Intercultural Communicative Competence in English Language Teaching in Polish State Colleges [1 ed.] 9781443892254, 9781443873130

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Intercultural Communicative Competence in English Language Teaching in Polish State Colleges

Intercultural Communicative Competence in English Language Teaching in Polish State Colleges By

Piotr Romanowski

Intercultural Communicative Competence in English Language Teaching in Polish State Colleges By Piotr Romanowski Peer-reviewed by Dr. Neva Cebron, University of Primorska, Slovenia. This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Piotr Romanowski All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7313-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7313-0

To Sylwia, Zuzia and Julka without whose company most intercultural encounters would not have been the same.

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures .......................................................................... ix Foreword ..................................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ................................................................................................. 6 Culture and Communication in the Light of Intercultural Studies 1.1 Intercultural studies – their history and basic assumptions 1.2 The concept of culture as used in intercultural studies 1.3 The impact of culture on the process of intercultural communication 1.4 Diverse cultural patterns Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 35 Language and Intercultural Communication 2.1 Language as a basic means of interpersonal communication 2.2 Models of communication and their components – a review 2.3 The role of English in modern-day communication 2.4 Intercultural aspects of English as the lingua franca in the 21stCentury Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 48 From Linguistic Competence to Intercultural Communicative Competence 3.1 Types of competence – their definitions and value for the communication process 3.2 From linguistic competence to sociolinguistic communicative competence 3.3 Communicative competence as a forerunner of intercultural communicative competence 3.4 Intercultural communicative competence and its components 3.5 Intercultural sensitivity as an essential dimension of intercultural communicative competence 3.6 Developing essential skills and knowledge for intercultural communicative competence

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Table of Contents

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 75 Intercultural Approach in Language Education 4.1 On the way to intercultural learning 4.2 Ethnographic approach 4.3 Experiential learning 4.4 Comparative approach 4.5 Intercultural communicative competence in the classroom – challenges, opportunities and difficulties Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 96 Techniques for Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence 5.1 Simulation games and their methodological value 5.2 Case studies 5.3 Critical incidents 5.4 Role plays 5.5 Culture assimilators Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 116 Investigating the Intercultural Communicative Competence of Polish Students of English 6.1 The course in intercultural communication and its description 6.2 The main objectives and assumptions of the study 6.3 Research methodology in intercultural communication 6.4 Research design 6.5 Research context and its target group Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 138 Findings of the Investigation 7.1 Research analysis and results 7.2 The culture-specific profile of students of English at Polish colleges 7.3 The course in intercultural communication and its evaluation by the students Conclusion ............................................................................................... 173 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 178

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Differences between small and large power distance societies Table 2. Ten differences between weak and strong uncertainty avoidance societies Table 3. Ten differences between collectivist and individualist societies Table 4. Ten differences between feminine and masculine societies Table 5. An overview of two different time concepts and their resultant behaviour Table 6. Research sample Table 7. Positive attitudes towards intercultural differences (before the course in intercultural communication) Table 8. Negative attitudes towards intercultural differences (before the course in intercultural communication) Table 9. Positive attitudes towards intercultural differences (after the course in intercultural communication) Table 10. Negative attitudes towards intercultural differences (after the course in intercultural communication) Table 11. The varying values of students’ positive attitudes towards intercultural differences Table. 12 The varying values of students’ negative attitudes towards intercultural differences Figure 1. Poland and the research areas Figure 2. The increased values of students’ positive attitudes towards intercultural differences Figure 3. The decreased values of students’ negative attitudes towards intercultural differences Figure 4. Box-and-whisker plot of mean values of positive attitudes Figure 5. Box-and-whisker plot of mean values of negative attitudes Figure 6. Distribution of mean values before the course – positive attitudes Figure 7. Distribution of mean values after the course – positive attitudes Figure 8. Distribution of mean values before the course – negative attitudes Figure 9. Distribution of mean values after the course – negative attitudes Figure 10. The calculation of the statistics for hypothesis 1 Figure 11. The calculation of the statistics for hypothesis 2

FOREWORD

It is a demanding time to be a language educator. After a hard week in class, today’s trainee or novice language instructor might be forgiven for looking back with some nostalgia to an easier epoch when the agenda, it seems, was easier: all you needed to do was to design curricula, courses and tasks so that the students might accomplish a series of well-defined and relatively simple learning outcomes, such as mastering the second conditional, or apologizing politely. That era has passed, and the hardpressed instructor now faces a much more complex challenge: to devise language curricula, courses and classes that shape learners into interculturally competent beings. An interculturally competent being is someone who possesses much more than evolving knowledge about the vocabulary and grammar of the target language, together with the skills and subskills that are required to communicate in it accurately and fluently. An interculturally competent being possesses the linguistic knowledge, emotional resources and ethical qualities necessary to mediate otherness, cope with strangeness and make wise judgements in unpredictable situations. Developing intercultural communicative competence, or ICC, is, as they now say, a big ask. To rise to this challenge, the 21st century teacher needs to draw upon more than a deep knowledge of linguistic and pedagogical theory and practice, fundamentally important though these domains remain. To these domains, however, must be added understanding of critical and cultural theory, applied philosophy, models of intercultural communication, descriptive techniques drawn from anthropological fieldwork, and interpretive skills drawn from semiotics and discourse analysis. The teacher needs also to think about how to distil the insights from these diverse domains and transform them into classroom activities that will promote certain types of knowledge, certain types of attitude and a set of skills that far exceed reading, writing, speaking and listening. The trainee or novice ELT teacher who is bewildered or daunted by the challenges of teaching intercultural communicative competence will benefit greatly from reading Piotr Romanowski’s account of designing and assessing courses in ICC for Polish State Colleges. This is far from a narrow study: Romanowski clearly establishes key points of reference for the reader, reviewing the basic concepts of culture that inform widely used

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models of ICC, and showing how ICC is related to – but not identical to – intercultural communication. The reader will also be able to relate the teaching of ICC to familiar issues, such as the debates around the rise of English as a lingua franca, and to familiar practices, such as the design of language learning tasks. One of the many attractions of Romanowski’s volume is that the comprehensive and rich theoretical framework leads naturally into a detailed description of classroom activities. One of the keenest challenges facing ELT teachers who advocate and adopt intercultural language education is to do with how the knowledge, attitudes and skills associated with ICC might be assessed. The final chapters of Romanowski’s volume address this issue more explicitly than many fellow ICC practitioners. He claims that intercultural sensitivity is not only a necessary prerequisite for ICC but also that it can be measured empirically, and that its development can be monitored and treated as an index of developing ICC. Romanowski offers a case study that demonstrates how the delivery of ICC courses in a number of culturally diverse Polish State Colleges raised aspects of students’ intercultural sensitivity. The case study offers readers a detailed mode of assessment that could usefully be replicated and tested across a broader range of educational contexts. This volume, then, despite the specificity implied in its sub-title, should appeal to trainee, novice and even many experienced language teachers who are looking for a general introduction to intercultural language teaching, and who might be interested in adapting a clearly explained case study of its application in a particular educational domain. And the hard-pressed language instructor described at the beginning of this foreword can take comfort in the fact that, thanks to Piotr Romanowski and his fellow educators, the 21st century classroom might be a lot more demanding than it used to be – but, for both teachers and learners, it is also infinitely more interesting and rewarding. John Corbett University of Macau November 2016

INTRODUCTION

Intercultural communicative competence encompasses knowledge, skills and attitudes at the interface between several cultural areas including the students’ own values and worldviews and those of a target language country. Consequently, the development of intercultural communicative competence is seen as a process that involves the students’ experiences from their own cultural backgrounds allowing them, at the same time, to reflect on their individual cultural assumptions as an integral part of further development of their skills and knowledge of the world. Intercultural communicative competence is inseparable from language teaching, but linguists and methodologists started to consider it as a major facet of language instruction only recently. Nowadays, the stress is put on those foreign language teaching methods which enable learners to become successful communicators. Hence, they are expected not only to exchange information, for which they need to master a linguistic code, but also to maintain proper relationships with their interlocutors. The task reveals great cultural richness and complexity due to the multiplicity and abundance of cultural identities of the speakers. We may thus posit that an experience of otherness is a natural component of communication in a foreign language. Its sources are twofold: firstly, learners experience strangeness of their interlocutors and secondly, their contact with unfamiliar others challenges their own understanding of reality and often makes them discover a stranger in themselves. Although several models of intercultural communicative competence with its respective components have already been created – Milton J. Bennett (1986), Colleen Kelley and Judith Meyers (1999), Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta (2000), Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg (2002) and Michael F. Tucker (2004) – its mastering is still a challenge for language teachers and learners alike. The difficulty is twofold, because, as already mentioned, on the one hand learners are to possess the language and, on the other, they have to be able to use it in various cultural contexts, in which they interact. The challenge is particularly strongly felt in the countries where the experience of intercultural communication is fairly new. Consequently, a burning matter is to investigate the role of extra-linguistic, mainly culture-specific factors, in the process. Special attention should be paid to the role – either of a

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Introduction

facilitator or a barrier – of the learners’ mother culture. Its positive or negative function as underlying determinants of the learners’ knowledge, skills and attitudes, depends on the degree of similarity between the cultures involved in communication. The closer the relationship between the learners’ mother culture and the target culture of the speech community whose language they want to study, the less painful and the more successful the foreign language teaching/learning process. Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta (2000), Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg (2002) and Michael F. Tucker (2004) all identified intercultural communicative sensitivity as a component of intercultural communicative competence. However, considering its influence on all the other components, as well as on the final success of mastering intercultural communicative competence, the author posits that it can be assigned the status of its major determinant. Its development depends on the learners’ experience of another culture, which they can get either by means of either a formal exposure to it during language courses when it is taught together with a foreign language, or by means of intercultural communication courses which have been specifically designed for this purpose. It should also be mentioned that non-institutionalized means of developing it are possible in the course of informal interpersonal contacts with foreigners on various types of occasions. The present research is to examine the correlation between intercultural communicative sensitivity of Polish learners of English and the experience of cultural pluralism created by their participation in, first of all, the course in intercultural communication included in the syllabus of their studies and, secondly, in their personal and informal relations with foreigners in Poland and abroad. It thus aims at investigating the relationship between the students’ experience and knowledge of multiculturalism and their intercultural communicative competence. The study was conducted in four similar educational institutions in Poland: Legnica State College, Elbląg State College, àomĪa State College, and Krosno State College, among the students of English Language Studies whose command of the language was fairly good, so that this did not significantly account for any communication failure. Additionally, some of the students had already been exposed to some cultural diversity of two different types. The first one was obvious to them and it was constituted by their direct contacts with foreigners in Poland as well as during their trips abroad, e.g. as Erasmus exchange students or as holidaymakers – though only a very small number of our respondents had had an international experience prior to their participation in the present study. The second type was less consciously experienced as it was related

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to the phenomenon of Polish intraculturalism. Historically speaking, the regions where most of the students reside have always been part of a Polish melting pot marked with religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity and manifested as a variety of languages (mainly used at home with family members), customs and traditions, holidays, architecture, cuisine, etc. Thus, the author also claims that while investigating the level of intercultural communicative competence of his respondents, attention should be focused on the impact of the intraculturalism of Lower Silesia, Pomerania, Podlasie and Subcarpathian Regions on it. The decision to investigate intercultural communication competence of the students of the State Colleges stems from two reasons. Firstly, most of the students will work as teachers in local schools or kindergartens and become models for their learners whose ability to communicate with strangers will determine their educational, professional and also personal success. However, most probably their students will use predominantly English in communicating with other foreigners due to the fact that English has the status of a modern lingua franca, an international means of communication, which has become de-nationalized as each speaker uses it filtered through his/her own cultural experience. In effect, apart from rare instances when it is spoken by its native speakers, we cannot attach any particular culture to English anymore. It becomes an additional challenge to both teachers and learners which culture to choose while teaching/learning English to be effective intercultural communicators. Thus, the ultimate goal in the process of foreign-language learning should be to become an intercultural mediator, a person who has mastered both linguistic competence and intercultural communicative competence and is able to transcend boundaries thanks to the ability to recognize, negotiate and transfer cultural property and symbolic value. Secondly, most State Colleges are located in smaller cities, usually in economically disadvantaged area; and this is directly related to the students’ opportunities for travelling and developing the skills of intercultural communicators on their own. In their case the role of the school in developing their ability to act as intercultural communicators as well as its responsibility for it is much bigger than in important universities and academic centres. The role of the cultural component in developing intercultural communicative competence is unquestionable. It is not without a reason to claim that the extra-linguistic dimensions of intercultural communication encouraged the research in the field and inspired the study of the nonlinguistic skills that it is necessary for a competent intercultural communicator to develop (Kramsch, 1998; Byram et al., 2001). In Poland,

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Introduction

there has been observed a growing number of studies in the field of intercultural pragmalinguistics lately, but contrary to what could be expected, the number of Polish researchers engaged in a systematic investigation of the non-linguistic determinants of intercultural communicative competence is rather small (Mackiewicz, 2005). Hence the decision to fill up the gap by investigating the extra-linguistic determinants of intercultural communicative competence of Polish learners. As far as the author knows, the present research is the first attempt to do it in a systematic way. In order to accomplish the goal, a questionnaire was especially constructed as a research tool. It was inspired by the questionnaires originally used by Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta in 2000 and Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg in 2002. Both instruments were intended to assess intercultural sensitivity of American and German students respectively, and they did the job satisfactorily. To apply the instrument in another cultural setting, namely Poland, all that it was necessary to do was to adjust the questions in the administered survey to the Polish realities. The questionnaire was completed with guided interviews conducted with the students to clarify or deepen some of the answers they provided. The second aim of these interviews was to find out about their personal knowledge and experience of multiculturalism, which they gained in informal learning situations outside the school. A thorough analysis of the empirical material from the questionnaire as well as the interviews made it possible to identify the most common values and attitudes held as components of intercultural sensitivity of the Polish students of English. Then, the dimensions of cultural diversity according to Geert Hofstede’s model of culture together with their underlying values were used to classify them in order to predict the potential areas of communication misunderstandings between the Polish learners of English and representatives of other cultures. The research consisted of two parts: the first was carried out before the students started the course in intercultural communication; the second followed its completion, which allowed an assessment of the value of the course for developing the intercultural sensitivity of the students. The present volume is composed of six chapters. Its first five chapters serve as theoretical frames for further development of the empirical part. Chapter One entitled Culture and Communication in the Light of Intercultural Studies sets the scene by discussing the history and basic assumptions of intercultural communication studies. It also stresses the role of culture in intercultural communication. Chapter Two with the title Language and Intercultural Communication aims at providing an overview of basic communication models. It looks closer at English – the

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present-day lingua franca. Chapter Three From Linguistic Competence to Intercultural Communicative Competence presents the historical perspective of the development of the notion of ‘competence’. It focuses on intercultural communicative competence and its components. Chapter Four entitled Intercultural Approach in Language Education takes the discussion closer to the practical application of intercultural training in language teaching. It discusses various approaches proposed for the development of intercultural communicative competence in foreign-language teaching. Chapter Five Techniques for Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in the Classroom debates on the practicability of simulation games, case studies, critical incidents, role plays, and culture assimilators as the most common types of activities meant for the enhancement of intercultural training. Chapter Six Investigating Intercultural Communicative Competence of Polish Students of English is devoted to the discussion of the methodology used. It concentrates on the research design and delineates the context for the study and the target group. The empirical material collected from questionnaires, participant observation and interviews is presented in Chapter Seven Findings of the Investigation. It examines intercultural sensitivity as the main determinant of intercultural communicative competence developed among the students of English at four Polish colleges in Legnica, Elbląg, àomĪa and Krosno before the commencement of the course in intercultural communication and after its successful completion. As follows from the investigation of the empirical data the students have improved their intercultural skills and changed their attitudes, which helped them comprehend cultural differences much better and accommodate to them. Although the research has been carried out among the students of English, which nowadays has become the common language of communication, its findings as well as general conclusions may be applied to other languages. Hence, it is the author’s intention to share them with my colleagues in Poland and abroad hoping for their usefulness and applicability in developing the intercultural communicative competence of their own learners.

CHAPTER ONE CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION IN THE LIGHT OF INTERCULTURAL STUDIES

Introduction In this chapter the beginnings of intercultural communication studies dating back to ancient times as well as their evolution will be discussed. It was in the USA that the first systematic research into intercultural training was initiated after World War II. The Author will also focus on similar developments in Europe, and in Poland – his country of origin. The concept of culture, affecting the success of communication in intercultural encounters, will be subjected to thorough analysis. Last but not least, following the models of culture proposed by Geert Hofstede and Edward T. Hall, a presentation of various cultural patterns will be considered.

1.1 Intercultural studies – their history and basic assumptions In global and inter-reliant contacts intercultural communication is a ‘must’. It develops dynamically due to more and more frequent and intense relationships among international, multiethnic and plurilingual scholars, students, customers and travellers, to name only a few categories. The statement that it is paramount in a world full of differences has become a basic truth today. One of the reasons why an average person has become an intercultural communicator who experiences cultural differences on a daily basis is because the proximity is greater between cultures. Globalization is the main factor accounting for the change as the nations whose languages, cultures and worldviews have differed significantly make contact now and become mutually dependent. They tend to co-operate with each other and act as partners in various fields although geographically speaking some of them might remain hundreds of miles away from one another. Due to political and socio-economic changes more people can cross the borders of

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their own countries and become global students, nomads, tourists, employees, etc. However, contrary to what one might think, the facility with which they can act as global citizens, does not facilitate to the same extent their interpersonal relations. Participants in intercultural encounters are challenged by multiplied opportunities for cultural misunderstanding. The way they manage to overcome them is tightly linked with their success or failure in the process of communication. Thus, today more than ever before the biggest difficulty consists in the manner in which they deal with the culture-specific differences they face. The above sentence is supported by an experience of many interlocutors who are fluent in a given foreign language, most often English, and thus do not lack linguistic skills, but who still fail to achieve their communication goals. Let me stress one crucial fact again that in the postmodern reality marked with cultural diversity most communication failures result from a low level of intercultural communicative competence or even a lack of it. Linguistic competence is no longer a sufficient prerequisite of a communication success because communication has to be understood as more than a mere exchange of information and sending of messages. As posited by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin and Don Jackson (1968) it consists of two mutually complementary levels – a factual one which is an exchange of information and an interpersonal one which serves to create relationships between speakers. In both cases culturespecific differences play an important role. In the first case, communication success is dependent upon the receiver’s understanding of the speaker’s message in another cultural context which, in turn, accounts for its interpretation and a final assigning of meaning to it during the decoding phase. In the second case, it entails culture-specific expectations about the type of interpersonal relations proper to a given communication act. Considering the above remarks, intercultural communication is basically understood as an exchange of information between speakers with different cultural identities when “a message producer is a member of one culture and a message receiver is a member of another” (Porter and Samovar, 1982: 27). Their different cultural backgrounds result in their incongruent experience of communication practices, leading to potential difficulties in understanding each other. More or less serious misunderstandings inherent in communication which apply to both factual and interpersonal levels encourage Jerzy Mikuáowski-Pomorski (2003, 2006) to posit that the main aim of intercultural communicators is to understand others and to be understood by them despite culture-specific differences present in their encounters. Thus, as Michael Byram (1997: 3-4) claims, successful intercultural communication cannot be judged solely in terms of the

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Chapter One

efficiency of information exchange but also in terms of the effectiveness of establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Other definitions (cf. Kim, 1991: 259; Brislin and Yoshida, 1994) which have proliferated since the official recognition of intercultural communication as an academic field evolve around the aforementioned definition provided by Jerzy Mikuáowski-Pomorski. Although an academic and systematic approach to intercultural communication by ethnographers, anthropologists, communication studies researchers and linguists is only sixty years old, some less well-defined and haphazard interest in it started long before Jesus Christ (cf. Mikuáowski-Pomorski, 2003: 21). Historically speaking, intercultural communication dates back to the 5th century BC when Herodotus (489-425 BC), a Greek from Asia, who is said to be the first author dealing with it, travelled to Persia, Egypt and Italy in order to gather information about various cultures and their inhabitants. He described the societies he had visited in such a way as to show their moral superiority over other ethnic tribes. The ethnocentric attitude of Herodotus was considered to be one of the earliest examples of discrimination, also investigated by Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 BC) – the author of the well-known treaty Germania. The Crusades in the Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries), originally designed to conquer Jerusalem and now seen as the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, were also prolific in intercultural communication encounters (cf. the input of crusaders). The Age of Discovery from the early the 15th century and continuing into the 17th century, during which European ships travelled around the world in search of new trading routes and commercial goods such as gold, silver and spices, led to numerous contacts between Europeans and peoples of previously unknown lands. As a matter of fact, the great wave of expeditions enabled navigators to travel to virtually any destination in order to conquer and colonize the territories and those who inhabited them. Both the Crusades and the discoveries of new lands had a far-reaching political, economic, and social impact, which is still to be observed in many spheres of life in contemporary times. Further intensive works on the comparison of cultures were continued in the era of the Enlightenment. In that period so-called eurocentrism originated, initiating the importance of intellectual advancement and providing the background for the idea of the development of nations. European societies were viewed as better-developed and further advanced due to the progress of their civilization than other non-European cultures

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regardless of their past achievements and true contribution to the world heritage. Although intercultural communication has its origins in ancient times, it definitely produced its own methods, techniques, tools and procedures of investigation only as late as in the 20th century. It was after the end of World War II, which changed the world order by introducing a new political geography, when the need to communicate successfully in a multicultural reality was especially strongly felt. The USA became then an unquestionable winner and the main architect of the new after-war and post-colonial reality. Considering the new world situation as well as American multiculturalism, it was in the USA where the new academic discipline of intercultural communication was born as an essential factor determining global peace and co-operation between nations. The US ethnographers and anthropologists joined by linguists engaged in a systematic investigation of cultures of, first of all, new American business partners from Mexico and Japan as well as slowly decolonized South America and Asia. An academic inquiry was undertaken to confirm the validity of more impressionistic observations mainly by business people. Its aim was also to create and refine the theoretical basis of research in the field. Namely, anthropologists sought to describe behaviours envisaged by cultural patterns and themes. At the same time, linguists started studying exotic and uncommon languages, which provided them with a larger perspective on how to understand various tongues and modes of communication. Furthermore their findings had an impact on the field of second language learning and acquisition. Their work evidenced a strong relationship between culture and language. In the 1950s such an approach was new and challenging. It was also the time when many aid programmes came into existence aimed at teaching or improving interpersonal skills of people who were to communicate across cultures. Also, various teaching techniques were devised, refined and employed because, as already mentioned, the process of intercultural communication consists in not only sending messages, but first of all, in acting as cultural mediators. It means that to be a successful communicator, the speaker has to step out of their own world views and use empathy as an emotional and cognitive filter in the communication process. Hence workshops and lectures started to be offered to various professional groups. The first training sessions were of short duration and mostly confined to the processing of information regarding the culture of the target group. The information was very practical and detailed. Tied together, it was used to publish the first programme manuals, which appeared in 1970 in the USA – as David Hoopes (1975: 11) notes.

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Chapter One

The second incentive for the development of intercultural communication studies was the work of Peace Corps volunteers against culturally unfamiliar contexts in Africa and Asia. The organization was established in the USA to help people in economically disadvantaged regions or in the areas marked by wars, armed conflicts or ethnic cleansing. Its volunteers often failed while working in the regions and it was culture or rather the complete lack of its understanding which hindered their efforts. Thus they have become an immediate target group for intercultural training programmes as well as their direct beneficiaries enabled quickly to check the value of their intercultural skills in practice. The third factor advocating the development of intercultural communication studies was the demand from international students who in most cases selected American and British universities to study at. Again, many of them came from former colonies where a proper system of education did not yet exist and where upbringing was in a totally different cultural tradition when compared with the western world. Their cultural background explains why although they spoke English, they were still faced with many difficulties and cultural puzzles. The same applied to their American professors, counsellors, and administration staff as well as new friends and landlords because although America had always been a multicultural country, the ability to communicate with cultural strangers was not satisfactorily mastered by an average American citizen. Thus courses in intercultural communication became a survival kit for both American and foreign students. In fact they were offered on all American campuses, most often as pre-course training. The Civil Rights Movement was the fourth factor which sensitized average Americans to the value of multiculturalism and to the necessity of mastering the skills of an intercultural communicator. The movement came to prominence in the early 1960s making the understanding and management of ethnic differences one of the major socio-political issues to solve (cf. Hoopes, 1975). There existed two main sets of factors directing the focus on cultural variability with a delay in Eastern and Central Europe. The first refers to the political system of communism, whose ideology did not recognize cultural diversity as a social asset and a source of symbolic capital of a particular country. Consequently, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, during the era of Stalinism, the armament race and the policy of the Cold War, ethnic, religious and cultural diversity was promoted only if it fitted ideological principles. Moreover, at that time neither economic partnership nor informal relations between the two parts of Europe separated by the Berlin Wall was promoted, which resulted in mutual estrangement,

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stereotypical knowledge of each other, fear and hostility. The second group relied on the contacts between scientific and academic centres in the west and in Eastern Europe, which were however too poor to allow for a significant exchange of thoughts, ideas and people. Consequently, as intercultural co-operation was rudimentary, intercultural communication studies could not successfully develop, either. As mentioned earlier, the first efforts to understand culturally different communication processes fostered development of academic interest in the field in the USA. The book often regarded as a start into a systematic study of culture in relation to interpersonal communication was written by Ruth Benedict in 1947. Its title is The Chrysanthemum and the Sword and it was to help Americans to communicate with the Japanese war prisoners. Hence the book is seen an attempt to understand the Japanese society through a study of its culture. The biggest contribution of Ruth Benedict consists in finding consistent patterns of culture-specific values typical of the Japanese culture. Scholars tried to analyze them in terms of everyday behaviours of the Japanese to better understand them. Her second contribution to the field of cultural studies consisted in promoting cultural relativism as the only just and academic approach to examine cultures. Ruth Benedict also believed that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be both understood and evaluated only if one studies culture as a whole from the perspective of its native users. However important the aforementioned efforts were, it must be acknowledged that the emergence of the academic discipline of intercultural communication started with the publication of Edward T. Hall’s The Silent Language in 1959. The value and contribution of the book was enormous as it provided the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence between culture and communication. Considering the scope as well as the variety of issues involved in intercultural communication, it must be stated that from the very beginning it was an interdisciplinary field which borrowed many of its fundamental concepts from its sister fields of study such as: anthropology, ethnography, sociology, psychology, communication and linguistics. The most promising contributions into the area were made, among others, by Ruth Benedict (1934), Weston La Barre (1954), Geoffrey Gorer (1955), Margaret Mead (1964) whose work focused on cultural patterns, as well as by Milton J. Bennett (1979), Florian Coulmas (1981), Stella Ting-Toomey (1988), Shoshana Blum-Kulka with her associates (1989), Anna Wierzbicka (1991), William B. Gudykunst and Young Y. Kim (1992). Most of them were not trained linguists, which resulted in fairly late contrastive examinations of the impact of culture on the use of particular

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Chapter One

languages in chosen speech acts, e.g. an examination of speech acts from an intercultural perspective. Their research helped create an awareness of the complex relationships of culture and communication, language and culture, language and thought, and the second-language learning/teaching. A deeper understanding of the basic conceptual framework of culture applied to communication processes, shed a new light on old queries referring to familiar issues and thus, enriching the field of intercultural communication immeasurably (Damen, 1987: 25). Roughly speaking, intercultural studies refer to the role of the cultural component in communication processes which determines both verbal and non-verbal communication behaviours. The proponents (Clifton, 1968; Keesing, 1974; Nostrand, 1978) of the thesis posit that there are no communication studies without the study of culture. It was the beginning of a new approach to communication issues which got its legitimization in the today legendary statement of Edward T. Hall that communication is culture and culture is communication (1959: 97). Although in the form Hall assigned to it the statement was controversial, its weaker version where culture is treated merely as a central differentiating variable in the process of communication has been widely accepted and constitutes a fundamental principle of intercultural communication studies. Intercultural communication studies are deeply indebted mainly to sociolinguistics and anthropology. Dell Hymes (1962), John Gumperz (1964), Basil Bernstein (1966), Ervin Goffman (1971, 1976) to name only a few from a long list of researchers who were great contributors to the discipline: they were interested in investigating extra-linguistic factors which determined a different use of language in definite communication situations. Thus, their focus on socio-cultural facets and parameters refined the approach to communication and drew attention to the value of other than linguistic factors for its successful development. Dell Hymes, who is the founding father of the ethnography of communication stressed the need to investigate interactions among members of various cultures. The ethnography of speech is a method of discourse analysis in linguistics, which draws on the anthropological field of ethnography. According to Dell Hymes’ theory speakers must be able to discern which communication acts and/or codes are important to a given group of speakers, what types of meanings they apply to different communication events, and how they learn the codes which provide an insight into particular communities. The communicative value of the insight consists in its ability to enhance communication with group members, to make sense of group members’ decisions, and to distinguish groups from each another. Dell Hymes’ investigation aimed at proving that

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cultures communicate in different ways and all forms of communication require a shared code, which should be known by interlocutors. Therefore, the cultural dimension of the following aspects: the code, the channel, the setting, the message form, the topic, and then event created by transmission of the message need to be taken into consideration (cf. Hymes, 1962: 312). An attempt to explain the existing differences in communication patterns by examining their social dimensions was made by a sociologist, John Gumperz (1964). His approach known as Interactional Sociolinguistics allowed him to analyze variations in discourse within a particular speech community by studying how they affected the unfolding of meaning in interaction. He wanted to find out how they correlate with the social order of the speech and culture community and more exactly how the order of situations and the culture of the speaker affect the way in which conversational inferences are made. These, in turn, allow for a final interpretation of verbal or non-verbal signals known as contextualization cues. The impact of culture on communication was also evidenced by the research of Basil Bernstein (1966: 433) who saw culture as the central value which accounts for collective interests, identities, expectations and identifications of members in a given community. Hence his distinction between restricted and elaborated codes which reflect the socio-cultural make-up of their users. The value of culture for interpersonal communication was directly claimed by Larry Samovar et al. (1981: 18) according to whom proper communication research cannot be conducted without the study of culture. He justified his approach explaining that communication always occurs against a rich socio-cultural background, which means that understanding communication equals understanding its background. An interest in intercultural communication was also fostered by Geoffrey Leech (1983) whose main academic interest was pragmatics, the study of language in use. He researched the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than just what is explicitly stated in their utterances by means of linguistic forms of expression. Pragmatics studies the socio-cultural forces in play for a given utterance including power, gender, race, identity, etc. For example, code switching resulting from socio-cultural variables directly relates to pragmatics, since it affects a shift in the pragmatic force of an utterance. Thus pragmatics helps those researching the field of intercultural issues to relate elements of language to broader socio-cultural phenomena. At the very beginning of intercultural communication studies, the main interest was to know and understand the target culture undermining at the

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same time the role of the speaker’s mother culture and his/her cultural selfcognition in the process. The gap was substantially filled up in the 1990s when Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (1993: 175) postulated that in order to reduce the possibility of a communication failure, not to mention of a culture shock, in intercultural contacts, the interactors’ knowledge of their own culture is as important as the knowledge of the host-country culture. Geert Hofstede (1986: 58) also argues the necessity to focus on the values of national cultures to understand how intercultural communication works. The model of culture with five dimensions of cultural diversity proposed by him was to provide a frame of reference for a more systematic and comprehensive approach to the understanding of the concept. Institutionalization of intercultural communication started in the 1960s when the first courses entered American universities and other academic institutions. An overwhelming number of studies in the field resulted in a series of lectures and workshops initiated by the University of Pittsburg. Later, the need to establish an organization serving as a forum for intercultural educators and supervising their research, teaching and training activities was met in 1975 when the Society International for Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) was founded in Washington D.C. Today its branches exist in many countries, e.g. SIETAR Japan, SIETAR Germany, SIETAR France and since 2009 SIETAR Poland. The Global Awareness Society International (GASI), with its headquarters at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, is another example of an institution investigating global issues including communication and education. At this point it is also worth mentioning that there exist several publishing houses specializing in intercultural communication studies and disciplines related to it. Among them, Intercultural Press from Boston in the USA celebrating more than 25 years on the market, is one of the best known institutions worldwide. In its catalogue professionals, business people, travellers and scholars researching the meaning and diversity of culture will find books, and a wide variety of training materials designed for those who interact with people from other cultures. Another international independent publishing house is Multilingual Matters from Clevedon in the UK, with long lists of books in the areas of intercultural communication, second/foreign language learning, sociolinguistics, translation, and interpreting, to name only a few. They also publish peerreviewed academic journals including the results of scientific research regarding the disciplines mentioned above.

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In Poland, intercultural studies were first undertaken by the Department of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. Its pioneering Komunikacja miĊdzykulturowa: zbliĪenia i impresje (Kapciak, Korporowicz and Tyszko (eds.), 1995) and Komunikacja miĊdzykulturowa: zderzenia i spotkania (Kapciak, Korporowicz and Tyszko (eds.), 1996), offered scholars and readers a synthesis of intercultural communication issues investigated by foreign sociologists, intercultural communication trainers, linguists and psychologists. Examples of public institutions which took steps towards discussing the importance of intercultural studies in the contemporary world are many but the most widely recognized seem to be the International Centre of Culture, the Centre of Jewish Culture and the “Villa Decius” Foundation in Cracow, the Institute of Culture in Warsaw, the Foundation “Pogranicze” (‘Borderlands’) in Sejny. A very interesting view on culture-oriented language studies was demonstrated in the research project, “Polish national culture, trends of development and perception”, co-ordinated by Jerzy BartmiĔski of the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who at the beginning of the 1990s looked into the relationship between language and culture viewed in terms of anthropological linguistics and ethnolinguistics. Among the conclusions resulting from his research findings, he stated that language is the central component of culture, its tool and its symbolic code and determinant. Its function is twofold because, on the one hand it reflects the existing cultural values and, on the other hand, it creates new dimensions of the world for its users. The project is regarded to be of vital importance for Polish language and culture studies because by creating new research methods, tools and terminology, ethnolinguistics has acquired a new status in Poland. The Institute of Applied Linguistics, within the Faculty of Modern Languages of Adam Mickiewicz University in PoznaĔ has proved to be a very important centre on the Polish map of intercultural studies. It changed its scope of research in 1991, when it added intercultural communication to its academic research agenda. It provides courses of intercultural communication alongside comparative linguistics, cultural studies, information technology and foreign-language teaching methodology. In Cracow, an institution whose raisons d’être are various aspects of intercultural communication is the UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication which was founded in July 2002, by virtue of the agreement between the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and UNESCO. It is one of over 500 units in the network covering many countries worldwide. In 2006 The UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication obtained the status of an academic and

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teaching institution operating within the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. It pursues its aims through an integrated research and teaching programme on the local, national and international scale through an integration and development of the existing curricula for the training of translators and interpreters in the full range of translation types addressing the needs of Poland’s new political, economic and cultural situation after its accession to the European Union. A growing role of universities in fostering the knowledge of intercultural communication and its experience is a direct result if their internationalization as a sine qua non condition of fulfilling their academic function. This is according to the vision expressed in The Bologna declaration on the European space for higher education: an explanation, and by the Steering Committee on Higher Education and Research. A constantly growing number of institutions and individuals dealing with intercultural communication issues evidences on the one hand a very strong need to comprehend other people and, on the other, the challenges of communication in various cultural settings. The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue celebrated in 2008 at the initiative of the Council of Europe was a contribution to promoting the value of intercultural dialogue, a more advanced form of intercultural communication, as an important tool to prevent social exclusion of cultural minorities, both old and new, to develop social solidarity and partnership, social coherence and the sense of citizenship, as well as to generate symbolic capital of the nations. All the efforts, both institutionalized and individual, on global, international, national, regional and local levels are to help people become true citizens of the global village by developing the knowledge, attitudes and skills of a multicultural person (Adler, 1974). This is an ideal towards which all of us should strive as a multicultural speaker is a new individual, a product of the interweaving of cultures. As s/he embodies intellectual and emotional commitment to all human beings and at the same time recognizes, accepts, and appreciates the differences that exist between people, s/he may transcend smoothly a multiplicity of cultural realities. His/her communication success is conceivable only if s/he attempts to understand, facilitate and research the cultural dynamics of other worlds.

