Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence: Revisited 9781800410251

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence Revisited 2nd edition

Michael Byram

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/BYRAM0244 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Byram, Michael, author. Title: Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence: Revisited/Michael Byram. Description: 2nd edition. | Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This revised edition of Michael Byram’s classic 1997 book updates the text in light of both recent research and critiques and commentaries on the 1st edition. The book is an invaluable guide for teachers and curriculum developers, taking them from a defi nition of Intercultural Communicative Competence through planning for teaching to assessment”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033219 (print) | LCCN 2020033220 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800410237 (paperback) | ISBN 9781800410244 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800410251 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800410268 (epub) | ISBN 9781800410275 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages—Study and teaching. | Multicultural education. | Intercultural communication—Study and teaching. | Communicative competence. Classification: LCC P53.45 .B96 2021 (print) | LCC P53.45 (ebook) | DDC 418.0071—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033219 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033220 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-024-4 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-023-7 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2021 Michael Byram. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by NBN.

For my teachers – illuminations from the past For Marc, Max, Hugo, Sophie and Maya – lights into the future

The nations must understand one another and quickly, and without the interposition of their governments, for the shrinkage of the globe is throwing them into one another’s arms. E.M. Forster Notes on the English (1920) The Commission has put greater emphasis on one of the four pillars that it proposes and describes as the foundations of education: learning to live together, by developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions and spiritual values and, on this basis, creating a new spirit which, guided by recognition of our growing interdependence and a common analysis of the risks and challenges of the future, would induce people to implement common projects or to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way. Utopia, some might think, but it is a necessary Utopia, indeed a vital one if we are to escape from a dangerous cycle sustained by cynicism or by resignation. Learning – The Treasure Within ‘The Delors Report’ (1996)

Contents

Foreword Karen Risager

ix

Preface (2020) Preface (1997)

xiii xvii

Introduction The Tourist and the Sojourner Teaching and Assessment Intercultural Communicative Competence Teaching and Assessing ICC: A Framework What this Book is … What this Book is Not … 1

2

Defi ning and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence Introduction Communicating Across Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries and Frontiers Communication and Interaction Teaching Intercultural Communication in Context Assessment in the Context of Intercultural Communicative Competence Conclusion: The Language Learner as ‘Ethnographer’ and/or as ‘Applied Linguist’ Coda: Intercultural and Pluricultural Competence A Model for Intercultural Communicative Competence Introduction Describing Intercultural Communication and the ‘Intercultural Speaker’ Attitudes Knowledge Skills Intercultural Communication in Operation Acquiring Intercultural Communicative Competence in an Educational Setting vii

1 1 3 3 6 8 9 12 12 12 23 28 32 33 34 40 40 42 44 46 48 50 54

viii

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Relating Intercultural Competence to Communication Intercultural Competence Defi ned in Terms of Objectives The Developmental Factor Questions of Power in Intercultural Communication Coda: Moral Relativism, Pluralism and Human Rights 3

4

5

6

Objectives for Teaching, Learning and Assessment Introduction Formulating Teaching, Learning and Assessment Objectives Acquiring Intercultural Competence A Comprehensive Model of Intercultural (Communicative) Competence Coda: Mediation

59 61 67 69 72 82 82 83 91 96 99

Curriculum Issues Introduction Concepts of Progression A Threshold of Intercultural Communicative Competence? Planning a Curriculum for Intercultural Communicative Competence Two Contrasting Examples: Teaching French in an East Coast Region of the United States and English in Taiwan Lesson and Course Planning Coda: Intercultural Citizenship and the Teacher’s Ethical Responsibilities

103 103 104 105

Assessment Introduction Assessing the Five ‘Savoirs’ Purposes for Assessment Assessing Levels of Intercultural Communicative Competence Conclusion Coda: Measurement of Intercultural and Related Competences

