercultural sensitising and can extend as far as drama. In one ‘steps to settlement’ programme in the UK, authentic dialogues between migrants and local people were analysed in the classroom using conversation analysis techniques to uncover sociolinguistic, interactional and transactional strategies (Callaghan, Yemane, & Baynham, 2019). A similar technique was used with respect to preparing migrants for job interviews (Roberts, 2019). In exploring multilingualism with a migrant group in the UK, Cooke, Bryers, and Winstanley (2019) describe the use of ‘forum theatre’ in which students develop a short play or scene which encapsulates their experiences of prejudice towards non‑English speakers in the UK context. Technique: problem‑solving Part II Activity 18 Six degrees of separation Part III Vignette Vignette 3.3 ESOL, Ireland Commentary Problem‑solving has in recent years become an established pedagogical approach. Problem‑based learning (PBL) was originally used in training doctors but crossed the pedagogical divide into many other areas such as industry and language learning and teaching (see Mishan, 2010, 2011). Technique: sharing personal experiences Part II Activity 5 Class human library 23 Identity boxes 27 Story circles 28 Story exchange 31 Empathy museum (Continued)

From Application to Implementation  197 TABLE 3.1  (Continued)

Part III Vignette Vignette 3.5 Online ESOL class, UK Vignette 3.6 Australia Technique: photographs/visuals Part II Activity 11 Interpreting the visual 12 A picture paints a thousand words Part III Vignette Multicultural primary school Commentary P6 working in a multicultural primary school in Malaysia used photographs from the photobook Life from the National Geographic. Some original choices of visual material used by other contributors to our survey included: downloaded photographs of Welsh signage (for the police, hospital, and so on) by an ESOL teacher in Wales; The Basic Oxford Picture Dictionary (Gramer, 2003), pictures from a book of 96 photographs showing scenes of life in Germany used by a survey respondent teaching refugees in Germany. The teacher noted that this authentic, real‑life material is very useful in linking theory and practice, motivating the students, and sparking affective engagement. Photographs also support understanding of difficult concepts, and the comparison of different cultures helps learners accept the culture of their “second homeland” (P15). The ultimate extension of the use of images for intercultural learning is in a project such as ‘participatory photography’ (Moon & Hussain, 2019) in which migrant participants take photographs according to a chosen theme, building ownership and gaining a voice in the process. Technique: realia Part II Activity 16 Cooking class 19 I DIVE Commentary Realia has a definite place in the intercultural classroom. Activity 16 in Part II recommended a cooking class with all required equipment and foodstuffs and nothing is more culturally‑defining than national dishes. At the other end of the scale, ‘clean rubbish’ was used by one ESOL practitioner in our survey for a lesson on recycling and council services in England. Technique: comparison tasks Part II Activity 15 View through a different lens 22 The Cultura project 34 The Cultural video exchange project Part III Vignette Vignette 3.3 ESOL, Ireland ESOL, Germany EAL, Ireland (secondary level) (Continued)

198  From Application to Implementation TABLE 3.1  (Continued)

Commentary Comparison between and among cultures underlies many intercultural learning activities either implicitly or directly: German respondent P15 in our survey used photographs to support his ESOL learners in comparing their home and new cultures (see above). In EAL in Ireland (as recounted by P20) the secondary level teachers used the Irish novel set for the second level examinations to help the learners make comparisons between various aspects of culture in their own and Irish life. Technique: task‑based activities (TBLT approach) Part II Activity 21 Smelly socks group 16 cooking class Part III Vignette Vignette 3.1 Multicultural primary school, Malaysia Commentary The ‘Ghostbuster’ themed lesson in Vignette 3.1 represents task‑based learning at its best, involving young learners in the excitement of a film‑themed lesson that ‘disguises’ its language and culture learning objective. Technique: creative tasks Part II Activity 14 Combo culture 22 The Cultura project 23 Identity boxes 32 Memes 33 Comic strips 34 The cultural video exchange project Part III Vignette Vignette 3.6 EAL Australia

Conclusion This contemporary snapshot of the integration of intercultural skills into language curricula internationally indicates that intercultural competence is clearly viewed today as ‘a good thing’. This notwithstanding, emphasis on it varies widely in curricula from country to country and it is generally not assessed in the way that language skills are. This has led to a ‘catch‑22’ situ‑ ation in which many teachers are not keen on spending time on intercultural skills and publishers are thus not inclined to produce textbooks for such a narrow market. This results in a lack of resources, leaving it to the dedica‑ tion of those teachers who wish to fulfil intercultural objectives, to develop

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their own materials. While this – rather fortuitously – reinforces the demand for works such as this book, more importantly, it shows language and cul‑ ture resources lagging sorely behind the needs of an increasingly globalising world. That the production of such resources needs to be underpinned by targeted theory around developing intercultural competence has been the thrust of this book. Here in Part III, therefore, we have compiled a list of principles to guide teachers on how to integrate their intercultural materials into the language curriculum, and we also offer a handful of techniques that can operationalise these. In order to show how the principles and techniques work in real life, we surveyed practitioners working at the chalk‑ and screen- face, in various contexts and educational levels around the world to uncover how they actu‑ ally teach intercultural skills in their classrooms. We then displayed samples of our findings as a series of ‘living’ vignettes. These show, we believe, how teacher‑designed materials can be successfully used to develop learners’ inter‑ cultural awareness and competencies when the effort is made. Our research study apart, there seems to be little known about how exactly intercultural materials are used or designed, how students receive them, and what impact they have on learners’ intercultural competence. In Part IV we aim to address this, exploring how research, especially practitioner research, can contribute to our understanding of teacher‑designed intercultural materials.

References Aguilar, P. M. (2018). Integrating intercultural competence in ESP and EMI: From theory to practice. ESP Today, 6(1), 25–43. Benson, M. (2019). Case study 1–full‑time ESOL provision, 2002–2017, Limerick city, Ireland. In F. Mishan (Ed.), ESOL provision in the UK and Ireland: Chal‑ lenges and opportunities (pp. 101–108). Bern: Peter Lang. Bryan, A. (2012). ‘You’ve got to teach people that racism is wrong and then they won’t be racist’: Curricular representations and young people’s understandings of ‘race’ and racism. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(5), 599–629. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Callaghan, J., Yemane, T., & Baynham, M. (2019). 4 steps to settlement for refu‑ gees: A case study. In M. Cooke & R. Peutrell (Eds.), Brokering Britain, educat‑ ing citizens: Exploring ESOL and citizenship. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cooke, M., Bryers, D., & Winstanley, B. (2019). ‘Our langauges’: Towards sociolin‑ guistic citizenship in ESOL. In M. Cooke & R. Peutrell (Eds.), Brokering Britain (pp. 137–155). Bristol: Multiligual Matters. Cummins, J., Hu, S., Markus, P., & Kristiina Montero, M. (2015). Identity texts and academic achievement: Connecting the dots in multilingual school contexts. TESOL Quarterly, 49(3), 555–581.

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Department for Education. (2014). The national curriculum in England: Frame‑ work document. London: Department of Education. Devine, D. (2011). Securing migrant children’s educational well‑being: Perspectives on policy and practice in Irish schools. In M. Darmody, N. Tyrrell, & S. Song (Eds.), The changing faces of Ireland: Exploring the lives of immigrant and ethnic minority children (pp. 73–88). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Educate Together. (2004). Learn together: An ethical education curriculum for Edu‑ cate Together schools. Dublin: Educate Together. Europublic sca/cva for DG Education, Training, & Culture and Multilingualism. (2007). The intercultural competences developed in compulsory foreign language education in the European Union: www.lace2077.eu. Eurydice Report. (2016). Promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non‑discrimination through education  –  Overview of education policy developments in Europe following the Paris Declaration of 17 March 2015. Retrieved from https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national‑policies/eurydice/sites/ default/files/2016_publications_list_february_2017.pdf Gramer, M. (2003). Basic Oxford picture dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holmes, P., & O’Neill, G. (2012). Developing and evaluating intercultural compe‑ tence: Ethnographies of intercultural encounters. International Journal of Inter‑ cultural Relations, 36(5), 707–718. Kavanagh, A. M. (2013).  Emerging models of intercultural education in Irish pri‑ mary schools: A critical case study analysis  (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin City University). Li, W. (2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguis‑ tics, 39(1), 9–30. Maley, A., & Kiss, T. (2018). Creativity in language teaching and learning: From inspiration to implementation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mamchur, C., & Apps, L. (2009). On the edge of chaos: In search of a process. Com‑ plicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 6(2), 115–123. Mishan, F. (2010). Withstanding washback: Thinking outside the box in materi‑ als development. In B. Tomlinson & H. Masuhara (Eds.), Research in materi‑ als development for language learning: Evidence for best practice (pp. 353–368). London: Bloomsbury. Mishan, F. (2011). Whose learning is it anyway? Problem‑based learning in lan‑ guage teacher development. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 5(3), 253–272. Mitchell, H. Q., & Malkogianni, M. (2016). Matura leader plus: Level B2. London: MM Publications. Moon, P., & Hussain, R. (2019). Using participatory photography in English classes: Resisting silence, resisting dis‑citizenship. In M. Cooke & R. Peutrell (Eds.), Brokering Britain, educating citizens: Exploring ESOL and citizenship (pp. 121‑135). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Moor, P., Cunningham, S., & Crac, A. (2016). New cutting edge series. Harlow: Pearson Longman. Primary School Curriculum. (1999). Primary School Curriculum: Introduction. Dublin: Stationery Office.