1.2 The concept of culture as used in intercultural studies The concept of culture requires to be viewed from a number of perspectives since scholars have not yet reached any agreement as to how it should be defined in a multicultural environment. The multiple answers which they have provided can often be found to be contradictory,

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inconsistent and even confusing as the definitions tend to serve the research purposes of their authors. However, two basic definitions which give lists of individual components of culture can be distinguished. They seem pragmatic and functional because culture is treated as a tool to solve diverse problems. In order to reach a consensus as far as numerous complexities and simplicities of the terms are concerned, several attempts to define culture need to be synthesized; since each view, either linguistic, anthropological or social, offers a myriad of insights into it. The difficulty derives from the nature of culture itself. For the purpose of the present study, I will be predominantly interested in the view of culture that integrates language and culture in a comprehensive and full manner. In my own perception, culture is the most important concept in anthropology (the study of all aspects of human life, past and present) where it is commonly used to refer to a group of people who live and think in the same ways. Likewise, any group of people who share a common culture and consequently, common rules of behaviour as well as the same form of social organization constitutes a society. A memorable statement of how language organizes and represents culture is known as the Whorf/Sapir hypothesis which draws upon the previous research by Leonard Bloomfield: We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. (Bloomfield, 1956: 207)

Referring to the hypothesis, language is understood to be bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. It is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives and we use for our communication purposes. The ideas exchanged between speakers can be understood because the interlocutors possess a knowledge store which implies a shared knowledge about the world. The role of the language consists in representing both its users’ world views and their cultural identity in a symbolic way proper to their own culture by enabling them to create, explain, and record ideas and information. In turn, culture as a common intellectual and emotional state of all the members of a given speech and culture community, allows for deciphering and understanding the meanings transmitted by language. Thus, language and culture allow the members of a speech and culture community to draw a shared sense of importance and historical continuity embodied in their common customs,

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traditions, ideas and, first of all, values. In this way they also serve as markers of their cultural identity. An attempt to understand culture in a systematic way by means of referring to its value system was successfully undertaken by Clyde Kluckhohn and Florence Strodtbeck in the 1960s. Drawing on their research carried out in five distinct speech and culture communities (Spanish American, Native American, Mormons and English speaking settlers of Oklahoma and Texas) they concluded that each culture consists of the same set of values but what makes cultures differ from each other is not the values themselves but their hierarchy. They also postulated that culture plays a very pragmatic function in each speech and culture community where it serves as a tool for solving problems. The above statement is based on three assumptions. Firstly, there is a limited number of human problems to which all cultures must find solutions. Secondly, the limited number of solutions may be charted along a range of variations, and, thirdly, not all solutions are favoured in each culture group to the same extent, although, potentially they are present in every culture. Consequently, as Henry A. Murray and Clyde Kluckhohn (1953) noticed, intercultural communication could be facilitated by analyzing a given culture-specific orientation to five key aspects of human life, each of which implies specific underlying values: Human Nature (people seen as intrinsically good, evil, or mixed); Man-Nature Relationship (humans should be subordinate to nature, dominant over nature, or live in harmony with it); Time (primary value placed on past/tradition, present/enjoyment, or future/posterity/delayed gratification); Activity (being, becoming/inner development, or doing/striving/industriousness); and Social Relations mainly defined in terms of the locus of power (hierarchical, collateral/collective-egalitarian, or individualistic). The concept of culture as the totality of human life, including both its spiritual and material aspects was also posited by Susan Stempleski and Barry Tomalin (1993). Moreover, while enumerating the components of culture, they included language among them, which is of some special interest for my analysis. Culture is defined as patterns of behavior and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create, and share. Culture distinguishes one human group from others. A people’s culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems. (Stempleski and Tomalin, 1993: 25)

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The duality of culture which consists of cultural products, practices, persons, communities, and perspectives (visible and explicit) as well as values (hidden, invisible and intangible) has been represented in an iceberg metaphor by Terence Brake, Danielle Medma Walker and Thomas Tim Walker (1995). The iceberg tip stands for explicit culture, while tacit culture is portrayed by all that lies beneath the surface level of the sea. The metaphor is very simple but it immediately reveals all potential difficulties which can be experienced while crossing cultures. An intercultural communicator can directly access only a small part of culture while its centre, or core, accounting for differences in its explicit manifestations, is not easily available. As for other scholars who have investigated the issue of culture to offer its clear and comprehensible explanation, Deborah Peck’s definition is worth mentioning. Peck (1998) seems to have provided the most complete definition where not only all the basic constituents of culture are included but also their character is explained. Her definition puts an emphasis on the pragmatic value of culture, which makes us think about it in terms of progress and civilization. It also assigns to culture a normative function seen in the way it organizes societies. Culture is all the accepted and patterned ways of behaviour of a given people. It is that facet of human life learned by people as a result of belonging to some particular group; it is that part of learned behaviour shared with others. Not only does this concept include a group’s way of thinking, feeling, and activity, but also internalized patterns for doing certain things in certain ways … not just the doing of them. This concept of culture also includes the manifestation of a group as exhibited in their achievements and contributions to civilization. Culture is our social legacy as contrasted with our organic heredity. It regulates our lives at every turn. (Peck, 1998: 257)

The impact of digital culture is seen in the approach of Geert Hofstede (1994: 4-5) who views culture as software of the mind. The metaphor allows him to discuss the relationship between culture and human behavior, which he directly expresses saying that “information is more than words – it is words which fit in a cultural context” (Hofstede, 1994: 315). His main idea refers to the fact that human behaviour is partially predetermined by the social environments in which one grew up and by one’s life experiences. The mental programming starts within the family and continues within the neighbourhood, school, work place, and the living community. Mental programs vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired. A customary term for such

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mental software is culture meaning civilization and also refinement of the mind and its results. Culture as the mental software corresponds in a much broader sense to cultural anthropology where it means patterns of values which imply certain patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, etc. Using the above assumptions, Geert Hofstede has proposed a model of culture which was to systematize our knowledge of it in five dimensions of cultural diversity focused on values and their different configurations (cf. Hofstede, 1994). A slightly different view was expressed by H. Douglas Brown (1994) who focused on the relationship between language (its meaning) and culture. He claims that they are intricately interwoven and cannot be separated “without losing the significance of either language or culture” (Brown, 1994: 122). He uses the following arguments to support his thesis about the link between language and culture; -

-

language acquisition does not follow a universal sequence, but differs across culture; the process of becoming a member of a society is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations; every society arranges the ways in which children participate in particular situations, and this, in turn, affects the form, the function and the content of children’s utterances; caregivers’ primary concern is not with grammatical input, but with the transmission of socio-cultural knowledge. (Brown, 1994: 124).

The social aspect of culture, which accounts for its differentiation, has been stressed in the definition by Patrick Moran. He refers to three interrelated dimensions of culture, the three poles of an equilateral triangle which embody products, practices and perspectives. To stress the active role of people in creating their own culture, two more items must be added, namely, communities and persons as these are necessary for the interplay (Moran, 2003: 23). Thus, for Moran culture is the evolving way of life of a group of persons, consisting of a shared set of practices associated with a shared set of products, based upon a shared set of perspectives on the world, and set within specific social contexts (Moran, 2003: 24). The evolving way of life accounts for the dynamic nature of culture – its people, history and tradition actively affecting formation and change of its products, practices and perspectives. All artifacts are referred to as products while actions and interactions constitute practices, which include language and other forms of communication. Perspectives, in turn, represent perceptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes that underlie the

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products and guide persons and communities in their cultural practices. Communities stand for specific contexts and circumstances as well as people who make effective their cultural practices. Finally, persons are individuals who embrace a distinct mixture of communities and circumstances. They have a particular cultural identity that both links them to other members of their own group and separates them from other members of other culture groups. All the definitions under discussion refer, more or less explicitly, to the concept of culture as a set of values and their subsequent norms and patterns of behaviour which members of a given speech community identify with and which account for existing differences among them. They also stress a strong relationship between culture and language as well as identity which continually evolves because of the dynamic character of culture. Culture resembles a living organism that undergoes constant transformations under the influence of external changes and in contact with other cultures. Referring to enumerative and functional definitions of culture, it appears as a natural habitat for people, which makes it a challenge for interpersonal encounters. Consequently, culture has to be included in language teaching because it may both facilitate and hinder communication. In its facilitating role, culture reveals to interactors a great variety of potential solutions and approaches to the same problem. As a barrier, cultural diversity results in mutual misunderstandings of speakers who, in order to accept the differences, are challenged intellectually, emotionally and even somatically. Hence the importance of understanding culture and its role in communication, which in reality equals understanding its role in shaping interpersonal relations. The biggest challenge for each intercultural communicator is to maintain an optimal balance by recognizing and appreciating cultural uniqueness, while at the same time embracing the shared human conditions and characteristics (Gudykunst and Kim, 1992).

1.3 The impact of culture on the process of intercultural communication As already stated the process of intercultural communication involves a dynamic relationship between its participants and the situation in which the cultural context and a prior experience of culture of interlocutors come into play. Since words and their meanings are linked to their cultural context, language and cultural patterns change over time and vary according to the situation. Michael Byram and Michael Fleming (1998), for example, state that language has no function independent of the

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situation in which it is used, always referring to something beyond itself: its cultural context. The statement is of great value for intercultural communication, because it explains potential failures of intercultural speakers who have been brought up in different cultural contexts and who while interacting with each other tend to make a direct transfer of their cultural knowledge and experience. Cultural dimensions of the context provide sufficient clues to interpret the messages received and to act accordingly to the interlocutor’s expectations. It is also the cultural context which accounts for the choice of speech acts, especially the indirect ones, conversational topics, conversational scripts, etc. Essentially, one does not need to be familiar with the other individuals in order to communicate, but one does need to understand their cultural context. The role of culture in intercultural encounters is ambiguous in the sense that it may either facilitate communication between its participants or hinder it. Its negative impact on communication success is more frequent than the positive one, which makes it often studied by many researchers in order to reduce or even eliminate it. Jerzy MikuáowskiPomorski (2003: 75) claims that culture is one of the main barriers in intercultural communication and to reduce its harmful influence, first of all similarities instead of differences among interacting cultures should be focused on. Laray M. Barna’s (1998: 173) idea is different because she finds it essential to deal with culture-specific differences which are classified into six types of barriers. She calls them stumbling blocks and they are the following: ethnocentrism, preconceptions and stereotypes, high anxiety, assumption of similarities instead of differences, language and nonverbal misinterpretations. Ethnocentrism (Barna, 1998: 174) is understood as an inclination to issue negative opinions concerning other cultures while referring to the standards functioning in a native culture. The tendency to evaluate, approve or disapprove, rather than to try to comprehend thoughts and actions from the worldview of the other is a deterrent to understanding among cultures. Preconceptions and stereotypes, as the second stumbling block, reduce the threat of the unknown by making the world predictable. On the other hand, as they are over-generalized beliefs that provide a conceptual basis independently of their accuracy and objectivity, they provide us with a simplistic concept of reality, often biased and harmful to the group it describes. High anxiety results from the unknown and unfamiliar world the speaker is to deal with while interacting with his/her interlocutor who is a cultural stranger. This, in turn, causes a great deal of stress, which many speakers do not have control over. Feelings of anxiety usually permeate both parties and are most visible by interruptions in the

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flow of verbal and nonverbal interactions. Misunderstanding and rejection, which result from the next barrier – assumption of similarities instead of differences – occur when people are lured into thinking that communication should be possible due to the fact that they share the same human needs, although they are of completely different backgrounds. Unfortunately, they overlook the fact that the forms of adaptation to the common needs are culture-specific and thus vastly incompatible. The fifth stumbling block concerns the use of language, both verbal and nonverbal, by interlocutors and their fluency in it. The difficulties may be caused by vocabulary (slang, dialect), syntax and paralangue (intonation, tone of voice, loudness, etc). Communication is successful only if the command of language by both speakers allows them to decode the messages received with minimal or no distortion. Finally, the misinterpretation of nonverbal language such as gestures, postures, proxemics and body movements contributes to communication failures. To avoid the six stumbling blocks, William B. Gudykunst and Young Y. Kim (1992: 30-32) focus their attention upon the act of communication, bringing it to the individual level. They analyze the ways in which cultural, socio-cultural, and psychocultural influences affect the intercultural communication process. Research at this level provides us with a means of integrating various contributions made to the field of intercultural communication by other disciplines for a better understanding of the work of culture. Its role is defined by the patterns of the native culture of each interlocutor instilled in him/her in the process of socialization which are filtered through his/her individual values, assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions. Thus what each communicator brings to the intercultural encounter is partially public and shared with other members of their cultural group as well as private and personal. As a result, no person represents a whole culture, and cultural patterns are not shared by all members of a cultural group in exactly the same way, which accounts for intercultural as well as intracultural differences and enhances the threat of miscommunication. The public/private components in interpersonal communication account for interpretational differences of the communication context, which in turn determine the use of language. William B. Gudykunst and Young Y. Kim (1992) distinguished two types of context in intercultural encounters: external vs. internal. The first of them, the external context refers to the socially generated cultural evaluation of various locations and settings where interaction occurs, which puts specific constraints on communicative behaviours of interactors. Formality vs. informality of the setting, for example, makes the speakers differentiate their use of language, both

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verbal and non-verbal, their choice of conversational topics, selection of particular speech acts, modification of paralangue, etc. Two people might address each other more formally in an office setting than if they were to meet in a bar because of the culture-bound view of the workplace as more formal than the bar. The external context, then, is about the ways in which an individual interprets various communication settings. It refers to the cultural meanings, which are a mixture of social and private experience of culture that people themselves tend to bring into communication. Therefore, speakers, but especially intercultural communicators, should remember that it is not the context itself that changes the language use but it is the meaning associated with that context which, in turn, is determined by culture. Thus, communicating effectively means to know how to ‘read’ the contexts. The ability to read the cultural context of communication depends on the culture learning process which, as noticed by Claire Kramsch (1998) can take place in either a naturalistic or an institutionalized setting. The first of them, the naturalistic setting, also called culture learning in the field, consists in learning a foreign culture in interactive encounters directly experiencing it in its natural environment, e.g. socializing with the target culture users. Although it is less safe than the second type, when people study culture in the classroom guided by instructors and do have to pay for their failure, it is more likely to make them gain self-confidence and self-esteem as well as positive attitudes towards foreign languages and cultures. Besides, the naturalistic setting brings about a greater level of cultural self-awareness as well as awareness. Anna Lubecka (1998) observing the impact of culture on communication in intercultural encounters as evidenced by the findings of many researchers posits that culture mainly influences its three areas: 1) the use of language, both verbal and non-verbal, 2) the choice and realization of particular speech acts, especially of the so-called conversational routines and, 3) the classification of conversational topics into taboos and non-taboos. As previously discussed, culture determines meanings and their social valence. The same word may have identical, partially similar or exclusive meanings in two language and culture communities. The most troublesome are the lexical items whose semantic fields differ to some extent but are not mutually exclusive. They cause a lot of misunderstandings and are rightly called false friends, for example, the Polish and English terms of address ty/you or the words parsley/pietruszka or else college/kolegium are partially similar but also different in many respects. The same interpretational difficulties appear on the level of syntax, e.g. a very well-

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defined order of English sentences with a definite place for subject, verb and object and a rather loose order of Polish sentences which create meanings. Moreover, emotional intensity or its lack, degree of expressivity, reverence, authority, friendliness, empathy, distance communicated by speakers reflect their cultural identity, socio-cultural needs and patterns of relationship to others. Lots of diminutives and hypocoristic forms in Polish correlate with the values of Polish culture and subsequent communication patterns while their much smaller occurrence in German or English correspond to the socio-culturally created communication needs of speakers and their subsequent verbal and nonverbal equivalents. Anna Lubecka (2000) rightly highlights the fact that the same, often troublesome, culture-specific differences concern the use of the non-verbal language classified into the following categories: eye contact, facial expression, body posture, gestures, haptics, proxemics, chronometrics and olphatics. Non-verbal means of communication, although learnt, are largely subconscious. As such they are also less strictly monitored by speakers than the verbal ones, which may more often lead to miscommunication and false assumptions. To communicate proficiently interactors have to be aware of the culturally determined patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication where smaller units get combined into longer stretches of text. In a similar course of reasoning John L. Austin (1962) put forward the theory of speech acts understood as basic communication units revealing a strong dependence on culture to be manifested in two different ways. Firstly, it is seen in a number of their constitutive moves and their lexicosyntactic features. Secondly, it can be observed in the attribution of meaning to indirect speech acts which are much more context bound than the direct speech acts. Particular speech and culture communities show substantial differences in this respect as evidenced in the research of Anna Wierzbicka (1991) on speech acts from English, Italian, Polish, German, Jewish, as well as Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk’s analysis (1989) of British-English and Polish; Anna Lubecka’s (2000) investigation of American-English, French and Polish; Shoshana Blum-Kulka and her associates’ (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989) examination of American-English and Jewish; and Anna Trosborg’s (1987) research into English and Dutch. The differences are especially conspicuous when the so-called conversational routines are studied, that is those speech acts which belong to the sociolect and where an idiolectal use of language is hardly to be seen, e.g. greetings, apologies, requests, wishes, etc.

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Traditionally realized greetings in English, especially AmericanEnglish and Polish illustrate the many differences quite well. A simple answer given by Americans to the question “How are you?” reveals their optimism, belief in the value of success, empowerment and conviction that “where the will is, the means is”. In contrast, Polish respondents keep grumbling and complaining about literally anything, which can be attributed to the lack of self-confidence, modesty and a strong need for an emotional rapport based on compassion and a special kind of solidarity which they feel in distress. Finally, the choice of conversational topics mirrors culture-specific values of a given community, especially the cultural concept of taboo. Some ideas are socially disapproved, forbidden and banned from the public discourse for many different reasons, e.g. fear, respect for privacy, politeness, well-being, etc. Money cannot be directly approached in discussions with Americans who claim that only God and the tax office know how much they earn but it was (and still tends to be) natural for Poles. Questions about marital status are treated as perfectly polite in South American and Latino cultures, while most Europeans and North Americans find them intrusive and disrespectful of their privacy. Thus, when crossing cultures, the knowledge of the socio-cultural rules of appropriateness of topics is vital for creating and then maintaining interpersonal relationships and critical for achieving success.

1.4 Diverse cultural patterns In this chapter, the complex notion of culture has already been defined in many ways (see section 1.2). However, it is crucial at this point to discuss various taxonomies devised to analyze key behavioural orientations found in particular cultures. One of the best-established classifications was developed by Geert Hofstede in 1980. It identifies four value dimensions influenced and modified by culture. The second theory, which will be presented, was advanced by Edward T. Hall. It analyzes how high-context and low-context cultures respond to various message systems.

1.4.1 Dimensions of national cultures by Geert Hofstede Geert Hofstede (2001) perceives the concept of culture as the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others. Many researchers (i.e. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961; Hall, 1969) speculated about the nature

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of the basic problems of societies that would present distinct dimensions of culture. Geert Hofstede’s work was one of the earliest attempts to use extensive statistical data to examine cultural values. During the 1980s he surveyed over a hundred thousand workers in multinational organizations (e.g. IBM) in forty countries. After careful analysis, each country was assigned a rank in each category depending on how it compared to the other countries. The four dimensions, he investigated, are as follows: 1. Power Distance, related to the different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality; 2. Uncertainty Avoidance, related to the level of stress in a society in the face of an unknown future; 3. Individualism versus Collectivism, related to the integration of individuals into primary groups; 4. Masculinity versus Femininity, related to the division of emotional roles between women and men. The premise of the first value, Power Distance, is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. It suggests that a society’s level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality are extremely fundamental facts of any society. Table 1 lists a selection of differences between national societies that validation research showed to be associated with the Power Distance dimension. In G. Hofstede et al. (2010) Power Distance Index scores are listed for 76 countries. They tend to be higher for East European, Latin, Asian and African countries and lower for Germanic and English-speaking Western countries. Geert Hofstede understands Uncertainty Avoidance as a society’s tolerance for ambiguity. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, and different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict behavioural codes, laws and rules, disapproval of deviant opinions, and a belief in absolute truth.

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Table 1. Ten Differences Between Small- and Large-Power Distance Societies Small-Power Distance

Large-Power Distance

Use of power should be legitimate Power is a basic fact of society and is subject to criteria of good antedating good or evil: its legitimacy and evil is irrelevant Parents treat children as equals

Parents teach children obedience

Older people are neither respected nor feared

Older people are both respected and feared

Student-centred education

Teacher-centred education

Hierarchy means inequality of roles, established for convenience

Hierarchy means existential inequality

Subordinates expect to be consulted Subordinates expect to be told what to do Pluralist governments based on majority vote and changed peacefully

Autocratic governments based on cooptation and changed by revolution

Corruption rare; scandals end political careers

Corruption frequent; scandals are covered up

Income distribution in society rather even

Income distribution in society very uneven

Religions stressing equality of believers

Religions with the hierarchy of priests

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Table 2. Ten Differences Between Weak- and Strong-Uncertainty Avoidance Societies Weak-Uncertainty Avoidance The uncertainty inherent in life is accepted and each day is taken as it comes Ease, lower stress, self-control, low anxiety Higher scores on subjective health and well-being Tolerance of deviant persons and ideas: what is different is curious Comfortable with ambiguity and chaos Teachers may say ‘I don’t know’ Changing jobs no problem Dislike of rules – written or unwritten In politics, citizens feel and are seen as competent towards authorities In religion, philosophy and science: relativism and empiricism

Strong-Uncertainty Avoidance The uncertainty inherent in life is felt as a continuous threat that must be fought Higher stress, emotionality, anxiety, neuroticism Lower scores on subjective health and well-being Intolerance of deviant persons and ideas: what is different is dangerous Need for clarity and structure Teachers supposed to have all the answers Staying in jobs even if disliked Emotional need for rules – even if not obeyed In politics, citizens feel and are seen as incompetent towards authorities In religion, philosophy and science: belief in ultimate truths and grand theories

Research has shown that people in uncertainty avoiding countries are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervous energy. The opposite type, uncertainty accepting cultures, are more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to. They try to have fewer rules, and on the philosophical and religious level they are empiricist, relativist and allow different currents to flow side by side. People within these cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and not expected by their environment to express emotions. Table 2 lists a selection of differences between societies that validation research showed to be associated with the Uncertainty Avoidance dimension. In G. Hofstede et al. (2010) Uncertainty Avoidance Index scores are listed for 76 countries. They are higher in East and Central European countries, in Latin countries, in Japan and in German-speaking countries, lower in English-speaking, Nordic and Chinese culture countries.

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Individualism on the one side versus its opposite, Collectivism, as a societal, not an individual characteristic, is the degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups. On the individualist side, we find cultures in which the ties between individuals are loose. Everyone is expected to look after himself/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side we find cultures in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) that continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty, and opposition to other groups. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is a fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world. Table 3 lists a selection of differences between societies that validation research showed to be associated with this dimension. Table 3. Ten Differences Between Collectivist and Individualist Societies Individualism Everyone is supposed to take care of him- or herself and his or her immediate family only ‘I’ – consciousness Right of privacy Speaking one's mind is healthy Others classified as individuals Personal opinion expected: one person one vote Transgression of norms leads to guilt feelings Languages in which the word ‘I’ is indispensable Purpose of education is learning how to learn Task prevails over relationship

Collectivism People are born into extended families or clans which protect them in exchange for loyalty ‘We’ – consciousness Stress on belonging Harmony should always be maintained Others classified as in-group or outgroup Opinions and votes predetermined by in-group Transgression of norms leads to shame feelings Languages in which the word ‘I’ is avoided Purpose of education is learning how to do Relationship prevails over task

In G. Hofstede et al. (2010) Individualism Index scores are listed for 76 countries. Individualism tends to prevail in developed and Western

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countries, while collectivism prevails in less developed and Eastern countries. Masculinity versus its opposite, Femininity, refers to the distribution of values between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society, to which a range of solutions can be found. The studies revealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men’s values, (b) men’s values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women’s values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women’s values on the other. The assertive pole has been called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole ‘feminine’. Women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as men. In the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as men, so that these countries show a gap between men’s values and women’s values. In masculine cultures there is often a taboo around this dimension (Hofstede, 1994). Table 4. Ten Differences Between Feminine and Masculine Societies Femininity Minimum emotional and social role differentiation between the genders Men and women should be modest and caring Balance between family and work Sympathy for the weak Both fathers and mothers deal with facts and feelings Both boys and girls may cry but neither should fight Mothers decide on number of children Many women in elected political positions Religion focuses on fellow human beings Matter-of-fact attitudes about sexuality; sex is a way of relating

Masculinity Maximum emotional and social role differentiation between the genders Men should be and women may be assertive and ambitious Work prevails over family Admiration for the strong Fathers deal with facts, mothers with feelings Girls cry, boys don’t; boys should fight back, girls should not fight Fathers decide on family size Few women in elected political positions Religion focuses on God or gods Moralistic attitudes about sexuality; sex is a way of performing

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In G. Hofstede et al. (2010) masculinity is high in Japan, in Germanspeaking countries, and in some Latin countries such as: Italy and Mexico. It is moderately high in English-speaking Western countries. It is low in Nordic countries and in the Netherlands and moderately low in some Latin and Asian countries, e.g. France, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Korea and Thailand. It should be noted that later the model was extended onto further dimensions. These, however, are irrelevant for the purpose of the present research, hence they have not been included.

1.4.2 Models of cultures by Edward T. Hall Edward T. Hall (1976) offers another effective means of examining cultural similarities and differences in both perception and communication. He categorizes cultures as being either high- or lowcontext, depending on the degree to which meaning comes from the settings or from the words being exchanged. The assumption underlying Hall’s classifications is that one of the functions of culture is to provide a highly selective screen between man and the outside world. In its many forms, culture therefore designates what we pay attention to and what we ignore. The study of high-context and low-context cultures therefore offers some insight into what people regard as important and what they disregard. The word context, as it is used by Hall, needs to be understood in terms of its relation to communication. It is defined as the information surrounding an event and it is inextricably bound up with the meaning of the event. A high-context communication or message is one whose most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message. On the other hand, a lowcontext communication is just the opposite, i.e. the mass of information is vested in the explicit code. In high-context cultures (e.g. Native Americans, Latin Americans, Japanese, Chinese and Korean), people are very homogeneous with regard to experiences and information networks. Such cultures, because of tradition and history, change very little over time. These are cultures in which consistent messages have produced consistent responses to the environment. Meaning is not necessarily contained in words. Information may be provided through gestures, the use of space, and even silence. In low-context cultures (e.g. German, Swiss and American), the population is less homogeneous and therefore tends to compartmentalize

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interpersonal contacts. The verbal message contains most of the information and very little is embedded in the context or the participants. This is manifested on a number of occasions, i.e. the Asian mode of communication is often indirect and implicit, whereas Western communication tends to be direct and explicit. Westerners are more prone to making very explicit statements and have little capability with nonverbal forms of expression. High-context cultures tend to be more aware of their surroundings and the environment and do not rely on verbal communication as their main information channel. In addition to the differences in nonverbal communication, there are other manifestations of high-context and low-context cultures that influence communication. Usually members of low-context cultures expect messages to be detailed and definite. If the message is not clear, or if the point being made is not apparent, members of these cultures will ask very blunt questions. Contrastively, high-context people are apt to become impatient and irritated when low-context people insist on giving them information they do not require. Another problem is that people in high-context cultures perceive lowcontext representatives, who rely primarily on verbal messages for information, as less credible. They believe that silence often sends a better message than words, and anyone who needs words does not have the information. Edward T. Hall’s second concept, polychronic versus monochronic time orientation, deals with the ways in which cultures structure their time. Similar to the high/low context concept, this concept is easy to understand, but it lacks empirical data. The monochronic time concept follows the notion of ‘one thing at a time’, while the polychronic concept focuses on multiple tasks being handled at one time, and time is subordinate to interpersonal relations. To monochromic cultures, time is a precious commodity that can be lost, saved, or wasted. Cultures, which embrace a monochronic time orientation, view schedules and punctuality as an indispensable part of their workday. Most monochronic time-oriented cultures are Westernbased cultures, such as the United States and Germany. On the contrary, polychromic cultures prefer to multi-task, or work on different activities at the same time. They do not work on schedule, and in fact, will work while socializing in order to sustain relationships (e.g. South and Latin America).

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Table 5. An overview of the two different time concepts, and their resultant behaviour

Interpersonal Relations

Activity Co-ordination

Monochronic culture Interpersonal relations are subordinate to present schedule Schedule co-ordinates activity; appointment time is rigid.

Task Handling

One task at a time

Breaks and Personal Time

Breaks and personal time are sacrosanct regardless of personal ties. Time is inflexible; time is tangible Work time is clearly separable from personal time Activities are isolated from organization as a whole; tasks are measured by output in time (activity per hour or minute)

Temporal Structure Work/personal time separability Organizational Perception

Polychronic culture Present schedule is subordinate to Interpersonal relations Interpersonal relations co- ordinate activity; appointment time is flexible Many tasks are handled simultaneously Breaks and personal time are subordinate to personal ties. Time is flexible; time is fluid Work time is not clearly separable from personal time Activities are integrated into organization as a whole; tasks are measured as part of overall organizational goal

CHAPTER TWO LANGUAGE AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Introduction In this chapter a wide array of definitions of language will be provided and its role in communication will be stressed. Various models of communication will be analyzed in depth. It is English, which performs the role of lingua franca in the 21st century. Hence, the historical underpinnings of the status quo will be discussed. Finally, the Author will discuss the possible interrelations between English and interculturality.

2.1 Language as a basic means of interpersonal communication To allow for some indication of the properties that linguists, especially before the emergence of intercultural communication studies, tend to think of as being essential to language, a thorough analysis of its definitions is required. They evolve in time reflecting a changing concept of interpersonal communication as well as its scope and actors. Considering the fact that Sapir/Whorf hypothesis has had an impact on the development of intercultural communication studies, a further discussion should be preceded by the definition of these authors. Edward Sapir (1921: 8) understands language as a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols. He also maintains that we may think of language as a symbolic guide to culture. On the one hand the definition is inherently inexhaustive and imprecise as the terms ‘idea’, ‘emotion’ and ‘desire’ do not cover everything that is communicated by language. On the other hand, it is a rather early attempt to see a close mutual relation between language and culture and the meaning the language conveys. Another definition was provided by Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager (1942: 5) for whom language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of

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which a social group co-operates. Its value as a forerunner of an intercultural communication perspective on language consists in pointing out the social functions of language. Bloch’s and Trager’s view brings in the property of arbitrariness and restricts language to its verbal and spoken code. The relation that holds between language and speech comes into play as one cannot speak without using the language, but one can use the language without speaking. Edward T. Hall (1969: 158) also made a noteworthy statement about language assigning to it the function of the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols. The point to notice here is the fact that both communication and interaction are introduced into the definition, and the term ‘oral-auditory’ makes reference to the hearer as well as to the speaker. Edward T. Hall, like Edward Sapir, treats language as a purely human property typical only of a particular society. It is also a part of that society’s culture. The last of the pre-interculturalists’ definitions to be quoted here expresses the view of Noam Chomsky (1957: 13) whose role in understanding the nature and the work of language cannot be denied. He claims that a language should be viewed as a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements. According to the definition each language has a finite number of sounds, and each sentence can be represented as their finite sequence. Noam Chomsky’s definition illustrates the contrast with the others, both in style and in content. It neither emphasizes the communicative function nor mentions the symbolic nature of the elements or sequences because its purpose is to focus upon the purely structural properties of languages. The approach reflects the state-of-the-art dimension in the field and for the time when it was created it was a significant achievement. All the definitions under discussion take the view that language is a system of arbitrary symbols designed for the purpose of communication. They point out at an intrinsic connection between meaning and language although only some of them consider the contextual impact on its work. They also perceive communication and the use of language as an intentional process. John Lyons (1995: 32-33), for example, posits that the process of communication encompasses the transmission of information by means of some established signalling system, and involves the intentional transmission of factual or propositional information. It is noteworthy that a new concept of language emerged with sociolinguists and interculturalists who studied an active use of language in communication. Thus they claim that language cannot be separated from the context of communication which, in turn, is mainly created by the

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culture of its speakers. Patrick Moran (2003: 35) maintains that anyone immersed in culture sees and hears the language all around in its verbal and non-verbal forms. Thanks to a consistent effort of intercultural communication specialists the concept of language has been enlarged and non-verbal repertoires, which include the use of senses, facial expressions, body movement (kinesics), gestures, space and other means of physical contact, have been incorporated within its notion. Thus, the new perspective on language makes it embrace all kinds of behaviours, including the verbal ones, because as Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues claim we cannot not communicate (Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson; 1968: 12). Whatever we do constitutes a certain code and a message we keep sending, often subconsciously without intending to do so. Consequently, an intentional use of language is not a necessary prerequisite for communication. At this point it should be stressed that the latest definitions of language focus on its relation to context, especially created by culture, and on the impact of the latter on its meaning, use and communicative success. According to Louise Damen (1987: 119-120) language may be viewed as a system of meanings, a vehicle for cultural transmission, a formative force whose structures place their stamp upon the minds and actions of its speakers, or as only one of many modes of communication. The relation between language and culture is twofold. Language embodies the products, practices, perspectives, communities, and persons all of which are marked by culture. At the same time, it is a product of culture, both similar to other culture-specific products and unique. Language, therefore, is a window to culture. To practise culture, we need a language. We need to be able to express ourselves and to communicate with members of the culture as we engage with them in a myriad practices and products that constitute their way of life. Additionally, we need to do it appropriately, using the right language in the right way, according to the expectations of the members of the culture. This is the language of selfexpression, communication, and social interaction. It is based on a direct cultural experience. Thus, to conclude, a complete understanding of culture requires an examination of language and language cannot be fully appreciated and successfully used in interpersonal communication unless it is filtered through culture. Intercultural communication researchers always study an active use of language, which raises the question about its functions. Apart from its basic role, which according to John Rupert Firth (1984: 5) is functional and which is clearly demonstrated by the purposive nature of communication, language plays other functions whose classification has

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been more fine-grained. Michael Halliday (1973) outlined seven of them and they are the following: instrumental, regulatory, representational, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative. The instrumental function serves to change the speaker’s environment, to cause certain events to happen due to the fact that such speech acts have a specific force bringing about a special condition. The regulatory function of language is the control of events. Such a control is difficult to distinguish from the instrumental function. The representational function consists in such a use of language which allows us to make statements, convey facts and knowledge, explain reality or report about it. The interactional function serves to ensure social maintenance, to provide communicative contact among human beings, to keep channels of communication open. The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions and personality. In its nature cognition, affection, and culture all interact. The heuristic function involves the language user to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment. It is realized as questions that lead to answers. The imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas. Through this dimension we go beyond the real world to talk about impossible issues and our desires. The functions can be incorporated simultaneously in a single utterance to enhance its communicative intent. However, their choice and combination are culture-bound, which differentiates the use of language in various speech and culture communities.

2.2 Models of communication and their components – a review As has been already emphasized the concepts of culture and communication are strongly linked together. However the relation has not always been obvious either for individual communicators or specialists in communication studies and researchers who in the last sixty years or so put forward various communication models. John Fiske (1993: 2) identifies two main schools in the study of communication. The first sees communication as the transmission of messages. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949) investigated the encoding and decoding processes to find out which factors determine the final work of both the sender and the receiver and how transmitters use the channels of communication. They viewed communication as a process by which one person affects the behaviour or the state of mind of another. For the second school (Gerbner, 1956) communication entailed the production and exchange of meanings. Its representatives were concerned with how people interacted on the basis

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of messages they received and sent in order to produce meanings. They studied text and culture and the main method of investigation was semiotics (the science of signs and meanings). Social sciences, psychology and sociology, in particular, were used as frames of reference. But within the two schools several attempts to discuss communication and certain models have appeared as a result of investigation conducted by different scholars. The models of interpersonal communication from the 1950s and 1970s, namely the model of Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949), Theodore M. Newcomb (1953), George Gerbner (1956), Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean (1957) and the mass communication model by Harold D. Lasswell (1948) are very careful to stress the impact of culture on communication. In chronological order, the model of Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver, whose aim is to find out how accuracy and efficiency of the process of communication may be improved, should be the first one to be discussed. The model represents communication as a simple linear process which can be hindered by three types (levels) of interrelated problems. Level A concerns the simplest, technical problems for the explanation of which the model was originally developed. The semantic problems of Level B are again easy to identify, but much harder to solve. Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver postulate that the meaning is contained in the message, and improving the encoding will increase its semantic accuracy. Thus a speaker is treated as a decision maker who determines which message to send and who selects one out of a set of possible messages. The selected message is then processed by the transmitter into a signal sent through the channel to the receiver who is to decode it and find out its meaning. However, meaning is as much in the message as in the interlocutors’ culture, which the model neglects although Level C concerns effectiveness problems between the speaker and the receiver of a particular message. George Gerbner’s model from 1956 is considerably more complex but it is still based on the linear skeleton. Its main advantage consists in relating the message to its extra-linguistic reality, which enables us to approach the questions of perception and meaning. It sees the communication process as consisting of two alternating dimensions – perceptual, which is a reception of external stimuli, and communicating when the external stimuli are matched with internal patterns of thought or concepts resulting in meaning. The matching is controlled by culture, which accounts for a development of interlocutors’ internal concepts or patterns of thought. Consequently, people of different cultures will

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perceive reality differently. Accordingly, perception is not just a psychological process within the individual; it is also a matter of culture. The model of mass communication by Harold D. Lasswell (1948), which is a verbal version of Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver’s model, does not deal with the cultural component, either. For Harold D. Lasswell communication is a transmission of messages and to understand the process each of its stages should be studied by answering the following questions: Who says what in which channel to whom and with what effect? He also points out the importance of effect over meaning, where effect implies an observable and measurable change in the receiver that is caused by identifiable elements in the process. Changing one of them, the encoder, the message, the channel, etc., will change the effect. Although Harold D. Lasswell draws our attention to the necessity of adjusting the message content to the channel as well as to the speakers and their communication objectives, he does not discuss the interdependence at length. The first attempt to include social variables in the analysis of the process of interpersonal communication was made by Theodore M. Newcomb in his triangular model from 1953. The model is constituted by three interdependent variables ABX where A stands for a communicator, B for a receiver, and X for their social environment. Both interlocutors must have adequate information about their social environment without which they do not know how to react to it and to identify factors which enable proper communication behaviours. The social need for information underlies Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean’s extension of Theodore M. Newcomb’s model, which originated in 1957. The root of this model is clearly ABX, but a fundamental change was made, namely, a new element was incorporated – C, which is the editorial-communicating function, making decisions about what and how to communicate. Thus although culture is not explicitly included in the model it starts a discussion on the non-linguistic factors responsible for meaning of the messages both sent and received. Roman Jakobson’s model from 1960 shares similarities with both the linear and the triangular models, nonetheless it investigates the matters of meaning and the internal structure of the message. Six constitutive factors form the background of the model. They are an addresser who sends a message to an addressee in a specific context, which form the points of the triangular model. Its remaining two points are a contact and a code where a contact is meant as a physical channel and psychological connections, and a code stands for a shared system of meaning by which the message is structured. Each of the factors determines a different function of language,

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and in each act of communication we find a hierarchy of functions. The six functions are the following: emotive, referential, phatic, redundant, metalingual and poetic. The emotive function describes the relationship of the message to the addresser by communicating the addresser’s emotions, attitudes, status, class, and other elements making the message personal. The referential function deals with the reality orientation of the message and is concerned to be true or factually accurate. The phatic function is to keep the channels of communication open; it is to maintain the relationship between the addresser and the addressee. The metalingual function focuses on the identification of the code used. The final function is the poetic one describing the relationship of the message to itself and aiming at identifying and later using a particular code suitable in a given context. First sociolinguistics and then intercultural communication studies as well as pragmalinguistics, especially intercultural pragmalinguistics, result in a switch of focus, which has become the context of communication. The contribution of sociolinguists and interculturalists may be summed up by Louise Damen (1987: 92) who posits that interpersonal communication is constituted by a socio-cultural matrix whose boundaries are indicated by groups of individuals sharing a set of cultural assumptions, behaviours and patterns. The setting, which operates within the matrix, initiates the locus of communication which is culturally conditioned in terms of the uses of manner of speech, or styles of communication. Thus, the process of communication which consists of particular communication acts is always assigned to a certain setting and changes together with the change of its underlying socio-cultural factors.