126 126 128 142

Conclusion

153

Appendix: Glastonbury Public Schools Project References Index

107 110 119 121

145 147 148 156 159 170

Foreword

This book is a revisited version of the very influential book published in 1997 (Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence). During the 24 years that have passed since then, the importance of communication and cooperation across the world has become ever more evident. Educational authorities, materials developers and teachers worldwide need tools for ensuring that learners – children, young people and adults – develop the necessary competences in intercultural communication: intercultural communicative competence. The present book is such a tool, and it is both highly useful and full of reflections. For those who know the 1997 book, I can say that the core models have not changed in their structure: the well-known model of the five components of intercultural competence and the full model of the combination/integration of communicative and intercultural competence. What is new is a revised defi nition of some of the components and the introduction of a wealth of extra reflections and explanations, notes and codas which make clear how the models and the suggested implementations should be understood in the light of the complexities of the world today and of advances in the field of language and intercultural education. Furthermore, some misunderstandings of the original text are dealt with and clarified. The focus in the book is on intercultural communicative competence in relation to language teaching, particularly foreign language teaching. Thus, the focus is on learners’ ability to relate to and communicate with people who speak a different language and live in a different country. However, as Michael Byram emphasises, most countries are multicultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual, and therefore foreign language teaching should also enable learners to relate to and communicate with people in their own country. This means that, although the practical examples in the book mainly relate to the field of foreign language teaching, the abstract models, and to some extent the detailed lists of objectives and methods of assessment, may be used in connection with all kinds of language teaching, including second language teaching (e.g. for immigrants) and in many different contexts. The importance of institutional and geopolitical contexts for the implementation of the framework is frequently underscored in the book. ix

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Michael Byram occupies a central position in the field of language and intercultural education, and his concept of intercultural communicative competence has influenced curricula and teacher education in many parts of the world. Underlying this concept is a complex view of the language learner, including three interconnected facets: • • •

a person with an open mind; a person with the curiosity and courage of the ethnographer; a person with the engagement and responsibility of the citizen.

These three facets (or ideals) have always been present in his work (including the 1997 book), but the idea of the language learner as an engaged and responsible citizen has been emphasised more and more strongly throughout the years. The fi rst facet is very basic and rests on the conviction that learning a language is not just learning a set of skills but is an opportunity to develop as a person (cf. the German concept of Bildung). Teaching should be designed to offer learners opportunities to challenge their views of the target language and its users, to become aware of and reflect on possible stereotypes and prejudices concerning target-language countries and peoples and, if possible, to replace or supplement them with more valid knowledge, personal experiences and intercultural interaction in the target language. The second facet derives from Michael Byram’s early inspiration from social anthropology and ethnographic practice: the language learner could be imagined as a person who is – or prepares to be – a kind of ethnographer. He or she observes people’s practices in a target-language community, tries to learn their language, participates in everyday life, interprets narratives and documents, reflects on norms, beliefs and values, and in the process learns something about him- or herself. The third facet draws on the field of citizenship education – across subjects and including language teaching. In this perspective, the language learner is not only seen as a person with the curiosity and courage of the ethnographer but as an engaged and responsible citizen, in the classroom as well as in life after school. Learning a language is an opportunity to develop as a citizen with intercultural communicative competence, taking the vantage point of ‘the other’ to analyse one’s own country and people, with a view to changing it for the better. This was an important idea in the 1997 book since the central component of the intercultural competence model was ‘critical cultural awareness’. However, this part has been developed much more in the present book as a result of Byram’s extensive work with intercultural citizenship in the intervening years, including his contributions to the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018). The present book, then, takes intercultural competence in a more politically-oriented direction and with an emphasis on criticality.