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Pullin, P. (2015). Culture, curriculum design, syllabus and course development in the light of BELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 31–53. Roberts, C. (2019). From the outside in: Gatekeeping the workplace. In M. Cooke & R. Peutrell (Eds.), Brokering Britain, educating citizens: Exploring ESOL and citizenship (pp. 213–226). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Singapore Ministry of Education. (2010). English Language Syllabus (2010). Primary & Secondary (Express/ Normal [Academic]. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Sorti, C. (1994). Cross‑cultural dialogues: 74 brief encounters with cultural differ‑ ence. Yarmouth, MN: Intercultural Press.

Part IV FROM IMPLEMENTATION TO RESEARCH

DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385-4

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Introduction The book is conceptualised within the context of professional development, in that its aim is to cultivate intercultural awareness in practitioners/teach‑ ers which they can apply not only in developing materials and activities but in their whole approach to pedagogy and which they can, ultimately, foster in their learners. This holistic view means, we feel, that the book is rich in directions for further research  –  and given the instructional environment, action research in particular. Action research, with its observation – critical ­reflection – modification loop, coincides with what we have endeavoured to build into the sequenced materials offered in Part II. Action research is just one of the research methods suitable for classroom investigation which we outline in the research section below. Following that, we pull out the main recurring themes of the book and suggest how practitioners might explore these using some of the research methods described. First, though, a short discussion on why cultivating practitioner research in this area is so important.

Intercultural competence training in teacher education Although we have seen that the landscape of language learning and teaching research has been changing, these changes do not, or at least not systemati‑ cally, seem to be incorporated in language teacher education curricula. Not surprisingly, the same would apply to intercultural competence training and research. There are many reports which point out that language teachers do not feel prepared to develop their learners’ intercultural competence (e.g. Bastos & Araújo e Sá, 2015; Cushner & Mahon, 2009; Leo, 2010) (see also accounts from practitioners discussed in Part III). However, there seems to be a lack of research on intercultural competence training (Ngai & Janusch, 2015) although it is clear that integrating intercultural communication in teacher education would have several affordances (Dogancay‑Aktuna, 2005) that point beyond intercultural awareness. Although there are attempts to incorporate intercultural experiences and learning in teacher education programmes (or more broadly, in higher edu‑ cation settings), these seem to be more accidental than systematic (Moore & Díaz, 2019). Nevertheless, one example that has been widely published and received very positive reviews, is the Cultura project (see e.g. Bauer et al., 2006; Levet, 2015; Levet & Tschudi, 2021) initially designed at MIT for a French intermediate class, in which students from different cultural contexts take part in internet mediated intercultural tasks. The original project was then developed in Russian, Spanish, and German (Bauer et al., 2006) and adapted to fit slightly different contexts and set‑ups as well.

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Another problem that riddles teacher education in terms of intercultural competence development is the need, and thus time and place, for such skills development to take place. Although most 21st‑century educational models place a high importance on the development of intercultural and cross‑cultural skills, most teacher education programmes are conducted in fairly homogeneous contexts, where students view the world through a “monolingual‑mono‑cultural” lens (Fonseca‑Greber, 2010, p. 102). These student teachers, as Thapa (2020) reports, imagine that their future charges will share the same cultural and ethnic backgrounds with little diversity in the classroom. Therefore, their perceived need for developing intercultural competence, or for the skills of dealing with learners from various cultural backgrounds, might be minimal compared to their need for learning effec‑ tive classroom management, pedagogical subject knowledge, or psychology. Of course, this might be different in highly multicultural countries/com‑ munities (e.g. USA, the UK, Australia, and Canada) where teachers might have very diverse student groups at certain schools or school districts and ultimately in higher education. Since there are other needs that have to be fulfilled before attention can be given to intercultural skills development, there seems to be little room (and time) in the curriculum for such training. Unfortunately, several re‑ search reports seem to reinforce this. For example, Nelson (1998) reported that only 42% of MA TESOL courses in the USA had modules related to cross‑cultural communication and this seems to be a general trend in the broader context of higher education as well (Byram & Feng, 2004; Young & Sachdev, 2011). Such lack of attention to developing intercultural competence in teacher education suggests that teachers need to learn about the issues themselves. One way of doing this is through the sort of small‑scale research projects we suggest in the ‘Areas of focus’ section later on; projects situated within teachers’ own practice and which aim to improve the learning and teaching experience in the classroom.

Research methods for investigating intercultural learning and materials Investigating intercultural learning has been conducted in many different ways using established research methodologies to understand how students develop their cultural awareness, what materials contribute to learning, how knowledge, skills, and attitudes shape intercultural competence, etc. to name but a few. Most of this research, however, has tried to simplify investi‑ gation, rather than embracing the complexity a CDST lens offers and what

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we have proposed in the materials development framework in Part I. This is understandable as the application of CDST into any classroom research is not an easy task. As Larsen‑Freeman (2021, p. 794) puts it: If researching language classroom dynamics seems like a tall order, well, it is. However, to do otherwise, e.g. to conduct a conventional experiment, in which an attempt is made to control all variables except one, is to remove the “pattern that connects” (Bateson, 1988) and to run the risk of produc‑ ing ecologically invalid findings. In this book, we have proposed developing materials which view learning as situated, emergent, and largely unpredictable. As such, large, standard‑ ised measurements with generalisable results may not be the most appropri‑ ate means to capture how learning unfolds in different classroom settings, in wildly different educational and sociocultural contexts. In order to ac‑ count for the uniqueness and unpredictability of learning and teaching, we suggest that small‑scale practitioner research (action research, see below), within an individual or collaborative framework (Burns, 1999, 2019) is op‑ timally positioned to study how students – as parts of many complex sub‑ systems – interact with each other and intercultural materials and to capture how intercultural learning emerges in the classroom. Action research allows teachers to be part of the complex system they are studying and therefore, at the same time, observe how small changes affect the learning system as a whole. Furthermore, the advantages of collaborative action research are that they provide opportunities to notice emerging patterns across classrooms and offer a chance to reflect on how these can be used to positively influence students’ intercultural learning.

Action research As outlined above, action research (AR) is a classroom‑based practitioner research methodology, which aims to investigate an issue a teacher may con‑ sider exploring in their classroom, thereby providing a better understanding of and insights into it. As its label suggests, it emphasises both action and research, whereby teachers systematically examine their practice, plan for change, collect data on the effect of changes, and reflect on whether the process has been successful. Like all research, AR has the potential to gen‑ erate more questions than answers, therefore the cycle can be repeated, or redirected until a satisfactory solution is found. The discoveries are usually used to refine the plan and continue the cycle of improvement. AR can involve collaborative inquiry and exploration, or it can be con‑ ducted by individuals who are directly involved in a particular situation or

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problem. The purpose of AR is to improve the quality of teaching and learn‑ ing in a particular context through a cyclical process of reflection, planning, action, and evaluation. The key characteristics of AR include a focus on the practical applica‑ tion of research, the involvement of practitioners in the research process, and a cyclical process of reflection and action. Common belief holds that teachers are against theories and value practice more. Well, we believe this is not quite true. Although teachers may not be in favour of a theory which is removed, temporally or spatially, from the context in which they work in order to provide generalisable frameworks, they are keen to generate their own theories about teaching through localised and contextualised AR. A similar approach to study intercultural learning is through lesson study, which not only contributes to teacher learning but can also be used as a method of inquiry (Elliott, 2019). In a lesson study project on inter‑ cultural learning or the use of intercultural learning materials, teachers work together and select a learning objective (see Part I, Table  1.2) they want their students to master. Then they plan a lesson, or series of lessons, choose or develop their materials collaboratively, compare notes on how the lessons have worked in their respective classrooms, and plan for further interven‑ tion if necessary. In this sense, lesson study can be considered a structured collaborative reflection exercise that helps practitioners unearth what works and what does not work in their classrooms. Furthermore, it also offers a chance to understand how unique and unpredictable learning can be when using the same lesson plan and materials with different student groups. Building on collaborative AR (Burns, 1999, 2019) or lesson study (Elliott, 2019), one possible research avenue could be towards identify‑ ing possible recurring patterns across different classroom settings. As we discussed earlier, CDS are unique and unpredictable, yet they display self‑­ similarity in their structure. Therefore, adapting Larsen‑Freeman’s (2021, p. 794) suggested research question, “Granted that each learner is unique, can certain general learner profiles be established?” we may ask: If inter‑ cultural materials’ contribution to learning is unique in different classroom settings, can a certain general pattern still be established? In order to answer this question, teachers (working individually or collaboratively) might se‑ lect, adapt, implement, and examine the effects of particular intercultural materials within their own classroom(s), and share their discoveries with other teachers doing the same. Furthermore, AR is best suited to study the openness and adaptability of complex dynamic learning systems by intro‑ ducing different types of materials and studying how these influence the creation and emergence of intercultural understanding and knowledge. The practitioner, being part of the system, can experience first‑hand how differ‑ ent types of input, modality, tasks, etc. have an effect on emergent learning.

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Some of these may be rejected by learners or embraced by them and inter‑ nalised and changed through several feedback loops. In line with Burns and Knox (2011, p. 2), we see the classroom not as a machine where inputs are processed and outputs are generated, not as a space where activity takes place, and not as an activity, but as a convergence of different elements which stretch beyond the temporal and spatial location of a given classroom, and which combine in dynamic relationships.