2.3 The role of English in modern-day communication No one can dispute that in the last fifty years English has achieved a genuinely global status. It is used all around the world by professionals and academicians in international encounters; it is frequently the official language of international companies and industries; finally, it is the language of the Internet. It has penetrated deeply into the international domains of political life, entertainment, business, education, communication and the media. The convenience of having a lingua franca available to serve human relations all over the globe has come to be appreciated by millions. Several domains have appeared to be totally dependent on it. The future of English seems to be assured when so many organizations have a vested interest in it.

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According to Barbara A. Fennell (2001: 243) the present-day world status of English has resulted from its development in four periods partially overlapping: 1) the 17th-18th centuries – English expands as a result of British colonialism; 2) the 18th-19th centuries – English spreads as the language of British leadership in the Industrial Revolution; 3) the late 19th century and early 20th century – English extends as the language of American economic superiority and political leadership; 4) the second half of the 20th century – English expands as a consequence of American technological domination. The American linguist, Braj Kachru (2001: 135), while discussing how English has been acquired and is currently used, illustrates the process by means of concentric circles. The inner circle refers to the geographical areas where English is the primary, official language. It is estimated to be spoken by over 400 million native speakers (cf. Crystal, 2002) in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The number is far exceeded by the total number of people involved in the outer circle for whom English is a second language – at least 500 million. For them, the language has become a part of the country’s chief institutions, and plays an important role in a multilingual setting. India, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Singapore and over fifty other countries belong to the group. The expanding circle involves the nations, e.g. China, Japan, Poland, Greece, etc., which recognize the importance of English as an international language – approximately 700 million speakers. Their number is steadily increasing. Altogether we arrive at 1.5 billion speakers of English – a figure which equals a quarter of the world’s population. One speaker in four is impressive as no other language has ever flourished so rapidly or has ever been spoken in so many areas by so many people. When a language affects world affairs so much, nations begin to study it on an unprecedented scale and courses in its teaching proliferate. There is also a general raising of consciousness in schools and popular programmes on radio and television appear. Furthermore, the knowledge of particular areas, such as technology, economy, media, telecommunications can be accessed most directly via the medium of English as major technological advancements are pioneered in the countries where the language is spoken. This again, strengthens the position of the language internationally. Finally, translators

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of English are employed more often than before, reflecting the position of English in international trade, finance and industry. The role of English as the passport to everyday communication seems to have reached its peak today. If we go back in history we realize that it was especially English, which moved around the world, beginning with the pioneering voyages to the Americas, Asia and the Antipodes. It was an expansion which continued with the nineteenth-century colonial developments in Africa and in the South Pacific, and which took a significant further step when it was adopted in the mid-twentieth century as an official or semi-official language by many states. English is now represented in every continent. Additionally, it is present in the islands of the three major oceans – St Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, and Fiji and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The English language has been an important medium in all domains of life both in the USA, Great Britain, and other leading countries in the world. English is the language of the press, radio, television and advertising, and not only in the USA where the first newspapers were published at the beginning of the 17th century. Their dynamic development resulted in over 400 daily newspapers by 1850 and nearly 2,000 titles by the end of the century. According to Tom McArthur (1998: 77), due to censorship and other restrictions in Europe, the provisions of popular news in languages other than English developed much more slowly. Additionally, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed the growth of major news agencies, especially after the invention of the telegraph. Paul Julius Reuter launched his agency in London and the New York Associated Press emerged in 1856. The most influential newspapers are still all in English. The New York Times is at the top, followed by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the two British papers The Times and The Sunday Times, all intended for a global readership (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002: 850). English was the first language to be transmitted by radio when the American physicist Reginald Fessenden broadcast music from Brant Rock, Massachusetts on Christmas Eve in 1906. By 1922, there were over 500 licensed broadcasting stations in the USA, and in 1995, the total was about 5,000. In Britain, experimental broadcasts were made in 1919 by the BBC. During the early 1920s, English-language broadcasting began in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Most European countries started radio services during the same period and all of them saw a growing reliance on English. Television has also used English starting with the world’s first BBC service in 1936. In the USA, the National Broadcasting Company

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was able to provide a regular service in 1939. In 1995 the total number of TV stations reached over 1,500 in the USA with 200 million TV receivers, each of them spending 1,000 hours watching TV during the year. In 2001, The World Service of the BBC was broadcasting over 1,000 hours per week to a worldwide audience of 153 million and reaching 120 capital cities. In America in the post-war period The Voice of America was broadcasting from the USA worldwide in English. Most other countries showed a sharp increase in external broadcasting and launched Englishlanguage programmes, e.g. the USSR, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002: 243). Cinema and the recording industry provide us with other pieces of evidence in favour of the world-wide use of English. Despite the growth of the film industry in other countries, English still leads as the language of the medium as in 2002 over 80% of all films given a release were in English (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002: 557). The Oscar system has always been English-language oriented. Moreover, there is a strong English-language presence in most other film festivals, too. As for the recording industry, it started with T. Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the first words from the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb. All the major recording companies in popular music have English language origins. The oldest active record labels are American – Columbia (from 1898) – and British: HMV, which as a result of merger formed EMI. English also dominates modern pop music and show business (cf. spectacular world successes of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones). The numbers are impressive: of the 557 groups included in it, 549 worked predominantly in English; of the 1,219 solo vocalists, 1,156 sang in English (Penguin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, 1990). At the same time, the language has had a profound impact on the nature of modern pop culture. As the lyrics of Bob Marley, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and others spread around the world in the 1960s and 1970s, English became a symbol of freedom, rebellion and modernism for the young generation. It frequently carried some social and political messages unifying the nations. And it has continued to play this role as the medium of such international projects as ‘Live Aid’. Mass tourism is another area where English dominates in information, restaurant menus, hotels, means of transport, safety instructions, information concerning emergency procedures, directions to major locations, etc. Furthermore, English is also the medium of the world’s science and technology. It is biology, physics and medicine which employ English in their periodicals most frequently – about 85% (Crystal, 2005: 112). The English Language Teaching (ELT) business has observed an unprecedented

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growth worldwide and become one of the major industries, which can be best illustrated by the work of The British Council promoting cultural, technical and educational cooperation with a network of offices in 109 countries in 2002. In 1996 over 400,000 candidates worldwide sat English language examinations administered by the Council, over half of these being in English as a foreign language, and the figures have steadily grown since then. The British Council assessed that a particular growth area is central and eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union where some 50 million people are learning English. Estimates of this kind help to confirm the picture of English emerging as a global language. It is apparent that the postal and telephone systems and the electronic networks are also affected by English. The amount of mail sent just through the US postal system reached 197 million pieces and was larger than the total for all the non-English speaking countries put together. Interestingly, another widely quoted statistics is that about 80% of the world’s electronically stored information is currently in English. The same applies to the Internet as almost 80% of items retrieved from the World Wide Web searches are in English (Britannica Book of the Year, 2002: 850, 877). The standing of English is not likely to be affected in the next century or two because, at the moment, there are no other languages which could become more attractive and, as a result of their power, could take over the functions currently assumed by English. Only a major change in the balance of power all over the world – whether political, economic, technological or cultural – would endanger its status. At the same time no one can dispute the fact that English is a heterogeneous language. In fact, there exist several New Englishes in the English-speaking territories (former states of the Commonwealth). These Englishes function as dialects recognized on an international level. They express both national and individual identities. As for the future, a new form of English ‘World Standard Spoken English’ (WSSE) is most likely to arise to be used in formal situations, such as public gatherings, and to guarantee international intelligibility (Crystal, 2003: 185). Additionally, the balance between the demands of intelligibility and identity may seem fragile, and can be further influenced by social changes, such as a swing in political alliances or population trends. If English did have, one day, less of a global role, the next languages to rise could be Spanish, Chinese and Hindi. However, at present, the standing of English is unlikely to be destabilized.

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2.4 Intercultural aspects of English as the lingua franca in the 21st century A very important issue, which still needs to be discussed, refers to the interconnections and inter-relationships between English as a lingua franca and interculturality. Of course, the world has always been full of ‘lingua francas’; however it is English, whose position in tertiary education and research is undeniable. This language has also been used to conduct the present investigation, where students of English based in different colleges across Poland learn about intercultural issues and observe their shift of attitudes towards various examples of behaviour exemplified by representatives of other cultures. Indeed, for the participants of the study discussed in Chapter Six, English is the language of instruction and most of the information they retrieve comes either from libraries or the internet resources available in this language. English is today acknowledged as a global lingua franca that facilitates communication between speakers of varied first-language backgrounds and cultures in a wide range of domains (Seidlhofer, 2011). Jennifer Jenkins et al. (2011) examines how English as a lingua franca (ELF) is used for a range of purposes, i.e. the projection of cultural identity, or the promotion of solidarity. Prue Holmes and Fred Dervin (2016) affirm that any examination of languages – including ‘lingua francas’ – in intercultural communication must explore and seek to understand how language and its culture are constructed and negotiated through communication in intercultural encounters. Thus, it would seem logical to think that English-medium intercultural communication could be defined as interactions predominantly in English involving individuals between whom there are some differences as well as similarities in cultural backgrounds, identities and experiences. Nowadays, what is also needed is an understanding of communication from a multilingual and multicultural perspective with an accompanying range of knowledge, skills and attitudes related to successful communication in ELF. This knowledge, skills and attitudes should be related to intercultural education and language teaching (Jenkins et al., 2011). An interesting approach, which draws on the research into intercultural communicative competence and pedagogy in intercultural communication from an ELF perspective, is the one to intercultural awareness (discussed in section 3.5) proposed by Will Baker (2012). From this perspective intercultural awareness also recognizes that for English used as a lingua franca, it is impossible to make assumptions about predefined target communities or cultures, which interlocutors will make use of or refer to

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in communication. Instead the emergent and dynamic nature of culture and communication in ELF is emphasized. Following this line of reasoning, intercultural awareness is perceived as a conscious understanding of the role culturally based forms and practices can have in intercultural communication. To go further, it should be stated firmly that the successful development of intercultural awareness is enhanced by the use of English due to the increased diversity evident in multicultural and multilingual contexts. Hence, as shown above, there is mounting evidence to suggest that English is recognized as a significant means of (intercultural) communication between members of diverse societies. To summarize the aforementioned arguments, stressing the role of ELF in intercultural communication is paramount, because, as proved earlier, English as a lingua franca encompasses any use of English among speakers for whom this language is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option. This assumption underpins the viewpoint that intercultural communicative competence is developed efficiently if proper skills and knowledge are applied to a particular cultural context of interlocutors.

CHAPTER THREE FROM LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Introduction This chapter offers an insight into the concept of competence. Consequently, the evolution of the term of competence from linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, communicative competence, and ending with intercultural communicative competence, will lie within the scope of Chapter Three. Moreover, the components of intercultural communicative competence, being the major theme of the present volume, will be discussed. Finally, the role that intercultural sensitivity plays will be considered, since it is posited that this is the most essential dimension of intercultural communicative competence;

3.1 Types of competence – their definitions and value for the communication process Foreign-language teaching deals with two major and highly relevant issues regarding language knowledge and language use in communication. In other words, it is concerned with the knowledge of its vocabulary, syntax, and phonetics, but also with an extra-linguistic knowledge, which is required by each speaker to be understood and to understand the interlocutor during any interaction. The term language is interwoven with the notions of competence and performance, which are inter-related concepts helping in its interpretation (cf. Brown, 2000). The distinction between the two concepts has raised discussions among linguists in recent years and resulted in a change of their position. Apart from Noam Chomsky’s approach (1965), the major theories regarding the development of competence, which are of interest in the present thesis, are those expressed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1922), Dell

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Hymes (1972), Hans Stern (1991) and Michael Canale and Merrill Swain (1980). Each provides a unique view of competence, has developed its own methods of analysis, and has offered important insights into the concept as well as a more adequate approach to communication, and so to language teaching. All of them have also prepared the field for the emergence of intercultural communicative competence. The concept of competence has varied in time and its analysis from a historical perspective meant such phenomena as: 1) the mastery of language forms; 2) the mastery of linguistic, cognitive, affective and socio-cultural meanings expressed by language forms; 3) the capacity to use the language with maximum attention to communication and form, and the creativity of language use; and 4) the use of language across cultures which consists in attributing to culture its importance as the factor that does most to shape the speaker’s utterances. The value of each approach lies in its bringing the nature of communication, culture and social diversity closer to anthropological, sociological, and communicative concerns within any linguistic inquiry.

3.2 From linguistic competence to sociolinguistic communicative competence The concept of linguistic competence was introduced by Noam Chomsky (1965) who intended to show the relationship between the linguistic knowledge of fluent speakers of a language (competence) and their actual production and comprehension of speech (performance). Chomsky claimed that competence refers to an ideal speaker’s underlying knowledge of a system, event, or fact which he defined as the intrinsic tacit knowledge … that underlies actual performance(Chomsky, 1965: 113). Also, John Lyons (1968: 11) who was deeply influenced by the investigations of Chomsky (1965) and some earlier research by Ferdinand de Saussure, defines linguistic competence as the knowledge of particular languages, by virtue of which speakers are able to produce and understand utterances in those languages. Thus, in reference to language, linguistic competence encompasses its rules of grammar, vocabulary and all other components as well as their mutual relationships in the process of using it by an ideal speaker. Performance, in turn, is an overtly observable and tangible manifestation or realization of competence in an actual act of communication. It is the true ability to do something and as such it involves the actual production (speaking, writing) or comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic phenomena. It instantly became obvious that Chomsky’s distinction

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between (a) knowing a language, (b) the ability to use the language and (c) actually using it, referred exclusively to the terms of knowledge and capacity. Looking at the relationship between competence and performance, we can say that performance presupposes competence, whereas competence does not presuppose performance. It is worth stressing that the idea of linguistic competence is the result of reframing Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1922) crucial linguistic distinction between langue and parole. He viewed langue as a language system and parole as a manifestation of language or its use, thus langue being a larger abstract system that supports parole. Using Noam Chomsky’s terms, langue is therefore understood as competence or the fundamental linguistic system while parole is linked to performance. Moreover, de Saussure described the concept of a linguistic sign as composed of two aspects: the signified (signifié) which is the meaning and the signifier (signifiant) which is the form (sound). The relationship between them is arbitrary. According to de Saussure Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others (1916: 54). He also uses the term ‘distinctive features’ which refers to a series of characteristics associated with all sounds of all languages. From the point of view of language teaching methodology, linguistic competence is to be considered as a learning outcome or a goal, and thus to be defined in terms of objectives or standards, which are context-free and do not refer to actual communication exchanges. Chomsky’s competence-performance model did not meet with universal acceptance and was later reinterpreted as it did not help understanding of what accounts for effective communication. In the 1970s, many proponents of the communicative approach to language (Hymes, 1972; Widdowson, 1978) started a search for an alternative, broader and more practical concept. They criticized the concept of linguistic competence for its exclusive focus on purely formal linguistic elements and the knowledge of the language system which alone could not account for a proper use of language in communication. They posited that the context of communication has to be considered as it influences the communicative value of language and finally accounts for its effective use. The gap was filled up by first sociolinguists and then pragmatists. The sociolinguists stressed the need to consider an essential socio-cultural dimension of language use. They pointed out that what the native speaker has to acquire to be able to communicate efficiently is not merely linguistic competence, but sociolinguistic communicative competence. It enables the speaker to

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convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific social contexts. Its author, Dell Hymes (1972: 282) defines it as the most general term for the capabilities of a person which is dependent on ‘tacit knowledge’ and ‘ability for use’ and the inclusion of ability for use as a part of competence incorporating not only cognitive factors, but also non-cognitive ones such as motivation. He also adds that it is the ability to relate to others with accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness, which allows us to treat it as an indicator to what extent the goals of interaction have been achieved (cf. Hymes, 1974: 126). Sociolinguistic communicative competence involves the rules of language use which allow a speaker to adjust language forms to sociocultural/situational factors of the communication act without which the rules of grammar would be useless. It thus embodies the notions of appropriateness and acceptability, which Noam Chomsky leaves for performance. The relationship between competence and performance was also made explicit by Ron Allen and Kenneth Brown (1976: 248) for whom Competence […] is tied to actual performance of the language in social situations. Also, Michael Cody and Margaret McLaughlin (1985) stress that communicative competence is dependent on the context in which the interaction takes place. Dell Hymes (1972) is more specific about its understanding as he included four categories of constraints on communication. Consequently, his model of communicative competence includes: 1) formal constraints – whether or not something is formally possible; 2) constraints as to the means of implementation – whether or not something is feasible; 3) appropriacy constraints – whether or not something is adequate to the context; 4) actual behaviour – whether or not something is in fact done (1972: 84).

The language adjustments the speaker makes to sociocultural/situational factors are not random but governed by rules which refer to six constituents of each communication act, which are the following (Hymes, 1974: 110-111): 1) setting – the time and place of communication; 2) participants – the social roles of the speakers and the addressees or the audience; 3) purpose – the communicative goal which can be further subdivided into smaller objectives;

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The constituents can be interpreted as questions about who speaks to whom, about what, where, when, how and for what purpose. The value of the distinction between linguistic and communicative competence lies in highlighting the difference between the knowledge about language forms and the knowledge that enables a person to adjust the forms to the communication context which results in his/her communicating functionally and interactively. The presence of a social component in the sociolinguistic communicative competence leads Sandra Savignon (1983: 9) to note that communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the co-operation of all the participants involved. It is thus an interpersonal construct that can be examined only by means of an overt performance of two or more individuals in the communication process. Inspired by Dell Hymes’ contribution to understanding interpersonal communication, Michael Canale (1983) created his own model containing four sub-competences: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. The first two subcategories reflect the use of the linguistic system itself. The other two define the functional aspects of communication (Canale, 1983: 16). They are mutually interdependent and a communicative success depends on the degree of their mastery by speakers. Grammatical competence is that aspect of communicative competence that encompasses the knowledge of lexical items, the rules of phonology, morphology, syntax, sentence grammar, and semantics. It deals with the accurate expression of the literal meaning of utterances, an important concern for any communicative approach (cf. Canale, 1983: 21). Sociolinguistic competence consists of socio-cultural rules of use and rules of discourse. This knowledge is essential in interpreting utterances for their social meaning, especially when the speaker’s intention is expressed indirectly. Socio-cultural rules refer to Dell Hymes’ context of the communicative situation, such as: topic, role of participants, setting, and norms of interaction, also register and style, whereas the rules of discourse refer to cohesion, i.e., to grammatical links within the above sentences, and coherence, i.e., the appropriate combination of communicative functions in utterances. On the other hand, rules of

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discourse make use of a functional-sentence perspective, which are not found in sentence grammar. Discourse competence broadens the concept of grammatical competence. It is the ability we have to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. Discourse signifies everything from a simple spoken conversation to lengthy written texts. While grammatical competence focuses on sentencelevel grammar, discourse competence is concerned with inter-sentential relationships. Strategic competence is exceedingly complex and it is referred to as verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication. Sandra Savignon (1983: 40) paraphrases this as the strategies that one uses to compensate for imperfect knowledge of rules – or limiting factors in their application such as fatigue, distraction, and inattention. All the subcategories of competence occupy a special place in our understanding of language and communication whose interplay is realized through their mixture. Grammatical competence is associated with mastering the linguistic code of a language and the sociolinguistic competence of Dell Hymes relates to its social semantics. Finally, strategic competence underlies the speaker’s ability to sustain communication through certain objective-bound strategies and shifts in register and style. The stages of communicative/linguistic competence provide the definition of what it means to know a language and be an effective communicator. They include phonology, lexis, semantics, syntax, as well as socio-cultural, discourse, and situational features. Their importance is relative and it changes depending on the relationships among six constituents of each communication act. Their psychological aspect, which has been explored by psycholinguists over the past twenty years, is also to be considered. The evolution of the stages of competence has a diachronic character and can be presented as follows (Hymes, 1974: 96-97): 1) Language users know the rules governing their native language and they can apply them subconsciously. Native speakers or competent language users can distinguish typical, right, well-formed, or grammatical forms of utterances from a typical, wrong, ill-formed, deviant or ungrammatical forms. They have a sensitivity to right and wrong use, and possess norms of language against which they can judge utterances, which they can hear or produce. Their knowledge of the rules is an intuitive grasp which provides the native speaker with a communicative system of orientation. It is taken for granted in

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2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

everyday communication but under certain circumstances, which may result in a communication breakdown, the knowledge becomes explicit and the speaker starts to reflect on it. Native speakers have an intuitive grasp of linguistic, cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural meanings expressed by language forms. They can relate different sentence patterns to their underlying nonlinguistic meaning. They can keep an underlying meaning constant while changing the surface sentence structure. The fusion of form and meaning which is self-evident in the first language, is absent from a new language. A number of second language forms are meaningless to second-language learners and appear at first arbitrary and sometimes even unnatural and peculiar. The aspects (1) and (2) can jointly be referred to as linguistic competence, i.e., competence with reference to mainly formal and semantic features of the language. Native speakers spontaneously use their first language in communication because they have an intuitive understanding of its sociolinguistic functions. They dispose of a tacit knowledge whose use of language, register or style is appropriate. They can also recognize and sometimes even employ more than one language variety – a social or regional dialect. In the second language the sociolinguistic features and stylistic varieties are most difficult to acquire and are hardly ever perfectly learnt. Similarly to the linguistic component, the communicative component in the first language proficiency is also implicit knowledge which, however, under certain circumstances can be made explicit. The intuitive knowledge of social, functional, and contextual features is, after Dell Hymes, referred to as sociolinguistic communicative competence. Linguistic and communicative competence manifest themselves in language behaviour receptively and productively in listening and speaking, and in literate societies, also in reading and writing. Native speakers use their first language creatively because as Noam Chomsky (1982) pointed out, they not only possess a set of phrases and sentences but are also able to produce and understand an infinite number of new sentences although they have never heard them before. Their creativity can be applied to both the productive use of the system of existing rules and the creation of new rules. Their competence is thus dynamic and active, not mechanical and static. Consequently, they are able to conform to an existing system and also to actively impose order and regularity on new language data. While it is a universal characteristic of native speakers to have linguistic and communicative competence, they differ in the degree of its mastery. They show differences in the degree of creativity, which results in a different use of linguistic potential by each speaker. Likewise, while all native speakers possess communicative competence they differ in degrees of sociolinguistic sensitivity.

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8) In order to use the language as defined in (1) to (7) native speakers’ competence must be confirmed. Without it speakers cannot process language so as to convey meaning through their own utterances and assign meaning to the utterances received. Linguistic competence is visualized as an internal system, a network or a schema, which in the early stages is relatively fluid, simple and unstructured. In the course of learning it becomes more refined, complex and efficient. 9) Each speaker develops his/her own competence in the first language. It is a mixture of social features shared with other language users and of his/her idiolect which mirrors his/her individual characteristics. 10) Lastly, the concept of competence as interpreted above is a construct which is accessible only through inference from the language behaviour of its users, their performance in listening, speaking, reading, or writing.

3.3 Communicative competence as a forerunner of intercultural communicative competence Referring to the basic principles of Dell Hymes’ theory, communicative competence is contingent upon the context in which the interaction takes place. Consequently, a communicator who is successful with one group in one situation may not be perceived as competent with a different group in another situation. The emphasis on communication skills can be viewed as both ‘a blessing and a curse’ because while few communication professionals would argue with the claim that acquiring basic communication skills is necessary for our effective social participation, when we are confronted with the prospect of operationalizing the concern, most often we are left to our own devices. A gradual shift towards a more behavioural orientation of communicative competence was seen in the 1980s when the study of communicative effectiveness was related to such elements as acceptance, self-disclosure, involvement and empathy, e.g. the definitions by Carl Larson, Philip M. Backlund, Mark Redmond and Alton Barbour (1978). For all of them communicative competence is the ability of an individual to demonstrate knowledge of the appropriate communicative behavior in a given situation (cf. Backlund, 1978: 16). The key to the definition is their understanding of communication as a series of communicative behaviours properly demonstrated by interlocutors. They distinguish at least their two types: the first one embraces behaviours actually performed in a given situation and the second one refers to the ability to identify appropriate and inappropriate behaviours performed by others in a communication act.

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The interactional nature of communicative competence has also been stressed by Brian H. Spitzberg (1988: 77) who offers this very short but vague and general definition, referring to it as the ability to interact well with others. His attempt at making it more precise by explaining that the term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness is not very helpful because he does not clarify how to understand each of the notions. In Gustav Friedrich’s approach, communicative competence is measured by the speaker’s success in having his/her goals met, which in turn depends on his/her ability to have them realistically set by drawing on his/her selfknowledge and the knowledge of the world, as well as by maximizing the achievement of ‘shared meaning’. Thus, for Friedrich communicative competence is best understood as a situational ability to set realistic and appropriate goals and to maximize their achievement by using knowledge of self, other, context, and communication theory to generate adaptive communication performances (Friedrich, 1994: 84). Also, John Wiemann’s definition is functional as he puts stress on interactors’ ability to choose from available communicative behaviours the ones which will allow them to have their interpersonal goals met during an encounter (1977: 91). Thus, John Wiemann expects interlocutors not only to possess the proper knowledge of communication behaviours but also to be competent, that is to know which behaviours should be performed in a given communication situation. Their competence is judged on the basis of the accomplishment of their goals, which leads to the conclusion that a speaker’s competence is evaluated by the success of his/her performance. A very pragmatic and functional definition of competence has been also offered by M. R. Parks (1985: 194) for whom it is the degree to which individuals perceive they have satisfied their goals in a given social situation without jeopardizing their ability or opportunity to pursue their other subjectively more important goals. Three interdependent themes of competence – control, responsibility and foresight – should help to achieve it. We should not only 'know' and 'know how,' we must also 'do' and 'know that we did’ (Parks, 1985:195). Parks’ combination of cognitive and behavioural perspectives is consistent with John Wiemann and Philip Backlund’s (1980: 42) argument that communicative competence is the ability of an interactor to choose from among available communicative behaviors in order to successfully accomplish his own interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line of his fellow interactors within the constraints of the situation. A useful framework for understanding communicative competence was designed by Brian H. Spitzberg and William Cupach (1984: 55-57). It is known as the component

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model of competence which comprises three specific dimensions: motivation (an individual’s approach or avoidance orientation in various social situations), knowledge (plans of action; knowledge of how to act; procedural knowledge), and skill (behaviours actually performed).The component model asserts that communicative competence is mutually defined by the interdependency of the cognitive component (concerned with knowledge and understanding), the behavioural component (concerned with behavioural skills) and the affective component (concerned with attitudes and feelings about the knowledge and behaviours). All of them should be simultaneously performed by interactors in an interpersonal encounter within a specific context. A more elaborate component model has been proposed by Joan Rubin (1987: 140) for whom communicative competence is an impression formed about the appropriateness of another person’s communicative behavior [and] one goal of the communication scholar is to understand how impressions about communicative competence are formed, and to determine how knowledge, skill and motivation lead to perceptions of competence within various contexts. When applying the component model to organizational communication contexts, Joan Rubin (1987) divides motivation into two separate (though related) components: sensitivity (the ability to show concern and respect for others) and commitment (the desire to avoid previous mistakes and to find better ways of communicating through the process of self-monitoring). Consequently, this revised model applied to interpersonal communication embraces knowledge, skills, sensitivity and commitment. It is used by J. Dan Rothwell (2009) to study communicative competence in small-group interactions. James McCroskey (1982: 2) discusses the changing nature of competence resulting from various context-specific constraints. He posits that the domain of communicative competence includes learning what the available means are (available strategies), how they have been employed in various situations in the past, and being able to determine which ones have the highest probability of success in a given situation. The rather general definitions of communicative competence presented above were made more specific by Daniel Canary and Michael Cody (2000: 42-44) who provided six main criteria for its assessment: adaptability, conversational involvement, conversational management, empathy, effectiveness and appropriateness. 1. Adaptability is the ability of interlocutors to assess situations and when necessary change behaviours and goals to meet the needs of interaction. It shows their awareness of the other person’s perspectives,

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interests, goals, and communication approach as well as their willingness to modify their own behaviours and goals to adapt to the interaction situation. By mindfully tracking what is happening in the situation, both parties may modify their non-verbal and verbal behaviour to achieve a more synchronized communication process. By modifying their behavioural styles, their polarized views on the problem may also be depolarized or softened. Adaptability consists of six factors: a) Social experience – participation in various social interactions b) Social composure – refers to keeping calm through accurate perception c) Social confirmation – refers to the acknowledgment of a partner’s goals d) Appropriate disclosure – being sensitive to the amount and type of information e) Articulation – the ability to express ideas through language f) Wit – the ability to use humour in adapting to social situations, or to ease tensions 2. Conversational Involvement determines the degree to which individuals participate in a conversation with others. Specifically, it concerns the message receivers who tend to differ in terms of their attentiveness and perceptiveness, which influences their reception of information from senders. Perceptiveness stands for the ability to assign appropriate meanings to others’ behaviour as well as the ability to understand what meanings others have assigned to their own behaviour. Attentiveness is cognizance of another person’s communicative behaviour. Responsiveness is a tendency to react mentally in a given situation and to adapt to it by knowing when and what to say. Highly involved persons are predicted to be more issue-oriented and attentive to the underlying message in the conversation. On the other hand, less involved persons are expected to focus on events or surface of the conversation. 3. Conversational Management is essentially the way the communicators regulate their interactions. It is a matter of knowing the rules of interpersonal communication exchanges and following them. Communication rules are just like other socially conditioned behaviours and are acquired in the same way. John Wiemann (1977: 200-201) mentions five of them which he finds crucial for a communication success: a) one cannot interrupt the speaker, b) only one person may talk at a time,

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c) speakers’ turns must alternate or interchange, d) frequent or long pauses are inappropriate, e) both parties should be assured that the other is devoting his/her undivided attention. 4. Empathy is considered a fundamental dimension of interpersonal and communicative competence when used in its broadest sense. It is the ability to demonstrate understanding and sharing reactions of the interlocutor as well as the ability to understand his/her unique experiences from his/her own perspective. It performs the following functions: a) it connects people with one another on a meaningful and fulfilling level, b) it demonstrates a person’s caring attitude towards others, c) it helps understand the people better, d) it usually leads a conversation towards emotional issues, e) it lets one build a personal rapport with others, f) it helps reduce one’s irritation with the others’ attitude or behaviour, g) it helps reduce one’s prejudice or negative assumptions about the others, h) it fosters more meaningful, more helpful and closer friendships. 5. Effectiveness refers to the degree to which communicators achieve mutually shared meaning and integrative goal-related outcomes. Effective encoding and decoding processes lead to mutually shared meanings, which in turn result in perceived understanding. Interaction effectiveness has been achieved when multiple meanings are attended to with accuracy and when mutually desired interaction goals have been reached. Interaction ineffectiveness occurs when content or relational meanings are mismatched and noises and clashes jam the communication channels. Communication effectiveness can improve task productivity. 6. Appropriateness constitutes a fundamental criterion for determining communicative competence. It is the ability to uphold the speakers’ expectations in a given situation. Individuals typically use their own expectations and scripts to approach an interaction scene. They also formulate their impressions of a competent communicator on the basis of their perceptions of the other’s verbal and nonverbal behaviours in a particular interaction setting. To understand whether appropriate communication has been perceived, it is vital to obtain competence evaluations from the standpoint of both communicators and interested

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observers. It is also critical to obtain both self-perception and other perception data. Appropriate communication behaviours can be evaluated through understanding the underlying values, norms, social roles, expectations and scripts that govern the interaction episode. The discussion concerning specific interpersonal skills basic for communicative competence was completed with the research findings of Wilga Marie Rivers. She identified seven types of communicative behaviours which are the following (2002: 117-121): 1. Listen more carefully and responsively. An active listening followed with an acknowledgement and a brief restatement should always precede an answer even if the listener does not agree with his/her interlocutor. It is especially useful in tense situations as it communicates interest, respect and a dialogistic attitude to the speaker. It should be stressed that acknowledging another person’s thoughts and feelings does not mean the listener’s approval or agreement with the speaker. 2. Explain your conversational intent and invite consent. Communicative success depends on the conversation partners’ cooperation, which becomes easier and more effective when they know the conversation intent. Its explanation reduces possible misunderstandings and allows the interlocutor to play better his/her communicative role. It is especially important when the interaction is long, complex and emotion-laden. Hence many successful communicators preface their conversations with a clear explanation of their intent. 3. Express yourself more clearly and completely. The listener should give as much information as required to be able to identify mentally and emotionally with the speaker, which will positively increase his/her cooperation. The information received allows him/her to reconstruct the speaker’s experience, to understand it and finally to act empathically, which is especially important while trying to solve a problem. Expressing yourself carefully might appear to take longer than a usual quick style of communication but it is an efficient communicative strategy. 4. Translate your (and other people’s) complaints and criticisms into specific requests, and explain them. The interlocutor’s co-operation is more effective when the speaker clearly explains his/her goals by means of using specific, action-oriented and positive language rather than generalizations. Similarly, criticism and complaints from others should be translated and restated as requests for action. 5. Ask questions more open-endedly and more creatively. Unlike yes/no questions which neither open the conversation up nor encourage the interlocutor to share his/her thoughts, feelings, wants and plans, openended questions allow for a rather wide range of responses. Thus they provide the listener with information which facilitates the flow of

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conversation and may have a positive impact on the achievement of his/her goals. 6. Express more appreciation. Appreciation, delight, affirmation, encouragement and gratitude help to build satisfying relationships, self-confidence, healthy and strong relationships, all of which make it easier to satisfy the needs of interactors. 7. Make better communication an important part of your everyday life. Considering the role of successful communication in facilitating the speaker’s achievement of various goals, its skills should be practised in everyday life, especially in solving problems, giving emotional support to people and sharing with others a positive influence in your world. Each conversation should be seen as an opportunity to grow in skill and awareness, each encounter as an opportunity to express more appreciation, each argument as an opportunity to translate complaints into requests, and so on.

The seventh step should be of special concern today as it implies an ability to separate oneself from the culture of hatred, animosity and violence, and to learn co-operation, mutuality, and first of all, tolerance. The most important value of communicative competence consists in enabling interactors to become more effective in achieving their goals and also in creating better interpersonal relationships, ones that are more authentic, open, respectful, and that allow for a true dialogue, which is the biggest challenge of modern societies. Its holders should be able to learn from their past experience to become more effective in their communicative encounters in the future.