Foreword xi

I welcome this very much, and am reminded of Michael Byram’s and my collaboration in the 1990s on a joint English-Danish project on ‘Language Teachers’ Identity in the Process of European Integration’ (published as Byram & Risager: Language Teachers, Politics and Cultures, Multilingual Matters, 1999). That project had a clear political dimension as it investigated language teachers in Denmark and England with regard to their views of Europe and European integration, and how this was related to their actual teaching of the target languages (a project which is highly interesting to revisit today in the light of Brexit and related movements in other countries in the EU). In his comments on models and implementations, Michael Byram mentions many different issues of the contemporary world and also warns against Eurocentrism. Indeed, the present book is part of a movement towards greater awareness of the cultural content of language education in terms of the problems and issues that are taken up, analysed with a critical mind and perhaps selected for active engagement inside and outside the school. Our world is packed with serious problems: climate change, inequality, poverty, racism, sexism, hunger, war, disease, etc. – problems that require collaboration across borders and across languages. Language subjects have a special role to play in the education of the global citizen with intercultural communicative competence. And with respect to Michael Byram’s own work, one can truly say that he has walked-thetalk, since collaboration across borders and across languages has always been his hallmark. The book comes out in a time of growing global awareness of our world as the home of a multitude of different voices, interests and languages. Through social media and other channels, many people get their information about what is going on in other parts of the world and become aware of shared interests and visions. The recent worldwide mobilisations of not least young people in relation to global issues – e.g. Prides, the Occupy movement, Pussyhat Women’s March, School strike for climate, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, etc. – suggest that this is the time to acknowledge the importance of intercultural communicative competence for all, not just for travelling but for understanding, discussing and fi nding new ways of transnational collaboration and change. Karen Risager Roskilde June 2020

Preface (2020)

The fi rst version of this monograph was published in 1997. Since then I have rarely opened its pages until I began this version, but I was happy to see the text make its way in the world and become widely referenced. Maybe my secret wish was to see it become a ‘classic’, because my Director of Studies at King’s Cambridge, Dr R.R. Bolgar, was such a model to all his students with his book The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries. That bar was set too high and I have been content to see the book reach an academic half-life of 20 years. Why then produce a second version when the fi rst is still (half) alive? There are several reasons. One is that it has become clear from commentaries and criticisms that my meanings have not always been interpreted as intended and need to be made more transparent. Another is that there has been much development in theory and practice concerning ‘the intercultural’ – manifest in the appearance of handbooks, of new journals and academic societies, of new language education policies and of new practices in schools and universities. The innovations in practice are slower than the others, but this is not surprising, and what is important is that they endure. It would therefore be possible to rewrite the monograph and include reference to all these changes. That would be a different and in fact a new work, surveying the literature, both academic and professional, and that is not the purpose of this book. Essentially, I am satisfied that what I wrote in 1997 can stand, and can remain useful for the future as it has proven to be in the past, albeit with full recognition of its weaknesses. I am conscious of those and, because I had read many theses and dissertations which quoted the book uncritically, I produced in 2012 a list of critiques and comments which I circulated to a network of researchers, encouraging them to use it with their students. Where new work has changed my views and text, I have cited and quoted, but I have not cut out older references which were the sources of my text simply because they are old. I will not follow the trend I often fi nd among younger researchers who think that because something is more than a few years old, it is not worth reading. This is then not a revised edition that changes the central message. That message remains, as do any inferences drawn from it for educational xiii