BOX 4.1: THE POTENTIAL OF AR FOR INVESTIGATING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Working with Chinese students in a provincial capital in Mainland China, one of the authors was warned that ‘those students’ would be passive and prefer not to interact with a lecturer. He was also reminded that creativity was not something the learners would showcase in the classroom. Yet, a ‘lec‑ ture’ on intercultural communication to a group of 200 university students turned out to be an interactive dialogue with students answering probing questions, offering their ideas, making suggestions, and working in groups on a poster design. What could have caused such an ‘unexpected’ result? Was it the lecturer (being non‑Chinese and introduced into the system from the outside)? Was it the material? Was it the task? Perhaps a combination of these? Could the effects of this one‑off lecture be replicated if this was a series of lectures or seminars over a semester? These are all questions that AR is best suited to answer. As a more generic research question, the reader may ask: How does introducing different types of materials as input into the complex dynamic system of intercultural learning impact the emergence of student learning?

Although most practitioners engage in small‑scale research in their own classroom, what distinguishes this work from academic research is that the latter often aims to have generalisable results, while the former seeks practi‑ cal solutions in particular contexts. While practitioners are best positioned to examine their own classroom practice, they may lack systematic train‑ ing in research that would ensure that their findings are valid and reliable. They mostly rely on insights gained through years of practice; feelings and hunches may guide their investigation. These are extremely valuable sources of information when dealing with unpredictable classroom situations, but may not be able to provide solid evidence about learning or materials use

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that could guide future action. Below we summarise some of the most com‑ mon research tools and methods that teachers can rely on to collect data about learning, teaching, and materials in a systematic way. The tools and techniques listed are not exhaustive and are not meant to be treated as an ultimate guide to classroom research. They are offered as a reminder of the possible instruments that are at the readers’ disposal for systematic class‑ room investigation and can be used as a reference in the sections which sug‑ gest practical avenues for investigation. In any case, it is important to keep in mind that there is no one best way of doing AR: it is always a compro‑ mise. Different methods and tools have their advantages and disadvantages; therefore, it is important to choose those that are feasible and provide the most benefits within a particular context. Furthermore, AR can be an on‑ going process. While providing some answers to the questions we wish to investigate it also directs us to ones we had not thought of.

Observation Observation is one of the most versatile methods of collecting rich class‑ room data. However, it can be problematic as there is so much happening in any moment of a lesson that it is simply impossible to attend to everything. Therefore, we suggest that observations are focused and guided, rather than holistic. In the following, we offer some consideration for conducting lesson observations. Positionality: Positionality refers to the researcher’s position within the research study and their relationship to the study participants. For example, lesson observation can be done by ‘an outsider’ (perhaps a colleague) in‑ vited into the classroom or by the teacher (an ‘insider’) who conducts the lesson. Each ‘position’ (insider studying self, outsider studying insider, and so on) will have an effect on the dynamic of the classroom and thus needs to be considered for its advantages or drawbacks. For instance, an outsider in the lesson may disturb the flow of the lesson as students may be curious why they are there and their behaviour might be different than how they usually act when only their teacher is present. Yet, the outsider might be able to collect more objective data as they are not part of the learning system. They also have a different vantage point from that of the classroom teacher as they tend to stay at the back of the classroom or among the students, rather than at the front from where most teachers conduct their lessons. Their sole task is to observe the lesson, whereas teachers who observe their own lessons need to divide their attention between the task of teaching and facilitating learning and collecting data at the same time. When it is the classroom teacher who observes their own practice, they are in a position to gain insights an outsider would never be able to achieve.

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They are part of the learning system, and therefore are in a position to probe  it and direct it to get the most amount of data. Yet, they perform the dual role of teacher/researcher which may mean that by focusing on one, they may not be able to execute the other effectively  –  an issue of multi‑tasking. Quantitative vs qualitative

Classroom observation can involve collecting quantitative or qualitative data, or a combination of both. Quantitative observation means that the data col‑ lected can be counted and turned into numerical values. This means that the observer must focus on classroom phenomena that can be categorised. For example, they can focus on how many times students ask open‑ended ques‑ tions, or simply raise their hands to ask a question. Observers can measure how much time is spent on discussion from the whole lesson, or how much time is used by the teacher explaining a task. Qualitative observation, on the other hand, means that the observer needs to take notes as evidence of what is happening in the classroom. Some qualitative data may not require the observer’s interpretation, for example when taking note of and writing down instructions given to learners or narrating classroom events, whereas in other cases notes taken during an observation reflect the observer’s subjec‑ tive interpretation of what they see. For example, an observer could record that a student, the focus of the observation, “smiled when the teacher com‑ plemented their work” or they could note down that “the student looked happy and proud when the teacher complemented their work”. In the first case, qualitative data is more objective (a simple recording of events) whereas in the second case, it includes the observer’s subjective interpretation of the classroom event. Subjectivity, however, does not mean that the observation is not valid; it simply acknowledges the fact that human perception is sub‑ jective, and what we see, or do not see in the classroom, is filtered by our own values, beliefs, and experiences. The simplest way of doing a qualitative classroom observation is to note down what the teacher and/or students may say in the lesson. For example, the observer can focus on questions the teacher asks in order to facilitate intercultural learning. An examination of the questions asked could reveal which ones prompt the learners to reflect on their values and which are asked simply to manage learning in the classroom. Focus on student vs teacher

Another area that needs consideration is the focus of the observation, which of course, would depend on the aim of the research/observation. This might be on what teachers do or what students do in the classroom, or

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perhaps on both. It might be on a select few students, selected on the basis of certain criteria (perhaps gender, age, academic achievement, observed attitudes, or cultural background).

Questionnaires and surveys Questionnaires and surveys are useful instruments when the aim is to collect data in a relatively short time, from a relatively large target group, for exam‑ ple, from a class or a few classes. They can collect quantitative or qualitative data (and a combination of these) on various aspects of materials use and intercultural learning. However, questions used in these instruments need to be carefully crafted in order to elicit meaningful answers that can be used to answer research questions. It is highly recommended that questionnaires and surveys are piloted, i.e. tested out with students or teachers that are not part of the research before they are used for data collection. Feedback from this group on clarity, practicality, and usability is essential to fine‑tune research instruments.

Interviews Interviews are also popular research instruments and allow investigators to gain in‑depth answers about particular topics. We can distinguish between standardised interviews where the same questions are asked of a number of interviewees, or semi‑structured interviews, where some questions are the same, but the interviewer also asks probing questions to explore certain areas in more depth. Although conducting interviews seems an easy enough task, there are many aspects which may have an impact on the quality of answers and which, therefore, need consideration. These include the length of the interview, when and where it is conducted, whether it is audio/video recorded, the interviewer/interviewee seating arrangement, who is asking the questions, i.e. whether this is the student’s teacher or another colleague, and the questions themselves. One of the common mistakes is asking lead‑ ing questions which suggest what answer the interviewer would like to hear, and therefore careful consideration is needed when formulating questions.

Focus Group Discussion An alternative approach to the interview is the focus group discussion when a group of 4–7 participants are asked about their opinions on a particu‑ lar topic or topics. Although this can elicit a lot of insights in a relatively short time, care must be taken to make sure that the participants do not influence each other, everyone has a chance to express themselves, and a

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generally open and safe environment is created. While it is possible that cer‑ tain members of the group may dominate the conversation, it is also likely that ideas are bounced back and forth and answers that may be avoided in a one‑on‑one interview are brought forth.

Tests Research often means ‘measurement’ of some sort and the most common measurement of the successful application and use of teaching materials is how much students have learnt. Although there are some standard tech‑ niques in testing and assessment, for example, the use of multiple choice, open‑ended or True/False questions, or activities such as gap filling or matching items, to name but a few, any material that can be used for teach‑ ing purposes can also be used for testing and assessment. Standardised tests can be used in experimental research when there is a pre‑test to set a baseline, followed by an ‘experiment’, for example, the introduction of a new type of material, and then a post‑test to check the ef‑ fectiveness of the treatment. This research usually requires a control group which is similar to the experimental group, but which does not receive the treatment (i.e. the new type of material). Alternately, test results could be compared to those in similar classrooms where there has been no AR con‑ ducted and which in this case serve as a sort of ‘de facto’ control group. Short formative tests, or as they are sometimes called, quizzes, i.e. tests that show what progress learners are making with the materials, can also be used to collect information at different stages of the lesson. One type of test is also known as ‘exit ticket’ in which learners should answer a few questions before they leave the classroom. This can simply be an evaluation of how much they have enjoyed the lesson and the materials, how relevant they think the lesson topic was, or they can be asked to offer a short com‑ ment on how they felt, what they learnt, or what they would like to see in the next lesson.

Content analysis We have discussed content analysis in some detail in Part I, Section 2 as one of the possible ways to determine the appropriateness of teaching materials for a particular group of learners, or to uncover how culture is represented and intercultural competence is developed in such resources. Of course, content analysis can also be used as a research method either on its own or in combination with other techniques. One of the problems often quoted in relation to content analysis is the reliability of results, yet there are differ‑ ent measures that can be implemented to make sure that conclusions drawn

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from content analysis research are reliable. This depends, first of all, on the descriptive accuracy of the codes and coding categories used. In a research study by Mebarki (in progress), for instance, the high school textbook used in Algeria is analysed for the diversity of its cultural content, with agreed categories consisting of ‘local culture’, ‘target culture’, and ‘international culture’. The allocation of the content into the correct categories is crucial for the reliability and validity of the results.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) Critical discourse analysis is another possible research method to use to ex‑ amine intercultural learning materials. Just like content analysis, it was also discussed in some detail in Part I, Section 2 where we discussed how it can be used to discover ideologies on which a certain text is built. The assump‑ tion is that texts are never neutral and they express the values of those who create them. Therefore, when CDA is used, it looks at the text, the processes through which the text is created, and the social context in which it is cre‑ ated in order to draw conclusions. For example, CDA of a contemporary Japanese elementary school EFL textbook published by the Japan ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology (MEXT) revealed that its ostensible multicultural/multicultural objectives were mainly lim‑ ited to Japanese‑English bilingualism, ignoring the linguistic plurality of Japan today (Horii, 2015).