3.4 Intercultural communicative competence and its components Intercultural communicative competence has been the focus of a number of studies since the 1960s when the term was introduced by researchers interested in overseas technical assistants and by Peace Corps volunteers (Gardner, 1962; Hoselitz, 1954). It has become of interest for studies with such diverse conceptual themes as immigrant acculturation, culture shock, cross-cultural training, social change, international management, and advising foreign students. Consequently, it has been referred to by means of alternative names such as cross-cultural adjustment, intercultural adaptation, intercultural understanding, overseas success, personal growth/adjustment, cross-cultural effectiveness, and satisfaction with overseas experience. In the last two decades, however, there has been a growing consensus on how to define it. Finally, it has been agreed that intercultural communicative competence involves

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knowledge, motivation, and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of different cultures (Gardner, 1962: 243). Consequently, intercultural communicative competence entails the use of language that is proper in a given cultural context, and of actions that meet the expectations and demands of intercultural communicators who act in a culture-specific situation. As a result, effective intercultural interactors must recognize constraints imposed on their behaviour by different sets of rules (Lee, 1979: 795), avoid violating them with improper (e.g., impolite, abrasive, or bizarre) behaviours (Getter and Nowinski, 1981: 304), and enact communication behaviours in a proper (e.g., clear, truthful, considerate, responsive) manner (Allen and Wood, 1978: 289). Effectiveness and appropriateness combine to influence the quality of the interaction. They are also used as the two criteria evaluating communication success. Brian H. Spitzberg (2000: 193) suggested four possible communication styles in an intercultural exchange that may result from their combination: (1) Minimizing communication is described as both inappropriate and ineffective, and would obviously be of a low communicative quality; (2) Sufficing communication is appropriate but ineffective, because although it is highly accommodating, it accomplishes no personal objectives; Spitzberg claims that the sufficing style is sufficient to meet the basic demands of the context but does not contribute in any other way to increase its effectiveness; (3) Maximizing communication is effective because the speaker can achieve his/her personal goals, but at the cost of being highly inappropriate contextually; the style may include verbal aggression, deception, infringement of others’ rights, or their degradation; (4) Optimizing communication is effective in the sense that it allows the interactors to achieve simultaneously their personal goals and to fulfill the normative expectations of the context. When communicators interact on an intercultural level, they are co-orienting and co-ordinating their behaviours (verbal and nonverbal) to accomplish social functions, meet personal goals, and conform to the normative dimensions of the situation. Only then, can they be considered competent. Researchers have shown a considerable variation in identifying basic communicative components of intercultural communicative competence. In an early study, Brent D. Ruben (1976) identified seven of them which function as general dimensions of communication behaviours related to one’s effectiveness on an overseas assignment: 1) display of respect, 2) interaction posture, 3) orientation to knowledge, 4) empathy, 5) role behaviour, 6) interaction management, and 7) tolerance of ambiguity. The behaviours were subsequently operationalized in both self-report and

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observer examinations, and applied to the evaluation of overseas technical assistance personnel (Kealey, 1989). In another early study Mitchell R. Hammer, William B. Gudykunst, and Richard L. Wiseman (1978) examined the intercultural effectiveness among American sojourners in terms of their educational experiences in other nations. Based upon an examination of general behaviours posited to be instrumental in intercultural effectiveness, a factor analysis of the sojourners’ responses determined three basic factors. A factor analysis of their responses which referred to their general behaviours, allowed the researchers to identify three basic components of intercultural effectiveness. They classified them as instrumental and they are the following: 1) ability to deal with psychological stress, 2) ability to communicate effectively, and 3) ability to establish interpersonal relationships. All of them must be learnt although communicators possess individual predispositions which facilitate the learning process. Given the above conceptualizations of intercultural competence, different theories have been offered to explain or predict the value of particular components of it. In William B. Gudykunst’s (1992) anxietyuncertainty management theory, effective communication is related to the speaker’s ability to minimize misunderstandings with members of other cultures. To the extent that misunderstandings arise, s/he feels uncertainty about the other and the situation. Uncertainty subsequently evokes anxiety within the person, which, in turn, creates a drive to reduce uncertainty and increase mindfulness (Langer, 1989). The management of uncertainty and anxiety is at the core of William B. Gudykunst’s theory. Whilst uncertainty and anxiety are considered the basic causal influences on or rather barriers to effective communication, other variables (e.g., selfconcept, social categorization processes, motivation to communicate) are considered superficial causes (Lieberson, 1985). The basic causal influences may diminish the chances for an interaction or even prevent it from happening. The role of superficial causes is less strongly felt as they only affect the quality of an interaction. It is worth noticing that cognitive, motivational, and behavioural factors affect the communicator’s levels of anxiety and/or uncertainty. Once individuals feel sufficient levels of anxiety, they are in turn motivated to reduce their uncertainty via uncertainty reduction strategies (e.g., asking questions, disclosing). Reducing their uncertainty by means of predictions about strangers, will presumably reduce misunderstandings and increase the speakers’ effectiveness of intercultural competence.

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Issues regarding losing and saving face are a focal point in Stella TingToomey’s (1988) face-negotiation theory which is concerned with relational and appropriateness dimensions of intercultural communication. The face refers to the speaker’s sense of favourable social self-worth, and facework consists of such communication as people use to regulate their social dignity and to support or challenge the other’s social dignity (TingToomey, 1998: 188). It is felt that face-work are a universal phenomenon, but the actual strategies used by communicators are culturally varied. The causal connections among the variables of face-work, cultural dimensions, and contextual factors are observed in Stella Ting-Toomey’s (1994) conceptualization of the competence in face-work as an integration of three core dimensions, namely: 1/ knowledge, 2/ mindfulness, and 3/ communication skills in managing self-face and other-face concerns. TingToomey refers to knowledge as a deep-structure awareness of the nature and the rules of the cultures involved in a particular situation. Awareness would thus include the speaker’s predispositions for face maintenance, relational goals, and communication strategies. Mindfulness of oneself and others helps to monitor effectively the threat of ethnocentrism. Effectiveness and appropriateness related to the relational and episodic context was examined by Brian H. Spitzberg (2000: 375-376). His research suggests a model of intercultural communicative competence as an impression that behaviour is appropriate and effective in a given context. Thus, the two standards, of appropriateness and of effectiveness, are goals for a competent intercultural communicator. Within the model, three subsystems are operative: 1) the individual subsystem, 2) the episodic subsystem and, 3) the relational subsystem. The first, individual subsystem comprises the communicators’ characteristics, traits, skills, and predispositions. The second subsystem includes such features of an individual communicator which facilitate his/her competent interaction in a specific episode of the interaction. Finally, the third subsystem refers to the aspects of competence that affect the span of relationships rather than just a particular episode. The subsystems are hierarchical, the individual subsystem is subsumed by the episodic subsystem, which in turn is subsumed by the relational subsystem. The components of knowledge, motivation, and skills have an impact on each of the three subsystems in Spitzberg’s model and account for the speaker’s communicative competence. Spitzberg (2000) emphasized that one subsystem is insufficient to master intercultural communicative competence. Moreover, both interactors must evaluate their competence as effective because when their self-perceptions and mutual perceptions differ, there is small chance for a competent

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interaction. It should be stressed that intercultural communicative competence is contingent on the optimal interrelationship of the individual, episodic, and relational systems. In turn, intercultural adaptation as a prerequisite for becoming a competent intercultural communicator has been examined by Young Y. Kim (2001). Her research programme, which spanned nearly 25 years, resulted in a cross-cultural adaptation theory whose aim was, firstly, to describe the process of cross-cultural adaptation and, secondly, to explain the structure of the process as well as key variables that influence the degree to which individuals adapt to new and unfamiliar cultures. Since adaptation is a dynamic process involving both internal (intrapersonal) and external (social/environmental) variables, Kim advocates a systematic approach to understanding it. She argues that it is the best suited approach for representing the complex interrelationships involved in cross-cultural adaptation. Kim (1995) characterized adaptation as a three step process consisting of: stress-adaptation-growth. On the one hand, the newcomer may experience culture shock, avoidance, hostility, or selective attention, but on the other, stress motivates him/her to adapt to the host environment and restore homeostasis. His/her stress adaptation is accomplished through acculturation (learning) and deculturation (unlearning). Learning leads to his/her internal transformation and growth which is not a simple linear process but rather a helical one characterized by ups-and-downs. Kim has distinguished its five major variables which are: host communication competence, host social communication, ethnic social communication, environment, and predisposition (1995: 180). They constitute the structure of cross-cultural adaptation and interact with each other either to facilitate or to inhibit a cross-cultural transformation. To finish the presentation of various significant approaches to intercultural communicative competence, M. J. Collier’s (1996) cultural identity theory is worth mentioning. It is similar to Stella Ting-Toomey’s theory of identity maintenance. For both of them identity which is a cultural construct, emerges through interactions with others in an act of communication, and takes the forms of patterns of meanings, interpretations and rules for behaviours. Consistent with a human action meta-theory, the emphasis in on the speakers’ subjective experience and interpretations of behaviours (Geertz, 1973). Cultural identity is negotiated along two dimensions of rules: a constitutive dimension (consisting of symbols, interpretations, and meanings) and a normative dimension (consisting of guidelines for behaviour and competencies for conduct). Individuals co-create and co-ordinate their meanings and rules in order to

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learn and enact their cultural identities. Thus, intercultural communicative competence consists in understanding the meanings, rules, and codes for interacting appropriately; for performing and identifying appropriate, rulefollowing behavior; and for describing outcomes that arise from conforming and violating the rules (Collier, 1989). Finally, according to Stella Ting-Toomey (1994) communication competence is a matter of successfully negotiating mutually acceptable identities during the process of interaction. Competent intercultural communicators must be able to reconcile three dialectical tensions: (1) supporting their own face and the other’s face, (2) supporting competence face (e.g., ingratiation, empowerment) or autonomy face (e.g., respecting the other’s privacy, independence), and (3) confirming the other’s separate cultural identity (heightening cultural differences) or negotiating a mutually defined cultural identity (minimizing separate cultural differences). Communicators are perceived as interculturally competent to the extent that they effectively and appropriately negotiate the three identities. It should be also noted that face-work, and dialectical orientations are never static, they are constantly in flux and must continually be renegotiated if the relationship is to stay healthy.

3.5 Intercultural sensitivity as an essential dimension of intercultural communicative competence Following the findings of such prominent researchers as Milton J. Bennett (1986; 2004), Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta (2000), Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg (2002), two basic assumptions have been made with regard to the dimensions of intercultural communicative competence. Firstly, the role of extra-linguistic determinants of intercultural communicative competence tends to be even more important than that of the verbal language in the success of intercultural communication. Secondly, intercultural sensitivity has been assigned the role of the essential non-verbal component and skill determining a proper development of other communication skills. Milton J. Bennett (1993: 107) considers intercultural sensitivity as the main variable accounting for success in intercultural communication. He understands it as the ability to be aware of other cultures and to accept the differences resulting from them. Based on his observations that if individuals are taught how to confront cultural differences by becoming more sophisticated and sensitive to them, they may predict at least some of them and diminish their misunderstandings and failures.

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Also, for Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta (2000: 124) intercultural sensitivity is a basic dimension of intercultural communicative competence. It is an ability to understand similarities and differences of other cultures, which embraces people’s emotional desire to acknowledge, appreciate, and accept cultural differences, their multiple perspectives on an event or behaviour, their recognition of their own cultural values and those of others as well as their empathy and ability to adjust to different ways of communicating (Chen and Starosta, 2000: 155). In a more recent approach to intercultural sensitivity Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg (2002) have concurrently isolated intercultural awareness and intercultural adroitness as equal and additional constituents of intercultural communicative competence. Intercultural communicative competence is an umbrella concept that consists of a person’s cognitive, affective, and behavioural abilities in the process of intercultural communication. Intercultural awareness is the cognitive dimension of intercultural communicative competence; intercultural adroitness acts as a behavioural aspect and ultimately, intercultural sensitivity performs the role of affective aspect of intercultural communicative competence. For the purpose of the present work and its research findings, special attention should be paid to the aforementioned intercultural sensitivity, which has been largely discussed in The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), created by Milton J. Bennett (1986; 1993). It constitutes a framework explaining the experience of people who were observed in intercultural workshops, classes, exchanges, and graduate programmes. Based on the conducted observations Milton J. Bennett (1993) assigned intercultural sensitivity the crucial role in determining an intercultural speaker’s level of intercultural communicative competence. During his studies it appeared that learners confronted cultural difference in some predictable ways as they acquired more intercultural competence. Employing concepts from cognitive psychology and constructivism, he organized these observations into six stages of increasing sensitivity to cultural difference. The underlying assumption of the model is that as one’s experience of cultural difference becomes more sophisticated, their competence in intercultural relations potentially increases. Milton J. Bennett assumed that each stage was indicative of a particular worldview structure, and that certain kinds of cognitive processing, attitudes, and behaviours would typically be associated with each such configuration of worldview. The first three DMIS stages are ethnocentric, meaning that a person’s own culture is experienced as central to reality to some extent. In Denial, one’s own culture is experienced as the only real one, and consideration of

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other cultures is avoided by maintaining psychological and/or physical isolation from differences. In Defense, one’s own culture (or an adopted culture) is experienced as the only good one, and cultural difference is denigrated. In Minimization, elements of one’s own cultural worldview are experienced as universal, so that despite acceptable surface differences with other cultures, deep down those cultures are seen as essentially similar to one’s own. The second three DMIS stages are ethno-relative, meaning that our own culture is experienced in the context of other cultures. In Acceptance, other cultures are experienced as equally complex but different constructions of reality. In Adaptation, one attains the ability to shift perspective in and out of another cultural worldview; thus, their experience potentially includes the different cultural experience of someone from another culture. In Integration, a person’s experience of self is expanded to include the movement in and out of different cultural worldviews. In general, it must be emphasized that the ethnocentric stages can be seen as ways of avoiding cultural difference, either by denying its existence, by raising defences against it, or by minimizing its importance. The ethno-relative stages are ways of seeking cultural difference, either by accepting its importance, by adapting a speaker’s perspective to take it into account, or by integrating the whole concept into a definition of one’s identity. The DMIS is a stage model of cognitive development based on personal construct theory and its extension, radical constructivism (Watzlawick, 1984). Personal construct theory was formulated by George A. Kelly (1963), who held that experience is a function of our categorization, or construing, of events. As described by the DMIS, individuals can generally progress from ethnocentrism, where they experience events in their own culture as central to reality, to ethnorelativism, where they can perceive events in the context of their own and other cultures. In ethnocentrism, a person’s perceptual systems are less sensitive to cultural differences. Conversely, in ethnorelativism, cultural differences are more likely to be discriminated. In the earliest ethnocentric stage (Denial), other cultures are either not discriminated at all, or they are construed in rather vague ways. As a result, a cultural difference is either not experienced at all, or it is experienced as associated with a kind of undifferentiated other such as “foreigner” or “immigrant”. In later ethnocentric stages, other cultures are discriminated in more complex ways, but they still do not appear as complex as one’s own. Thus, other cultures are experienced as less “real” than one’s own, and cultural difference is labelled as threatening (Defense)

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or superficial (Minimization). In the first ethno-relative stage (Acceptance), other cultures are construed as equally as complex as one’s own. As a result, events enacted in other cultures may be experienced as equally “real” as those belonging to one’s own culture. In the later ethno-relative stages, behaviour (Adaptation) and then identity (Integration) is attached to this experience, yielding intercultural competence.

3.6 Developing essential skills and knowledge for intercultural communicative competence Success in intercultural communication involves knowing what skills are required and then becoming proficient in using them. Such proficiency demands a great deal of practice. William B. Gudykunst (1992: 162) posits that skills are our abilities to engage in the behaviours necessary to communicate appropriately and effectively. Speakers’ understanding of skills that facilitate communication processes among culturally diverse communicators must lead to their enforcement and active use on a regular basis. Skills are also tied to motivational factors in intercultural communication. The more skilful a speaker becomes, the more successful s/he will be in intercultural communication, thereby increasing the motivation to enter into further exchanges. The intercultural communication skills discussed below include being mindful, managing anxiety, empathizing, adapting one’s behaviour, and making predictions about and explaining others’ behaviours. They have been selected from a much longer list (cf. our discussion of intercultural communicative competence in section 2.2) because they are mutually dependent. Moreover, they constitute pivotal components of intercultural communicative competence. They are larger superimposed concepts which include smaller, more specific sub-skills which function as their sub-components. Being mindful, for example implies, among others, such sub-skills as self-cognition, selfawareness, being non-judgmental, intercultural tolerance, disclosure, flexibility, respect and self-respect, curiosity about other cultures, etc. Being mindful refers to the awareness of the dynamics of a communicative interaction (Gudykunst, 1992: 180). In intercultural communication the dynamics often centre on the cognitive dissonance resulting from the speaker challenging what his/her interlocutor knows to be true. Challenging an individual’s reality often leads to an emotionally charged interaction which eventually turns into a cultural clash. When it becomes evident, a mindful communicator uses it as an opportunity to react emotionally in an attempt to re-establish positive emotions. Instead of becoming defensive, s/he refrains from judging the interlocutor’s

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behaviour until more information has been gathered. Being mindful shows true commitment to the process of exploring cultural differences that have an impact on intercultural communication. It is vital to be able to interpret strangers’ behaviours and their underlying different value systems from an ethnocentric perspective. Thus, mindfulness is a necessary prerequisite for tolerance. Tolerance of ambiguity is challenged anytime individuals engage in intercultural communication. It means that even if they do not have complete information, or if it seems vague or conflicting, they do not abandon their communicative attempts (Brislin, 1993). Instead, they try not to externalise their emotional reactions and wait until objective information can be gained. According to William B. Gudykunst (1992: 182) objective information is necessary to understand strangers and accurately predict their behaviour. The skill of tolerating ambiguity can be honed by suspending judgement of others’ behaviours, gathering objective information, trying to see the perspectives of others and detaching oneself from emotional involvement so as not to take interactions personally. A speaker committed to tolerating ambiguity will put aside his/her discomfort when the interaction becomes ambiguous and even uncomfortable and will continue his/her attempts to communicate. Managing anxiety is essential if individuals are to communicate effectively with others (Brislin, 1993). Anxiety is an emotional response triggered by the fear that an event may have a negative impact on the speaker. Knowing how anxiety affects us is the first step in developing skills to reduce and manage it. According to Richard Brislin and Tomoko Yoshida (1994: 74) people have three options for coping with anxiety and the stress it causes. They can change either the stressful situation or their attitude about the situation, or else they can accommodate to the stress. In many cases it is possible to change the situation. The second option is more difficult as it involves changing the interlocutors’ thinking and feeling about the stressful situation by not evaluating it as such. The third option, accommodating to stress, is usually the most realistic one. Finding adaptive mechanisms which are tools that help individuals cope with stress without distorting their perspectives is extremely important (Brislin and Yoshida, 1994: 75). Learning the skills needed for intercultural communication will enable communicators to handle the stress involved and thereby minimize the frequency of stressful encounters. Consequently, their success will increase their motivation to engage in intercultural communication interactions. Empathizing with another person means being able to understand his/her thoughts, feelings, and behaviours from his/her point of view

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(Samovar, Porter and Stefani; 1998). Empathy is an imaginative, intellectual and emotional participation in another person’s experience (Bennett, 2004: 418). Speakers can develop it by practising seeing the world and others from their point of view. One way of achieving empathy is by means of exploring cultural differences and identifying similarities in the interlocutor’s motivation and behaviour, which allows the communicator to learn their cultural relativity. Seeking out objective information helps keep negative stereotypes at bay and increases empathy. Adapting the communicator’s behaviour to a given communicative situation consists in selecting the best means of gathering information about others, being flexible with instructional strategies, and before passing judgement trying to understand others’ interactions and behaviours as a possible result of cultural differences (Samovar, Porter and Stefani; 1998). Speakers can adapt their behaviour by incorporating into their own repertoires the strategies of their interlocutors’. They can also become mindful of their own limitations in intercultural communication and of the need to call for help when they themselves fail. Some intercultural communicative situations are especially difficult to manage because of the differences in values across cultures. Then it should be natural to ask for assistance from the people who have a better understanding of a particular culture as they can offer needed information, refer their interlocutors to other sources of information, and act as intermediaries. Making accurate predictions about another’s behaviours as well as explaining them consists in attributing certain characteristics to its performer or to the whole group s/he belongs to so as to make them meaningful for the communicator. As meanings tend to be assigned by means of assumptions, stereotypes or previous experience of an individual or his/her group of reference (Triandis, 1995), cognitive processes often get simplified. On the other hand, their simplification assists the interlocutor’s comprehension of another speaker and of the situation, which allows him to be more selfconfident, self-possessed and effective in his/her communicative behaviours. On the other hand, in many situations assumptions and stereotypes do not provide sufficient information. Each communicator should try to gather as much objective information as possible to avoid erroneous interpretations of his/her interlocutor’s behaviours. William B. Gudykunst (1992: 191) explains the process of making accurate predictions pointing out its inherent difficulties in the following way: When we are on automatic pilot, our predictions and expectations of others’ behaviour are based on our stereotypes, attitudes, and previous experiences with the individuals involved. We may be highly confident of our predictions and explanations when we are on automatic pilot, but our

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Proper conditions constitute another category of factors contributing to a speaker’s becoming consciously and consistently competent in intercultural interactions. Brian Spitzberg and William Cupach (1984) isolated three such conditions: knowledge, motivation, and skills. The likelihood to act as a competent intercultural communicator significantly diminishes when any of them is either absent or poorly performed. Knowledge refers to the speaker’s awareness or understanding of requisite information and actions at the criss-cross of cultures. A knowledgeable communicator possesses information about the people, the communication rules, the context, and the normative expectations governing the interaction with the interlocutors from another culture. Without it, s/he will invariably make misattributions, choose incorrect communication strategies, violate rules of etiquette, or cause the loss of face for self or other. Furthermore, s/he may not be able to correctly ascribe the reasons for erroneous behaviours in communication and remedy them. To obtain the needed knowledge, speakers need to be not only sensitive to their interlocutors’ feedback but also cognitively flexible to accommodate that feedback (Berger, 1979; Gudykunst, 1992). Thus, the knowledge component of intercultural communicative competence entails both the body of information necessary to interact appropriately and effectively as well as the cognitive schemata or orientations to facilitate the acquisition of such information. In terms of the necessary information, researchers have found a positive correlation between intercultural communicative competence and awareness of the other culture (Wiseman, Hammer and Nishida; 1989) and self-awareness (Gudykunst, Yang and Nishida; 1987). They increase the intercultural communicator’s understanding of others and of self, which, in turn, facilitates his/her making accurate predictions and attributions. Favourable cognitive orientations have been found in terms of open-mindedness (Adler, 1975), being non-judgmental (Ruben, 1976), self-monitoring ability (Snyder, 1987), problem-solving ability (Brislin, 1981) and cognitive complexity (Wiseman and Abe, 1985). All of them facilitate perspective-taking and adaptation to new information.

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Motivation refers to the set of feelings, intentions, needs and drives associated with the anticipation of or an actual engagement in intercultural communication. Factors such as anxiety, perceived social distance, attraction, ethnocentrism, and prejudice can influence a decision to communicate with another. If fear, dislikes and anxieties predominate in communicators’ affect towards others, they will have negative motivation, which will probably make them avoid the interaction, even if they feel that they have the requisite knowledge and skills. However, if confidence, interest, likes, and good intentions predominate in their affect towards others, this will result in their positive motivation, and they will seek out and engage in interaction with others (Morreale, Spitzberg and Barge; 2001). Thus, competent intercultural communicators must learn to reduce the negative influences and increase the positive influences on their motivation to communicate with members of different cultures. In terms of the motivation component of competence, a number of variables have been found to influence the communicator’s affect towards others and intercultural communication. A positive correlation has been found between intercultural communicative competence and intercultural sensitivity (Chen and Starosta, 1998; 2000), positive affect towards the other’s culture (Randolph, Landis and Tzeng; 1977), social relaxation (Gudykunst and Hammer, 1988; Sanders and Wiseman, 1993), and empathy (Chen and Tan, 1995). A negative correlation has been found for ethnocentrism (Neulip and McCroskey, 1997; Nishida, Hammer and Wiseman, 1998). These correlations (both positive and negative valence) which work as evaluation of competence operate by changing a potential communicator’s approach-avoidance predispositions to communicate interculturally. Skills refer to the actual performance or the communicative behaviours felt to be effective and appropriate in the communication context. For Spitzberg (2000), skills must be repeatable and goal-oriented. If a communicator accidentally produces a behaviour that is perceived as competent, this would not be adequate, since s/he may not be able to replicate the same behaviour with the same effect. S/he needs to be able to perform the script fluently and with cause (i.e. an appropriate rationale for its performance). The final skill component of intercultural communicative competence reflects the behaviours necessary to interact appropriately and effectively with members of different cultures. Researchers have discovered several behaviours that are positively correlated with intercultural communicative competence. They are: mindfulness (Gudykunst, 1992), intercultural adroitness (Chen and Starosta, 1996), interaction involvement (Cegala, 1984), recognition of non-verbal messages (Anderson, 1994), appropriate

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self-disclosure (Li, 1999), behavioural flexibility (Bochner and Kelly, 1974), interaction management (Wiemann, 1977), identity maintenance (Ting-Toomey, 1994), uncertainty reduction strategies (Sanders, Wiseman and Matz, 1991), appropriate display of respect (Ruben, 1976), immediacy skills (Benson, 1978), ability to establish interpersonal relationships (Hammer, 1987), and expressing clarity and face support (Kim, 1993). They allow for adaptive, flexible, and supportive communication.

CHAPTER FOUR INTERCULTURAL APPROACH IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Introduction The aim of Chapter Four is to highlight the role of intercultural issues in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Three basic approaches, namely ethnographic, experiential and comparative will be considered in some detail. Their advantages and disadvantages will be discussed as each approach is best applied in a different context.

4.1 On the way to intercultural learning In the contemporary language pedagogies teaching and learning a foreign language is not reduced to the direct teaching of linguistics skills anymore. The present-day models of communicative competence indicate that there is much more to learning a language and they involve cultural knowledge and awareness – often perceived as a vital extension of a language learning process (Bachmann, 1990; Cháopek, 2008). Hence, it is assumed that interactions lacking appropriate cultural content will result in serious miscommunication and misunderstanding. It is also noticeable that many practitioners while referring to teaching culture restrict themselves to the specific cultural content of the target language. On the one hand, it might be perceived as a narrow view as it is not always English, which is instructed. On the other hand, it seems sufficient especially in cases of students being immersed in the culture of the English-speaking environment. Importantly enough, it should be stressed that if learners want to communicate with non-native speakers of English through the medium of English, regardless of where they reside, they might consider themselves as participants in international, or rather intercultural communication, where the target language (e.g. English) constitutes a mere tool to be used in interaction.

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Therefore, it is posited that the intercultural dimension in language teaching is aimed at developing learners as intercultural speakers, or mediators who are able to engage with complexity and multiple identities and to avoid the stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through a single identity (Byram et al., 2001). It is based on perceiving the interlocutor as an individual whose qualities are to be discovered, rather than a representative of an external identity. The intercultural dimension is concerned with: 1) helping learners to understand how intercultural interaction takes place; 2) how social identities are part of all interaction; 3) how their perceptions of other people and other people’s perceptions of them influence the success of communication; and 4) how they can find out for themselves more about the people they are communicating with. Intercultural training in language education requires the application of three different approaches: experiential learning, an ethnographic approach and a comparative approach, which will be discussed in the forthcoming parts of the present chapter.

4.2 Ethnographic approach The term ethnography is very broad and it focuses on research that involves immersion within, and investigation of, a culture or social world. What we do is we enter a particular culture and draw upon a variety of methods in order to understand and interpret various cultural meanings. Ethnography can be conceived as a methodological persuasion, or a guiding approach to research, in which the researcher attends to the rich generation of meanings by social actors, as a consequence of various structures and decisions made by individuals. This approach denotes moving from description to explanation, because as Bronisáaw Malinowski (1922) argued the role of ethnographer was ‘to attempt to grasp the native’s point of view, their relation to life and to realize their vision of their world’ (cf. Edgerton, 1984). Hence, it means getting to know people by being there, alongside them, during ordinary days, to try to capture their experiences at first hand. John Corbett (2003) describes ethnography as an immersion within the deep culture of a social group that attempts to find hidden treasures and submerged dangers. In principle, ethnography is committed to representing the actions of the relatively unknown insiders of a given social group. Whilst there is a clear vision of ethnography as making sense of the culture of the ‘other’, the use of ethnography in practical and policymaking contexts by practitioners, particularly in educational settings, has given rise to a different conceptualization of ethnography. Here, the aims

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are to render the familiar strange. Ethnographic research can be embraced as a methodology that aims to look again at the cultures we may feel we already know so well. In this sense, ethnography is about turning a critical eye onto practices, dynamics, policies and meaning making within familiar cultures. It means turning social contexts into research contexts: the latter associated inevitably with the researcher examining the social context anew through the perspective of a critical inquirer. When researchers become part of the cultures that they describe, then researchers and participants interact together to produce the data (Charmaz, 1995). Even when a covert approach to participation is adopted – and there are clearly ethical issues that we need to explore – the researcher’s perspective on the actions of participants form a dialogue from which understandings emerge. Meanwhile, overt participant observation in a field of enquiry – where the researcher clearly states their reasons for involvement in the field and their research aims – will alert participants to the possibilities that their conduct is being watched. Turning social into research contexts raises more general considerations about the nature of ‘truth’ in research and brings with it a variety of troubling but often rewarding debates. Over the past few decades ethnography has also gained significance in the literature of both cultural studies and language learning (e.g. Byram et al., 1994; Damen 1987; Roberts et al., 2001). We might assume that ethnographic practices are becoming increasingly central to intercultural approaches to language teaching and learning. In EFL contexts, direct contact with Anglophone cultures is usually limited – comparatively few learners can take advantage of overseas trips, or even study for a year abroad, however, many of the techniques used to stimulate the ethnographic imagination are still applicable. The influence of ethnography on the intercultural approach goes beyond the general observation of a target culture. Some research into behaviour in context has concentrated much more specifically on how participants in conversations interact to construct meaning jointly. This particular focus on communicative events is the substance of ethnomethodology (Gumperz, 1977; Saville-Troike, 1989). Ethnomethodologists argue that meaning arises out of the interaction between individuals in a specific context, the individuals bringing to their encounter social knowledge and prior experiences that are used to interpret the utterances of the other participants. Communication through dialogue therefore arises out of a complex, ongoing negotiation about what utterances mean. The idea that meaning is ‘dialogic’ (i.e. negotiated through interaction) reflects the theories of Mikhail M. Bakhtin (2004), who can be recognized as a

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precursor of what is considered ‘new’ in language research from a sociocultural perspective. Ethnography in language learning basically concentrates on observation and description of behaviours among representatives of a particular culture. From the point of view of ELT the most interesting aspect to be investigated refers to human communication. John Corbett (2003) points out that a communicated meaning is constantly negotiated and constructed by the participants of an interaction embedded within a context. It does not depend on the intentions communicated by a speaker. The role of ethnographic methods in foreign-language teaching was suggested by Louise Damen (1987: 53). The supporters of the intercultural approach are positive about the possibility of using ethnography in integrated culture and language teaching and developing mediating competences. A learner who is showing ethnographic skills can: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)

use their own experiences; observe culture phenomena; be a participant-observer of their own and the other’s culture; question in order to obtain information about culture; search for the most useful sources of information; take notes during field trips; collect, analyze, present, evaluate and distinguish qualitative from quantitative data; 8) refrain from assessing the other’s culture.

4.3 Experiential learning Recent approaches to foreign-language education emphasise the significance of the students’ own contributions to their language learning through initiative-taking and active involvement. Students need to take charge of their learning in order to enhance their autonomy as students and language users. Students need to be helped to develop a basic reflective orientation by working on their experiences, beliefs and assumptions of language and learning (Jaatinen, 2001; Kaikkonen, 2002; Kohonen, 2001, 2004; Lehtovaara, 2001). Experiences of language, communication, culture and personal learning processes are essential for foreign-language learning – but they need to be processed consciously for learning to take place. Learning requires an explicit awareness and understanding of what it is that needs to be learnt, and why such learning is necessary. Learning is the process of creating new knowledge and understandings through the transformation of

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experience. Reflection plays an important role in this process by providing a bridge between practical experience and theoretical conceptualisation. Experiential learning is an educational orientation which aims at integrating theoretical and practical elements of learning for a wholeperson approach, emphasising the significance of experience for learning. The approach is well-known in various settings of informal learning, such as internships in business and service organisations, work and study assignments, clinical experience, international exchange and volunteer programmes, etc. However, the principles and practices can be used both in formal learning (institutional) contexts and in informal learning. Experiential learning techniques include a rich variety of interactive practices whereby the participants have opportunities to learn from their own and each other’s experiences, being actively and personally engaged in the process: 1) personal journals, diaries, 2) portfolios, 3) reflective personal essays and thought questions, 4) role plays, drama activities, 5) games and simulations, 6) personal stories and case studies, 7) visualizations and imaginative activities, 8) models, analogies and theory construction, 9) activities calling for empathy, 10) story-telling, sharing with others, 11) discussions and reflection in co-operative groups. All of these contain a common element of learning from immediate experience by engaging the learners in the process as whole persons, both intellectually and emotionally. Experiential learning involves observing the phenomenon and doing something meaningful with it through active participation. It emphasises learning in which the learner is directly in touch with the phenomenon being studied, rather than just watching it or reading, hearing or thinking about it (Kolb, 1984; Kohonen, 2001). Experiential learning consists of the following four components (Woolfe, 1992: 1): 1. The student is aware of the processes which are taking place, and which are enabling learning to occur. 2. The student is involved in a reflective experience which enables him/ her to relate current learning to past, present and future, even if these relationships are felt rather than thought.

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In experiential learning, immediate personal experience is the focal point for learning. As pointed out by David Kolb (1984: 21), personal experience gives the life, texture, and subjective personal meaning to abstract concepts. At the same time it also provides a concrete, publicly shared reference point for testing the implications and validity of ideas created during the learning process. Experience alone is not, however, a sufficient condition for learning. Experiences also need to be processed consciously by reflecting on them. Experiential learning is a cyclical process that integrates immediate experience, reflection, abstract conceptualization and action. As Leo van Lier (1996: 11) points out, learning something requires that one notices it in the first place: “This noticing is an awareness of its existence, obtained and enhanced by paying attention to it. Paying attention is focusing one’s consciousness, or pointing one’s perceptual powers in the right direction, and making mental ‘energy’ available for processing”. To learn something, one has to notice it and be motivated to do something about it through a conscious effort. This integration of cognitive, affective and volitional components of personality means a holistic, whole-person approach to learning. According to the model, learning is essentially a process of resolution of conflicts between two dialectically opposed dimensions, the prehension dimension and the transformation dimension. (1) The prehension dimension explores the ways in which the individual grasps experience. The dimension includes two polar ends of the ways of knowing, ranging from unconscious, intuitive experience (involving tacit knowledge) to a conscious comprehension of the experience. Abstract conceptualisation structures and organizes the flow of unconscious sensations. Reality is thus grasped and made sense of through varying degrees of unconscious and conscious learning. (2) The transformation dimension entails the transformation of experience through reflective observation and active experimentation. An individual with an active orientation is willing to take risks and has little concern for errors or failure. An individual with a

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reflective orientation, on the other hand, may withdraw from such risks, preferring to transform experiences through reflective observation. The polar ends of the two dimensions thus yield four orientations to learning (Kolb, 1984; Kohonen, 2001): (1) concrete experience, learning by intuition, with an emphasis on personal experiences, belonging and feeling. The instructional activities that support this aspect include small group discussions, simulation and drama techniques, and the use of videos, films, examples and stories. (2) reflective observation, learning by perception, focuses on understanding the ideas and situations by careful observation. The learner is concerned with how things happen by attempting to see them from different perspectives and relying on one’s thoughts, feelings and judgment. The instructional techniques include personal journals, reflective essays, observation reports, thought questions and discussions. (3) abstract conceptualization, learning by rigorous thinking, using a systematic approach in order to structure and frame the phenomena. Emphasis is placed on the definition and classification of abstract ideas and concepts, aiming at precise conceptual categories. The instructional techniques include theory construction, lecturing and building models and analogies. (4) active experimentation, learning by action, emphasizes practical applications in real work/life contexts. The learner attempts to influence people and change situations as necessary, taking risks in order to get things done. The instructional techniques include fieldwork, various projects, laboratory work, games, dramatizations and simulations. Experiential learning thus consists of a four-stage cycle combining all of these orientations. Experience gives food for reflective thinking, which in turn leads to abstract conceptualisations and hypotheses to be tried out through active experimentation. Practical action, in turn, yields concrete experiential material for reflection. I wish to argue further that theoretical concepts will become part of the individual's frame of reference only after s/he has experienced them meaningfully at an emotional level. Reflection plays an important role in this process by providing a bridge, as if it were, between experience and theoretical conceptualisation.