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

policy and practice. It is a new version which revisits and renews the first. I will attempt to remove ambiguities, and add reference to recent research and practice which supports and enriches the content. In doing so I will consider the critiques that have appeared, as far as I know them, and will use them to help me in my task of renewal. Let it be said here that the ‘savoirs model’ largely remains as it was but that it has been changed in some details and in particular in the explanation of what is meant by ‘savoir s’engager’/‘critical cultural awareness’. Furthermore, I will in some places deal with ideas – such as moral relativism or mediation – which are related to the text but were not present in the first version; I will do this where necessary in a coda to a chapter. One cannot of course trace the origins of all one’s ideas – neither to people nor publications. Some acknowledgements are nonetheless possible. First to all those dozens of doctoral students I have supervised or examined, who perhaps thought I was teaching them but who were also teaching me. Some were quoted already in the fi rst edition and others appear in this one. Second, to the members of Cultnet, an informal group of doctoral and post-doctoral students – and others who joined out of curiosity or in search of kindred spirits – which has existed for over two decades. The network is large and not everyone can attend the annual meeting in Durham but these meetings and other contributions, such as sharing access to articles, copies of new books or information about conferences, have been a joy to work with. Third, to all those whom I have met in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe and who have been a constant source of intellectual stimulation and friendship. I also had particular help with my text from Mattia Baiutti, Claudia Borghetti, Dorie Conlon Perugini, Manuela Guilherme, Stephanie Houghton, Claire Kramsch, Wen-Chuan Lin (Richard), Ana Matos and Manuela Wagner. In recent years I have also benefitted from writing articles and books with other people, which have had impact on this book too. Thank you, Sarah Boye, Fabiana Cardetti, Belen Diez-Badmar, Mike Fleming, Irina Golubeva, Adelheid Hu, Han Hui (Hellen), Jia Yuxin, Maria del Carmen Méndez García, Lamia Nemouchi, Lynne Parmenter, Melina Porto, Petra Rauschert, Maria Stoicheva, Manuela Wagner, Wang Lihong and Leticia Yulita. I have had help from numerous others – although they may not know it – who have commented both negatively and positively on the 1997 version. Above all, in this list of thanks, I am extremely grateful to Karen Risager, Tony Liddicoat and Manuela Wagner for their meticulous reading and comments on the text, and to Karen for writing a Foreword. I began with reference to my Director of Studies in Cambridge and will end with reference to another influential figure. John Trim was the head of the new Linguistics Department in Cambridge when I was an undergraduate, and he introduced us to this new discipline in memorable lectures and phonetics workshops. I met him again a decade or so later at

Preface (2020)

xv

the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT) in London and in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe. His influence on me – and many others – was significant. He too set the bar too high for me, but I have enjoyed trying to jump over it. I once overheard him saying that I had taught him about the significance of the intercultural dimension of language teaching, an accolade I treasure. I hope I can (still) do the same for others. Michael Byram Brighton, England and Cossé en Champagne, France April 2020 Postscript: ‘The world will never be the same again’ is the mantra I hear as I fi nalise this manuscript while in ‘confi nement’ in France during the COVID-19 crisis. In Europe, the internationalism of the European ideal has been submerged under the nationalism of competition and self-esteem of different nation-states. The end of frontiers in Europe and the more general spirit of cooperation and globalisation have given way to national competition for medical resources within Europe and between Europe and the United States. Comparisons of statistics to see which country is best at ‘flattening the curve’ are rampant as a means of boosting national pride. All this is predictable from social group theory. As Catherine Jaeger, who is French but lives in Germany, wrote to me a few days ago, the fluidity and liquidity of the super-diverse world – phrases so beloved of post-modernists – give way to the ‘national solidities of the passport’, an insight from the way she was treated while being repatriated from Costa Rica after commercial flights through the United States were cancelled. The emphasis on countries somewhat mistakenly criticised in the first edition of this book is not entirely out of place in a context of national solidities. Fortunately we do not know whether the world ‘will never be the same again’. I hope that the false patriotism which hides the rampant chauvinism famously condemned as ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’ by Samuel Johnson – and there are as many scoundrels in the 21st century as in the 18th – will again retreat, aided in some small way by the work of language teachers and other interculturalists.