Researching intercultural competence: areas of focus This final part of the book picks up on its main recurring themes and throws out research tentacles with the aim of seeding ideas and studies and, in the spirit of AR, even new practices. One of the concerns in the book has been how intercultural materials are, can, and should be used – researching materials in use is explored in the first of the sections below. This is then extended, in the next section, to investigating intercultural learning via a perspective that has framed our conceptualisation of intercultural learning in the book, complex dynamic systems. Underpinning the use of intercultural materials is the elusive area of cultural sensitivities, the focus of the follow‑ ing section. This has been broached repeatedly within the pages of this book (and there is a substantial section on it in Part I) but as we indicate in the section on it below, the ever‑evolving societal and cultural movements of to‑ day’s world endow this area with fresh and vibrant research potential. Next, we move from cultural sensibility to ideology. The importance of a critical pedagogy perspective on language and culture teaching materials has never been far from the surface in this book and we see it as a crucial research

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strand. Finally, we think it fitting to conclude this part – and the book – by turning the spotlight on the original stimulus for this work, the learner. In the penultimate section, therefore, we consider learner‑centred studies, including one producing learner‑generated materials, and, to conclude, we address the quandary of assessing students’ intercultural learning. Each sec‑ tion contains between one and three projects for practitioner research utilis‑ ing the sorts of research methods described above and which can be selected according to the practitioner’s own context, interests, and/or needs.

Materials in use – how are intercultural materials used? In 2010, Chapelle asserted “the role of the textbook depends on individual teachers and learners, their understanding of and interest in the materials, and their ability to meet the content part way in terms of comprehending and exploring it” (2010, p. 45). The dearth of research on the interaction between teachers and materials was still an issue around a decade later; ‘dis‑ covering what teachers do with materials’ remained among the 13 areas of research identified in Tomlinson and Masuhara’s Materials development for language learning (2018, p. 364). Alongside this, Tomlinson and Masuhara stress “it is not the materials per se that are responsible for learning effects but the ways in which they are used by teachers and by learners” (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 374). This missing focus in materials development research on materials used in the classroom has seen the launch of a new area, ‘materials in use’, also termed ‘materials mediation’, which is now an emerging strand in the field. With the working definition of “entangled and emergent influences among the teacher(s) and the learner(s) and one or more LLT [language learning and teaching] materials” (Guerrettaz, Engman, & Matsumoto, 2021, p. 3), materials in use look at how materials work as “mediating resources” in the classroom, how materials “shape and are shaped by classroom discourse” (LaScotte, Mathieu, & David, 2022, p. v).

BOX 4.2:  MATERIALS IN USE PUBLICATIONS LaScotte, D. K., Mathieu, C. S., & David, S. S. (Eds.). (2022). New perspectives on material mediation in language learner pedagogy. Cham: Springer Nature. The special issue: Materials Use Across Diverse Contexts of Language Learn‑ ing and Teaching of the Modern Language Journal (2021), Vol. 105 (S1) Research group MUSE (Materials in Use) museinternational.wordpress.com

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Mediation is most commonly effected as materials adaptation as we have seen in Part II, Set (D). This is because adaptation is unavoidable in the mediation process that is ‘teaching’. The moment material is used in the classroom, it is mediated in its interaction with the teacher and the ­learners – and inevitably altered to some degree. This is nicely illustrated in Zhan Li’s (2020) study mentioned in the adaptation section which de‑ scribed the minimal tweaks involved in even the most controlled use of materials. It likewise makes for the conclusion to another research study into materials use; “no teacher wholly used the material as it was presented in the textbook and every exercise was adapted by some teachers” (Bolster, 2015, p. 20). The research on materials in use ranges from adaptation to a number of areas that have been important in this book. These include the use of semi‑ otic resources such as images, sound, gesture, and movement, and multimo‑ dality in general, often via the affordances of technology (Guerrettaz et al., 2018). There is a striking correspondence between materials in use research and the concept we have applied in this book, of (intercultural) classrooms as complex dynamic systems, considering the new research strand’s atten‑ tion to: The role of classroom materials from an ecological perspective … This line of studies conceptualizes the classroom as an ecological system con‑ sisting of complex and interrelated sets of participants and elements ranging from learners, teachers, classroom discourse, materials, and other artifacts such as digital and online resources, shedding light upon the relationships between classroom materials and other elements in the classroom ecology. (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 38) Materials mediation research appears to take a CDS perspective in that it emphasises the “critical role of the teacher” and hence teacher expertise “in mediating the impacts of materials in the classroom” (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 41). Figure 4.1 illustrates this interdependent relationship between the teacher and teaching materials. The correspondence between CDS and materials in use/materials media‑ tion theory would seem to open out the potential of ‘looking inside the black box’ of intercultural materials used in the classroom. To consolidate this perspective on materials use, it seems fitting to revert to those essential actors in the classroom, practicing teachers. Significantly, there were participants in our 2020–2021 study (discussed in Part III) who likewise conceive materials use as an interactive and emergent process in

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Materials development (evaluation, creation, adaptation)

Materials in use

Language teaching expertise FIGURE 4.1  Interrelationships

between materials use, materials development, and teacher expertise (drawn from Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 41)

the context of intercultural learning, characterised by learner‑led flexibility, creativity, and innovation; My advice for other teachers would be not to cover only the book strictly, feel free to assign the tasks for students to do it on their own and feel free to be creative to use extra materials on the same topics. (P36, Hungary) My advice to teachers is to be innovative and not shy away to take initia‑ tive. It is not necessary to follow the lesson plan pedantically. Make the students take initiative and involve them fully into class activities. (P35, Pakistan)

Project 1: Learner engagement with materials It is always important to learn how engaged learners are with the materi‑ als in the classroom. Learner engagement – which points beyond a simple interest  –  is an important aspect of learning, therefore a worthwhile area for classroom investigation. It can take many possible avenues, depending on the specific focus of classroom research. However, researching engage‑ ment is not an easy task as this abstract concept, similarly to motivation, cannot be directly observed or measured in the classroom. You need to

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operationalise it, i.e. look for signs that indicate engagement with the ­materials, for ­example, the learners’ attention, curiosity, interest, interac‑ tion, willingness to learn, etc., which indicate that they are engaged. It is still a difficult task and needs careful planning. Below is an example of how to measure learner engagement in an intercultural learning task that requires students to work in small groups and discuss a topic. 1 Prepare a chart that is similar to the one below and which breaks down a 10‑minute period of your lesson (or as much time the task would take) to 10‑second intervals 0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

1 min 1.10

1.20

1.30

1.40

2 Choose 3–4 students from your class. Your selection could be based on language level, motivation, gender, or can simply be done randomly. 3 Prepare as many tables for as many students you select to observe. 4 Number the tables or write the students’ names on the top. 5 When the students start doing the task, check at 10 seconds if student 1 is talking or not. If they are, put a tick, if not, put a cross. 6 Move on to the next student, student 2, and mark their activity in T ­ able 2. Continue with the other students. You should be able to check every stu‑ dent before you get to 20 seconds and you look at Student 1 again. Of course, you can change the time intervals to allow for note‑taking or to involve more students. 7 Tally the results and think about similarities and differences in student talking time. 8 You may repeat the same observation with another intercultural material which involves discussion. Do you find the same results? If not, how can you account for the differences?

Project 2: What do you see? Teaching materials generate cultural meanings through the combination of different modalities, usually through linguistic (text‑based) and visual ele‑ ments. Materials writers often include visuals in the materials to enhance students’ understanding of the accompanying text, or to raise their interest in a topic. Visuals can be treated as signs, they stand in place of the reality they represent. They are encoded with messages to the reader/viewer and therefore they present a rich resource of cultural information. However, the problem is that we do not necessarily decode them in the same way. Our

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interpretation of visuals depends on our cultural filters, life experiences, val‑ ues, beliefs, etc. Therefore, the meanings the materials writer aims to create may be different from the meanings students generate in the classroom. 1 Choose a picture from the material you use currently, or what you intend to use in material you are developing for intercultural learning. 2 Give the visual to the learners (either in printed or digital form) and ask them to write down 3–5 things that come to their mind when they see the image. 3 Collect the answers from the learners; there are no correct or incorrect answers! 4 Arrange the answers students provide into possible topics, by merging answers and groups of answers into major categories. For example, look‑ ing at a picture of some girls celebrating the Indian festival Holi, stu‑ dents may come up with suggestions such as ‘party’, ‘concert’, ‘music festival’, ‘birthday party’, ‘holiday’, ‘end of school’, India, ‘Holi’, ‘religion’, etc. These could be merged into three or four bigger categories, such as ‘party’, ‘music’, ‘celebration’, etc. Continue this process until merging sub‑categories does not make sense anymore. Most likely you will end up with 5–6 categories of answers. 5 Name, or rename the categories. One of the original ideas can serve as the name of the new categories, but it is also possible that students choose a different name that better describes the content of the categories. 6 Now answer the following questions: a) Are there any major groups (with more answers than others)? What are these? b) Are there any minor groups with only a few answers? What are these? c) How would you explain students’ answers? Why did they come up with the answers they provided? What does it tell you about their cul‑ tural knowledge, experiences, possibly stereotypes they are holding? d) Do you need to change the material or task that accompanies the visual to exploit their potential for intercultural learning? Do you need to change the task you have been planning to use with the visual in your own material? How would you go about it? 7 Try to do the same with a different group of learners and compare the results. Can you account for any similarities or differences between the learners’ answers? For a similar project, see: Kiss, T., & Weninger, C. (2017). Cultural learning in the EFL classroom: The role of visuals. ELT Journal, 71(2), 186–196.