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In traditional teacher-directed approaches using structured lesson or lecture formats and teacher-initiated decisions, learning takes place mainly at an intellectual level. The students remain more or less passive recipients of information that does not require them to examine their own emotional responses to the subject material. They can thus remain personally unaware of the effects of their own response to the subject material on themselves or on other people, and the intensity of such responses. This can lead to an inadequate application of knowledge in the use the subject material in authentic real-life situations. Only after individuals have experienced theoretical concepts meaningfully at an emotional level will these concepts form part of their frame of reference. Experiential learning aims for a qualitatively different degree of learning from that resulting from teacher-directed learning. Reflection bridges the often wide gap between experience and theoretical conceptualisation. From the teacher's point of view, experiential learning means that opportunities are provided for the full development of the cycle. Different instructional techniques promote different aspects of learning. The traditional academic setting has tended to emphasize reflective observation and concept formation at the expense of practical action and immediate concrete experiences. The model also cautions against the opposite extreme, the assumption that any experience leads automatically to learning. Only experience that is reflected upon seriously yields its full measure of learning. Reflection needs to be followed by the framing and conceptualising of the phenomena through appropriate theory-building. In order to better understand what experiential learning means in language learning, the four learning orientations should be related to the historical developments in foreign language pedagogy. The grammartranslation method was obviously strong on the abstract conceptualisation of the linguistic system of the target language, at the expense of spoken fluency. This is because it focused on explicit grammatical rules and categories, analysing texts to consolidate grammar and fine-tune vocabulary, and translating texts for accuracy of expression. The behaviouristic approaches, such as the audio-lingual method, were strong on concrete experience. They emphasised oral communication skills which were built up in a careful progression of syntactic structures using a variety of pattern drill exercises. It was argued that grammar was best learned inductively from actual examples of use, and the purpose of the extensive drills was to automatize the structural patterns. The method deliberately avoided giving grammatical rules and theoretical explanations as these were perceived to interfere with the unconscious learning cycle

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leading to habit formation and automatization. The necessary new vocabulary was similarly introduced through demonstrations and visuals, relying on active learner participation and experience. The communicative approaches, on the other hand, have shifted attention somewhat back on to abstract conceptualisation, aiming at a conscious understanding of the linguistic system as a condition for an effective communicative use of language. Affective factors are also taken more into consideration, with an emphasis on learner initiative and meaningful communication in social contexts. In the current intercultural learning approach, emphasis is clearly shifted further towards reflecting on the personal, emotional and social elements inherent in authentic communication. Whereas communicative competence related primarily to the individual’s knowledge and skills in communicative situations, intercultural competence also focuses on the learner’s personal identity, social abilities and attitudes, such as risktaking, tolerance of ambiguity and respect for cultural and individual diversity. It further emphasises the importance of a reflective awareness of language use and cultural elements in intercultural settings. It thus aims at an integrated and a more balanced view of the different learning orientations discussed in experiential learning theory. Intercultural communicative competencies an action-oriented concept, suggesting the importance of relating to otherness and foreignness in human encounters. As intercultural communication is also a question of attitudes and emotions, becoming an intercultural language user clearly emphasises the central role of the affective elements in foreign- and second-language education. It entails an element of personal growth as a human being and a language user. Personal growth, however, develops through social interaction between the participants, as noted in recent socio-cultural theories of language learning (Lantolf, 2000; Little 2001, 2004; Johnson, 2004; van Lier, 2004). The quality of the interaction between the participants shapes the individual construction of the meanings. To foster interaction, it is essential for the teacher to develop a learning community in the class that enables the participants to open up their thinking to others in a dialogic process. Dialogue essentially entails a respect for the other person, encountering him or her as a unique person and being ready for genuine interaction and sharing of meanings. It also means an openness to the subject matter at hand, aiming at understanding the diversity of views and opinions. Building a community of learners is fostered by the use of co-operative

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learning techniques (Kohonen, 1992). Co-operative learning groups provide a supportive affective environment for the development of belonging and new understandings. Student talk can be harnessed to the exploration of dawning understandings and new learning. At its best it can lead into something quite different from authoritarian, teacher-directed classroom discourse. Working towards a dialogue in teaching means meeting the student as a partner in a reciprocal relationship. Teachers encourage their students to strive for authenticity in their language use and learning experiences through their active presence in the class. This involves consistency, integrity and respect, and the recognition of their achievements (van Lier, 1996). Experiential learning aims at integrating linguistic and learning theories into a holistic and an internally consistent educational approach to language teaching. It provides useful pedagogical concepts and tools for developing language teaching as foreign-language education. Developing foreign-language teaching towards language education is very much a question of the teacher’s professional growth and a new collegial institutional culture. Student development needs to be accompanied by and consciously linked to the teacher’s professional growth towards an ethical, educational stance. Further, teacher development needs to be embedded in the context of a purposeful staff development towards a collegial institutional culture, connected with the development of society at large (Kohonen, 2003; 2004). The ways of supporting the growth processes through pre-service and in-service teacher education are discussed in recent literature with reference to transformative learning. Essential in this concept is that the teachers emancipate themselves from their constraining educational beliefs and assumptions and work towards a professional identity as an educator, designing new pedagogical solutions as appropriate. The change is an experiential process that integrates the cognitive, social and emotional aspects of professional learning. Transformative learning includes the following properties (Askew and Carnell, 1998; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Edge, 2002; Kohonen, 2001; 2003; 2004; Huttunen, 2003): 1) realizing the significance of professional interaction for growth; 2) developing an open, critical stance to professional work and seeing oneself as a continuous learner; 3) developing a reflective attitude as a basic habit of mind, involving reflection on educational practices and their philosophical underpinnings; 4) developing new self-understandings in concrete situations;

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5) reflecting on critical events or incidents in life and work history and learning from the personal insights; 6) conscious risk-taking: acting in new ways in classes and in the work community; 7) tolerating ambiguity: learning to live with uncertainty concerning the decisions to be made.

The approach emphasises the teacher’s self-understanding, based on pedagogical reflection in concrete situations with the students. Linda Darling-Hammond points out that teachers learn by observing and listening to their students carefully and looking at their work thoughtfully. This develops their understanding of how their students see themselves as learners, what they care about, and what tasks are likely to give them enough challenge and success to sustain motivation. Teacher learning therefore needs to be connected with actual teaching, supported by ongoing reflection and theory building: “Teachers learn best by studying, doing, and reflecting; by collaborating with other teachers; by looking closely at students and their work; and by sharing what they see.” (Darling-Hammond, 1998: 8). To develop curriculum, teachers need to share their ideas, insights and uncertainties with each other. They need to clarify and redefine their educational beliefs, images and assumptions. They need to work towards increased reflectivity by considering their goals and practices, judging their findings against empirical classroom-based evidence. The purpose of the reflective work is to integrate their professional beliefs and theoretical knowledge into new professional meanings and concrete practices for the benefit of student learning. Transformative teacher learning thus entails that teachers move from the role of being consumers of outside expert knowledge towards taking an active role as curriculum developers and researchers of their work. Transformative teacher learning requires time for thoughtful reflection, collegial discussions and planning for site-based pedagogical action. Teachers also need time for collecting their observations, reflecting on them and modifying their action, based on the findings. This is a question of time, effort and commitment. This is why transformative learning should not be pushed through too hastily in the interest of efficient school management. Changes of the magnitude of paradigmatic shifts in teacher thinking, pedagogical action and school culture do not take place overnight. They are inevitably a function of time and explicit concrete support in any profession. Besides, the students are similarly in need of time, guidance and support in their process of assuming a more autonomous role as learners.

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Self-directed language learning poses great demands on the students’ ability to cope with the uncertainties in developing their skills of reflection and self-assessment. Taking charge of their learning as socially responsible members of the classroom community is similarly anew learning culture for many students. Students can take control of more and more aspects of the learning process only to the extent that they assume the necessary knowledge, understanding, skills and engagement for the new goals and ways of organising their work and working together (Kohonen, 2003; 2004; Little, 2001; 2004). Margarita Limón Luque discusses professional learning as a matter of integrating the intellectual, emotional and behavioural components of personality development into a conscious capacity for action. She points out that the following three conditions are necessary for a conceptual change (Luque, 2003: 135-140): a) knowledge and understanding of what it is that needs to be changed (metacognitive/linguistic condition); b) motivation for the change (volitional condition: engagement, commitment); c) self-regulation of the change process (condition of self-regulation: goal-setting, monitoring, self-assessment).

An intentional conceptual change becomes possible when the person understands the reasons for it and receives help to plan, monitor and evaluate the change processes. As the skills of self-regulation develop, the person gets positive rewards from the process and becomes more motivated for the changes, with proper support and encouragement. Reflection is an essential element in all of these conditions, and it needs to be facilitated explicitly (Kohonen, 2004).

4.4 Comparative approach ElĪbieta Zawadzka (2004) and Alan Pulverness (1999) notice that learning about the other’s culture provokes comparisons with our own culture. Thus, we tend to understand and compare new phenomena with the application of categories employed by our language and culture community. The comparative approach should be applied in teaching only with the presence of a teacher who will be responsible for preserving an objective glance at the new phenomena so as not to falsify the newlylearnt reality. It is extremely crucial to be able to adjust an unknown or foreign element to the vision of the world we are familiar with in a very careful way. Unfortunately, comparing two cultures does not necessarily

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lead to the development of intercultural awareness and empathy. Michael Byram and Genevieve Zarate (1997) claim that only critical cultural awareness achieved through the critical analysis of cultural phenomena and their deconstruction contributes to general education and development among learners. Constant comparative analysis remains undoubtedly an essential element of action conducted by intercultural mediators. The comparative approach in teaching culture helps: 1) learners to reflect on how their own language, linguistic and cultural identity are perceived by others; 2) to analyze stereotypes and distinguish individual traits; 3) discussion of tolerance, xenophobia, acculturation and sustaining one’s identity; 4) to activate previously gained knowledge and experience; 5) distance oneself from one’s own cultural norms; 6) shape one’s curiosity and critical attitude instead of developing prejudices. By emphasizing the role of the comparative approach in intercultural training, Claire Kramsch (1998) recommends various tasks, which require accepting worldviews different from one’s own. One of the tasks, referred to as personal constructs, requires of learners that they make constant comparisons of ways meanings are construed by themselves and other representatives of culture. This way of perception leads to the theory of social construction of reality proposed by George Kelly in the 1950s. It is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating models of the social world and share and shape these models through language. George Kelly (1963) explicitly stated that each individual’s task in understanding their personal psychology is to put in order the facts of his or her own experience. Then the individual, similarly to the scientist, should test the accuracy of that constructed knowledge by performing those actions the constructs suggest. If the results of their actions are in line with what the knowledge predicted, then they have done a good job of finding the order in their personal experience. If not, then they can modify the construct: their interpretations or their predictions or both. George Kelly (1963) also posited that every construct is bipolar, specifying how two things are similar to each other (lying on the same

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pole) and different from a third thing, and they can be expanded further with new ideas. This philosophy proves that even within the same language and/or culture group, similarities and differences in the perception of a particular phenomenon can vary greatly. Analyzing things from a different perspective will allow learners to compare those aspects of their culture, which they are unaware of, although, on the other hand, they might seem obvious. To fulfill the expectations of the comparative approach, they need to engage the knowledge and experience that is indispensable for making comparisons. As a result students will be able to strengthen their cultural identity (Bandura, 2007: 78).

4.5 Intercultural communicative competence in the classroom – challenges, opportunities and difficulties Classrooms are situated in a very special place where intercultural communication is experienced in two different ways. Firstly, it is an inherent daily experience of every student because in even an ethnically monocultural classroom there are many manifestations of cultural diversity due to age, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability differences, etc. Some of them are clearly noticed (e.g. age – students vs. teachers, gender – girls vs. boys) while some others are hidden (e.g. sexual orientation, religion). As such their impact on communication seems to be non-existent. Moreover, as many teachers and students still tend to think about cultural diversity in terms of traditional differentiating categories of ethnicity, race, and religion, intercultural communication takes place only if its interlocutors belong at least to one of the above categories. Another type of intercultural communication occurs during foreignlanguage classes where a foreign culture is incorporated in numerous ways. Typically, cultural instruction offered as part of foreign language courses involves orientation to the target culture through what is called objective culture (Bennett, 1998). It generally refers to the customs, political and social institutions, history, important holidays, cuisine, major landmarks, political and cultural institutions as well as basic history, etc. Information about it is included in textbooks or in curricula as a way to give life and cultural orientation to language instruction. Another way of looking at culture is what is referred to as Big C Culture (Bennett, 1998) which embraces fine arts, literature, music, dance, film, etc. It is also common to find foreign-language textbooks and curricula with information about famous authors, musical genres, musicians and artists to encourage students’ interest in the foreign language. In addition to the

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information about the target-language culture, many teachers and syllabuses also embrace general cultural development as an important contribution to students’ overall growth. It is common, especially in the school setting, to find programmes, or instructors who include cultural activities as part of an educational experience. There is also subjective culture (Bennett, 1998) which includes beliefs, values, assumptions and patterns of culture without which it is not possible to understand the impact of culture on communication. It is the most difficult aspect to teach and learn as it needs to be experienced intellectually, emotionally and even somatically. This accounts, in particular, for the speaker’s intercultural awareness, which the Common European Framework for Reference has clearly distinguished from the intercultural know-how. Whereas intercultural awareness refers generally to the learner’s awareness of him/herself as a member of a global community, intercultural skills and knowhow are related to the individual’s manner of coping with cultural differences. A formal exposure to objective culture as well as to the Big C Culture may help, but it may turn out to be insufficient for the development of intercultural communicative competence. Although, as already said, subjective cultural knowledge is acquired through direct experience, cultural notes or orientation included in textbooks and programmes may be useful, too. Moreover, since language itself is the medium through which subjective culture is constructed, language instruction is filled with opportunities for building intercultural awareness in teachers through training, knowledge or interest in these areas. In some cases, textbooks are pointing out more and more the necessity to pay attention to socio-cultural and socio-pragmatic conventions in language so that students do not only sound more nativelike, but actually are able to achieve basic social etiquette and are able to adhere to cultural norms in the foreign language. However, despite many efforts to allow students to experience the communicative challenges of multiculturalism, it is difficult to make it an authentic practice in the classroom. In most cases both the teacher and his/her students share their cultural identity and speak the same tongue. Their use of a foreign language is to some extent artificial as they can easily, effectively and appropriately communicate in their mother tongue. The next important difference consists in the impact of their intercultural communicative competence on their communicative goals and their success in achieving them. In real-life situations, communication failures tend to be very costly, but in the classroom students do not pay a psychological and interpersonal price for their mistakes, e.g. lost friendships, hostility, or exclusion. The only “punishment” is an unsatisfactory mark which can be improved. The .

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feeling of safety the students enjoy should, on the one hand encourage them to practise their communicative skills, but on the other hand, it may demotivate them as they feel merely to be actors, who are to play their part, not real people. Thus, motivation to develop intercultural communicative competence and intercultural knowledge understood as the speaker’s sensitivity and awareness of what needs to be done in order to communicate appropriately and effectively which it entails, constitute the areas of the most serious challenges for the teachers and the students alike. It must be stressed that intercultural sensitivity as a basic dimension of intercultural identity accounts for increasing or decreasing students’ motivation to participate in classroom communication. The factors which motivate individuals to communicate with people from cultural backgrounds different from their own, are either psychological rewards such as a need to belong to a group, a desire for community harmony, a need to learn about others and ourselves and to have others learn about us, or more instrumental and pragmatic such as professional and personal success. Teachers are motivated by their desire to help their students develop communicative competence. The difficulties and challenges students may encounter in the process should motivate teachers to empower their students by providing them with knowledge and an ability to use it in action. Both knowledge and skills develop in students a special kind of sensitivity manifested as their own need to sustain their self-conceptions and self-image, their degree of anxiety and their avoidance tendencies engendered by strangers. Their sensitivity becomes a true demotivating factor when their interlocutors do not give them the feedback that validates their sense of self. The role of the teacher consists in making students understand who they are, reinforcing their selfconfidence, sustaining their self-conceptions and overcoming their anxiety (Gudykunst, 1992). The last ability is very important because when communicators are threatened, they often become defensive and can no longer think clearly or access the knowledge and skills needed to communicate effectively. Their sensitivity experienced as anxiety hinders an ability to gather information that could reduce uncertainty and their sense of alienation from the other cultural group. All the factors decrease their motivation to communicate further and make the students avoid intercultural interactions in the future (Brislin, 1993). Students’ individual traits may also facilitate or hinder the learning process which means that teachers need some knowledge about their general communication and learning styles. In the absence of such information, they are likely to make incorrect assessments, further

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derailing the communication and learning process. They should also sensitise their students to the fact that often they may not be successful in intercultural communication and may easily be demotivated to engage in it because communication styles are rooted in cultural backgrounds. Intercultural sensitivity as a superimposed determinant of motivation is thus a key factor in encouraging individuals to engage in intercultural communication exchanges. William B. Gudykunst (1992) refers to the phenomenon as an approach to avoidance tendencies. Understanding its complex dynamics enables both teachers and students to work through difficult encounters which can either become an opportunity to be positively developed instantly, or cause a real obstacle resulting in difficulties not easily overcome. In such encounters, both parties need to be patient, less defensive, and learn how to suspend judgement about others until they have obtained further information. Ultimately, this will help them comprehend the perspectives of cultures different from their own. Also, intercultural knowledge contributes to both the students’ proficiency by sensitising them to its components and motivates them to act as intercultural communicators. Five specific types of knowledge are important in the process: cultural self-awareness, knowledge of group differences, knowledge of personal similarities, knowledge of alternative interpretations, and knowledge of strategies to gather information (Samovar, Porter and Stefani; 1998). Cultural self-awareness involves understanding the speaker’s own cultural background, the rules and norms of thinking and behaving in his/her culture, and the influence of cultural background on beliefs and values (Samovar, Porter and Stefani; 1998). It represents the foundation of cultural knowledge from which it is possible to make cultural comparisons. Cultural self-awareness is an essential condition for understanding the cultural differences that lead to clashes in communication. To increase it, teachers must explore how they communicate with others, what they believe about themselves and others, and what values they hold in regard to curriculum, instruction, and discipline. If teachers can be aware of the influence of their own culture on their beliefs and values, they can see more clearly the culturally-bound differences between their ways of knowing and doing as well as those of others. In this case, ethnocentrism will be a serious obstacle to it. Consequently, both the knowledge and awareness of stereotypes prevent the teacher from mistaking them for true cultural differences (Gudykunst, 1992), which in the classroom apply to learning and cognitive styles, communication, expectations for school, and ways of showing

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respect. By not recognizing the cultural difference in how students understand and relate to things in their lives, the teacher may miss some educational opportunities. Thus, teachers who are knowledgeable about cultural differences will be better prepared to recognize them and to respond when such differences appear in the classroom. Understanding cultural differences is as important as knowing personal similarities and sharing commonalities with interlocutors in the process of intercultural communication (Gudykunst, 1992; Samovar, Porter and Stefani; 1998). They facilitate the building of relationships and connecting with one another, which has a significant impact on communication, directly on its relational level and indirectly on the factual one. Teachers who use interactive journals have an excellent opportunity to discover things they have in common with their students. By finding personal similarities, they are able to validate their students’ experiences and ways of knowing and doing. They can also build educational experiences on the common ground and advance their own understanding of other cultures. The knowledge of potential alternative interpretations of reality points at the major role played by culture which is like a cultural lens through which interactions are viewed (Gudykunst, 1992). Gudykunst (1992: 178) claims that culture-specific erroneous interpretations of communicative behaviours stem from an inability to distinguish three basic stages, such as description, interpretation, and evaluation, in decoding the meanings sent by the speaker. Description involves a communicator’s sensory experience of an interaction (e.g. what was seen or heard). The most objective description is the one that renders an accurate and concrete account of the physical action of an incident. Although description is not entirely culturefree, it is less culturally biased than interpretation or evaluation. Interpretation involves an explanation of why or how something has happened based on the receiver’s cultural experience and expectations with regards to that event. Finally, evaluation is either a positive or negative judgement concerning the social significance attributed to the observed behaviour. Knowing about cultural differences allows teachers to keep observations of their students’ behaviours at a descriptive level, withholding judgements until explanations for their behaviour, such as cultural differences, are explored. The knowledge of the interlocutor as well as of how to gather information about him/her reduces the danger of misjudgement, enabling teachers to learn the most effective ways of gathering accurate cultural and individual information about their students. It will assist them in understanding the nature of the experiences the students bring to school and in making personal connections to provide support for learning both

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within and outside the classroom (Hollins, 1996: 62). The most important are such aspects of the students’ culture as are evident in their social interaction in the classroom, especially the expectations they hold for the schooling process. Etta Hollins (1996) and William B. Gudykunst (1992) discuss several ways of gathering both culture-specific and individual information about students. Observation of their behaviours, both in interaction with school mates and with the teacher him-/herself is quite efficient although the teacher’s awareness of cultural variables, his/her identity as well as the type of interaction (e.g. formal or informal) affect the amount of the information gathered. Teachers can also use written records such as journals, life stories, biographical accounts, questionnaires and other activities or projects that invite students to bring their lives into the classroom and curriculum. One thing to remember is that teachers cannot rely on just one data source as they may easily run the risk of making decisions based on information that is limited or inaccurate. In relation to the know-how part of intercultural communicative competence, there are several arguments for not stopping at the level of knowledge and awareness, especially if one is interested in building students’ actual competence in intercultural situations. Milton J. Bennett (1998) argues that the general intercultural theory is needed in the process. Its role consists in helping not only understand why different communication patterns exist but also laying the foundation for possible adaptation to a new culture. Consequently, the general intercultural theory should be explored by teachers, especially in the light of recent developments in foreign-language teaching. The foreign-language classroom should be transformed into a microcosm where group identities converge in an ever more hybrid world, where misunderstanding is common and where students’ behaviours towards their peers seriously affect communication success. Interactive experiences as well as learners’ increased autonomy and independence, peer-learning, co-operative learning and other alternative forms of structuring the learning experience may be helpful. Many of these changes are met with suspicion, preconceptions and rejection by our learners because they imply new ways of being and doing in the classroom, new patterns and rules of behaviour, not to mention new and different beliefs and concepts as to what a classroom, and more specifically a language classroom, is supposed to be. Given these challenges, it is necessary to devote specific attention to developing students’ competence to adapt to and work with others despite different identities, interests, preferences and backgrounds, as well as to adapt to the new learning experience despite the fear it engenders.

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How to apply successfully the aforementioned theories for the foreignlanguage classroom causes another challenge for teachers. Earlier it was argued that foreign-language students possess a distinct need for intercultural communicative competence, even though they may not plan to travel to a foreign country. Today’s culturally hybrid world and classroom need individuals with increased awareness of the different ways of being and perceiving. Students need to be open and prepared for new experiences, to be trained in self-reflection and to be flexible enough to adapt to and work with others. To answer the demand teachers should structure the classroom experience in such a way as to encourage students’ exploration and appreciation of multiple perspectives. There are also specific language items that should be made available to students in order to aid them in the use of language that fosters more inclusive, open attitudes and relationships in the classroom. The interactions between students should be made more meaningful and authentic. They should involve not only the teacher but mainly class peers and their aim is to make their participants share information, ideas, opinions and personal reflections in comfortable, supportive spaces in which students can express themselves following the principle of multiple perspectives. The principle consists in promoting a diversity of opinion and interests, which prevents ostracism of differences as well as stereotyping and rejection of interests and hobbies fraught with otherness. In classrooms advocating more autonomy and independence for learners, where students may be involved in training on learning strategies and study skills, it may be important to discuss the need to be open to new experiences and ways of learning. Classroom activities are structured in such a way that they encourage more active behaviours and more responsibility on the part of students for the learning process. A great part of the training of learners involves a confrontation with expectations, beliefs and attitudes regarding the learning process, and the development of students’ openness towards new experiences. Students who are aided in developing a higher level of adaptability, independence and flexibility will more likely be able to face new situations in the future and, by adapting to it, work with others. This ability is also of utmost importance in today’s foreign-language classroom, where activities and tasks require from students not only to share information, but also to use it in order to collaborate on group tasks and projects. In many cases, teachers allow students to perpetuate divisions in the classroom by assuming that their reluctance to work with others is a natural but insurmountable obstacle. Such behaviours and attitudes of rejection, stereotyping and otherness discourage the

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collaborative classroom, and in the future, a society built on co-operation rather than competition. To create pro-collaborative attitudes in students they should also be taught the language that shows involvement and interest in others and consequently facilitates group work and interaction activities. In conclusion, it must be stressed that a foreign-language classroom offers to students an experience of acting as intercultural communicators. Its authenticity is not a given but it is carefully created by both the teacher and his/her students who get engaged in a difficult process of dealing with strangeness. Intercultural communicative competence which they aim at developing is to provide them with knowledge, attitudes and skills to overcome their fear, uncertainty, one-dimensional picture of reality, and stereotyping, to act as modern global citizens. A foreign-language classroom is an opportunity to prepare for the future where encounters with others will be a daily experience.

CHAPTER FIVE TECHNIQUES FOR DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Introduction Simulation games, case studies, critical incidents, role plays and culture assimilators belong to the group of techniques used by language teachers to help their students acquire intercultural skills in more active and authentic ways. Their value consists in enabling the students to experience, although in the classroom, the challenges, pitfalls, opportunities and rewards of intercultural communication as they engage their participants intellectually, emotionally and also somatically in the interactions. Since the techniques differ in their impact on the development of intercultural communicative competence, they should be combined together and carefully tailored to their participants’ actual knowledge, skills and needs. They will be discussed in the following sections in a more detailed way in order to sensitize foreign or secondlanguage teachers to their positive as well as negative potential.

5.1 Simulation games and their methodological value Simulation games have proven to be an extremely valuable technique for foreign-language learning as they prepare learners for a successful participation in intercultural communication. They encourage thinking and creativity, help students develop and practise new language and behavioural skills in a relatively non-threatening setting, and create the motivation and involvement necessary for learning to occur. The use of simulation games as training tools is not new but its significant growth has been experienced in their development and use since the 1990s. A simulation can be defined as a general term referring to constructing an operational model that replicates behavioural processes (Zuckerman

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and Horn, 1973). It is an operating imitation of a real process whose participants are provided with interactive opportunities to practise new behaviours and experiment with new attitudes as well as ideas in a nonthreatening and nonjudgmental environment. Simulations are particularly useful in intercultural training, since, in a very short time, they can stimulate cognitive and affective understanding and broaden participants’ perspectives. For Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (1986) simulation is a very effective means to create learners’ cultural awareness and to make them learn the value of culture in interpersonal communication so as to relate better to others and to fulfill social transactions more efficiently. They evaluate it by examining its impact on realizing three functions of language in interpersonal encounters: structural, functional and interactional. The simulation method follows from the interactional view which sees the language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transactions between individuals. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and organized by patterns of exchange and interaction or may be left unspecified, to be shaped by the inclinations of learners as interactors. (Richards and Rodgers, 1986: 17)

In Ken Jones’ approach, in turn, the stress is put on the duties and obligations of the parties involved in a simulation game. To fulfill their roles, students must relate to others by means of effective social skills which means that simulation teaches co-operation and social skills, the same as in a real communication context. Its pragmatic value derives also from the communicators’ ability to negotiate their behaviours in response to any change within the interaction. Jones specifies the conditions under which simulation is effective. He claims that for a simulation to occur the participants must accept the duties and responsibilities of their roles and functions, and do the best they can in the situation in which they find themselves (Jones, 1982: 113). Simulation games provide their participants with a comprehensible input because students engage in genuine communication forgetting that they are learning a foreign language. They also have the opportunity to try out new behaviours in a safe environment, which encourages them to develop long-term motivation to master a given language. Finally, the simulated life-like problems help them develop their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The roles specifically defined in the simulation method either through verbal instructions or role cards often cause the students to take new

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responsibilities they might not be accustomed to. Alvin Burns and James Gentry (1998) recommend that during simulations instructors should pay close attention to the introduction of experiential exercises so as not to make them too challenging for the students and eventually discourage them from engaging in the game. The advice seems especially relevant if we consider the impact of culture on a learner’s autonomy. If s/he comes from a culture where teacher-centred classrooms are the rule, a simulation where s/he is more active than a teacher may look difficult and threatening. To quote Ken Jones (1982), the teacher becomes the Controller, and controls the event in the same way as a traffic controller, helping the flow of traffic, but not telling individuals which way to go. The principle is consistent with Robin Scarcella’s and Rebecca Oxford’s (1992: 55) concepts. Unlike in a traditional, teacher-centred classroom structure, the teacher keeps a relatively low profile and students are free to interact with each other spontaneously, which reduces their anxiety and facilitates their learning. However, playing the role of a controller, the teacher must take on some additional responsibilities in simulation. In particular, s/he must keep learners motivated by stimulating their curiosity with relevant materials aiming to achieve a creative tension promoting active learning (Burns and Gentry, 1998: 91). The simulation technique should be integrated with other languagelearning activities and adapted to students’ needs and to their language level. If these guidelines are followed, it can be a rewarding experience for both the students and the teacher. As simulation games serve as excellent communicative activities, they can be a powerful language-learning tool. On the surface, the aim of all language games is to get the students to use a foreign language; but their true reason is to make them use the target language for specific purposes, e.g. to persuade and negotiate their way to obtain desired results, which involves productive and receptive skills simultaneously. Dorothy Sisk (1995: 88) while discussing the use of simulation, referred to them as one of the fundamental activities which provide a means for making any topic relevant to current reality. In a game where participants take on their roles in a limited time and space framework, choices are made to follow a certain course of action which may anticipate their future life roles. The manipulation of time and space is therefore one of the most meaningful aspects of simulations. Through them participants eliminate the interval between learning and applying their knowledge to real life. They tie the present, the future, and their skills, values, and knowledge together to make the ongoing situation relevant and useful. Other major benefits derive from the fact that simulation games include

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critical thinking which they motivate and reward. Their participants analyze possible moves and probable consequences of those moves, plan rationally and think through countermoves. Simulation games also encourage intuitive thinking as players make spontaneous decisions, perhaps unreasonable ones, and learn to understand the role of unpredictability in life. As in real life where we are rarely completely in control of our lives, the simulated reality also includes many chance variables. Multilevel learning is another advantage because simulation operates at three levels: (1) learning information embodied in the context and dynamics of the game; (2) learning processes simulated by the game; and (3) learning the relative costs and benefits, risks, and potential rewards of alternative strategies for making decisions (Sisk,1995: 88). Through information, processes, and strategies, simulation provides participants with experience of operating on all three levels simultaneously and demonstrates a built-in complexity of the decision-making process. Another strong point of simulation games which build upon the knowledge and skill of their participants is an ability to teach social values, such as competition, co-operation, sense of community and empathy (Sisk, 1995: 88). Participants see clearly that they must cooperate and also be responsible for their decisions in order to play and win. They experience the way their decisions influence not only their own future but also of the whole team they belong to, offering them opportunities for self-awareness. Simulation games allow participants to recognize their personal responsibility in dealing constructively and effectively with the environment. They can also increase their knowledge of specific terms, concepts, and facts as well as of structures and relationships, they help them develop intellectual and social skills and attitudes by simulating them in the games. Encouraging questions that help make sense of social systems in a global context and experimenting with new ideas and behaviours are the strengths of simulation games. According to James Coleman (1966), the use of simulation reverses a common pattern of learning because instead of focusing merely on the learning outcomes, participants are rather interested in achieving the simulation goals, which makes the learning process more natural and effective. Due to many similarities between simulation games and real-life situations learning continues more easily beyond the game and participants continue to experience insights into their own lives and the lives of others. In the low-risk environment of the classroom, participants tend to be more actively involved in problem-solving situations and engage in considerable interaction and communication, which fosters a sense of trust in the group.

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Herman Kahn (1962) used simulation games to activate the natural human tendency that motivates people to take sides, which creates the feelings and zeal of partisanship, motivating engagement in and learning from doing things together. Thus, simulation encourages a close working relationship between the leader and other participants making him/her act as a facilitator and a mediator in the learning process. As follows from an action research conducted by Thi Thanh Huyen Nuyen and Khuat Thi Thu Nga (2003), simulation games help create a relaxed atmosphere, competitiveness, and motivation in the classroom. Consequently, students seem to learn more quickly and retain the learned materials better than in a stressful and uncomfortable environment. The benefits of using simulation games in language-learning can be summed up in nine points: they are learner-centred, promote communicative competence, create a meaningful context for language use, increase learning motivation, reduce learning anxiety, integrate various linguistic skills, encourage a creative and spontaneous use of language, construct a co-operative learning environment, and finally, they foster participatory attitudes of the students (2003: 117).

5.1.1 Examples of simulation games The best way to understand simulation games would be to explore briefly a few different examples. Each of the games described below applies one of the simulation procedures. The format was described by Gillian Porter Ladousse (1987) and consists of eleven factors necessary for a game to finish successfully. They are the following: level, time, aim, language, organization, preparation, warm-up, procedure, follow-up, remarks and variations. Level indicates the minimum (and sometimes maximum) threshold at which the activity can be carried out. Time may depend on whether students need to read articles, reports, etc., and it refers to the time needed for the whole simulation to occur. Aim indicates the broader objective of each activity, such as developing confidence or becoming sensitive to the concepts expressed in language. Language stands for the particular components of language the students will need, such as its structures, functions, register, intonation patterns, etc. Organization refers to whether the activity involves a pair work or group work, and in the latter case, how many students should be in each group. Preparation is understood as the activities needed to be done before the simulation has started. Warm-up involves ideas on which to focus the students’ attention and their interests. Procedure consists of a step-by-step guide to the activity.

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In order to be more effective, Jack C. Richards (1985: 174), for example, recommends a six step procedure to activities: preliminary activity, a model dialogue, learning to perform the game with the help of cards, listening to recordings of native speakers performing the activity with cards, follow-up, and repeating the sequence. However, many simulation procedures do not follow all of these steps nor should they conform to such restrictive guidelines (cf. Kaplan, 1997). Follow-up indicates activities that are done after the game, often as homework. Remarks may be of general interest or they may sensitize students to special difficulties that may arise in the process. Variations can be used with different types of classes or different levels. The most important part of any simulation game is debriefing. Each simulation game tends to emphasize particular aspects of an intercultural experience. While debriefing intercultural simulation games, we can encourage participants to apply what the game simulates to specific reallife situations. For example, after playing Barnga we can ask participants to address what might be done when someone is placed in the predicament of not knowing the rules in a new culture but thinking they do. Bafa Bafa raises, among other sensitive issues, the problem of adapting to another culture when its perceptions are biased by one’s own cultural view of, for example, the position of women in society or what constitutes appropriate interpersonal behaviour. Since process is at the heart of any simulation game, debriefing usually focuses on what happened, what its consequences were, how misperceptions led to mistakes, why and how certain strategies were effective, etc. Content issues such as cultural baggage, values, and adaptation models should also be addressed. In using simulation games, it is important that the facilitator should warm up the group with a brief introduction to the game and offer an explanation of its rules and patterns. A certain amount of confusion may and usually does occur at the beginning of any new activity, but it is usually temporary. Clarity is essential, but it often comes as the activity progresses. While the participants are playing the game, the facilitator should be alert and observant but as unobtrusive as possible. At the end, participants should be helped, consciously, to give up their simulated roles to enter into a discussion about their experience. An analysis of Gillian Porter Ladousse’s eleven factors as applied to David Crookall’s and Rebecca L. Oxford’s (1990) Island Game shows how the above procedures can be followed in practice. The game is both an extended ice-breaker and a collective decision-making activity which can help develop a range of skills in the target language. In the simulated

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situation a group has been stranded on an island where a volcano will erupt in 30-60 minutes. Their main concern is to make up and implement an escape plan very quickly. There are lifeboats to carry all to safety on neighbouring islands, but an overall group consensus must be reached on who will go where, with whom, etc. The procedure is shown below (1990: 21-22): Level: Advanced Time: 1 1/2 hours for the main game, 1 hour for follow-up Aim: Ice breaking, developing skills in decision-making and cooperation. Language: Language skills are used to reveal things about oneself, express agreement and disagreement, persuade, defend a point of view, elicit co-operation, analyze data, and make judgments. Different skills are enhanced such as listening, understanding directions, initiating, speaking, writing and reading. Organization: Whole class and small groups of 3-7 students. Preparation and Warm-up: Students must not talk. They are given information on lifeboat numbers and capacities, neighbouring islands, etc. Each student must complete a ‘personal profile’ with accurate information on sex, age, nationality, background, employment, practical skills, and with the top three preferred islands indicated. Procedure: The group makes decisions to reach a consensus. The teacher makes sure that everyone stands up and moves around. Changes can be made (such as boats being declared unseaworthy, or islands declared out of bounds) when a group seems to have made a decision "too easily." The time until the volcano explodes is periodically written on the board. Follow-up: Small groups discuss the five main factors that led to their decisions about forming groups, choosing islands and escape boats, etc. Variation: Each group develops a society on its new island, complete with a political structure. They draw up a set of community guidelines or a constitution. The number of simulation games is continually growing due to their value in the teaching-learning process. Bafa Bafa belongs to their first generation, other such as Tag Game, The Land of the Sphinx and Land of the Rainbow, Parle follow the same basic principle to make their participants experience intercultural communication and thus be able to understand it as well as their own reaction in the new setting. A short discussion of the games given below is pointed at their educational

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potential, resourcefulness as well as simplicity and attractiveness for the students (Hicks, 1981). Bafa Bafa, first designed in the mid-1970s, is still one of the most used and successful simulation games. Originally developed for the Navy, for intercultural misunderstandings faced by young sailors, Bafa Bafa immediately became a generic game for use in many multicultural settings: international and intercultural situations, domestic ‘diversity’ issues, teacher-student, doctor-patient, and any settings where two groups of different ‘cultures’ engage with one another. The cultures in the game are two hypothetical cultures: Alpha and Beta. They are carefully constructed to be different from one another and the basic principles and values on which each of them lies is e.g. leadership, style, family, work ethos, emotionality. In a very simple format, participants visit the other culture in small groups for a few minutes each. After each visit, each culture briefly discusses what happened and what was learnt during the visit. When everyone has visited the other group, the game is over. A carefully designed debriefing guides players to explore their interpretations (mostly misinterpretations because they were based only on the home culture experience of the one interpreting) and compare them to what actually was going on and why. Even though each visit was short, analogous to first encounters with a new culture, the insights are many and rich. The game takes 2 to 3 hours, and requires 2 facilitators and 2 rooms. It works very well in a non-threatening manner for any number of participants from 16 up. Larger numbers can be handled, too, but do require some very careful preparation. It uses artifacts, which require some time to assemble for the first run, and about an hour for successive runs. It provides rich internal discussions (after the visits) which make it a reservoir of insights and understandings. Tag Game constitutes another useful example. It is a short and highly participative activity. It can be used as an icebreaker or an introductory exercise to encourage a group to focus on similarities and differences so they can be openly discussed. Participants wear tags of different shapes and colours and walk around silently observing each other. Then they are instructed, still silently, to form groups. After at least four rounds of forming new groups, they trade their original tags for new, unique tags. Again they observe, but do not talk, while they decide how to form groups during four more rounds. After the game, participants usually list obvious similarities and differences among people and eventually begin to identify more intangible abstract similarities and differences. They also discuss the strong attachment people have to likeness rather than diversity. In-

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group/out-group issues can arise from this game and be discussed. The game and debriefing can take less than half an hour. The Land of the Sphinx and Land of the Rainbow was developed in 1983 to enable a group of psychologists to better understand learning styles and to explore the concept of cerebral differences. The setting is the year 2050 and two cultures with distinct sets of values are created: the Sphinx and the Rainbow. Each culture is challenged with a necessity of selecting three projects to shape its future; one in education, one in research, and one in environment. In small groups, participants identify their three projects. The citizens of the Land of the Sphinx are people who trust logic and objectivity implicitly and order is very important, as are schedules and routine. Conversely, the Land of the Rainbow is inhabited by people who are interested in a deeper, larger, all-embracing reality, and they follow hunches. Before the game, a minimum of four travelers is selected to visit both lands during the activity period. They are asked to display enthusiasm and curiosity and told to be bold, open, and courageous during their encounters with the natives of each land. They experience different reactions to the questions they pose to members of the two lands. In the debriefing, participants usually discuss whether or not they were comfortable in the different lands to which they were assigned, and then the travelers are asked to select a land where they might like to remain as residents. The discussion centres on which environment is conducive to fulfilling aspirations, curiosity, and desires. Participants from different cultures often see similarities between the simulated cultures and their own cultures and openly discuss whether their land’s simulated culture is shaping the future that they feel is desirable. This game can be played with as many as one hundred participants. Larger numbers require creating several Sphinx and Rainbow lands and adding sufficient numbers of travellers to make visits to all of them. Parle is a simulation game that involves players who are representatives of ten countries (Shima, Myna, Ila, Usa, Pam, Bonay, Shivey, Lani, Ranu, and Bili). Each of the countries has a variety of factors to be considered: defence, available resources, and demography. The major theme of Parle is negotiation and interdependence among countries. Crisis incidents are introduced, such as a revolution in Ranu, as participants work towards solving global problems. In Parle participants experience a variety of leadership roles and through the use of crisis cards they are asked to negotiate and make decisions on a variety of issues such as tribal war, famine or revolution. The point in time during which the game is played can be altered to reflect the past, deal with the present, or project to the

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future. The only way countries can win is by co-operating and pooling resources. As already claimed, all simulation games are an invaluable aid in developing intercultural communicative competence. Although, they are just games, students tend to behave in a similar or even identical way as they do in reality. They solve their problems, judge actions of other group members, and react emotionally towards their defeats and successes. They feel fear, anger, happiness, and enjoyment. They head for the integration with a new society and want to gain its acceptance. They experience the very fact of being different – all its advantages and disadvantages. To survive, they construct a new world of their ego values, which have been saved when confronted with an unknown reality, and the values of the new group they belong to, now. They go through a painful metamorphosis as they learn about themselves. Thus, the main role of simulation games consists in experiencing something unknown, which cannot be learnt with the help of only theoretical knowledge. A deep insight into oneself can help understand what empathy is, provided that the verification of socially transferred stereotypes and prejudices becomes a direct experience of interlocutors. Simulation games test how their participants function in a world of obligations and prohibitions, regulations and norms of another reality. According to Anna Lubecka (1998: 70-73) apart from developing necessary extra- language skills, participants of simulation games learn how to use the language they are studying in a more natural way. They are not exposed to doing sets of lexical and grammatical exercises, but they really communicate as they are strongly motivated by a dramatic tension caused by the game to obtain and share pieces of information, which are immediately used for practical reasons. At the same time they feel secure because it is just a game, and even if they do not succeed in coping with their tasks, they are not going to be threatened by reality. Simulation games can be used once the students have achieved a good level of advancement. Otherwise, they will not be able to communicate freely in a foreign language. As a result, they will speak their mother tongue. Simulation games are mainly used for developing speaking, although as their participants often have to read the instructions very often, reading is also practised. To master writing, the students may be asked to prepare reports on how they have dealt with the task, describe various episodes and form similar games. There are many possibilities of working with simulation games and they depend mainly on teachers and students’ creativity.