Preface (1997)

Although I am the sole author of this monograph and take responsibility for what it says, it owes much to its origins in a particular project and to the people involved. I am above all grateful to Geneviève Zarate, with whom I have enjoyed the privilege of cooperation and joint authorship for several years. She may not agree with all that I say but her ideas have profoundly influenced this text. In 1989 in Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education, I wrote that one of the areas crucially in need of further research was the assessment of the cultural dimension in language learning. I was therefore very pleased to be invited to participate in the Council of Europe’s project to develop a ‘Common European Framework of Reference for Language Learning and Teaching’. The Framework was to be based on defi nitions of levels of proficiency in the use of languages, and Geneviève Zarate and I were invited to write a paper to clarify the issues involved in determining levels of ‘socio-cultural competence’. The paper, ‘Defi nitions, objectives and assessment of socio-cultural competence’ was written to a tight schedule. This had the advantage of obliging us to formulate our thinking quickly and clearly, and the disadvantage of allowing little time for reflection, revision or elaboration. It also meant that the formulation was related to a particular model of language learning and to other position papers in the project. It is possible that without the stimulus of the Council of Europe project, we would not have put pen to paper or hand to computer, being too wary of the complexities of the issues. For me, it served as a significant fi rst step, whose direction was determined by writing together with Geneviève Zarate. Research Fellowships in Durham and Washington, DC provided the second stimulus and the intellectual and physical space in which to pursue the ideas of our original paper. This time the purpose and the readership is different. My hope is that this monograph will be accessible to anyone interested in foreign language teaching and learning, whatever the context in which they live and work. I realise that I am setting myself a difficult task because language teaching and learning are social phenomena differing according to time and place. Assessment in particular is linked to societal demands, to ensure quality of education, to plan for national needs, to facilitate mobility, and so on. To say anything useful xvii

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for every context is difficult but important, partly for reasons internal to the field, and partly because national concerns are now being complemented by international ones. I referred above to the different origins and contexts in which this monograph has been produced. At the Council of Europe, I am particularly grateful to Antonietta de Vigili, Joe Shiels and John Trim. At the National Foreign Language Center, I was very fortunate in being in residence with Ross Steele and Myriam Met, who were generous with their time in reading my long-hand script, and stimulating in discussion of my ill-formed first drafts. It was also a novel and rewarding experience, in my first visit to the United States, to be coping with new cultural practices, a whole range of cultures, and attempting to communicate in a language in which I was a proficient foreigner, while at the same time retiring to the haven of my office to write about the ‘intercultural speaker’. Theory and practice were one. I am grateful to the University of Durham for the award of a Sir Derman Christophersen Research Fellowship, and to the National Foreign Language Center at the Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC for the award of an Andrew Mellon Fellowship. It was a pleasure to be a colleague of David Maxwell, his staff and other visiting Fellows – particularly my neighbours Mats Oscarrson and Stephen Straight – for three months. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript by an anonymous reviewer who provided encouragement and detailed suggestions for improvements. I am grateful to Susan Metcalfe who patiently and efficiently typed my first draft, written still with paper and pencil, I have to confess. As always, my wife, Marie Thérèse, allowed me the luxury of quiet essential for writing, and put up with my absences while my attention was elsewhere. My best, and best-loved examples of ‘intercultural speakers’ are our children Alice and Ian, who are an inspiration. Michael Byram Durham January 1997

Introduction

The Tourist and the Sojourner

The purpose of this monograph is to explore the issues that arise if we wish to teach and assess a person’s ability to relate to and communicate with people who speak a different language and live in a different cultural context. That context can be in another country or in one’s own, since most countries are multicultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual.1 The need to do this is not a new one. Relationships between different cultural and linguistic groups – whether they are called ‘ethnic groups’, ‘nations’ or ‘states’ – are at the heart of diplomacy, and the need to choose appropriate ambassadors of one group to another is as old as civilised societies. What is new is the condition of the world which allows and encourages all the people in a cultural and linguistic group, not just its diplomats and professional travellers, to take up contact with people in other groups. 2 This leads to two quite different types of response even if individuals in reality may combine elements of both: the response of the tourist and that of the sojourner. The tourist response – and the word itself – was, until the late 20th century, far more familiar than the word and the characteristics of the sojourner, because the latter had touched fewer people. As the 21st century has progressed, sojourners have become far more familiar, and the causes and consequences of migration more diverse and controversial, but the word sojourner remains unusual, and ‘migrants’ and ‘immigrants’ are terms in much wider use. In Europe, the end of the Soviet Union and its imperial control of other countries led to an opening of borders and opportunities for economic migration from East to West, and sometimes back again, especially for young people. Economic migration from other continents, especially Africa, was more dangerous and life-threatening for those travelling across closed borders and rough seas. Displacement by wars and migration from West Asia, or ‘the Middle East’ as Europeans say, was an unexpected and highly sensitive phenomenon with different reactions in different countries which have created deep divides within Europe itself. North America, especially the United States, has had similar experiences as people have fled poverty, war and terror in some South American countries, resulting in division and extremism in the responses within the population. Populism, a new kind of fascism, is one regrettable 1