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Project 3: It’s a matter of time How much time does it take for students to engage with different types of tasks? During the design of materials writers usually estimate how much time it takes for students to work with a set of materials and tasks. However, we know that each learner group is unique and different, and each teach‑ ing context has its own limitations and affordances; therefore learners may engage with some materials in more depth and skim through others without much thought. When you design your own teaching materials it is impor‑ tant to learn how much time your students are likely to spend on different tasks in order to maximise their effectiveness in your classroom. For this project, you need to select a variety of teaching materials, some that require individual work, and some that are based on group work. You can select text‑ or task‑based materials, ones that are multimodal, etc. You may use some of the materials presented in Part II of this book.   8 Before you use the materials in the classroom make an estimate of how much time your learners will need to complete the tasks. If you are using different learner groups, make an estimate for each individual group. Mind you, although learners share certain common characteris‑ tics, they may respond differently to the same stimuli.   9 Use the material in the classroom and measure how much time stu‑ dents take to complete it. If the material is designed to contain differ‑ ent steps or stages, you may take note of the time needed to complete these as well. 10 Compare your estimated time with the actual time needed to finish the materials. Are they similar? Are they different? How can you explain the similarities and differences? Are the answers different in different student groups? Why? What explains the difference? What adjustments might you need to make for the time involved?

Cultural sensibilities That cultural sensitivity is key to intercultural competence is self‑evident. This emerges strongly from the research into developing intercultural com‑ petence, and stimulating it is the underlying objective of most of the inter‑ cultural competence activities in Part II of this book. Yet it remains perhaps the most elusive aspect. For it is dependent on ‘getting under the skin’ of another culture, that is, a genuine and non‑judgemental appreciation of, and empathy with, another culture or cultures. As such, it is a keenly personal/ individual skill, and in a social climate in which we tend to be reluctant to attribute personal responsibility (in the West at least), it can be hard for us as

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educators to train the spotlight onto the students themselves. Alongside this must come the recognition that their developing intercultural competence is naturally and unavoidably influenced by their own regional and local cul‑ tural perspectives. The ‘ideal’ of intercultural competence involves reaching beyond these boundaries towards attaining multiple perspectives  –  what Deardorff calls ‘cultural humility’ (e.g. 2018) – an acknowledgement that the way we see the world is just one way and that it is important to seek out and embrace other perspectives. At the same time, “encounters with cultural difference” foster an “understanding of oneself and one’s multiple cultural affiliations” (Barrett, Huber, & Reynolds, 2014, pp. 16–17). Nurturing such critical‑ ity, is, of course, the central task of intercultural awareness education as has been emphasised in this book and actively cultivated through the classroom tasks offered in Part II. The interaction and link between training in intercultural awareness and language education form the rationale for this book. The irony that the ethos of language learning publications – and ELT ones in particular –  undermines this link, and the criticality it promotes – has been previously pointed out. The publishers of global coursebooks tie themselves in knots to avoid topics that they consider could upset the cultural sensibilities of their international readership – yet these are the very topics (politics, ideol‑ ogy, and so on) that are most likely to stimulate cultural criticality. Inter‑ national publishers are not alone in this though. Nationally and regionally published materials are equally as likely to stymie the development of critical thinking on culture and society where they are designed under levels of gov‑ ernment control to adhere to the national ideology; for example, the case of primary school ELT textbooks used in China (Ping, 2018) and course‑ books in Iran, reported by Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2015) discussed in the book’s Introduction. As Dat Bao comments regarding some of the domestically produced materials used in Southeast Asia, while familiarity enables learners to discuss issues in their lives with ease, “an overdose of local‑culture ingredients can easily damage learner curiosity” (Bao, 2008, p. 268), with obvious implications for motivation. Rahim and Daghigh, on the other hand, maintain that the emphasis on target and other cultures in global coursebooks “inadvertently limits the role of learners’ own culture in awareness‑raising activities” (Rahim & Daghigh, 2020). Thus, laying aside the issue of cultural mores, materials that provide the comfort of the familiar (from the source culture) versus those offering the attraction of the novel (from the target culture), can each be seen to have their advantages in terms of motivating learning.

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The realm of cultural sensitivity is probably the most elusive to explore via empirical research such as AR. Empirical studies are by their nature based in one or a small range of cultures, and AR is even more restricted to a local context, so such research might thus seem self‑limiting, even self‑de‑ feating. However, the scope of such research can be infinitely broadened by exploring the relatively recent concept of intercultural or global citizenship (GC) which we looked at in Part I. The ethos of Global Citizenship Educa‑ tion (GCE), nurturing tolerance and inclusivity (as represented in UNE‑ SCO’s (2014) GCE framework) would seem to speak to and characterise today’s generation, and it invokes a critical perspective essential in the trans‑global environment in which we live and function. Indeed, GC has rapidly become more of a reality, accelerated by technological innovation and by the global pandemic of 2020–2022 that moved huge swathes of international interaction online. Global/Intercultural citizenship, its mani‑ festation on the online environment and its intersection with intercultural sensitivity are thus burgeoning, cutting‑edge areas of research with fascinat‑ ing potential.

BOX 4.3: PROJECTS ON INTERCULTURAL CITIZENSHIP For a wide selection of projects on intercultural citizenship, the reader is re‑ ferred to the British Council workbook Integrating global issues in the creative English language classroom: With reference to the United Nations sustainable development goals (Maley & Peachey, 2017). The 17 United Nations sustain‑ able development goals aim to address pressing global concerns such as climate change and the inequities this causes; access to food, water, and energy resources and the consequences of these for health, wealth, and education. This workbook offers a research project on each of the 17 goals developed by experienced language practitioners and textbook authors. The workbook is freely downloadable from the British Council website: www. teachingenglish.org.uk. The projects are designed to be carried out with English language learn‑ ers and adopt a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach as they clearly have a content as well as language learning objective. This, usefully, means that they are equally suitable for practitioner research with minimal tweaking, as illustrated by the adaptation of a sample workbook project below, on gender balance in the classroom.

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Project 4: Researching gender balance in the classroom Chapter 6 of the book, by Jemma Prior and Tessa Woodward, focuses on Sustainable Development Goal 5: ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. The authors’ stated aims are to: Create an atmosphere and to give students in our classes, no matter what their gender or background, the experience of being in an inclusive, safe, fair environment, and of learning facts about, and the social and linguis‑ tic tools for, the empowerment of women and girls (Prior & Woodward, 2017, p. 57) The activity suggested is essentially content analysis (CA) research (see above). The CA here focuses on gender representation in published language learning textbooks – a currently popular area for materials research (see, for example, the work of Jane Sunderland (e.g. 2000) and contemporary studies such as Benlaib (2024)). In Prior & Woodward’s proposed activity, the chosen text‑ book’s reference to, and images of men and women, the jobs they do, the actual number of times the words man, woman and their pronouns are men‑ tioned, whether they initiate turns in conversation and their roles in it, are all counted. Next, they suggest that the materials be coded to compare how active or passive each character is in the text/dialogue, whether their role in it is major or minor, whether this correlates with their gender, and whether the genders operate in different areas “valued or undervalued economically or intellectually in society” (ibid., p. 58). This quantitative analysis can then be triangulated with qualitative analysis looking at aspects like vocabulary, topic choice, and the “juxtapositions of image and text, at plot types, at characters and how they are depicted, what they say and do” (ibid.). Qualitative analysis like this is obviously subjective, as the researcher’s own interpretations are in‑ evitably culturally influenced as we have often discussed in this book. This in it‑ self can be an opportunity for the practitioner/researcher to introspect on their interpretations and on how revealing these are of their own cultural influences. Prior and Woodward suggest a follow‑up activity which is essentially AR. Via video or sound recording (with learner consent) or colleague observa‑ tion, classroom interactions during a lesson can be coded with respect to gender differentiation. This involves counting, for example, the number of times; the teacher calls on or corrects male/female students; female or male students volunteer a response initiate an exchange, and so on. The number of interruptions of or by male versus female students and the comparative length of utterances can also be counted. Quantitative analysis of the results will quickly show any gender bias by the teacher, and the male‑female power dynamic among the students.