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Apart from all the benefits connected with the development of intercultural communicative competence and language skills, simulation games bring a sort of entertainment to the lesson. Needless to say, they are a relaxing break which integrates the group and forms relations within the group. Additionally, what is even more important, they teach their participants social skills, e.g. how to co-operate and feel responsible for all the group members. If introduced carefully, simulations can be very effective for experiencing cultural principles and for creating cultural awareness because they offer an opportunity to be emotionally involved in intercultural learning and reflect upon cultural differences. The students learn to examine their perceptions and treat representatives of other cultures with empathy. A socio-cultural approach, on which simulation games are based, is the most recent approach currently applied in language teaching all over the world. Its major objective is to prepare learners for intercultural communication and a dialogue of cultures. We are provided with empirical evidence that socio-cultural strategies can be seen as one of the most efficient ways of achieving learners’ socio-cultural competence within communicative competence, and, intercultural communicative competence which prepares them for successful intercultural communication. Sandra Fowler (1986) stresses that the movement provided by a simulation game is often enough to start people teaching how to learn about other cultures. A highly motivating nature of simulation games makes them complementary tools to well-integrated training programmes.

5.2 Case studies The case-study technique has its modern roots in the use of court records, in cases presented to Harvard Law School students as early as late 19th century, and in the use of real-life business problems in Harvard Business School classes beginning in the early 1900s. The use of case studies in intercultural training in preparing the learner for interaction with cultures other than his/her own is also connected with anthropological research. Anthropologists have a long tradition of collecting life histories from different cultures as a way of learning about the normal and appropriate behaviour of their subjects. In an article published in 1960, the anthropologist Edward Hall describes a case in which a business deal fails because of cultural differences in the use of time and space (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990: 278). Today case studies comparable to Hall’s are used successfully with learners from many different types of business, government, and academic institutions, including foreign service personnel and family

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members, Peace Corps volunteers, corporate employees, university staff, and students. They provide participants with concrete examples of problems caused by cultural differences in communication and other behaviour patterns. To define a case study one should point out that it is usually a written account of a realistic situation, including sufficient details to enable the participants in a training programme to analyze the problems involved and to determine possible solutions (Nadler, 1995: 95). In practice, distinguishing a short case study from a critical incident or a text of a role play is sometimes difficult. A longer case study will usually contain several incidents, several characters, and details about the context of a situation. It usually takes place over a period of time and concludes with a problem for the reader to resolve. Case studies are most often associated with an instructor-led format. However, they can be also created for selfpaced instruction and for computer-based programmes. The components of a typical case study are the case itself, which may include separate descriptions of perspectives of different characters, followed by a set of questions. The questions are to be discussed in groups with an instructor in the role of a facilitator. Cases may also include supporting documents, such as readings, memoranda, organizational procedures, reports, even films or videos. Case studies can be used in the beginning, middle, or end of the teaching programme. The decision whether or not to use the case study technique in intercultural training depends on three basic factors: (1) the purpose of the case study in the course design and the learning objectives it supports, (2) the level of the course participants in relation to the sophistication of the material presented, and (3) the other learning strategies to be used. Case studies are used primarily to develop and refine cognitive skills, such as analysis and decision making. They also bear on the following intercultural training goals and objectives: identifying and solving problems which have their roots at least in part in intercultural differences; developing alternative approaches and strategies; and making decisions which take into account different cultural perspectives and their consequences for these decisions (Nadler, 1995). According to Robert Ross (1979: 142) case studies are designed as a technique for developing ways of approaching complex or stressful situations which can be practised in the safety of the classroom. He claims that: [The technique] will facilitate maximum understanding of those situations, of the people in them, and of the several outcomes that might result when one or another of the people emphasizes certain values rather than others.

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Case studies may be additionally used to develop awareness and appreciation of cultural differences and of the complexity of the types of situations participants are likely to encounter in inter- and intra-cultural settings abroad and in their own country. They also facilitate development and practising of skills in group dynamics, such as consensus building, managing discussions, influencing others to accept a certain point of view, and dealing with interactions in a multicultural group. Finally, they serve to develop information-collecting skills called forth in exploring the human and material resources. The case study should be used in tandem with more interactive techniques to increase its effectiveness. For example, some trainers present and discuss a case study and then have the participants act it out as a role play. Apart from unquestionable advantages it offers, the case study technique is constrained by a number of factors. Firstly, its proper application in view of the needs of a particular audience in the training programme is very time-consuming as it can take from an hour to half a day depending on how elaborate it is and how much information has to be collected for its construction. Secondly, the method is most effectively used when there is a minimum of 15 to 20 participants and a maximum of 40 to 60 participants, which is not always possible. Thirdly, it requires a special classroom arrangement to allow the participants to interact with each other and also with the trainer. Fourthly, as it is an experientiallearning technique, it demands from its users some openness and willingness to adopt the format. The trainees who have not had experience with the case-study approach require additional time to become familiar with it. As for advantages of the case study, it is one of the safest experientiallearning techniques because, among others, the participant does not have to perform in front of the whole group but does have the opportunity to speak in small groups. The problem-solving approach it uses draws on the knowledge and experience of the group, which results in a natural way of sharing knowledge and information and promotes peer learning. It reflects the actual complexities of intercultural interaction by showing that they are rarely as simple as they seem. It encourages participants to question the notion that there is one right way or one correct answer to the problem, helps them learn to weigh carefully the many factors which affect intercultural interaction, sensitizes them to snap judgments which may

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have negative consequences for the trainee once on the job or in the field and encourages them to appreciate the opinions of others.

5.3 Critical incidents Over the past thirty years, critical incidents have been used as a useful training tool in a wide variety of training programmes, not just intercultural, where achievement of increased understanding of human attitudes, expectations, behaviour, and interaction is an important goal. Relatively easy to develop and to conduct, they never fail to engage participants at a meaningful and personal level in examining attitudes and behaviours that might be critical to their effectiveness in the role for which they are preparing. Looking back at the history of critical incidents we realize that apparently, they were first used by John C. Flanagan (1954) for task analysis in developing job descriptions; later they were applied to assess training needs and to evaluate training programmes (Morton and Wight, 1963). In 1965, the first critical incidents and other situational tests were converted into instrumented, experiential exercises for use in Peace Corps training at Utah State University and Southwest Texas Teachers College. The Critical Incidents Exercise (CIE), a series of individual, small- and large-group activities where a number of critical incidents were analyzed and discussed, was included as a basic exercise in the Guidelines for Peace Corps Cross-Cultural Training (Wight and Hammons, 1970) and used since that time. Aside from its application in the training of Peace Corps volunteers, the CIE has been used in a variety of settings to prepare persons to live and work in other cultures, e. g. in business settings to train managers and their families or to train teachers working on or near American Indian reservations. In order to define the technique, we must first define critical incidents: they are brief descriptions of situations which cause a misunderstanding, a problem or a conflict due to cultural differences between interacting parties. They may also deal with difficulties of intercultural adaptation. Each incident gives only enough information to set the stage, describe what happened, and possibly provide the feelings and reactions of the parties involved. It does not explain the culture that the parties bring to the situation as it has to be discovered in the course of the exercise. It is highly unlikely to use only one incident in training as its effectiveness will be low. CIE usually consists of a number of incidents, dealing with different situations and revealing different aspects of their underlying culture.

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The basic purpose of the CIE is to confront participants with examples of the difficult, confusing and frustrating problems or conflict situations they may experience in interpersonal encounters across cultures or when adjusting to a new culture. Therefore, the incident should identify the main actors. The objectives of the exercise are to increase participants’ awareness of their own typical, idiosyncratic, and culturally determined interpretations and explanations of others’ behaviour as well as of their own attitudes and responses in new situations by means of critical comparisons. The participants are expected to clarify the cultural differences in their interpretation of the incidents, which should lead to an increase in their understanding of cultural diversity and normative differences between the cultures. At the same time they should become more aware of things they need to learn to have their goals met, which should motivate their learning. Finally, CIE may provide a basis for engaging in role plays that will build skills in handling problematic intercultural situations. In developing or selecting incidents for a given programme, the nature of the participants’ assignment should be identified, and the kinds of intercultural interactions they will take part in. Therefore, incidents must be selected on the basis of their relevance, breadth of coverage of important situations, insight into fundamental cultural differences and the types of problems and misunderstandings that arise from them. The relationships between the trainer and the trainees as well as basic psychological dimensions of interpersonal encounters should also be focused on. The number of incidents selected for a CIE usually depends on the time available for the exercise, but generally it is better to have too many incidents than too few to avoid the danger of leaving some issues aside. The optimum number is between ten and fifteen incidents representing various situations and cultural differences. The CIE can be easily used to confront participants with perplexing incidents they probably will not understand. This is a very effective way of getting their attention, convincing them of the importance of learning more about the other culture, and motivating them to do so. It is also a way of orienting the participants towards problem-solving and doing their own thinking in an experiential programme. Using the exercise at the beginning of the programme is also an effective way of eliciting typical, habitual, culturally determined ways of interpreting and dealing with various life-situations and demonstrating how inappropriate and ineffective such behaviour is in the intercultural context. Alternatively, the CIE can be used later in a programme to build on the cultural understanding participants have achieved through other means, to provide more specific examples of

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situations in which cultural differences will be manifested, and to test participants’ ability to apply their cultural understanding. When used as examples or illustrations of cultural differences identified earlier in the training, the incidents are more reinforcing than illuminating. CIEs have their own structure and procedures which have to be observed for their effectiveness. At the beginning, participants are asked to work individually on the incidents and send the assignment to the instructor in advance or introduce it when they arrive for the training programme. A brief written or verbal introduction and overview of the exercise, is followed by the participants reading the incidents and answering the questions. The second part of the exercise is devoted to small-group discussions. Its handling depends on the number of participants, availability of resource persons, and the instructor’s decision to participate in it or not. Discussions are more effective in a group that has a sufficient number of participants to provide a variety of views and opinions but small enough to allow each person to participate actively. The best results are achieved with no fewer than five or six persons and not more than eight or nine, not counting resource persons. With more than nine persons, it is better to break into two small groups, unless the number of resource persons is insufficient. The resource person or the trainer is encouraged not to take part in the group discussions as this might inhibit open participation. With written instructions given to the group and reinforced orally, participants are fully capable of managing and monitoring their own discussion. Finally, the groups will be asked to share the results of their discussions with the other groups in a general meeting. Who represents them in the large group is a decision that should be left up to them. They might even choose to have more than one spokesperson. Preferably two or three resource people from the other culture additionally differentiated along age, gender and education variables should be present in each small group to make available more than only one view on it. A variety in terms of views and experience should be considered a main criterion in the selection of resource persons. It should be made clear that the resource persons are not instructors but rather participants, all of whom are analyzing, discussing, and explaining what happened in the incidents from their own cultural perspective and also explaining their way of thinking and behaving. It is also a learning process for them as they get some deeper and more conscious insight into their own culture as well as the cultural perspectives of the host culture. The role of the facilitator consist in monitoring the work in small groups and to act as a time keeper. If s/he decides to participate, s/he must make sure not to act as an expert.

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A discussion of critical incidents during a general meeting of all small groups is crucial but as it is usually difficult to focus on all CIE’s aspects, they have to be prioritized to allow for their in-depth analysis with an active participation of all trainees. Recording scale values and seeking clarification of positions taken by individual participants are useful things a facilitator can do. S/he should additionally encourage an exploration of various perceptions, interpretations, explanations, and possible consequences. Another thing a facilitator may do is to keep a running record of the cultural differences identified during the discussion of incidents which should be then reviewed in the summary, duplicated and given to each participant. The summary processing of the critical incidents, particularly when used early in the programme, is an appropriate time to acquaint the trainees with the attribution theory (Lacy and Trowbridge, 1995: 191-192). Its knowledge helps an understanding of the cognitive processing of another culture. A lack of knowledge of another culture, or insufficient understanding of it, results in using the cognitive schemata from the mother culture for its interpretation. However, a mother-culture filtered attribution of motives, intentions, feelings, reactions, and objectives may cause mistakes that have serious consequences such as reducing the speaker’s effectiveness in the interaction and damaging his/her relations with the interlocutor. Critical incidents allow the trainees to examine many of the issues in the safety of the training programme and, one would hope, help them avoid making mistakes in real life.

5.4 Role plays A basic role play (McCaffery, 1995: 17-18) is a training activity where at least two participants take on characteristics of people other than themselves in order to attain a clearly defined objective. Their roles are usually fictitious, although they must be completely believable in the eyes of the trainees for the role play to work. If they are not actively involved in the role play, they function as observers. Although a role-play session may run up to an hour, which includes preparation and debriefing, the actual role play runs from five to seven minutes. The most appropriate use of role plays is to build skills. Therefore, role plays should be used in training programs that are aimed at building interpersonal skills, such as a management-training course that includes sessions on delegating, negotiating, managing conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and so on. There are many ways in which intercultural training (and language training) can include role plays, for example, by exploring such topics as

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meeting people from another culture for the first time; trying to persuade a culturally different interlocutor; carrying out international negotiations; and being assertive. In addition to skill development, there are other reasons for using role plays: creating attitudinal change (asking a manager to play the role of a secretary) or generating a sense of empathy for a person from another culture. In general, the objectives are met through a role reversal (i.e. inviting a Thai to play the role of a Canadian). Although the role play may have other purposes, it is important to emphasize that its major and most appropriate purpose is still skill building. It also has the most face validity. Its biggest advantage is that the technique teaches by means of acting and experiencing, which allows the students for an active use of the theoretical knowledge they have acquired. They can intellectualize a lot about, for example, international negotiations, but they will only begin to improve when they actually practices the skills it takes to be competent. A role play should never be conducted by itself; it should be done as part of a larger session that has a beginning, some clear training goals, established and well-developed training procedures, and an ending. The role, usually written on a card may sometimes be new for the studentactor, which enhances the challenge of performing it, e.g. the predeparture training for people going to live and work in another culture. Hence, the role play becomes practice for a future experience that can be predicted and for which there should be preparation. A well-written role play, which is a prerequisite for its didactic success, must be clear, concise and open-ended (it does not have a predetermined end), have some element of dynamic tension, and be interesting to participants, perhaps even use language from their everyday work or social settings. It must also follow a certain procedure. A role play should share the goals and rationale of the students who should understand its purpose and its value for their future activities. The linkage between the purpose of the role play and the reason for the group getting engaged in the training should be clear for every participant as otherwise they may fail to see their benefits. Sometimes a role-play session is reinforced by an actual model, in person or on a videotape. At other times, the model may be a description of a certain skill or approach to an interpersonal situation, which facilitates the participants’ sharing the situation, characters (roles), and details of the role-play. The protagonist role must be allocated to one of the participants as they will identify with and practise it. The role of the instructor consists in reinforcing the goals and allowing participants to practise skills in a comfortable atmosphere which shows his/her openness with participants, engagement and expertise. S/he should also know how

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to manage time to allow participants to prepare for the task, to understand the value of the role play, to reflect upon the skills that the course is highlighting and the language they use while performing. Without the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the role play continually experienced by the trainees, they will not be able to explore its rich educational potential (Fowler and Mumford, 1995).

5.5 Culture assimilators The culture assimilator (also called intercultural sensitizer) is another popular technique of intercultural training. It uses a series of scenarios that involve some elements of culture clash or misunderstanding to prepare people for interacting effectively with culturally different others. A participant is asked to read a scenario and then select the best explanation for the incident under discussion. A feedback on the appropriateness of the choice is then received. The reasoning behind a culture assimilator is that through repeated exposure to a situation or a scenario, the trainee will learn to make attributions similar to those made by members of the culture involved (Paige, 2004). Fred E. Fiedler, Terence R. Mitchell and Harry C. Triandis (1970) claim that the development of an effective culture assimilator is a rather complex process. First of all, there is no single and universal culture assimilator as different activities are needed for different pairs of cultures. It is due to the fact that the activity has a form of programmed learning experience designed to expose members of one culture to some of the basic concepts, attitudes, role perceptions, customs and values of another culture. Furthermore, assimilators can be general or specific; hence they may train an individual to behave effectively in a narrow set of social situations, or in a broad group of social situations. The content of assimilators can also vary greatly. Some assimilators emphasize the interpersonal attitudes that contrast the learner’s culture and the target culture; other assimilators focus on the customs of the target culture, while still others concentrate on the value contrasts of two cultures. On some occasions it is hard to estimate which type of assimilator is maximally useful in a particular situation. However, it might seem obvious to postulate that a balanced assimilator containing an equal number of general and specific items, and concerned with each of the aforementioned areas of content does improve interpersonal interaction in multicultural settings. One basic premise of all culture assimilators is that the critical problems in multicultural encounters occur in areas where there are the

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greatest divergences in norms, customs and values between two cultures. Where no differences exist, there will be little cause for conflict. Thus, the problem lies in identifying the culturally critical concepts and behaviours, and in providing the trainee with a series of experiences in which s/he must symbolically cope with them. Only through a careful analysis of the subjective culture will the trainee be able to manage the situation. A skillfully constructed culture assimilator should be regarded as a useful technique for the instruction of members of one culture to behave effectively in social and task situations involving members of another culture. Three particular strengths of this approach are: 1) the training depends on a detailed analysis of empirically derived critical cultural information; 2) it provides an active training procedure; 3) it improves the effectiveness and satisfaction of those trained with the technique when they are compared with another group prepared by means of another activity.

CHAPTER SIX INVESTIGATING THE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF POLISH STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

Introduction In these last chapters the author will concentrate on discussing the procedure of researching intercultural communicative competence among the students of English in Polish colleges. The first section will describe the course in intercultural communication. The main methodology taking into account the objectives of the study as well as its assumptions will then be analyzed in depth. The major research tools will be demonstrated and the discussion of their application will follow. The author will also focus on the target group and their cultural background affecting the development of intercultural communicative competence. As intercultural sensitivity is regarded as the main determinant of the development of intercultural communicative competence, ways of assessing it before and after the course in intercultural communication will be highlighted thereafter. On the basis of the investigation and once the careful analysis of the research findings has been done, the author will be able to create the culture-specific profile of the students of English who voluntarily participated in the study. It is anticipated that the profile might be generalized and subsequently applied to other groups of students with similar backgrounds both in Poland and abroad.

6.1 The course in intercultural communication and its description The academic course is the first step in the long and never-ending process of institutionalized and formal learning how to communicate within an intercultural setting as communication itself never ends. It only evolves in time following the quick pace of changes in our lives. The

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syllabus of an introductory course in intercultural communication, which is offered to the students of Year 3 in the selected colleges, holds suggestions for how to teach its elements and develop its necessary skills. It tries to combine all the essential theoretical assumptions having at the same time a very practical approach. Its aim is to make the students develop a special kind of intercultural sensitivity and awareness, act outside their ethnocentric cognitive and emotional schemata, and finally, follow a simple rule that description and interpretation precede evaluation. The course instructors have formulated them as an objective to form in the students an attitude of intercultural sensitivity, openness to, interest in and understanding of multicultural aspects of the modern world, culturespecific phenomena, both local and global, in order to allow for an active participation in a variety of culture-specific forms and methods of interpersonal communication among the inhabitants of the ‘global village’. The introductory course of intercultural communication consists of 30 contact hours offered to full-time students. It embraces a wide range of topics grouped according to eight areas of interest, which in some cases, have been further subdivided. The first issue discussed at the beginning of the course of intercultural communication is devoted to socio-economic and historical reasons, which led to the creation of an independent branch of science called intercultural communication. A short historical overview of the most important factors regarded as the foundation of the new science are highlighted. A discussion of the most fundamental concepts in intercultural communication follows. It presents an insight into subsequent issues such as: the tripartite model of culture; the cultural melting pot vs. the salad bowl models; socio-demographic components of culture; heroes and myths; semantic changes and the concepts ‘stranger’ and ‘domestic stranger’. From the Three Levels of Culture, the students learn that Edgar Schein (1992) offered an important contribution to defining what organizational culture and culture tout court actually is. Schein is responsible for the division of culture into three levels: 1) artifacts at the surface, those aspects which can be easily discerned, yet are hard to understand, 2) espoused values (underlying artifacts), which are conscious strategies, goals and philosophies; and finally 3) basic assumptions and values (the core), or essence, of culture represented by the basic assumptions that are difficult to discern because they exist at a largely unconscious level – yet they provide the key to understanding why things happen the way they do. The concepts of melting pot and salad bowl as two basic models of understanding culture and cultural diversity are the next topics under

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discussion. Their proper understanding is basic for developing an ethnorelative attitude. The salad bowl concept suggests that the integration of the many different cultures of the U.S. residents is combined like a salad. The concept is opposed to the more prolific notion of a cultural melting pot where cultures lose their individual uniqueness. In Canada, on the other hand, the concept of a cultural mosaic is more popular. In the salad bowl model, various American cultures are juxtaposed – like salad ingredients – but do not merge together into a single homogeneous culture. Each culture keeps its own distinct qualities. The idea proposes a society of many individual, pure cultures, and the term has become more politically correct than the melting pot metaphor, since the latter suggests that ethnic groups may be unable to preserve their cultures. The role of stereotypes and auto-stereotypes in intercultural communication is also mentioned in the syllabus. The role of language in creating and promoting ethnic stereotypes and gender stereotypes is discussed. The issue seems to be crucial in the Europe of the 21st century which is based on diversity, pluralism and freedom, particularly of expression. Ethnic stereotypes are defined as generalized representations of particular ethnic groups and composed of what is thought to be typical characteristics of its members. Such generalizations are not based on objective truth but are rather subjective and tend to use an unverifiable content-matter, which results in prejudice. Within the concept of multiculturalism, being the fourth area under discussion, its ambiguous nature – a chance for, or a barrier to, the prosperity of modern societies is focused on. First of all, the term multiculturalism is defined as acceptance and/or promotion of cultural diversity. In its context, students are sensitized to the value of diversity and its potential richness. The metaphor of a global village which illustrates the multiculturalism of modern societies draws the course participants’ attention to the fact that multiculturalism has become a fact of life and a challenge to everybody. The concepts of children born into extended families, and culture shock, are also presented as they are a potential experience of an average person in the modern world. The process of communication and its basic model constitutes another big thematic bloc. A discussion of the role of linguistic and cultural context with an emphasis on the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis is followed by a presentation of various models of culture, i.e. by Clyde Kluckhohn, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars and Edward T. Hall. Communication is examined as a process of the communicators’ identity negotiation, which cues the introduction of the theory of Stella Ting-Toomey (1993), who was the first one to apply the concept of Identity Negotiation to the field of

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intercultural communication. Her concept of ‘multiple self-identity images’, e.g. cultural, social or personal identity images, which exert influence both on peoples’ communicative motivation and the sense of identity coherence, shows the value of the relational aspect in communication exchanges. Sociolect and idiolect are the other two topics dealt with during the course and they are designed to sensitize the students to intracultural differences. Sociolect is a very notable phenomenon of present-day societies and widely investigated. It is a social dialect spoken by a particular group, such as working-class or upper-class speech. The evidence confirms that different social classes use language differently. In the case of idiolect, we investigate a language variety unique to an individual. It is basically manifested by patterns of vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation. Every individual’s language production is in a sense unique. The course stresses the need to familiarize its participants with models of culture which allow for a systematic approach to cultural diversity and facilitate a prediction and anticipation of potential misunderstanding with communicators from particular cultures. Such concepts as low/highcontext cultures, polychronic vs. monochromic cultures from the model of Edward T. Hall (1959), as well as the dimensions of cultural diversity, which form the models of Geert Hofstede (1980) and Charles HampdenTurner and Fons Trompenaars (1993) (e.g. individualism vs. collectivism, high vs. low power distance, universalism vs. particularism, masculinity vs. femininity) are introduced and their value for intercultural communication is shown. As the verbal and non-verbal components of intercultural communication constitute an important issue, they are also covered by the course syllabus. A contrastive, culture-relative analysis of discourse, speech acts (compliments, requests, invitations, apologies) and conversational rule is to increase the sensitivity of the potential intercultural communicator to the issue of culture in each communication act. The roles of prosodic features and non-verbal means of communication are also explored, as although often ignored or underestimated, they are very powerful means of expression. They usually express the speaker’s emotional state and communicate some extra information, which may not be successfully encoded by grammar or choice of vocabulary. At least two reasons support the study of non-verbal means of communication. Firstly, non-verbal communication dominates the communication process even though for most speakers verbal means are the basic medium. Secondly, most misunderstandings, distortions of meaning and conflicts that are accounted

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for by non-verbal messages are more difficult to deal with in comparison to the verbal ones. This is so because they tend to be sent subconsciously by the speakers, though their interlocutors may read them as intended pieces of information understood within their own interpretational schemata. Moreover, non-verbal failures are rarely, if ever, clarified and as such they create an impression of the speaker's dishonest, disrespectful or even aggressive treatment of the listener. Emotional integrity is at stake and as we all know it is much easier to make up for cognitive mistakes than for a hurt ego. The course addresses the issue and aims at acquainting the students with the repertoires of non-verbal means of communication and their cultural relativity, e.g. gestures, facial expression, kinesics, proxemics and olphatics. The closing session of the intercultural communication course is devoted to political correctness and its impact on interpersonal communication at the crossroads of cultures. The students are given a definition and various examples where there is an effort to minimize social and institutional offence in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, disability, and age-related contexts. The lecturer additionally introduces the notion of genderlect, which was invented by Deborah Tannen (1994) and refers to a sociolect associated with a particular language used by women and men. As a result of the session the relationship between genderlect and political correctness becomes more obvious. The course is conducted by means of interactive lecture. Additionally, an inclusion of case studies and simulation games as a very practical realization of the intercultural communication theory contributes to the students’ more successful understanding of their role as intercultural communicators.

6.2 The main objectives and assumptions of the study There is an increasing need for developing intercultural communicative competence among a continually growing number of speakers. The aim of the present research is to measure the level of intercultural communicative competence of the students of English Philology at four Polish colleges. The second aim, directly related to the first one, consists in creating a cultural profile of the Polish intercultural communicator who is a student of English. Hopefully, considering the type of education provided by foreign language departments in colleges in Poland, the profile will be generally valid, which should help tailor the teaching curricula to the needs of the students attending a course in intercultural communication more efficiently.

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The research has been incentivized by its practical dimensions and its usefulness. Although intercultural communication has become a field widely researched in Poland, so far no systematic investigations have been conducted that have used standardized measuring instruments to evaluate the level of intercultural communicative competence of Polish students and intercultural communicators. Inspired by the research into intercultural sensitivity conducted by Milton J. Bennett in 1986, Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta in 2000 as well as Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg in 2002, the author has decided to check and prove that the extra-linguistic determinants of intercultural communicative competence are of much higher significance than verbal language when determining one’s communication success in intercultural encounters. Following this line of reasoning, it instantly becomes self-evident that intercultural sensitivity performs the role of the essential non-verbal component affecting a proper development of other communicative skills. Hence, it was decided to limit the field of investigation to the examination of intercultural sensitivity. Additionally, it is assumed that there exists a positive correlation between participants’ intercultural communicative competence and the content of an introductory course in intercultural communication offered in the last year of English Language Studies, because as previously stated by Milton J. Bennett (1986) a speaker’s education, if properly tailored to his/her needs, might greatly account for his/her intercultural development. Thus, the research data will also serve to evaluate the impact of formal education realized by means of a specialized course in intercultural communication aimed at developing intercultural communicative competence. These assumptions lead to formulating three separate but crucial aspects of the present research. First of all, considering a lack of proper tools and insufficient investigation in the field, it was imperative to develop a means of measuring intercultural communicative competence. Moreover, analyzing why intercultural sensitivity plays the role of the main extra-linguistic determinant of intercultural communicative competence came to be of central importance to the author. Finally, as a result of the investigation it became possible to create the cultural profile of a Polish intercultural communicator who is a student at a foreignlanguage department in a Polish college. Because intercultural sensitivity is defined as the ability to be aware of other cultures and to be able to accept the differences resulting from them, it was also rightly posited by Milton J. Bennett (2004) that if individuals are taught how to confront cultural differences by becoming more sophisticated and sensitive to them, they may predict at least some of their

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misunderstandings and failures and ultimately eliminate them. Therefore, the author’s task was to design a tool, which could be used successfully to measure intercultural sensitivity, just as Bennett devised his Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity in 1986. DMIS was later treated as a framework explaining the reactions of people to cultural differences characterized by certain attitudes and behaviours in four stages of their intercultural development. Also, Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta (2000) identified intercultural sensitivity as a basic dimension of intercultural communicative competence. For them the concept embraces individuals’ emotional desire to acknowledge, appreciate, and accept cultural differences, their multiple perspectives on an event or behaviour, their recognition of their own cultural values and those of others as well as their empathy and ability to adjust to different ways of communicating. That is why the author invented a questionnaire that would incorporate all the skills mentioned above in order to validate them with his students. The present discussion would not be complete without the most recent approach to intercultural sensitivity proposed by Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg (2002), who investigated three conceptual dimensions of intercultural communication. For them intercultural communicative competence is an umbrella concept that consists of a person’s cognitive, affective, and behavioural abilities relevant in the process of intercultural communication. Intercultural awareness is the cognitive dimension of intercultural communicative competence, intercultural adroitness acts as a behavioural aspect and intercultural sensitivity performs the role of the affective dimension of intercultural communicative competence.

6.3 Research methodology in intercultural communication Most of the research tools and methods widely used to investigate intercultural communicative competence and measure intercultural sensitivity have been borrowed from social sciences, ethnography and anthropology. Amongst them, the most often applied are: self-reflection, participant observation, qualitative interviews and questionnaires. For the purpose of the this research and to enhance their advantages and reduce the potential drawbacks, they have been combined so as to allow for more objective and reliable results whose validity could thus be generalized. The first method, self-reflection, helps individuals and groups reflect on their experiences and actions in order to engage in a process of continuous learning. It enables recognition of the paradigms – assumptions, frameworks and patterns of thought and behaviour – that

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shape our thinking and action. It also allows for the exploration of broader questions or problems pertaining to the scope of research. Moreover, it usually ignites an interest in a given issue, encourages its investigation and contributes to the formulation of a working hypothesis and research questions. It helps conceptualize the research aims and then monitor and control the research at each of its particular stages. Its role consists mainly in ‘setting the stage’ for proper investigation which applies other methods in order to collect empirical material for further analysis. A participant observation, on the other hand, has its roots in traditional ethnographic research, whose objective is to help investigators learn the perspectives held by study populations. It always takes place in locations believed to have some relevance to the research questions. Danny L. Jorgensen (1989: 12-13) stresses a great value and reliability of the method because the researcher approaches the respondents in their own environment. As a member of a community under investigation, s/he tries to learn what life is like for an ‘insider’ while remaining, inevitably, an ‘outsider’. The data obtained through participant observation serve as a check against respondents’ subjective reporting of what they believe and do. The method is also useful for gaining an understanding of physical, social, cultural, and economic contexts in which the study participants live, of their mutual relations, behaviours and activities as well as ideas, norms and events which are part of their life. It also enables researchers to develop a familiarity with the cultural setting that will prove of importance throughout the project. The value of the method lies in providing researchers with an opportunity to gain personal experience of the issue they investigate which gives them a deeper understanding of it. There is no substitute for witnessing or participating in human interaction. Through participant observation, researchers can additionally uncover factors important for a thorough understanding of the research problem which were unknown when the study was designed (Spradley, 1980: 124). This is a great advantage of the method because, although the answers to the research questions are truthful, the questions asked may not always be totally relevant to the research aim. Thus, what a researcher can learn from participant observation helps him/her not only to understand the data collected through other methods (such as interviews), but also to design questions, which better suit the method, and consequently achieve full understanding of the phenomenon under review. As claimed by Kathleen De Walt and Coral Wayland (1998) a qualitative interview, tends to be the most extensively employed method in anthropology research. It is its flexibility that makes it so attractive. In qualitative interviewing, there is a great interest in the interviewee’s

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perspectives and points of view, which results in an emphasis on generality in formulation of initial research ideas. Interviewers are very careful not to suggest an answer. They often ask new questions that follow up interviewees’ replies and also vary their order as well as their wording. As a result, the interviews tend to be flexible and responsive to the direction which the interviewees take. Their emphasis is modified according to the significant issues that emerge in the course of interview. As opposed to the advantages of the qualitative interview pointed out by Katrin De Walt and Coral Wayland (1998), Diana Burton and Steve Bartlett (2009: 11) highlight the usefulness of a questionnaire, because it allows for an easy, efficient and quick access to a considerable group of people, including those at a distance. With the potential for large sample sizes, questionnaires make it easier for the researcher to generalize their findings from the sample to the target population. It is also possible due to standardization, which may yield comparable data. The researcher, therefore, can be sure that everyone in the sample answers exactly the same questions. Thus, a questionnaire is a very reliable tool of research. Depending upon the mode of distribution, it can be returned quickly to the researcher and the data analysis can begin instantly. The questionnaire avoids an interviewer’s bias, guiding, and cues that can affect the validity and reliability of the data collection. Anonymity ensures more valid responses whose quality is also better, because respondents may gather and consult sources needed to respond well. It can be completed in privacy where the interviewees are not intimidated by the presence of a researcher, which increases the chances of getting honest answers. On the other hand, interviewees sometimes tend to act as experts and their answers do not reflect their own opinions but are adjusted to meet social expectations and trends. Still another advantage of the tool is that it is relatively quick and easy to create, code, and interpret. William Foddy (1994: 73) adds that depending on the type of questions the researchers ask, four types of questionnaires can be distinguished: 1) questionnaires with open-ended questions, 2) questionnaires with closeended questions, 3) questionnaires with partially close-ended questions, and 4) value-ranking questionnaires. The first type provides no fixed choice of answers. Questions are easy to ask and allow for a wide variety of responses, including even the most creative and unusual. Open-ended questions are especially useful when researchers do not know the likely values or cannot anticipate how the respondent will respond. The information gathered by open-ended questions can be used to develop appropriate close-ended questions for another questionnaire. Moreover, the questions force the respondents to

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think and allow them to clarify and explain the issue at length. If the respondent takes the time needed and makes the effort, responses can be illuminating and yield much useful information. However, if s/he does not like giving written answers and finds the blank space demanding and intimidating, the response rate will be lower. Illegible handwriting may also be a problem in case of questionnaires. Since responses are not really ordered, their analysis requires considerable time and effort. It may also be difficult to measure and classify them. In some cases, responses may not be to the point because there is inadequate guidance from the instrument itself. As the name suggests, questionnaires having close-ended questions provide specific answer choices. Their main drawback is that there is always a chance that the right question will not be asked and valuable information will not be gathered. Such questionnaires can either be ordered or unordered. Ordered close-ended questions require their respondents to select a particular response which is easy and takes little time, at least by most respondents but the questions require well-defined variables and values. They work best when there is a small number of reasonable answer possibilities. On the contrary, unordered questions ask respondents to rank values and are useful for identifying priorities. They also require well-defined variables and values. Unordered close-ended questions are not reliable if there are more than five values. Most respondents find ranking of more than two values difficult. David de Vaus (2002: 107) maintains that questionnaires that have partially close-ended questions include questions, either ordered or unordered, and also an additional option which adds some flexibility by providing an opportunity to add information not otherwise captured by the instrument. More flexibility may mean better and more valid responses. New values may be selected from the leading values, but this will make their analysis more challenging. Finally, in the value-ranking questionnaires the statements are categorized by the number of values. They can be quickly answered by respondents and their analysis may be straightforward and quick. However, researchers must remember that the questionnaire should not give too few alternatives as it will falsify the results. Another weak point is a chance that respondents will select the first value from the list, which should be considered by the researcher and his/her way of ordering the values. Each value must be exclusive and the researcher must know the notable alternatives.