2

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

result in both Europe and the United States. In Asia, too, there is population movement, often unknown to Europeans and Americans. It has been largely driven by economic factors as people from poor countries seek work in richer countries, a phenomenon that started much earlier in Europe, and that is likely to mirror the developments there. Whatever the causes, such events are the context for language education and cannot be ignored. At the same time, there have been vastly increasing numbers of ‘tourists’ as travel, and particularly air travel, has become much cheaper and within the grasp of almost everyone in economically developed countries. The change is generational. Young people today travel more than their parents but the sharper contrast is with their grandparents. For many of these, the only experience of travel was the enforced ‘tourism’ of the 1939–1945 war, which affected people throughout the world who would otherwise never have left their region, let alone their country. 3 Tourism has major economic consequences, often visible but also often superficial. It is the sojourner who produces substantial and lasting challenges to a society’s unquestioned and unconscious beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings, and whose own beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings are in turn challenged and expected to change. The tourist hopes for quite the opposite effect: first that what they have travelled to see will not change, for otherwise the journey would lose its purpose4; and second that their own way of living will be enriched by the experience of seeing others, but not fundamentally changed. The experience of the sojourner is one of comparisons, of what is the same or different but compatible, but also of conflicts and incompatible contrasts. The experience of the sojourner is challenging for all concerned and, for many sojourners, tragic. Their migration is forced, their acceptance of a new ‘home’ reluctant. That same experience is nonetheless potentially valuable, both for societies and for individuals, since the state of the world is such that societies and individuals have no alternative but proximity, interaction and relationship; these are the conditions of existence. It is important to remember, however, that we already have a hundred years of insight, as my initial quotation from E.M. Forster shows. 5 Given favourable circumstances, societies benefit from more harmonious co-existence, and individuals gain an understanding of others and of themselves which makes them more conscious of their humanity and more able to reflect upon and question the social conditions in which they live. Where the tourist remains essentially unchanged, the sojourner has the opportunity to learn and be educated, acquiring the capacity to critique and improve their own and others’ conditions, actions which are ‘political’, a term whose meaning will be explicated in later chapters. The attitudes of the sojourner are, in short, preferable to those of the tourist, but this is not a book about sojourners per se; it is about language learners, who may or may not become actual sojourners. What I want

Introduction 3

them to become, however, is people with a sojourner’s modes of experiencing and analysing other ways of life and, as a consequence, their own. I want them, as a further consequence, to change in themselves – whether they travel or not – in sum, to be educated through language learning. Teaching and Assessment