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Project 5: Creating cultural third spaces in the multicultural classroom A recurring concept in the book has been that of the cultural ‘third space’, a metaphorical ‘place’ where learners from different cultures operate within a notional, harmonious ‘culture‑neutral’ space to work out and negotiate between their cultural boundaries empathetically and non‑judgementally. A default example of a cultural third space these days is the internet, social media networks and platforms, as noted in Part I. But how to create cultural third spaces in the multicultural classroom goes to the heart of fostering intercultural competence – offering a fascinating if challenging area to re‑ search in our classrooms. This project invites practitioners to reflect on cultural third spaces, start‑ ing from ‘real‑life’ experiences where they might occur naturally, and then go on to consider how to create these in the classroom. For real‑life exam‑ ples, we have only to look at children, who are naturally good at creating cultural third spaces as they are less weighed down by (acquired) cultural baggage. Children’s play, for example, is often conceived as a conceptual third space, bridging the gap between home discourse and school discourse, for instance (Yahya & Wood, 2017). Another useful prompt for thinking about lived experiences of third spaces is this description from Adrian Holliday, author of Understanding Intercultural Communication (2019) (referenced in Part I). Here, Holliday is in discussion with Nick Pilcher in the latter’s (2019) co‑authored article. He describes his concept of third space thus: The third space is a moment – a place – in which we can stand back and see things in a different way. It’s a space of investigation. … it’s got to be something that everybody does, so there are moments in everybody’s life when they find the deCentredness [getting away from West‑centric roots], and they can see what’s going on around them, perhaps even for seconds. And that’s the third space. Something unexpected happens and it takes everybody somewhere else and enables them to understand. (Zhou & Pilcher, 2019, p. 1) This AR study entails observing students engaging in intercultural activities of the sort described in Part II. This might be done by the teacher in their own class or via peer observation. The objective is to come to a descrip‑ tive analysis of the sort of environment or atmosphere the students create together during these activities and then evaluate, according to the sorts of characteristics offered below, to what extent this environment could be considered a metaphorical cultural ‘third space’.

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(Some) characteristics of cultural third space (that is, how does it manifest?). Participants’ level of: Relaxation Comfort Ease with each other Openness Interest in each other Comprehension Empathy Participants’ readiness to: Listen Dialogue Accept Share Enjoy each other’s company Other characteristics may be observed and added during the classroom observation. Reflection

After the analysis and description have been done, teachers can reflect on how ‘successful’ the created third space was: What worked? What didn’t work? What alterations could make it work better? Aspects affecting success might include: Group interaction patterns – group size, seating arrangements Gender/culture/age mix of groups Saliency of the teacher/observer (e.g. sitting at the back of the class, moni‑ toring groups, etc.) Overall classroom configuration Venue/environment: In a classroom? In a common room? Outside in a garden or yard? Sharing a meal/refreshment? Playing a game or sport?

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Reflection, followed by some reorienting of aspects such as these, should help towards creating the aspirational cultural third space within which in‑ tercultural competence can flourish. We close this section on cultural sensibilities with a colourful illustration of one teacher’s management of these as described in this vignette, set in the Amazon jungle:

Vignette 4.1: Managing cultural sensibilities in the classroom Several years ago, I taught members of the Achuar indigenous tribe in the Amazonian jungle as a volunteer English teacher. I spent about six months in one of their communities and the eco‑lodge nearby. My job was to teach English to the hotel staff (local guides, bar and restaurant staff, and boat drivers) as well as upper primary and secondary school students in the community where I worked on the days when foreign tourists (mainly Americans and Western Europeans) arrived at the hotel. The fact that we had a regular influx of visitors from abroad (both native and non‑native speakers of English) gave me the idea that I could informally offer the tourists an extra activity beyond the jungle hikes and the bird‑watching by the river bank. I invited them to join my students for an English class to give them an idea about how languages were taught in an environment where the students spoke Achuar at home, were instructed in Spanish at school, learnt basic Kichwa as an inter‑tribal language, and there was also a steady stream of volunteers arriving to teach English. Providing English classes is a curricular re‑ quirement in the primary education system, but Ecuadorian English teachers prefer to move to the cities rather than deep into the jungle without basic necessities. That’s how I took the volunteering assign‑ ment and was flown into the jungle on a tiny Cessna plane above a sea of broccoli – the treetops look exactly like that… What struck me most was the fact that my students were very shy. Not just the usual amount of shyness, but something deeper that was not gender‑based: my male students were just as reluctant as the females to speak up and look me in the eye. They looked down at their naked feet and their words came out as whispers. I was aware of the fact that looking down and speaking in a low voice were a sign of respect, but I also knew that for the visitors whom these young Achuar students were likely to meet at the eco‑lodge and or when tourists came to visit, could be perceived as shiftiness and could result in awkwardness owing to inaudibility in communication.

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I had two quick solutions. I knew that my students would find it dif‑ ficult to look me in the eye because a strong gaze and direct eye contact were unnerving for them. So, I said: “Look, I’d like to bring some visi‑ tors to our class, and they would find it awkward if you looked down all the time or shifted your gaze to the window. I am going to mark a point on the whiteboard behind my left shoulder, look at that point when you talk to me, in this way, you can practice directing your gaze. And when you meet a tourist, look at a point behind their left shoulder. They won’t really notice the difference”. Since I used to work for the BBC’s World Service, I also had a quick tip for “low volume”. The student who had to talk was given a white‑ board marker and had to speak into that improvised microphone. “Turn the volume up”, I would say, and funny enough, it worked. I also had a sequence of activities that I often did with the visitors who were made to take their seats facing the students sitting in their heavy, cedar wood desks. The tourists were given a sheet of paper with my students’ names on it and after a mini‑presentation, they had to guess the number of brothers and sisters that each student had. The guesswork was carried out in pairs, so the visitors had a chance to en‑ gage with one another. Most often, the foreigners seriously underes‑ timated the number of siblings; Achuar families often have 10 or 12 children, so in the upper grades that I was teaching many students had a number of siblings. The guests were surprised by the declared numbers, but so were my students, because in the next round it was the foreign‑ ers’ turn to give an account of their own brothers and sisters. The final stage was personal communication. Class sizes were small, so the tourists were able to sit down with a couple of students and talk to them. Mobiles came out of pockets, with images of nuclear American families, sceneries of snow‑capped mountains in Norway, and images of high‑rise apartments from Hamburg. I stood at the back and was watch‑ ing them. As they looked at each other. In the eye. Erzsébet Ágnes Békés (reproduced with permission).

Critical pedagogy The indelible connection between foreign language teaching and historical colonisation is evidenced by the very languages that have become lingua francas – English, of course, as well as Spanish and French. This was brought up in Part I. Hence a recurring concern in the book is about the degree to which political and societal ideology filter into language learning course‑ books, and the need for a critical pedagogy perspective on them. The capacity to perceive ideological influences on societies that are unfa‑ miliar and/or geographically distant is a natural factor of cultural distance.

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For instance, we as authors from a Western or ‘global north’ perspective, might detect this in language materials produced in Southeast Asia or South Amer‑ ica. We might observe examples of teachers self‑censoring or being censored for perceived ‘malpractice’ as evidence of socio‑political influence (see anec‑ dotes on Malaysian and Sudanese contexts in Part I). Yet we need to recognise the extent to which ‘Western’ ideologies permeate our curricula in the West and the so‑called ‘global’ coursebooks produced here – and even leak further afield. According to one of the Mexican participants in our research study: One of the course’s plans is to get students to be more aware and criti‑ cal of intercultural affairs. When learning English, either as a second or foreign language, the curriculum tends to reproduce a euro‑centrist view. To reproduce this view means to show only one side of the story, it is teaching a monocultural course. By listening to or reading the other side of the story, the course can actually become intercultural. I take the view that intercultural awareness cannot be possible if students are not aware of the historical power imbalances that have existed for a long time. Understanding the other means understanding their struggles and their problems. It is moving away from discussing a visit to Disneyland to discuss about social justice. (P13, Mexico) The teacher concludes by stressing the importance of “bring[ing] global issues to the classroom critically in order to challenge learners’ biases and challenge some privileged perspectives” (P13, Mexico). In truth, as teachers, we can be unaware of the extent to which we self‑censor to adhere to acceptable regional norms. Language teaching ma‑ terials and teachers in the West are today obliged to conform to a contempo‑ rary ‘woke’ ideology that contemporaneously, and somewhat paradoxically, upholds diversity while intolerant of any opinion perceived as challenging this. As McCarthy (2021, p. 10) wearily remarks: “What [teachers] do not need is the imposition of fad, fashion, orthodoxy, uniformity and ideology” (2021, p. 10). Yet the ideological considerations that impact heavily on textbooks “have received far too little critical examination” (Curdt‑Christiansen & Weninger 2015, p. xiii). There is still a tendency, it seems, to default to the position that foreign language teaching is somehow an a‑political field, disregarding “the ideological dimensions that underlie policies and practices” (Dendrinos, 2015, p. 30). While there is work in this area (indeed, Curdt‑Christiansen and Weninger’s 2015 edited book addresses this), we agree that the ideo‑ logical element of language and culture learning is too often a glaring ‘miss‑ ing link’ in research in the field of language learning materials development.

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Project 6: Critical pedagogy reflection: coursebook illustrations Most of the materials evaluation and adaptation tasks we offered in Sets A and D of Part II had elements of critical pedagogy, peeking behind the ‘cultural curtain’ of the textbooks we use to reveal the ideology at their core. As discussed above, it is important for teachers to be aware of the societal norms embedded within the textbooks they are using. Even – or perhaps especially – where a particular textbook is mandated, awareness of its ideo‑ logical underpinnings, its ‘hidden curriculum’, gives the teacher a deeper understanding of its potential impact on learners exposed to it. Broadly speaking, educational approaches that incorporate the word ‘critical’ adopt a view on instructional materials and education that challenges established ideologies rather than conforming to them, and subjects these to analysis and evaluation (Joseph Jeyaraj, Kiss, & Perrodin, 2024). Here we suggest a simple but effective critical reflection for teachers to use in their classroom textbooks. Take a textbook produced within a specific culture but intended for in‑ ternational use. Choose a single page or a double‑page spread that is rich in photos and/or images. Here, the single page of a British‑produced global coursebook Headway Intermediate, also used in Activities 49 and 50 in Part II, is used to illustrate the sort of analysis that might be conducted. (The page is reproduced below as Figure 4.2 for convenience.) In this sam‑ ple, the procedure is to interrogate each picture for its underlying cultural values and ideology and to (possibly) challenge these from the perspectives of another culture. The scene depicted in Picture (A), for example, implies that it is ‘right’ for people to go to the assistance of someone who has seemingly collapsed in the street. Yet as Bill Browder describes in his book Red Notice (2015), not so in Soviet Russia, where the assisting person/s can be seen as com‑ plicit in the other’s collapse. The picture also suggests that it is appropriate for a young man to touch a (prone) young woman. Is this the case in other cultures? Picture (C) portrays a man in uniform seemingly helping the child he is speaking to, implying an amicable relationship between authority and the public. But are uniformed men benign in all cultures, particularly in their dealings with young children? The critical pedagogy perspective on this photo might be the power relationship projected in the book between the establishment (represented by the person in uniform) and the public.