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6.3.1 Other research tools applied in the methodology of intercultural communication A review of a number of research methods and tools, aimed at the investigation of various aspects of intercultural communicative competence, has proven that a questionnaire is the basic tool to be successfully applied by all the researchers. In most cases it bears a named test as, for example, the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI), which was developed to provide assessment of intercultural effectiveness. It was created in 1987 by Colleen Kelley and Judith Meyers and later revised in 1992 to finally include four categories which permitted the examination of more cultures. Originally, it was supposed to function as an assessment training programme in response to the need for the measurement of intercultural adaptability (Kelley and Meyers, 1999). The tool consists of a checklist of characteristics important for cross-cultural adaptability such as 1) flexibility/openness, 2) emotional resilience, 3) perceptual acuity, and 4) personal autonomy. The CCAI helps individuals identify their current strengths and weaknesses within the aforementioned four critical skill areas important for effective intercultural communication. As the inventory is culturegeneral, it measures dimensions common to all intercultural experiences. It has been used effectively with people preparing to travel, live or work abroad, with sojourners returning from abroad and readjusting to their home culture, workers in a multicultural or culturally diverse environment, individuals who emigrate voluntarily or who are forced to relocate as well as professionals who work with the aforementioned groups. Another instrument successfully developed is the Overseas Assignment Inventory (OAI) proposed by Michael Tucker in 2004 to evaluate attitudes and attributes that contribute to international assignment capability. It offers a significant insight into intercultural adjustment by analyzing six critical factors, which determine a person’s international assignment capability. They are the following: acceptance, knowledge, affect, lifestyle, interaction and communication. Additionally, motivation for seeking or accepting an international assignment and expectations about such an assignment are considered. The higher result an individual scores in each dimension, the greater the likelihood that the critical factors will be achieved during an intercultural assignment.

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6.3.2 The questionnaire used in the study The questionnaire, which was administered to the students of English, contained statements listed in positive and/or negative pairs. Such a construction served to double-check the reliability of the responses and also to increase their consistency. To avoid automatic answers of the respondents, the statements which referred to the same issue were dispersed throughout the questionnaire. Thus, respondents were obliged to think of a proper quality or skill twice. The intercultural sensitivity questionnaire was inspired by Guo-Ming Chen and William J. Starosta’s survey (2000) and Wolfgang Fritz and Antje Moellenberg’s survey (2002), but adjusted to the situation of Polish colleges. It consisted of two parts: 1) personal data such as age, sex and place of residence and, 2) the main part including 20 statements to be ranked by respondents. The statements were as follows: 1. I like getting involved in interactions with representatives of other cultures. 2. I feel tension and get stressed while facing speakers of other cultures. 3. I feel quite amused and excited when interacting with people from different cultures. 4. I find it difficult to express verbally my intentions to people of other cultures. 5. I am always lost for words when interacting with people of other cultures. 6. I can easily socialize when interacting with people of other cultures. 7. I do not enjoy the presence of people of other cultures. 8. I show respect towards people of other cultures with regard to their opinions and values. 9. I am not able to stay calm when interacting with people of other cultures. 10. I feel confident when interacting with people of other cultures. 11. I usually wait before forming an impression of culturally-distinct speakers. 12. I instantly jump to negative conclusions about speakers of other cultures. 13. I think people of other cultures are narrow-minded. 14. I am very observant when interacting with people of other cultures. 15. I try to respect the behaviour of culturally-distinct speakers. 16. I am not willing to obtain any information about culturally-distinct speakers.

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17. I would not accept the opinions of culturally-distinct speakers. 18. I see the superiority of my culture over other cultures. 19. I often show my understanding through verbal or non-verbal cues to a culturally-distinct counterpart. 20. I enjoy differences between my culturally-distinct counterpart and myself. As already stated each of the statements refers to knowledge, skills or attitudes which should be mastered by an intercultural communicator in the process of developing intercultural sensitivity, a basic component of intercultural communicative competence. Their specific value for assessing the role of intercultural communicative sensitivity and also intercultural communicative competence is shown by means of a content analysis of each statement provided below: Statement 1 concerns the respondents’ willingness to contact other interlocutors whose cultural background differs from their own. It is the opening statement as well as the most basic one. The value given by the respondents indicates their ability of integration within a multicultural society. Statement 2 identifies speaker’s bad feelings towards his/her culturally-distinct counterpart. This way of approaching cultural strangers will not lead to any interactions. In some cases discouragement, hindrance or even dismay may prevail. Statement 3 refers to the speaker’s positive feelings of amusement and excitement during the encounters with foreigners. This way of behaving is very typical of some interlocutors. Statement 4 gives a clear picture of possible inhibition or embarrassment that respondents might demonstrate when being forced to speak in front of the others, usually cultural strangers. Statement 5 can be viewed as an extension of the previous stance since the respondents who agree with it will definitely find it very easy to express their thoughts and opinions when confronted with culturally distinct interlocutors. Statement 6 goes one step further as it refers to the ability of being communicative and friendly in interactions among speakers in multicultural societies or in situations when each speaker is distinct. Statement 7 displays contrary behaviour to that exemplified by statement 1. The highest value given to that statement shows the respondent’s inability to integrate within a multicultural society. Statement 8 describes the respondent’s readiness to respect the values shared by culturally different participants of a communication exchange.

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Being open and accepting opinions voiced by others indicates a certain degree of intercultural sensitivity. Moreover, showing acknowledgement towards a set of beliefs, which are unfamiliar to the speaker, may result in his/her positive evaluation and acceptance. Statement 9 highlights the problem of not being able to handle emotions andbeingliable to explode with anger when it is not necessary. Unfortunately, some speakers may be found reluctant to hide their real feelings and will anger very quickly. Statement 10 touches upon the communicator’s ability to think positively when in contact with speakers from different cultures. It also deals with his/her self-assurance. Both traits are essential in any contacts where speakers want to achieve their aims. Statement 11 refers to the speaker’s tendency to judge or misjudge an interlocutor during the first communicative exchange voicing the first impression, which sometimes is not sufficient to assess a stranger appropriately and draw the right conclusions. Statement 12 refers to conclusions some speakers, not particularly trained in intercultural communication, draw when participating in interactions in multicultural settings. Statement 13 indicates a speaker’s prejudice and lack of tolerance towards new cultures and their representatives. A positive reaction is crucial in intercultural encounters and makes them more successful. Statement 14 shows another worthwhile aspect of intercultural sensitivity: an ability to observe which allows the observer to draw the right conclusions at the right moment as most participants of communication exchanges terminate their deduction process prematurely. Statement 15 is related to the behaviour of people from other cultures. The respondent who gives it the highest value shows his/her consideration, tolerance and open-mindedness. Statement 16 concerns the speaker’s lack of interest in people from other cultures manifested by the lack of willingness to obtain the information, which might be helpful in understanding the verbal message. Getting familiar with other sets of values and being able to accept them enhances the chance for co-operation and partnership in short- and longterm contacts alike. Statement 17 discusses the inability or unwillingness to accept the opinions of people from other cultures. In this way it implies other aspects that have already been mentioned in the questionnaire such as the behaviour of our culturally-distinct counterparts, their values and beliefs. The respondents who grant the highest value to the statement will prove their lack of tolerance and they will even display hostility.

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Statement 18 brings in the issue of cultural superiority or inferiority. The question of which culture is supreme has always stimulated a discussion and usually it is the speaker’s culture which is evaluated as better than the interlocutor’s. The respondents who give the highest mark to that statement are without a doubt less liberal or permissive. They also display an ethnocentric attitude towards others. Statement 19 emphasizes the fact that through verbal or non-verbal cues sent to our interlocutors we not only communicate facts but create the relational dimension of the communication act. Such signals enable both sides to be more receptive. Statement 20 argues the enjoyment and delight resulting from the differences that the interactors find during their encounters despite their culturally different identities. Some speakers are likely to feel attracted by the existing divergence when communicating with their culturally distinct counterparts. Their attitude should definitely be considered as positive due to the value of richness recognized and experienced by communicators.

6.4 Research design The research investigation consists of several stages. As indicated previously it focuses on the application of four methods and tools popular in investigations into intercultural issues, such as: self-reflection, participant observation, questionnaire and qualitative interview. It was the author’s objective to collect and combine all the findings from these four complementary approaches. The 20-statement questionnaire is the main tool in the present investigation. It is a result of a pilot study, which was initiated before the course in intercultural communication and its purpose was to identify all the problematic areas for students related to their intercultural behaviour. The pilot study consisted of participant observation and interviews. Based on the outcomes of both methods, the author came to the conclusion that for the students communication in a foreign language means mastering the four language skills and grammatical accuracy. As a matter of fact the approach implies developing purely linguistic skills leading to linguistic communicative competence. The students did not possess any awareness of how communication is dependent on the so-called non-linguistic factors, such as culture. The conclusion was a sound piece of evidence that the choice of non-linguistic dimensions of intercultural communicative competence as the research area was the right decision. The author’s research started with self-reflection, which was the first stage of the study. In preceding other methods it served to approach

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conceptually intercultural communicative competence, formulate basic assumptions, working hypotheses as well as research questions, which were used at a later stage in the questionnaires and in the interview. It was successfully utilized during the investigation to analyze the empirical data and draw conclusions. Its role was essential in searching for explanations of the results obtained by means of the questionnaire and interviews. The participant observation was conducted almost throughout the whole period of the present study, since the author of the present research teaches in the English Department of Krosno State College. His work allowed him to observe his students in a natural way, which facilitated checking his assumptions, formulating and reformulating the research questions and also obtaining explanation of the communicative behaviours of his students, their understanding of intercultural communicative competence and their experience as intercultural communicators. He was able to carry out his research without making the students aware of his role, which was a great advantage as they were not intimidated by his presence. Thus, they eagerly shared with him their knowledge and skills by openly answering the questions, which they treated as part of the lesson. With regard to other colleges located all over Poland, the author managed to travel on various occasions to Legnica, Elbląg and àomĪa to observe other students taking part in the research voluntarily. As highlighted at the beginning of this section, the research uses two types of questionnaires: the first type (20-statement questionnaire) serves to measure intercultural sensitivity of the students of English and the second type aims at obtaining their evaluation of the course in intercultural communication in the development of intercultural sensitivity. It was administered to the students before graduation in June 2014 and consisted of five open-ended questions. The same sample of 150 students, as in the case of the first type of the questionnaire, was involved in providing the responses. As for the first type of the questionnaire its character must be defined as it affects the experiment. It consists of ten pairs of questions, all of which refer to various behavioural aspects of intercultural communication. The respondents were asked to allocate to each statement a number from 1 to 5 to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with it – where ‘5’ meant a strong agreement and ‘1’ a strong disagreement. It was designed for a comparative analysis of the responses because as Valsa Koshy (2004:62) points out, completing such a list is not time-consuming and reflects opinions in a very realistic way, because the criteria for ranking must be clearly identified and the order of the values must make sense to the respondent. The interpretation of the collected data involved

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searching for relations between the investigated variables. A statistical analysis allowed for obtaining quantitative results which made their qualitative interpretation more objective and reliable. As for the interviews which followed the questionnaire-stage of the research, they helped the author firstly clarify and complete the information provided by the students by means of the questionnaire, and secondly obtain some additional knowledge which was either not evident, or even absent from the respondents’ answers. The number of students who participated in the interviews was lower as only 91 respondents decided to take part. These were mainly women (66), who tend, in the normal course, to be more open, helpful and co-operative than their male counterparts. It is also true that the gender composition of the final year of English Language Studies shows a conspicuous predominance of women.

6.5 Research context and its target group As stated in the Introduction, the choice of research topic is not without significance. It is fairly obvious that a country, such as Poland, is defined as intracultural due to the fact that it has always been marked by religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity. This diversity has been manifested on many occasions as a variety of identities, languages, religions, customs and traditions. Until World War II Poland was regarded as a multicultural country. Owing to its geographical location, it was the area where constant migrations took place over the centuries. What had been a heterogeneous society became a more homogeneous one during World War II when massive repatriations and genocide occurred as well as in the period of 1945-1965 because of the political changes in Central and Eastern Europe (e.g. the introduction of communism in several countries, religious persecution, the changing shape of Europe’s borders, etc). The situation changed after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and Poland became an independent and democratic country again. According to the 2011 Polish Census of Population, there are 33 ethnic and national identities inhabiting the territory of our country: these include various national minorities and autochthonous ethnic minorities who are characterized by cultural distinctiveness, marked by language and belief regarding common roots, tradition and history. Moreover, there is an increasing number of immigrants who live in Poland along with the national minorities. These two groups determine the level of cultural diversity in our country. The following national minorities are to be distinguished in the structure of the present-day population: Belarusian, Czech, Lithuanian, German, Armenian, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian and

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Jewish. With regard to ethnicity, Crimean Karaites, Lemkos, Roma and Tatar minorities can be identified. Ethnic minorities differ from national minorities in the very fact that they do not possess their own country. Finally, it is crucial to add that the Pomeranian province (in the north of Poland) is also inhabited by a community speaking a regional language, i.e. Kashubian. The selection of the colleges participating in the study was not unintended, either. The institutions are located in four different parts of the country. The author’s intention was to indicate the multicultural character of Poland and check if the study can produce similar results in different geographical contexts. This would imply that its findings can be generalized and applied to various locations in Poland and abroad. The first location, which needs to be addressed, is Legnica where its State College is situated. The city with a population of over 100,000 inhabitants is located in Lower Silesia in the south-west of Poland. In the past, along with the whole region, Legnica passed to the rule of the Czech Crown, the Habsburg Dynasty, Prussia, and Germany. The modern history of the city features a nearly 50-year period of the presence of the Soviet forces. In the years 1945-1993, a huge Soviet garrison was stationed in Legnica (Chutkowski 1996). At the moment, the following national and ethnic minorities are present in the city: German, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Lemkos, Roma and Jewish. Legnica State College was established in 1998 and consists of three faculties. In the Faculty of Humanities a Bachelor’s Programme in English Language Studies is offered. In northern Poland, not far from the Baltic coast, the city of Elbląg is situated with over 124,000 inhabitants. After the administrative reform of 1999 the city was assigned to the Warmian-Masurian Province. Its history starts with the Old Prussian settlement of Truso, which burned down in the 10th century. In the 13th century the Teutonic Knights conquered the region and ruled it until the middle of the 15th century. The city successively came under the sovereignty of the Polish Crown (1466), Prussia (1772), and Germany (1971). Elbing, as founded in 1237, was heavily damaged in World War II, and its German citizens were expelled after the war was over. The city became part of Poland in 1945 and was repopulated with Polish citizens (Gierszewski 1970). The Warmian-Masurian Province is the largest concentration of ethnic and national minorities in Poland. Currently, there are nine groups present: Belarusian, Lithuanian, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Crimean Karaites, Lemkos and Roma. The academic institution where the study was conducted – Elbląg State College – was founded in 1998 and offers ten Bachelor’s Programmes and one Master’s Programme. English is

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imparted in three specializations: language teaching, language and business and applied linguistics. The third college is situated in àomĪa, a city in the north-east of Poland. It is one of the principal economic, educational, and cultural centres of north-eastern Masovia as well as one of the three main cities of the Podlaskie Province. The town has a population of 63,000 people and comprises five minority groups: Belarusian, German, Russian, Ukrainian, and Lemkos. The inhabitants of àomĪa are predominantly Roman Catholic, although over the centuries, followers of other religions, such as Orthodox and Protestant, settled there (Jemielity 2004). àomĪa State College is a leading, multidisciplinary institution providing first and second cycle programmes. Its Bachelor’s Degree in English is offered with an additional path in IT, which extends the programme into additional skills students might find useful and attractive while searching for job offers. Finally, Krosno is a town in the south-east of Poland within the borders of the Subcarpathian Province. Its location close to the Ukrainian and Slovak borders makes its surrounding areas a real multicultural pot. The oldest traces of settlement date back to the 10th and 11th centuries. In the middle of the 14th century, King Casimir transformed Krosno from a settlement into a town chartered according to the Magdeburg rights and brought in numerous groups of German settlers. The 15th century meant the beginning of commercial development for Krosno. The birth of the Polish oil industry undoubtedly contributed to the notable and rapid increase of importance of the town in the 19th century. During World War I the town suffered serious damage (i.e. bombing and looting several times, from the Austrian and the Tsarist troops). During the German occupation in the period of World War II its industry was heavily destroyed. Nowadays, it is an industrial town with over 46,000 inhabitants. It is also notable for its ethnic and national minorities constituted by Germans, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Jews, and Lemkos (Cynarski 1995). Krosno State College is the institution where the present research was initiated. The college dates back to 1999. At the moment it comprises three academic units where over 3,500 students are educated in Bachelor’s Programmes. Its courses range across eighteen specializations. A Bachelor’s Programme in English was initiated in 1990 in an English Language Teachers’ Training College, which provided the background to the present-day academic institution. There are three paths from which the students choose: language teaching, language and culture, and Spanish as an additional foreign language.

Intercultural Communicative Competence of Polish Students of English 135 Figure 1. Poland and the research areas

It is worth indicating that all these schools belong to a network of academic institutions established in Poland in the years 1997-2000. They lack previous, long-term academic traditions, but in most cases they function as the only institutions of higher education in the area. Their mission is to educate students at the level of three-year Bachelor’s Programmes. The regions are not economically privileged and not many students continue their education at university afterwards. Most of the graduates start work as teachers of English in primary schools or kindergartens where they are the only language models for their learners to follow. It should also be mentioned that the students are not very mobile, which is of importance when their intercultural communicative competence is concerned, and the formal education offered at school cannot be completed with other informal and non-institutionalized forms. Hence, the value of the course in intercultural communication, which is part of the academic syllabus, is substantial. Besides, the responsibility of the college to prepare the students for their future professional role is obviously a serious one. As indicated earlier, the colleges are located in four different parts of Poland where a multicultural environment is very visible. The diversity

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has its roots in the rich history of the provinces. Hence, it might be assumed that the students have a chance to experience multiculturalism, but the question is whether they are aware of it and if they have made any use of the opportunity. Only a very few of them have already had a certain experience in that field due to their background and the features of the regions described above. Since some students come from culturally-mixed families their attitude towards cultural differences, either opening or blocking, was of significant importance to the researcher. The choice of respondents was based on a random selection of students of Year 3 of English Language Studies. The questionnaire was completed by the same sample of 150 students each time, in December 2013 and June 2014. Among them, 83 students were female and 67 were male; 64 participants marked towns/cities as their place of residence and only 86 of them indicated villages. As can be seen in Table 1 the number of respondents from each location was different. The gender structure also varied although in all the locations female participants dominated. Regarding their place of residence, it is worth noticing that in the cases of àomĪa and Krosno there were more respondents from rural areas whereas cities and towns prevailed in the two other colleges. The participants were in the age range 22-26, so the calculated average age of the sample was 21.96. The total number of answers obtained in the present investigation reached 6,000 with 3,000 responses for each stage of the questionnaire administration. Table 6. Research sample

Legnica State College Elbląg State College àomĪa State College Krosno State College TOTAL

Male

Female

Residence in: City/Town Village 27 27

23

31

18

10

20

8

28

7

17

3

21

24

19

25

14

30

44

67 150

83

64

86

150

TOTAL 54

150

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The research was conducted directly in a written form at two separate stages. The first stage was carried out before the commencement of the course in intercultural communication in December 2013 and the second stage after it was over and when the students had managed to get their credits in June 2014. The questionnaire was administered twice to the same sample of students in order to learn about the evolution of their knowledge, skills and attitudes as a result of their participation in the course. It was also possible to assess which of them had been acquired informally by the time they started their Bachelor’s Programme in English Philology. The research conducted among the students of English reveals the features of a longitudinal study. According to Elisabetta Ruspini (2004: 3) longitudinal data can be defined as data gathered during an observation of subjects on a number of variables over time. The definition implies the notion of repeated measurements. Basically, longitudinal data presents information about what happened to a set of units (people) as they evolved over the course of time. The participants in the present study were asked to provide information about their behaviour and attitudes on a number of separate occasions throughout the investigation. The data are compiled and the findings are presented in the following chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN FINDINGS OF THE INVESTIGATION

Introduction The findings discussed in the present chapter arise from the student responses from the twenty statements and from the open-ended responses put to them in the course of interviewing.

7.1 Research analysis and results The questionnaires were administered before the course in intercultural communication and after its completion, comprising altogether forty statements. The empirical material gathered was divided into two groups. The first group embraced the data implying the respondents’ positive attitudes and skills and the second one included their negative repertoire. Generally speaking, the positive orientation towards interlocutors with different cultural backgrounds implied open, tolerant and friendly attitudes, ability to deal with stress, taking risk, recognition of the diversity of opinion, and the necessity to build relationships. It also included a conviction about equality of cultures and a need to work towards understanding among them. Statements 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19 and 20 reflect the aforementioned positive features of any intercultural communicator. The second group of statements depict the negative traits. They imply the respondents’ disrespectful assertiveness and aggression. A few of them indicate negative attitudes, such as hostility, ambiguity within a society, low tolerance of differences and new situations and a lack or low acceptance of all sorts of otherness. These statements are 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17 and 18. The respondents were asked to mark each statement twice to assess it with one of the following values: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 according to the five-point Likert scale. The statistical analysis of the empirical data used the following statistical measures: mean (average value), standard deviation, median, lower and upper quartiles. The average value is indispensable as it indicates how strong or weak a particular trait or dimension is. Standard

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deviation is a widely used measure of the variability or dispersion. It points out how much variation there is from the average. A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very close to the mean, whereas a high standard deviation indicates that the data is spread out over a wider range of values. In the present study the deviation is crucial as it gives further implications regarding the types of answers obtained from the students for subsequent analysis. Also, the median seems essential as it creates a dividing value of the data which is either located in the upper or lower halves. The upper half cuts off the highest 25% of the data and is referred to as the upper quartile. Similarly, the lowest 25% of the cut-off data is usually related to as the lower quartile. The importance of quartiles is enormous as they direct our attention to the middle value of the collected data and allow us to look at the skills the students have already developed as well as those, which need to be developed as a result of their participation in the course of intercultural communication.

7.1.1 Intercultural sensitivity as assessed before the course in intercultural communication Before the respondents attended the course in intercultural communication, in the first group of positive statements the results they scored ranged from the highest mean of 4.50 for statement 8 to the lowest one of 2.82 for statement 11. The disparity shows that some abilities and attitudes have been better developed than others and identifies the skills which need to be improved. The means will be discussed in descending order. The abovementioned highest average proves that students of English highly respect the values and opinions of people of other cultures and display openness, lack of prejudice, tolerance and willingness, which consequently indicates low uncertainty avoidance and low power distance. Statement 1 is the next one which has received the highest score of 4.38. It is similar in a sense to the previous one as the students confirmed in it their willingness for interactions with people from different cultures. In statement 3 the students expressed their feelings when confronted with otherness. With such responses the average value equalled 4.30. The statement proves that their openness and willingness for contacts have been enhanced and their respect for otherness will probably be fostered soon. They also show a lot of understanding towards foreign cultures, which is evidenced in statement 15 as the average value obtained in the questionnaire was as high as 4.24. The scored value also strongly confirms their ethno-relative attitudes. In statement 6 they see the urge to obtain as much information as possible

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about their interlocutors during interactions, hence they are willing to socialize with them. With the average value of 4.20 they exhibit their tendency to develop curiosity and lack of prejudice. The value obtained for statement 14 is also high and scores 4.10. It reveals the students’ tendency to observe the unknown and proves their restraint towards people from different cultures. Although in statement 20 the students reconfirmed their feelings of openness and enjoyment towards cultural differences between themselves and their culturally-distinct counterparts; the mean of 3.62 suggests that they should work towards its further development in the future. The mean achieved for statement 19 which discusses their ability to use effectively either verbal or non-verbal cues is 3.50. It thus indicates that the students should focus on improving it. A rather low mean of 3.44 was achieved for statement 10 which points out the respondents’ low level of confidence in intercultural encounters. The attitude is very important because it makes the interlocutors move from ethnocentrism towards ethno-relativism, and thus deals directly with intercultural sensitivity. The aforementioned lowest value of all the positive statements received for statement 11 (only 2.82) stresses the students’ lack of proper assessment skills of culturally-distinct counterparts. It usually takes time before the students have formed a particular impression about their interlocutor representing another culture. The details of the analysis have been presented in Table 7 below.

141

11

10

19

20

14

6

15

3

11

8

Statement n°

I show respect towards people of other cultures with regards to their opinions and values. I like getting involved in interactions with representatives of other cultures. I feel quite amused and excited when interacting with people from different cultures. I try to respect the behaviour of culturally-distinct speakers. I can easily socialize when interacting with people of other cultures. I am very observant when interacting with people of other cultures. I enjoy differences between my culturally-distinct counterpart and myself. I often show my understanding through verbal or nonverbal cues to a culturally-distinct counterpart. I feel confident when interacting with people of other cultures. I usually wait before forming an impression of culturallydistinct speakers.

Questionnaire Administration Stage 1

2.82

3.44

3.50

3.62

4.10

4.20

4.24

4.30

4.38

4.50

Mean

0.77

0.67

0.68

0.67

0.58

0.78

0.82

0.71

0.64

0.79

Standard Deviation

2

3

3

3

4

4

4

4

4

4

Lower Quartile

3

3

3

4

4

4

4

4

4

5

Median

3

4

4

4

4

5

5

5

5

5

Upper Quartile

Table 7. Positive attitudes towards intercultural differences (before the course in intercultural communication)

Findings of the Investigation

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What is also important in our analysis of the statistical data displayed in Table 7 is that the median, being our second quartile, can be calculated for the even number of views on the basis of the following formula:

Me

1 xn  x1 n 1 2 2 2

where M e stands for the median, n signifies the test number, and x is the number of particular measurement. The value divides the population under investigation into two halves. For the even number of views, as is in our case, the median is the middle figure in the ordered sequence. For example, if we look at statement 8, we notice that 50% of the respondents allocated it the value, which is not higher than 5. In statements 1, 3, 15, 6, 14 and 20, half of the respondents gave it the value not higher than 4. Finally, any value not higher than 3 was allocated by the respondents to statements 19, 10 and 11. Also, the lower quartile can be calculated on the basis of the following formula:

Q1

x10, 25˜( n1)

where Q1stands for the lower quartile, and x signifies a particular measurement. When the number of respondents equals 150, which covers all the respondents from the present study, the lower quartile takes the position of x13, so:

Q1

x13

For each statement, the lower quartile is based on item 13 in the rising sequence. In case of statement 8, the lower quartile is calculated as

Q1

x13

4,

which shows that 25% of the respondents allocated the value of at least 4 to statement 8. The same situation is true for statements 1, 3, 15, 6 and 14. If we analyze statements 20, 19 and 10, we can estimate the values allocated to these particular statements. The value of at least 3 was attributed in each case by 25% of the respondents. In case of statement 11, the value of at least 2 was given.

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On the other hand, the upper quartile is counted according to the following formula:

Q3

x10,75˜( n1)

where Q3stands for the upper quartile, and x signifies a particular measurement. When the number of respondents equals 150, the upper quartile also takes the position of x39.In case of statement 8, it is understood as

Q3

x39

5

and is subsequently interpreted in the following way: 75% of the respondents attributed the value not higher than 5 to statement 8. An exactly similar situation occurs for statements 1, 3, 15 and 6. In statements 14, 20, 19 and 10 the upper quartile takes a value not higher than 4 and in statement 11 the value equals 3. Considering the standard deviation, it must be stressed that the variability of answers ranges from 0.58 to 0.82 being a typical example of low standard deviation, since the collected data points are close to the mean and are not spread out over a wide range of estimates. It proves that the research findings are reliable. The results were obtained from the calculations based on the following formula:

V

1 n  x i  x 2 ¦ ni1

where x stands for the arithmetic mean, V stands for the standard deviation, n signifies the test number, and xi is a particular measurement or a result. The findings prove a major change in the attitudes of the students as they indicate their increased respect for cultural differences. Additionally, the results of the study have shown the presence of new intercultural skills, which at the initial stage of the research did not exist. Specifically, the students’ confidence in interaction has grown stronger and their willingness to be more sociable has also heightened notably. The second group of investigated statements describes rather suspicious attitudes or even negative feelings shared by the students of English towards intercultural differences. Some statements best characterize those individuals, who refuse all interaction with other cultures and have no interest in discovering cultural differences. That is why, the students, who

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exhibit such traits may also act aggressively during intercultural situations. Others can also wrongly evaluate foreign cultures to be inferior to their own culture and will constantly criticize the behaviour or thoughts of foreigners. The highest mean (4.24) of all the statements comprised in Table 3 was obtained for statement 5. It does not reveal any enjoyment or respect towards intercultural differences on the part of the students. With this statement the students display their speechlessness when being confronted with other cultures. The same happens to statement 4 where mere confidence of the speaker without any engagement in intercultural encounters is manifested. It was valued at the average of 3.52. By giving the statement a high value the respondents confirmed their inability to properly behave in verbal communication. What is also noticeable among the students of English is the fact that some of them when faced with otherness become hostile. They are not able to accept the opinions of culturally-distinct counterparts as demonstrated in statement 17, for which the mean equalled 3.42. The next common feature is the students’ timidity, being explicitly exposed by statement 2 with the mean of 2.84. Statements 18 and 9, with the mean values of 2.28 and 2.16 respectively, are the two examples demonstrating the students’ uneasiness, discomfort and discouragement in intercultural situations. Moreover, by judging other cultures negatively and putting their own culture in the focus and as being superior, the students are showing their prejudice and stereotyping. The successive four statements: 16, 7, 12 and 13 confirm high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance, which are typical masculine features. By allocating high scores to the aforementioned statements, one will instantly conclude that the lack of interest in otherness or intolerance is a highly negative emotion expressed by these respondents. The students’ negative attitudes and emotions are intensified in statements 12 and 13 exemplifying even their hostile behaviour. The average values obtained for the statements are as follows: 1.72, 1.60, 1.58 and 1.48, which shows that the traits are not very strong, however they need to be worked on and improved. The results have been presented in the table below.

145

13

12

7

16

9

18

2

17

4

5

Statement n°

Questionnaire Administration Stage 1 I am always lost for words when interacting with people of other cultures. I find it difficult to express verbally my intentions to people of other cultures. I would not accept the opinions of culturally-distinct speakers. I feel tension and get stressed while facing speakers of other cultures. I see the superiority of my culture over other cultures. I am not able to stay calm when interacting with people of other cultures. I am not willing to obtain any information about culturally-distinct speakers. I do not enjoy the presence of people of other cultures. I instantly jump to negative conclusions about speakers of other cultures. I think people from other cultures are narrowminded. 1.48

1.58

1.60

1.72

2.16

2.28

2.84

3.42

3.52

4.24

Mean

0.71

0.67

0.61

0.95

0.93

0.88

0.84

0.84

0.84

0.69

Standard Deviation

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

3

3

4

Lower Quartile

1

1

2

1

2

2

3

4

3

4

Median

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

4

4

5

Upper Quartile

Table 8. Negative attitudes towards intercultural differences (before the course in intercultural communication)

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From the point of view of statistics a great many issues need to be discussed. First of all, the median takes four different values. In the case of statements 17 and 5 the value of 4 was allocated by50% of the respondents. Statements 4 and 2 received a value not higher than 3.Statements 18, 9 and 7 scored the value of 2, and finally, statements 16, 12 and 13 were assigned the value of 1. Regarding the lower quartile, it can be stated that their positions vary again. Since the number of respondents remained 150, the lower quartile

Q

x

13 . Thus, for each statement, the lower takes the position of x13, so 1 quartile is based on item 13 in the rising sequence. In case of statement 5, the lower quartile equals 4, which proves that 25% of the respondents allocated the value of at least 4 to statement 5. If we analyze statements 4 and 17, we can estimate the value allocated to them as at least 3 in each case. This is understood similarly as 25% of the respondents attributed the value of 3 to the statements. If we go a step further, we will realize that statements 2, 18 and 9 received the value of 2 and statements 16, 7, 12 and 13 were given the value of 1 respectively. Likewise, the upper quartile will be calculated in the same manner. The number of respondents being 150 makes the upper quartile take the position of x39. Statement 5 received the highest value of 5, which is the result of 75% of the respondents having attributed it the highest value. Statements 4 and 17, having been granted the value not higher than 4, are examples of a precisely similar situation. In statements 2 and 18 the upper quartile takes the value not higher than 3 and in statements 9, 16, 7, 12 and 13 the value equals 2, being at the same time the lowest of all values assigned. The standard deviation in the case of negative attitudes among the respondents shows a little variation from the average and is comparable to the analysis of positive examples of behaviour. The dispersion varies from 0.61 being the lowest value to 0.95 – the highest value. Likewise, the collected data points are not spread out over a large range of estimates, but they are close to the mean. Similarly, it proves that the research findings are reliable.

7.1.2 Intercultural sensitivity as assessed after the course in intercultural communication As stated at the beginning of Chapter 6, the questionnaire was administered to the students of English Philology twice: before and after the course in intercultural communication. So far the results of the first

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stage administered in December 2013 have been presented and analyzed. After six months of the course the same group of students marked the same statements of the questionnaire, which gave the author a completely new insight into the levels of their intercultural sensitivity, varying immensely throughout the aforementioned period. The values exhibiting positive attitudes towards intercultural differences (Table 7) increased significantly, which proves that the students have improved their skills and they must have become more open, friendly and sensitive towards strangers in intercultural encounters. The results serve as evidence of a major change in the knowledge and skills of the students implying increased awareness and successively appropriate management of behaviour allowing for successful intercultural interaction. The students have demonstrated a meaningful rise in readiness for interaction; hence the author of the present study may presume that their levels of tolerance for certain diversities have significantly increased. The biggest change in the values obtained after the administration of the questionnaire has been noticed in statement 11 by 1.8, in statement 10 by 1.22, in statement 19 by 1.2, and in statement 20 by 1.16 respectively. Fluctuations in estimates by over 1 point, when the marking range maximum value is 5 and the highest scores received in Stage 1 – 4.5 in statement 8 and in Stage 2 – 4.84 in statement 14, signify an indisputable intensification of certain intercultural communicative competence traits and attitudes expressed in the aforementioned statements. All the four statements, for which the highest increase in value has been noted, confirm the author’s hypothesis that the students’ awareness, understanding and respect of otherness grew stronger, because by re-assigning higher values to the statements they showed a meaningful rise in their positive attitudes demonstrated by their interaction engagement and enjoyment (statements 11, 10, 19 and 20). This can consequently imply that since the statements have been earlier categorized as those displaying low uncertainty avoidance and low power distance, the author might presume that the students’ levels of tolerance for certain diversities must have significantly risen. Additionally, their support for equality among societies has been stressed and enhanced. Certain new perceptions and behaviour towards the ‘our’ and the ‘other’ culture among the students have been observed, without which developing intercultural sensitivity, being the main component of intercultural communicative competence, to its present extent would not have been possible. The values for the remaining statements are below 1 point and oscillate between 0.22 (statement 8) and 0.74 (statement 14). Although being relatively lower when compared with the other values, they prove a major change in the attitudes of the students

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of English as they indicate their respect for cultural differences and show their interaction attentiveness at the same time. The students have gained the skills to adapt their behaviour more easily and effectively by intentionally changing their communication style. In addition, their confidence in interaction has grown stronger and their willingness to be more sociable is another feature, which has heightened notably. The respondents’ open-mindedness towards culturally-distinct counterparts has become more visible. The results of the aforementioned discussion have been illustrated in Table 9. Additionally, the chart below contains a change in the values obtained for positively-oriented statements in both stages: before the course commencement (Stage 1) and after its completion (Stage 2). Figure 2. The increased values of students’ positive attitudes towards intercultural differences

6 5 4 before

3

after 2 1 0

S-8

S-1

S-3 S-15 S-6 S-14 S-20 S-19 S-10 S-11

11

10

19

20

14

6

15

3

1

8

Statement n°

I show respect towards people of other cultures with regards to their opinions and values. I like getting involved in interactions with representatives of other cultures. I feel quite amused and excited when interacting with people from different cultures. I try to respect the behaviour of culturally-distinct speakers. I can easily socialize when interacting with people of other cultures. I am very observant when interacting with people of other cultures. I enjoy differences between my culturally-distinct counterpart and myself. I often show my understanding through verbal or nonverbal cues to a culturally-distinct counterpart. I feel confident when interacting with people of other cultures. I usually wait before forming an impression of culturally-distinct speakers.

Questionnaire Administration Stage 2

4.62

4.66

4.70

4.78

4.84

4.78

4.80

4.76

4.76

4.72

Mean

0.49

0.48

0.46

0.42

0.37

0.42

0.40

0.43

0.43

0.67

Standard Deviation

4

4

4

5

5

5

5

4.75

4.75

5

Lower Quartile

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

Median

149

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

Upper Quartile

Table 9. Positive attitudes towards intercultural differences (after the course in intercultural communication)

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Regarding the negative group of traits displayed in Table 8, it has to be stressed that the students’ evaluations have lowered meaningfully, which allows the author to assume that his respondents have changed their attitudes and communication style when interacting with other cultures, acquiring at the same time a higher level of intercultural sensitivity and developing their intercultural communicative competence. In addition, they have progressed from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism, which is extremely vital for the success of any person willing to become more interculturally skillful. When examining the value changes for the negatively-oriented group of statements, it becomes noticeable that there exists a correlation between the two groups of analyzed statements. As stated at the beginning of the present chapter, the questionnaire had been constructed in such a way that it would allow for a higher reliability and consistency of responses among the students of English. Since the statements were paired on the basis of positive and negative traits expressed each time, but they were still dispersed throughout the questionnaire, all the respondents could objectify their answers more specifically and had to think of a proper quality or skill twice. This phenomenon is reflected in the statistical data of the present study where a sudden fall in the values for the negative group of statements can be perceived and a value rise for the positive set of statements respectively. The highest decline by 1.38 has been reported for statement 2, which obtained the value of 2.84 during the first administration of the test and after the course in intercultural communication it dropped to 1.46. It may be stated similarly that the students’ openness towards cultural differences has expanded. As a result of that, definitely, stereotyping and prejudices have become less common. Another vital shift in the magnitude of values is noticeable in statement 18 with a drop of 0.84 when comparing the estimates for stages 1 and 2. Both statements express more willingness on the part of the respondents regarding their enjoyment and respect of other cultures. On the contrary to the significant shifts mentioned above, it must be noted that for certain statements only a small decrease has occurred (e.g. statements 5, 4, 17 or 13). This implies that it is really hard to develop proper intercultural skills and attitudes within such a short period. Certain behaviours among the students are so deeply rooted that much longer and more intensified intercultural training would be required in order to meaningfully diminish hostility and prejudice. To complete the discussion, the data are collected in the table below.

151

Statement Stage 2 of Questionnaire Administration n° I am always lost for words when interacting 5 with people of other cultures. I find it difficult to express verbally my 4 intentions to people of other cultures. I would not accept the opinions of culturally17 distinct speakers. I feel tension and get stressed while facing 2 speakers of other cultures. I see the superiority of my culture over other 18 cultures. I am not able to stay calm when interacting 9 with people of other cultures. I am not willing to obtain any information 16 about culturally-distinct speakers. I do not enjoy the presence of people of other 7 cultures. I instantly jump to negative conclusions about 12 speakers of other cultures. I think people from other cultures are narrow13 minded.

Standard Deviation 0.35 0.46 0.58 0.54 0.50 0.40 0.49 0.50 0.70 0.49

Mean 4.12 3.12 2.88 1.46 1.44 1.72 1.40 1.38 1.58 1.38

1

1

1

1

5

1

1

4

4

5

Lower Quartile

1

2

1

1

5

1

1

5

5

5

Median

2

2

2

2

5

2

2

5

5

5

Upper Quartile

Table 10. Negative attitudes towards intercultural differences (after the course in intercultural communication)

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The analysis becomes more explicit when we compare and contrast the changes in the obtained values by visual means of the chart below. Figure 3. The decreased values of students’ negative attitudes towards intercultural differences

4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5

before

2

after

1.5 1 0.5 0

S-5

S-4 S-17 S-2 S-18 S-9 S-16 S-7 S-12 S-13

What also requires consideration is the distribution of standard deviation. When we analyze the values obtained during the first stage of the administration of the questionnaire, we realize that the estimates range between 0.82, and 0.58 in case of the statements describing positive attitudes towards intercultural differences. At the second stage of the administration of the questionnaire the variance decreased to 0.67 being the highest standard deviation value and 0.37 – the lowest value respectively. In both cases we observe a typical low standard deviation where the data points tend to be very close to the mean. It denotes that the students’ responses did not differ much before and after the course. They were quite unanimous, thus the answer profile seems fairly homogeneous. The results of the standard deviation shift regarding the students’ positive attitudes towards interculturality are presented in Table 11.

11

10

19

20

14

6

15

3

1

8

Stateme nt

1 2 1 I like getting involved in interactions with representatives of other cultures. 2 1 I feel quite amused and excited when interacting with people from different cultures. 2 1 I try to respect the behaviour of culturally-distinct speakers. 2 1 I can easily socialize when interacting with people of other cultures. 2 1 I am very observant when interacting with people of other cultures. 2 1 I enjoy differences between my culturally-distinct counterpart and myself. 2 1 I often show my understanding through verbal or non-verbal cues to a culturallydistinct counterpart. 2 1 I feel confident when interacting with people of other cultures. 2 1 I usually wait before forming an impression of culturally-distinct speakers. 2

I show respect towards people of other cultures with regards to their opinions and values.

Stage 4.50 4.72 4.38 4.76 4.30 4.76 4.24 4.80 4.20 4.78 4.10 4.84 3.62 4.78 3.50 4.70 3.44 4.66 2.82 4.62

Mean

Table 11. The varying values of students’ positive attitudes towards intercultural differences

Findings of the Investigation

Standard deviation 0.79 0.67 0.64 0.43 0.71 0.43 0.82 0.40 0.78 0.42 0.58 0.37 0.67 0.42 0.68 0.46 0.67 0.48 0.77 0.49

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In the same manner a switch in the values of standard deviation for negative traits can be investigated. The highest obtained value during the first test sample was 0.95 and the lowest was accordingly 0.61. After the course in intercultural communication was conducted, the estimates were replaced in the following way: 0.88 – the highest value and 0.35 – the lowest value. The spread of data points is similar when compared to the values of standard deviation for positive features. It represents a typical low standard deviation with the data points as close to the mean as possible. The respondents were compliant at both stages regarding the types of answers they provided. The results of the standard deviation shift in students’ negative attitudes towards intercultural differences are presented in Table 12.

13

12

7

16

9

18

2

17

4

5

Statement

1 2 1 I find it difficult to express verbally my intentions to people of other cultures. 2 1 I would not accept the opinions of culturally-distinct speakers. 2 1 I feel tension and get stressed while facing speakers of other cultures. 2 1 I see the superiority of my culture over other cultures. 2 1 I am not able to stay calm when interacting with people of other cultures. 2 1 I am not willing to obtain any information about culturally-distinct speakers. 2 1 I do not enjoy the presence of people of other cultures. 2 1 I instantly jump to negative conclusions about speakers of other cultures. 2 1 I think people from other cultures are narrow-minded. 2

I am always lost for words when interacting with people of other cultures.

4.24 4.12 3.52 3.12 3.42 2.88 2.84 1.46 2.28 1.44 2.16 1.72 1.72 1.40 1.60 1.48 1.58 1.38 1.48 1.38

0.69 0.35 0.84 0.46 0.84 0.58 0.84 0.54 0.88 0.50 0.93 0.40 0.95 0.49 0.61 0.50 0.67 0.70 0.71 0.49

Stage Mean Standard deviation

Table 12. The varying values of students’ negative attitudes towards cultural differences

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We can also examine the same values distributed on the box-andwhisker plot. In this case the central points and the range of whiskers are the most significant for the study. The central point, which has been marked on the diagram as a dot, accounts for the mean value. The distance between the dot and one of the whiskers corresponds with the value of standard deviation. It might be noticed that the mean values before and after the course differ by 0.8. Also, what is worth mentioning is the fact that the standard deviation value after the course is quite low. It confirms a small diversity of mean values indicating that students have changed their attitudes towards intercultural encounters meaningfully, which further resulted in the development of ethnorelativism among them. Figure 4. Box-and-whisker plot – mean values of positive attitudes

Another conclusion to be drawn is that the mean values are similar, and at the same time, they are quite high (between 4.65 and over 4.8). This definitely indicates that the students have increased their level of intercultural sensitivity leading to the development of intercultural communicative competence. The range between the maximum and the minimum values is fairly small – only 0.22. A bigger distance between one of the whiskers and the central point for the results obtained before the course (1) gives evidence of a bigger distribution of results, which signifies the fact that the students differed meaningfully in their attitudes

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towards intercultural encounters before the commencement of the course (see Figure 3). When analyzing the negative attitudes of the students towards intercultural differences on the box-and-whisker plot, we can notice easily that the mean values obtained before the course and afterwards do not differ significantly. After the course, the mean values are slightly higher, namely by 0.3. An increase on the diversity of the results is also observed, which implies that the respondents provided various answers regarding their behaviours in intercultural encounters. The distances between the dot and the whiskers on the diagram have grown bigger, especially in case of the values obtained after the course. It proves that the students have strengthened their intercultural communicative competence after the administration of the course, which as a matter of fact, was predictable (see Figure 5). Figure 5. Box-and-whisker plot – mean values of negative attitudes

With regard to the positive attitudes of the students before the course in intercultural communication, it has to be emphasized that the mean values of only four statements fit in the range between 2.5 and 4.0, whereas the mean values of the remaining six statements are to be found in the range between 4.0 and 4.5. What is noticeable is that higher values dominate, hence the distribution concentrates on the right hand-side of the diagram – the so-called left-side asymmetry of results can be observed. The red line

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on the diagram marks the expected normal distribution, however in case of the present study, we can observe that the values rise initially, next they drop to rise again after a moment. The conclusion can be drawn that the spread of intercultural skills was uneven and varied among the students. Moreover, some skills were stronger, whereas others were weaker due to the insufficient knowledge in the area of intercultural studies, which is visualized by the changing height of the columns (see Figure 6). Figure 6. Distribution of mean values before the course – positive attitudes

After the course in intercultural communication a dramatic increase of the mean values for positive attitudes was observable. The mean values for all the statements varied between 4.5 and 5.0. The author did not notice any low values. The features of openness, lack of prejudice, tolerance and willingness, which indicate such traits as low uncertainty avoidance and low power distance, are attributed to the statements whose mean values were under investigation. They basically confirmed the students’ willingness to engage in interactions with interlocutors from different cultures. Such a distribution of results indicates that the positive attitudes such as: cultural awareness, understanding and respect of otherness grew stronger. The students showed a meaningful rise in their positive attitudes demonstrated by their interaction engagement and enjoyment, hence their

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levels of tolerance for certain diversities have significantly increased. Consequently, the traits of low uncertainty avoidance and low power distance have become more evident. Additionally, the respondents’ openmindedness towards culturally-distinct counterparts has been marked specifically by their respect for cultural differences and interaction attentiveness (see Figure 7). Figure 7. Distribution of mean values after the course – positive attitudes

With reference to the negative attitudes of the students before the course, the author finds it significant to mention that a wide range of mean values was observed across the case. The most often represented range was between 1.5 and 2.0; only the range between 4.5 and 5.0 was not represented at all. The red line on the diagram marks the expected normal distribution and when analyzing Figure 5 such a distribution is the case. We can observe that the values rise initially, and after a while they drop to remain at the same steady level. As a concluding remark it must be stated that the spread of intercultural skills has become fairly even, with not so much of a variety among the students. Moreover, the negative skills have become weaker due to the exposure to intercultural exchanges and participation in the course devoted to intercultural communication. The phenomenon is better visualized by the fluctuating height of the columns,

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which are initially rising and then dropping to remain at the same level (see Figure 8). Figure 8. Distribution of mean values before the course – negative attitudes

While viewing the last diagram, we come to the conclusion that the respondents either provided very high or very low marks for the statements presented. The mean values can be found in the range between 1.0 and 2.0, or 4.5 and 5.0. As a result, no in-between values are present. Thus, the author may be assured that the students’ stereotyping and prejudices have become less common. Openness towards cultural differences has expanded. As a result of that more willingness on the part of the respondents regarding their enjoyment and respect of other cultures was recognized. In other words, the level of uncertainty avoidance has decreased. The group of the students of English has become less individualistic and more collectivistic. Last but not least, they have advanced to ethnorelativism from their initial ethnocentric attitudes, which is extremely vital for the success of any person willing to become more interculturally sensitive (see Figure 9).

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Figure 9. Distribution of mean values after the course –negative attitudes

The investigation as conducted can further be verified. The aforementioned questionnaire was administered to the population of 150 students before the course in intercultural communication (xi) and after the course (yi). With the application of test t- for two mean independent values, the author intends to verify the main hypothesis (whether appropriate intercultural training can affect the development of intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communicative competence) at the level of significance Į=0.05.The following basic hypothesis is put forward:

Ho : Z

0

and the following alternative hypothesis is advanced:

H1 : Z  0 where Z signifies a mean value in the population difference In order to calculate the value of t the following formula is used:

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t

where:

t

zi sd

n

zi

xi  y i

, and n is the number of pairs.

 0,832 10 0,494

5,329

The critical set will be as follows table t- of the student

tD

[f,tD (n  1)] ,

and the read z

2,262

Figure 10. The calculation of the statistics for hypothesis 1.

As can be seen in the diagram, the calculated value oft is to be found within the critical area. Hence, the basic hypothesis is to be rejected for the benefit of an alternative hypothesis stating that participation in the course of intercultural communication increases the students’ intercultural sensitivity. It might be assumed that their intercultural communicative

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competence strengthens, too, and as a result they become more skillful intercultural communicators. The same course in intercultural communication also affects the negative behaviours of the respondents. With the same test, it is to be proved that after the course in intercultural communication the students change their worldview, which is observed thanks to the values depicting their decreasing negative attitudes. The following basic hypothesis is to be made:

Ho : Z

0 (the course does not influence the responses of the

students surveyed) and an alternative hypothesis:

H1 : Z ! 0 (the course decreases the values of indicators) To calculate the value of t, the same formula is applied:

t

t

zi n sd 2,78 10 11,783 0,746

The critical set will be as follows t- of the student

tD

2,262

[tD (n  1),f]

and the read z table

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Figure 11. The calculation of the statistics for hypothesis 2.

Similarly to the previous case, the calculated value oft is to be found within the critical area. Hence, the basic hypothesis is to be rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis stating that the students’ negative attitudes become very rare due to their prior participation in the course of intercultural communication. On the contrary, their positive attitudes become more prevalent. Moreover, they have developed appropriate intercultural skills supported by expanded knowledge of the issues critical to intercultural communicators. The conclusion which can be drawn from our discussion is that the students are more positive in all the categories. The results of the course in intercultural communication had a positive impact on their attitudes and skills. The course allowed for an improvement of those skills, which the students had acquired informally before its commencement as well as those, which used to be hardly noticeable, or did not exist at all. The positively-oriented values towards intercultural encounters have increased in strength, and those negatively-oriented at the initial stage have decreased in size. To be more specific, it seems vital to point out that the students of English at Polish colleges can comprehend cultural differences better and even accommodate to them. Although some of them showed their initial tendency to withdraw from intercultural encounters, their lack of interest towards them, or even avoidance of interaction, it must be highlighted that most of the problematic issues, after a period of transition, have been

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successfully resolved. As a result of the course the students now assume that people from other cultures are basically like them. Thus, the author has observed that they are able to apply the values of other cultures to their own. The differences across cultures were recognized and the students learned subsequently how to shift their perspectives and behaviour according to a particular cultural context. Their generated ethno-relative worldview allowed for the development of appropriate attitudes, knowledge and behaviour that constituted intercultural sensitivity – the main component of intercultural communicative competence. Hence, it is possible to assume a potential growth in their sensitivity and developing intercultural communicative competence accordingly.

7.2 The culture-specific profile of students of English at Polish colleges On the basis of the data extracted from the questionnaire, which allowed for measurement of respondents’ individual orientations towards cultural differences, it also became possible to create their culture-specific profile. The two sets of results, before the students participated in the course in intercultural communication and after they completed it, allowed the author to show an evolution of their intercultural sensitivity and also of their cultural profile as intercultural communicators. As revealed by both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the choices of the positively and negatively oriented statements, ethnocentrism seems to be the dominating characteristic feature of the students’ profile before their participation in the course. Consequently, the students displayed their denial, lack of interest and avoidance of intercultural situations, or interactions with culturally-distinct counterparts. Referring to the knowledge gained from the interviews, some respondents have even tried to alienate themselves from their own intercultural experiences, either because they were uncomfortable with a complex multicultural identity, or because they could not manage to deal with intercultural perspectives. They also admitted to lacking intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes, which in turn, accounts for their reactions characterized by fear, uncertainty, low self-esteem, low self-confidence and high risk avoidance. Their fearful attitude towards another culture, which makes them experience it as central and polarizes their opinions and world views, may be often interpreted as aggressive. Another effect of ethnocentrism was the students’ tendency to see the world in simplified and mutually exclusive bipolar categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ followed with a positive evaluation of ‘us’ and rather negative of

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‘them’. Once more the explanation of this type of behaviour, derived from their interviews, is grounded in their tendency to consider Polish culture as inferior. Most probably it is accounted for by the lack of extensive knowledge about their mother culture, deeply rooted stereotypes, which convey negative images of Poles among foreigners, their own economic situation, which prevents them from being global citizens as well as their limited, or even non-existent opportunity to have a direct experience of other cultures. The interviews confirmed the above assumption because the students whose ethnic, cultural, and religious background lies within the investigated areas of Krosno, Legnica, Elbląg and àomĪa, are not placed in the privileged position in any way. They have admitted that due to their economic situation, they do not have many chances to explore foreign cultures. Only a few have had an opportunity to visit other countries within the Erasmus Exchange Programme. The Internet and the media seem to be the sole sources of intercultural information, which provide them with mediated experience of multiculturalism. When asked about the historical and modern multiculturalism of their environment, they were not able to discuss it, although the existence of different religions and ethnic minorities was intellectually acknowledged. Their contacts with Erasmus students who are quite numerous were limited, which marked their concept of multiculturalism and impoverished its experience. Consequently, their inability to see and exploit the cultural richness around them prevents them from developing intercultural sensitivity. On the other hand, its lack is a serious obstacle, because being observable and mindful, open and willing to participate in intercultural exchanges, all create an essential and proper attitude in intercultural encounters. The mutual correlation between intercultural sensitivity and experience of multiculturalism is very strong and resembles a vicious circle. Considering the environmental as well as psychological constraints, the majority of students demonstrated a difficulty in recognizing patterns of cultural difference in their own and other cultures. They could hardly adapt to and accept intercultural otherness by moving from a one-dimensional to multi-dimensional reality and shifting their prospective behaviour into other cultural contexts. A shift towards ethnorelativism and consequently a positive change in intercultural sensitivity could be observed in the students’ behaviour after the course was over. They have developed more self-confidence by stressing universal values of all cultures, which is typical of the minimization stage in the process of acquiring intercultural communicative competence. When interviewed, they claimed the importance of commonalities and similarities among cultures. They also assumed that

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although cultures differ across the globe certain cultural values, typical of Polish students, can also be found in their culturally-distinct interlocutors’ actions. Showing a strong commitment to the idea that people from other cultures are basically alike, they viewed the world in terms of common needs, interests and goals as well as values, norms, beliefs and practices. At the same time they were able to recognize basic patterns of cultural difference. Although their emerging ethno-relative attitude stemmed from generalizations and the use of unsophisticated cognitive schemata, it showed the beginning of a positive evolution. The big change was seen in their declarations that they are interested in interacting with culturally different people, which is enjoyable and enriching. A transitional change in the students’ cultural identification with an acceptance of multicultural identity existing in today’s worldviews among many young people could also be noticed. A positive change in the cultural profile of the respondents should serve as the most efficient motivation to make them continue towards the development of their intercultural communicative competence. Hopefully, they will do it as they have learned that the more experience they have of cultural differences, the easier they will master their intercultural communicative competence becoming at the same time more effective in interpersonal contacts across cultures.

7.3 The course in intercultural communication and its evaluation by the students The evaluation of the course in intercultural communication is a necessary procedure considering the fact that such courses have been incorporated in the teaching curricula in various institutions of higher education in Poland, including the four colleges where the present research was conducted. The assessment process is recognized and accepted at educational institutions all over the world as it is to the benefit of both students and academics. It is thus regarded as a teaching tool focusing on direct improvement of educational practices by making the teacher more responsive to his/her students’ goals, facilitating clarification and identification of teaching goals, clarifying the instructor’s expectations, making the students more self-reflective learners, and finally facilitating their understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses. The students who volunteered to take part in the investigation discussed the suitability and practicability of the course in the context of ongoing assessment. The evaluation process was broken into the following stages: 1) establishing students’ learning goals and objectives for the course, 2)

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eliciting from the students whether the goals have been met, and 3) initiating a discussion on how to improve teaching and learning in the course. An open-question Course Evaluation Questionnaire consisting of five questions was administered to the students of English in June 2014 once the course was over. The same group of 150 students who participated in the research agreed to answer the questions evaluating the course. The questions asked in the evaluation questionnaire were the following: 1. Did you find the course in intercultural communication necessary? Why (not)? 2. To what extent have your expectations been met regarding the course? 3. Which of the issues covered did you find the most useful and practical? 4. Do you find communicating across cultures easier and smoother having completed the course? If so, how? If not, why? 5. Is gaining knowledge in the field of multicultural issues a fashion or a necessity in the contemporary world? All the respondents found the course highly effective and expressed unanimously the same very positive opinion regarding its content. They stressed that their expectations had been met, although many of them admitted that they became more aware of their communication needs and subsequent expectations only when the course was in progress. The topic was new to them and they did not really know what to expect as the term intercultural communication did not have any deeper meaning for them. It was just a label used in public discourse devoid of any personal connotations. They also claimed that the number of hours devoted to the course (only thirty) was too small to address in-depth the most significant topics inherent in intercultural encounters. In their opinion it was just an introduction to intercultural communication issues and a way to sensitize them to the challenges as well as benefits of acting as a communicator at the crossroads of cultures. They also admitted that the course provided them with general knowledge, which they felt should be just a starting point in the lifelong process of learning intercultural skills and working towards creating proper attitudes. It is possible because thanks to the course they have become more acute observers, who refrain from quick judgments and try to apply the DIE (describe, interpret, evaluate) principle in their cognitive processes. They stressed that one of the advantages of the course was that

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they got interested in the issue and were encouraged to study it on their own. One of the respondents used the expression “discovering a new field which helps self-cognition”. He also said that looking at the neighbourhood after his participation in the course, it became to him a new place full of various manifestations of multiculturalism, which offer an experience of a multiple reality. The statement supports our claim that the students’ motivation to study intercultural communication changed from purely instrumental, rooted in pragmatism to authentic and genuine. The main criticism of the course concerned the lack of balance between theory and practice. What the students found missing in the course content was a more practical approach to the discussed topics. The students appreciated the simulation game they had played and a few critical incidents as well as the case studies they had analyzed, but they stressed that there should have been more time devoted to the activities. They positively assessed the interactive format, but in most of the cases the students did not participate actively in the course explaining it by their lack of knowledge of the issues discussed except for the situations when they could talk about their own limited experiences regarding intercultural exchanges. The respondents, especially those who were able to travel and experience intercultural communication outside the classroom, also voiced their preferences considering the selection of topics discussed throughout the course. They were able to assess the issues’ usefulness and practicability referring to their experience at other European institutions of higher education, which they had visited as Erasmus exchange students. Asked to make certain recommendations regarding the suitability of the course content, they most highly marked two course topics: multiculturalism with a special emphasis on the issues of the global village and culture shock. In response to the discussion on multiculturalism the students stressed that it is a fair system, which allows people to truly express who they are within a society. They argued that culture is not one definable thing based on one’s race or religion, but rather the result of multiple factors that change as the world evolves. The global village caught their attention because they understood that they belong to it as users of the internet, which is a powerful factor of inclusion into a global community. They also pointed at culture shock – the difficulty that more and more people face these days trying to adjust to a new culture, which differs markedly from their own. Other issues they mentioned as interesting and useful included stereotypes, political correctness, verbal and non-verbal communication, the concept of the melting pot and salad bowl, especially when referred to the extended idea of new multiculturalism. In the context of stereotypes,

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the students noticed that the process of creating ethnic and gender stereotypes is a result of diversity and pluralism in Europe, which is still mentally, politically and economically divided. They regarded the knowledge they had gained of how to deal with stereotypes as essential, since they could face the problem very frequently in various contacts with foreigners. What they also felt rather dissatisfied about was the fact that such generalizations were based on subjective truth and sometimes on unverifiable content matter. They found useful the topic of political correctness, which was not well known to many of them in the sense that they did not think about an ethical responsibility for the terms it uses. Political correctness denotes minimization of social and institutional offence in occupational, gender, racial, disability, and age-related contexts, but at the same time it may result in blurring basic ethical principles, relativizing them, e.g. a robber becomes a person with an alternative sense of private property. Such an understanding of political correctness sensitized them to a responsible and respectful use of language. For many of them it was a fairly new experience, which allowed them to look at the role of a communicator from a different perspective. It is also a tangible example showing how language and interpersonal communication construct relations among people. Many of the respondents stressed that the course changed their understanding of communication as mainly executed by verbal means. They admitted that it was one of their favourite topics, which enlarged their notion of communication. They emphasized that knowing how senses contribute to knowing the world and communicating its experience to others, they became richer. The value of the concepts of the melting pot and salad bowl consisted in making the students aware of how to treat cultural differences to make them a source of richness. A discussion of multiple identities, which most people have today, made them reflect upon their own identity dilemmas. Having participated in the intercultural communication course, the students declared that they are able to move across cultures more easily. Their communication has become more efficient as they themselves have become more knowledgeable, self-confident and open to other cultures. They have developed more positive feelings towards intercultural situations as they did not feel endangered by its newness. Their increased self-confidence and self-awareness resulted in diminishing their reluctance to get engaged in uncertain situations inherentin intercultural encounters. They realized that the greatest benefit of the course was the change of their attitude from ethnocentric to ethnorelative. They were no longer afraid of new things and opinions of others. They did not view their own culture as

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central anymore and they have overcome the inferiority complex. They expressed it very clearly that they were confident to meet a foreigner and feel equal to him/her. Curiosity and willingness to see the world was stated as a new disposition that they wanted to give expression to in the future. Displaying the features of an intercultural communicator the students have developed their intercultural communicative competence, although they did not use the term when asked about their ability to communicate across cultures. Considering the last question from the questionnaire, it must be highlighted that all the students stressed the necessity to attend the course in intercultural communication. They differed in giving the reasons why they had found it useful as for some it was its pragmatic value considering the changing patterns of communication, for the others a way to improve the quality of life and for a few a fashion. They explained that there is a need for such courses as culture has a major impact on the quality of international contacts where the danger of miscommunication is more and more realistic. The students remarked unanimously that intercultural training had been recognized as a critical element in succeeding on the global stage. Thus, such a course is indispensable in helping students attain the skills, knowledge and experience. Moreover, they can see numerous benefits to intercultural training. First of all, it is an opportunity to develop self-awareness through learning about their own strengths, weaknesses, prejudices and preconceptions. As a result they build their own confidence. The students have also noticed that the course helped them to break down barriers, which resulted in building trust enabling, in turn, a dialogue. The training also motivates them to work towards greater self-knowledge because through self-analysis people begin to recognize areas in which they need to improve and develop. Once the participants have been motivated positively their horizons open because they start to think about the surrounding cultures. The students stressed that they tend to deal with people with sensitivity and empathy, and by becoming better listeners they become better communicators. Also, some students have become aware of the fact that the course helped them to move towards creating a shared space rather than just focusing on the differences among people. Thanks to the course in intercultural communication most of the students declared that their communication skills have been enhanced and therefore, future employment opportunities have widened. Considering the responses given by the respondents, courses in intercultural communication should become a part of not only foreignlanguage teaching programmes but of others, too. The challenges to be met while designing them concern their practical aspects to give the

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students an opportunity to gain appropriate knowledge and to experience all the difficulties of intercultural communication.

CONCLUSION

The analysis of the empirical data allows us to formulate conclusions in three distinct but mutually complementary areas. All of them deal with the development of intercultural sensitivity, which we posited to be the most important determinant of intercultural communicative competence. The use of an eclectic method which consisted in combining questionnaires and guided interviews with Polish students of English at four Polish State Colleges resulted in both a quantitative and qualitative analysis giving more weight to our findings. The findings in the first area of our research sensitize us to culturespecific dimensions of skills, attitudes and knowledge which, on the one hand are proper to the learners of English but, on the other, can also be applied to students of any foreign language, e.g. German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, etc. Their generalization is possible because they refer to basic extra-linguistic, cognitive and socio-psychological constituents of intercultural sensitivity. The second one concerns the role of courses in intercultural communication in the process of its development. Finally, the third one, directly relates to the situation of learners in relatively small and rather new academic centres such as Legnica, Elbląg, àomĪa and Krosno, and the impact of their socio-economic and cultural background on the opportunity to create and then develop intercultural sensitivity, which refers to their ability to act as mediators in intercultural encounters. Hopefully, due to the unquestionable role of socio-cultural and economic factors in the development of intercultural communicative competence, the conclusions will also be valid for other teaching contexts and students based in similar academic institutions all over Poland. As far as the first area is concerned, the respondents have become more aware of three types of basic components of intercultural communicative competence – knowledge, skills and attitudes, which have changed their understanding of the communication process on the intersections of cultures. In the field of knowledge, the most important thing was to make them see verbal language as only one constituent of communication processes, important but not decisive. Their knowledge of culture systematized by means of available models were helpful in understanding its presence in semantics, syntax, conversational routines, choice of topics etc, which facilitates an anticipation and avoidance of potential communication

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difficulties. As followed from the interviews, our interviewees’ new approach to communication has affected positively their communication effectiveness at least in two ways: it enriched their own repertoire of its means and also made them aware that a proper understanding of messages goes far beyond its wording. The knowledge of the existing cultural diversity combined with an immediate experience of intercultural communication gained by participating in simulation games constituted a foundation for a change of attitude. They have gradually become more open towards strangeness and are willing to suspend stereotypes, prejudice, hasty judgments, apprehension, and even hostility towards others. They have also become more curious of other cultures and their users, which also resulted in their growing interest of mother culture, national values, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. Empathy, another dimension of intercultural sensitivity, has also been improved as a result of their better understanding of the value of the relational level on each communication act and an ethno-relative attitude. Such changes in their attitudes have led them to a much more critical and open approach towards otherness, unknown cultural meanings and behaviours. They have also encouraged a development of critical thinking, because through the participation in the course, the students, on many occasions, were expected to articulate their own beliefs even though these were not acceptable and caused a lot of confusion or doubt. Before the commencement of the course in intercultural communication, the respondents’ scores ranged between 4.50 and 2.82 for the statements expressing a positive orientation towards intercultural differences. The disparity showed that some abilities and attitudes were better developed than others and identified the skills which needed to be improved. The research findings proved that the students of English highly respect the values of people from other cultures and display openness, lack of prejudice, tolerance and willingness, which consequently indicates low uncertainty avoidance and low power distance. During the second phase of questionnaire administration the values exhibiting positive attitudes towards intercultural differences increased significantly. Without a doubt the respondents have improved their skills. Fluctuations in estimates by over 1 point, when the marking range maximum value was 5, mark an indisputable intensification of the traits of intercultural communicative competence. The second group of investigated statements described negative attitudes towards intercultural differences. The respondents were classified as those who refuse interaction with other cultures and have no interest in discovering cultural differences. The lowest mean values of 1.58 and 1.48

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demonstrated the students’ discomfort and discouragement in intercultural situations. The students’ improper attitudes and emotions were even more intensified in some cases by exemplifying their hostile behaviour. The most observable decline was to the value of 1.46. Hence, the students’ openness towards cultural differences has expanded, stereotyping and prejudices have become less common. Additionally, more willingness on the part of the respondents regarding their enjoyment and respect of other cultures has been noticed as a result. All this has confirmed the author’s initial assumption that the students’ awareness and respect of otherness grew stronger, because by re-assigning particular values to the statements, they showed a meaningful rise in their positive attitudes and a significant drop in their negative orientations accordingly. The changes in the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the course participants have been an indicator of the value of the course in intercultural communication. All the participants were positive and stressed that it had helped them to improve the intercultural communicator’s skills, which were either not fully developed, or even did not exist at the start of the training. They also highlighted that it made them more culturally sensitive, which turned out to be useful while learning how to tolerate ambiguity and manage stress as well as the fear of the unknown. Moreover, they have become more flexible in their approach towards intercultural differences and more successful in maintaining a positive emotional state regardless of the interfering obstacles. Their personal autonomy has increased and together with increased mindfulness, self-confidence, empathic openness and curiosity, empowerment, self-worth and self-pride, have contributed to creating new multicultural identities. The quantitative analysis as well as its qualitative dimension confirm the value of intercultural communication courses. However, we should remember that the classroom situation differs significantly from real life where all kinds of mistakes must be paid for. Still, without the course, becoming an effective intercultural communicator remains a challenge. Referring to the empirical material concerning the students’ life experience of cultural diversity rooted in their socio-economic situation, two reflections are worth sharing. Firstly, in the case of the students, the role but, first of all, the responsibility of language teachers is especially important in the process of teaching a foreign language and developing intercultural communicative competence. They should aim at helping their students to create truly multicultural identities, enabling them to act as cultural mediators drawing on their daily experience of intercultural communicators, which results from the fact that the students usually come

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from the regions historically marked by cultural diversity. The biggest challenge consists in sensitizing them to various manifestations of culture and to its impact on communication patterns by enabling them to identify and value cultural diversity of their own immediate surroundings. As follows from the responses of our research participants, they tend to see cultural diversity only in reference to national cultures, ignoring more subtle categories such as ethnic, religious, gender, age-differentiating dimensions. Moreover, many of them needed assistance in perceiving themselves as partners in an intercultural exchange. Their empowerment meant for them not only becoming more self-confident, but also being able to recognize the value of Polish culture and exhibiting pride because of being its user. Let me stress that their empowerment through selfcognition is a necessary prerequisite of partnership and equality, which in turn are built into intercultural sensitivity. Secondly, the role of formal education in the field of intercultural communication is much bigger than the informal one which consists in non-institutionalized contacts with strangers during private encounters. Most of the respondents are economically disadvantaged and cannot travel easily, which reduces their chances of practising their skills as intercultural communicators in natural settings. This aspect was often mentioned by students in the interviews as most of them openly admitted that their immediate experience of the British or American cultures was nonexistent. Their familiarity with other cultures was also very poor. Only a few students have visited Italy, Spain, Greece, Egypt and Turkey, the most popular holiday destinations for Poles. Erasmus exchange students were a positive exception but their number was relatively low. In their case the value of the course consisted in providing them with a cognitive frame of understanding their experience abroad, which was usually experienced as culture shock. The research has also evidenced a very complex relationship between the English language and the culture of its speakers. It is one of the basic dilemmas of instructors of the course in intercultural communication because today English has the status of lingua franca. Consequently, the users of English belong to various cultures, and although they speak this particular language they bring their own cultural experience to the communication process. The question, which arises subsequently is whether the students of English Language Studies have become successful intercultural mediators as a result of the course in intercultural communication they attended. The learners’ attitudes and beliefs changed as they came into contact with new cultures during the course and while travelling. They have learnt how to

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negotiate between the contrasting world-views of home and the target culture. It can be claimed for the course that the key values have been promoted: open-mindedness, curiosity, tolerance of difference, and respect for self and others. While dealing with various aspects of intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communicative competence, it is necessary to see their value from a wider social perspective. Their level of development corresponds to the quality of life of the speakers because of their potential to create a new quality of human relationships based on respect and recognition of cultural diversity. Moreover, as a component of each individual’s symbolic capital, it implies such a type of interpersonal communication, which is an effective tool to promote active and conscious citizenship, social coherence, empowerment, partnership as well as solidarity. It effectively assists the fight against social exclusion and intolerance manifested in all kinds of “-isms” (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.). Intercultural communicative competence is a pure public good, and as such, it is both a basic right that we, as teachers, have an obligation develop.

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