From Implementation to Research  229

FIGURE 4.2 Extract

from: Headway Intermediate Student’s Book, 5th Edition, 2019, p. 90

Student‑developed learning materials In this book, we have adopted a CDST view of intercultural learning and intercultural materials design. As such, it is important that we consider all agents in the learning system that interact with each other and therefore

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have the potential to contribute to emergent learning as a result of their connectivity. Yet, one key agent in the literature of materials design and use usually receives less attention: the learner. Although there is a wide array of research projects that look into learner‑centred materials, there is very little on how students (or teachers for that matter, as we note above) work with materials. As Graves (2019, p. 339) writes, “we still know very little about learners’ perceptions of or interaction with materials or the role materials play in learning”. Probably one of the few studies on how students interpret materials is Kiss and Weninger’s (2017) paper in which they asked students from different cultural contexts to look at a textbook visual (a picture de‑ picting the Indian ‘Holi’ festival) and write down anything that comes to their mind. They found that students create meanings at three levels: uni‑ versal meanings that reach across cultures, cultural and sub‑cultural mean‑ ings that are shared only among specific groups of people, and individual meanings that are unique to an individual based on their personal experi‑ ences and histories. Kiss and Weninger (2017) argue that meaning is not locked into the materials; it emerges through an active semiotic process in which intended and actualised meanings may be different. The research shows that learners are an active part of the learning ecosystem, they play a key role in defining the value of materials in their context of use. It is their individual and collective interaction with the materials that contributes to the emergence of intercultural learning. Yet, learners tend to be delegated to the simplified role of ‘users’ for whom materials are designed. Their active contribution to the meanings ma‑ terials may carry is often neglected. Although Graves (2019, p. 340) argues that the “relationship of the learners to the materials ranges from that of consumers to that of creators”, research, if it considers students at all, tends to focus on their ‘consumer’ role. In a recent collection of papers on materi‑ als development edited by Azarnoosh, Zeraatpishe, Faravani, and Kargozari (2016), Issues in materials development, not a single chapter discusses learn‑ ers as designers of learning materials. The extent researchers tend to go to is to consider learners as contributors to materials designed for them. This could range from learner‑generated texts as the basis of classroom activities to the use of visuals (videos and images) they create. One example of this latter is Bao (2018) who argues that students should be given the oppor‑ tunity to create visuals as part of their learning and that “these personalised visuals are worth embedding in coursebook activities for learners to enjoy, comment, interpret and relate to their own thinking” (Bao, 2018, p. 200). One ongoing research project (as of 2023) which investigates learners as materials designers that the authors know of, is a project led by Sun‑ way University’s Centre for English Language Studies. The research is part of a series of projects under the Sustainable Education initiative to look

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into how the impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic could be mitigated across economically disadvantaged communities in Asia. The research team that includes researchers from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Nepal is conducting an exploratory intervention study in which they look into ELT teachers’ attitudes to student‑designed materials and they examine the design process and use of student‑generated materials across cultural boundaries. In the first phase of the project teachers’ views on the feasibility of students designing materials for their own and their peers’ use were col‑ lected by a survey. The preliminary analysis of the data indicates that most teachers consider their learners – many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds  –  incapable of completing such a task. The most common reasons they cite are in connection with (a) low language proficiency of the learners (b) their lack of knowledge on how to design materials (c) access to and price of resources needed to complete the task and (d) a lack of student motivation they deem important for the successful completion of materi‑ als. In addition, they also note that materials design as a possible classroom activity would take a lot of time and they would not be able to complete the prescribed syllabus (Figure 4.3). In the second phase of the research, a group of select EFL teachers were approached in the participating countries to engage in a project where their

FIGURE 4.3 Students

in Nepal working on the design of learning materials

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learners designed multimodal learning materials. The reason for promoting multimodality rather than materials that are mainly utilising linguistic/tex‑ tual design was to compensate for the lower proficiency level some students may have and to acknowledge changes in literacy practices (New London Group, 1996). Participating teachers were given training in multimodal materials design as they were expected to assist and facilitate their learners’ projects. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, schools were closed in most countries and some participants had difficulty in contacting their learners which led to their dropping out of the project. Still, the research team re‑ ceived materials from four countries in different media (video, video + nar‑ ration, drawing, drawing + text, etc.), introducing the learners’ cultures and offering language learning materials. The cultural aspect of the materials was emphasised throughout the design process as the research team believes that such materials would be interesting and engaging not only for learners who come from a different cultural background but also for students whose culture is used in the materials. Students from minority cultures do not usually feature in globalised materials and can ultimately feel that they are invisible. As the final phase of the project (mid‑2023), the materials are be‑ ing prepared for sharing with teachers and learners in the region. Materials designed by Indonesian students have already been edited by teachers and researchers and are waiting to be published, and other materials are also be‑ ing shared through personal networks. The project above is an example of how classroom teachers can become involved in AR with their learners and explore how their learners develop materials that could be used for intercultural learning. Of course, in order to save time, the procedures could be simplified and adapted to make sure they are appropriate for the context in which they may be applied.

Project 7: Design of a learner‑generated materials project As will be clear from the above, investigating the feasibility of involving learners in the materials development process is a cutting‑edge area of re‑ search and can lend itself to AR. This AR project proposal on learner‑generated materials is outlined in terms of the research problems it needs to address: 1 Design a methodology that involves learners in materials development. 2 Devise instruments to observe and/or assess the impact of: • Involvement with materials development with respect to learner en‑ gagement and contribution to learning. • Response to using peer‑designed materials.

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Problem 1, methodology design, would need to consider areas such as:

• Resources (e.g. from the Web, print material such as newspapers, maga‑ zines, or books) (if any) for the students to base their materials on.

• Classroom management e.g. students work in small groups or pairs. • Sharing materials: e.g. on a class social media platform if there is one, displayed on desks or boards in the classroom.

• Trialling materials among peers. • Feeding back on materials.

Problem 2, instruments observing or assessing the degree of student involvement with this activity, might work from the teacher or observer perspective, or from the student perspective (self‑reporting via journals or blogs, for instance). How students react to using the materials created by their fellow students would likewise be self‑reporting. As with all AR, post‑project reflection, together with a review of any as‑ sessment instruments used and of the learner‑generated materials themselves, will offer rich insight into the degree of success of this learning concept.

Assessment of intercultural competence Globalisation has brought about the internationalisation of education that promoted standardised testing and examination procedures, for example, the International General Certificate of Education (IGSCE) by Cambridge Examinations or the International Baccalaureate (IB) by ibo.org. The same trend is also noticed in global higher education institutions that offer Eng‑ lish Medium training all over the world, for example, the University of Not‑ tingham which has campuses in the UK, Malaysia, and China, issuing the same degrees in all three settings. This brings us to the first problem: assess‑ ing intercultural competence. The literature on intercultural learning agrees in general terms that in‑ tercultural competence can only be achieved through embracing a critical stance in which a person questions their values, beliefs, knowledge (and even identities). This is exemplified in the different new avenues to inter‑ cultural competence, like critical semiotic intercultural awareness (Dooly, 2011), a metacognitive approach (Dypedahl, 2018), or simply having a “[c]ritical ability to question the implicit and explicit assumptions be‑ hind cultural claims and the power dynamics that they may be concealing” (Breidenbach  & Nyiri, 2009, p.  340). Yet as we have also noted above, such criticality does not seem to be integrated into the languages curricula (Moore & Díaz, 2019). If that is the case, then (inter)cultural learning can be limited to cultural knowledge, at best.

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Standardised assessment of intercultural learning can also be problematic as it would be difficult to operationalise and measure concepts like ‘aware‑ ness’ which underlie it. Awareness is individual and learning starts with the ‘self’ (Ngai & Janusch, 2015), involving concepts such as ‘self‑awareness’, ‘self‑consciousness’, ‘self‑monitoring’ (Deardorff, 2004). As such, it is bound to be different for individual learners, rendering standardisation somewhat meaningless. Furthermore, when intercultural learning is viewed through the lens of CDST, interculturality is deemed to be “a situationally emergent and co‑constructed phenomenon” (Kecskes, 2011, p. 67). This means that meanings that learners make are dependent on the context in which they work and on the interactions that take place in the classroom. Therefore, learning outcomes are unpredictable, a concept that current higher educa‑ tion curricula are struggling to accept and implement – along with other CDS features – in their rather traditional and rigid structure.

Project 8: How competent are you? Unfortunately, there are very few instruments available publicly that can measure learners’ intercultural competence. Therefore, it is likely that you need to develop your own if you would like to test your learners’ develop‑ ment. One possible way is to generate a list of ‘can do’ statements, simi‑ lar to those in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Figure 4.4).

Project 9: Reflection on assessing intercultural competence Given the challenges in assessing intercultural competence described above, what we outline here is an informed teacher reflection on how to approach such assessment. A baseline ‘definition’ of intercultural competence drawing on the prin‑ ciples in this book would seem to be an essential starting point in this. As implied in our intercultural learning objectives in our original framework for the design of intercultural learning material (Part I), we see intercultural skills as the ability to:

• Make connections between cultures • Develop knowledge and awareness of cultures (one’s own and that of others)

• respect cultural differences • Reflect on and question cultural assumptions • Delve beneath the surface of cultural behaviours • Share experiences and empathise with (people from) other cultures

From Implementation to Research  235 Strongly Slightly UnSlightly Strongly agree disagree disagree decided agree I find unexpected and unfamiliar situations - enjoyable - challenging. I help other members of the group solve problems in ways that appeal to the other group members. I clearly state my position when a problem occurs by criticism. I adapt my working approach with others to avoid conflicts. When confronted with problems within a group, I prefer to remain passive and let others solve the conflict. I am alert to the ways in which misunderstanding between people might arise through differences in speech, gestures and body language. I like to understand and get the meaning of any misunderstandings in the groups I work with. I seek agreement in communication and ask other members of the group to agree how they will use certain expressions and terms. I like to do some research in advance and get some information when I plan to meet other people from other countries. I normally foresee the possible difficulties and obstacles before an intercultural encounter. I normally foresee the possible difficulties and obstacles before an intercultural encounter. When working with other people, I like to suggest solutions, ideas, common objectives. When working with other people, I inform them about facts and about my own experiences related to the matter. When I am involved in group work, I try to examine the connections between different approaches and ideas. I enjoy finding out more things about other people's values, customs and practices. I regard other people's customs and practices as different from the norm. I prefer to impose my point of view in a group discussion: sometimes it is important to dominate and clearly impose your will. I try to understand and imagine other people's thoughts and feelings. I find it very difficult to see a situation through another person's eyes. I seek to reconcile the tensions in a group, when they arise. I check to see if the group members agree with each other and try to clarify different points of view. When I'm entitled, I seek recognition and get everybody's attention.

FIGURE 4.4 Survey

to assess learners’ intercultural competence

Source: http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/iccinte/results/en/assessing‑competence.htm

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With the overall objective of achieving ‘critical cultural awareness’ which we have defined as: A broadened knowledge and understanding of cultures, both one’s own and other people’s, and the capacity to analyse and perceive all of these objectively and non‑judgmentally. (Part I, p. 27) Thinking about your own experience in the multicultural classroom, what sort of mechanisms would be appropriate to use to assess intercultural com‑ petence as thus defined? Consider these options:

• Observing behaviours in real‑life intercultural situations:

If students are staying in the TL country, lodging with homestay fami‑ lies for example, the family might be asked to complete a reflection on their guest’s performance (Deardorff, 2011).

• Observing behaviours in the intercultural classroom:

This would entail teacher observation and assessment of students’ performance in interactions in multicultural groups or dyads in the class‑ room, using evaluation grids based on intercultural skills inventories such as ours above.

• Taking the learner perspective:

Arrange interviews and/or focus groups to gather students’ percep‑ tions of intercultural learning and intercultural competence. Use surveys to ask students to self‑report on their own intercultural competence with questions like: ‘to what degree do you accept the prac‑ tices of people from other cultures?’; ‘to what degree are you alert to misunderstandings that can arise through differences in speech, gestures and body language?’ Ask learners to produce reflective portfolios, journals, or blogs chart‑ ing their own evaluation of their intercultural competence development journey. Starting points for this, Deardorff suggests, might be writing prompts such as: “I learned that… This is important because… As a result of this learning, I will…” (2011, p. 75).

Use any combination of the above. Reflect on any other forms of intercultural skills assessment inspired by the above, or mechanisms that you have used or seen.

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BOX 4.6: RESOURCES FOR INTERCULTURAL ASSESSMENT Deardorff, D. K. (2011). Assessing intercultural competence. New Directions for Institutional Research, 149, 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.381 Deardorff, D. K. (2015). How to assess intercultural competence.  Research methods in intercultural communication: A practical guide(pp.  120–134). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Conclusion As can be seen by the number and range of suggested foci for further re‑ search above, this book has, in a way, generated as many questions as it has answers. Yet this only serves to reinforce the dynamic nature of what is involved in any educational endeavour. It is also a symptom of what a criti‑ cally evolving need for intercultural learning is – a relatively new field that has been propelled into the educational foreground through unprecedented movements and intermingling of global populations in very recent times.

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CONCLUSION

The premise underlying this book is that intercultural competence is far more than just a language issue. It is a universal concern that impacts how we view and communicate with each other within and across international boundaries, cultures, and continents. We would go as far as to argue that it goes further, transcending intercultural communication to touch on broader global concerns about how we interact with and treat not only fellow humans but the planet we all share. In fact, this connection is realised in the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs), set out in 2015, designed to end poverty and fight injustice and inequality within the framework of climate action. Among these goals, we see (as Goal 4) inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of lifelong learning. Indeed, education is surely key to addressing the other SDGs. The workbook, Integrating global issues in the creative English language classroom: With reference to the United Nations sustainable development goals (Maley & Peachey, 2017) mentioned earlier, seeks to do just that, situating the SDGs squarely within the education curriculum via a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach. We thus see how intercultural competence, fitted within this broader, global development agenda, expands into ‘global citizenship skills’, skills which oil the wheels of communication between and among the international community. As we noted in Part I and elsewhere, this notion of global citizenship has gradually moved centre stage in education and – to pursue the metaphor – can be seen to form the backdrop to this book. With the global citizen in our sights, therefore, we started, in Part I, with the theoretical underpinnings to the sorts of skills requisite for such DOI: 10.4324/9781032651385-5

242 Conclusion

citizenship; theories chiefly to do with culture, the relationship between cul‑ ture, language and identity, and intercultural competence. We then looked at how far the notion of intercultural competence as we conceive it today is influenced by contemporary phenomena such as globalisation, multicul‑ turalism, and the digital revolution. In the book’s introduction, we had noted shortcomings in fostering intercultural skills in the educational field where we would expect them; language learning coursebooks. We observed that rather than enhancing understanding of different ­cultures, they often (unintentionally, one would assume) reinforce cultural essentialism and ­ ‘othering’. As a means to address this, in the second section of Part I, we describe mechanisms for critical evaluation of coursebooks with r­ espect to their intercultural content; methodological tools to analyse ­content, discourse, and  –  so important in today’s heavily‑illustrated ­coursebooks  –  ­semiotics. Moving on to intercultural materials development per se, we add an innova‑ tive twist to the principles and frameworks we propose for this – complex dynamic systems theory. For, we argue, of all the learning environments, the intercultural classroom is the most unpredictable and thus acutely ­‘dynamic’. The materials development framework given in the conclusion of Part I is thus conceived as a flexible guide underpinned by CDST principles; the need to stimulate reflection, curiosity, flexibility, tolerance and collective knowledge‑sharing with respect not only to an understanding of the inter‑ cultural, but to the learning process itself. The next part of the book, Part II, operationalised the theory and prac‑ tices and the proposed materials development framework described in Part I, to provide a substantial set of intercultural teaching materials. An essential point here is the sensitivity of the area we venture into with intercultural learning, especially as the students involved in it may have been displaced from their country of origin by geo‑political strife. Awareness‑raising in the practitioners themselves was therefore seen as the crucial first, ‘sensi‑ tising’ step to their using intercultural materials with their learners, and the first set of materials, Set (A), fosters critical materials evaluation skills. Also, with the practitioner in mind is Set (C), Materials development tasks; here we stress the importance of such factors as gauging learner disposi‑ tion to learning and building up trust, and we suggest how these can be factored into activities. We contend in the next set of activities, coursebook adaptation, Set (D), that adaptation in fact blends with a teacher’s media‑ tion of the coursebook  –  and that all teachers adapt the coursebook and are, indeed, more creative than they might realise. We see the centrepiece of Part II as Set (B), however – a broad suite of intercultural activities for classroom use. These employ a plethora of pedagogical strategies; role‑play‑ ing, story‑telling, games, use of realia, online research and even cooking, to

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spark understanding of the intrinsic paradox of the intercultural; the symbi‑ otic relationship between diversity and universality. Part III uses vignettes drawn from our 2020–2021 international survey on practitioner use of intercultural materials to illustrate how intercultural materials are, and can be, integrated into the learning curriculum across the full gamut of educational and language proficiency levels. Like similar works in our field with a ‘research and practice’ agenda, the overarching shape of the book might be conceived as roughly an ‘action re‑ search’ format. It is cyclical, consisting of testing proposed theories, homing in on devising and observing practice, and, in its final part, Part IV, propos‑ ing new avenues for research that have sprung from the rest of the book. That learning as dynamic, flexible, and ultimately unpredictable has been a leitmotif of the book. While the imperative for the book was our recog‑ nition of how increasingly important intercultural understanding is in the world of today, and our intended readership is practitioners, researchers, and academics in the field of language and cultural studies, we would be excited to think that the book reached further afield touching other disci‑ plines, contexts, and readerships.

References Maley, A., & Peachey, N. (2017). Integrating global issues in the creative English language classroom: With reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. London: British Council.

Conclusion Maley, A. , & Peachey, N. (2017). Integrating global issues in the creative English language classroom: With reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. London: British Council.