Yet why teach and assess the qualities of a sojourner? Is it not enough to let these qualities emerge and to create the conditions propitious for societal harmony and individual education? The answer lies in the institutions in which the qualities are developed, but also in the underlying characteristics of social groups and societies. Social groups and societies have as a fi rst priority their own longevity, and they ensure that their members acquire loyalty and group identity from an early age. Their institutions support them through processes of socialisation, particularly educational institutions. At the same time, and increasingly as the world changes, schools and other educational institutions are expected to prepare those entrusted to them for the inter-lingual and inter-cultural experiences of the contemporary world. For the qualities of the sojourner are seldom acquired without help, are seldom learnt without teaching. Furthermore, these same qualities often run counter to many other dimensions of education which are intended to create a sense of loyalty and group identity; they therefore need special attention. Educational institutions live within a tension of looking inwards to ‘our own’ group and looking outwards to ‘others’. They have responsibilities, and need to demonstrate their ability to fulfi l them, to show they are accountable. Evaluation of their general efficacy, and assessment of the individuals in their charge, are part of that accountability. Evaluation and assessment6 cannot and should not be separated from the teaching and general institutional arrangements, and this monograph focuses on the teaching as well as the assessment of individuals. On the other hand, it will not deal with the evaluation of general arrangements, of the efficacy of the implementation of plans and principles for teaching and assessment. It will focus on the principles, on the ways in which they can inform planning and on the relationship between teaching and assessment. Intercultural Communicative Competence

Sojourners of every kind live in an environment that is new for them and where they themselves are perceived by others as new, as ‘newcomers’. In all societal environments – from the local community to the national society – there are complexities of power relations. Newcomers are not spared these, but experience a different kind of relationship from those that already exist. They are new, they are ‘outsiders’, they are ‘them’ not

4

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

‘us’. Whether they would otherwise be of high or low social status – whether they were, for example, professional people or street cleaners in their society of origin – in their new circumstances they have this additional dimension to cope with. It may lower their previous high status, making teachers become taxi drivers. Power relationships are therefore crucial, but can only be regulated by substantial societal efforts, in institutions, in the media, in politics. Education institutions are one important location for this, and what is described and discussed in this book should be seen in the wider institutional context. This book does not, however, deal directly with that wider context, for it is a book about learners and teachers in their classroom, however broadly interpreted the latter concept. This book is focused on helping teachers to develop in their learners the competences they need to bring to any encounter with ‘them’, irrespective of the location, especially where language competence is a crucial element for success. Bearing these restrictions in mind, teachers can develop in learners the qualities required of the sojourner, which I shall label ‘intercultural communicative competence’ (ICC), which is in turn the foundation for ‘intercultural citizenship’ (ICit). This is not to say that ICC is irrelevant if learners never become sojourners in another society – or even in another place in their own society. For they will nonetheless encounter sojourners and need to understand their experience and communicate with them and, secondly, the very fact that they may not become sojourners means that they need the perspective that challenges what they assume is normal and natural. The phrase intercultural communicative competence deliberately maintains a link with traditions in foreign language teaching, but expands the concept of ‘communicative competence’ in significant ways, to what I once called ‘post-communicative’ language teaching (Byram, 1988). The link makes explicit that my focus will be on the contribution of ‘foreign’ language teaching (FLT) to the development of the qualities required of a sojourner. The term ‘foreign’ is somewhat problematic. It suggests that an entity comes from outside, is alien and different, and thus contains some negative connotations. Terms have varied over time, geography and discipline, from ‘modern languages’ and ‘langues vivantes’ through ‘second languages’ and ‘additional languages’ to ‘world languages’, ‘fremmede sprog’ and ‘Fremdsprachen’, and many more in other languages. Furthermore, what is for one person a ‘foreign’ language from ‘outside’ is for the next person the language they speak at home while living ‘inside’, in the same society. Whichever term is used, there are unavoidable connotations, some of them undesired. I have chosen to continue to use ‘foreign’ and hope that any negative connotations will be removed in the process of analysis of what foreign language competence means in the context of intercultural encounters. As will become clear, this is a book that attempts to present a general and abstract view of ICC and

Introduction 5

simultaneously to serve in practical terms those who teach a language that is mainly spoken in another country, even if the language is also present in the country where learners live; it is above all a book for teachers of foreign languages in compulsory education. This is a difficult act to balance and has been a source of misunderstanding. In this second version, I have also tried to make it useful for language teachers in other situations, e.g. where the language they teach is the fi rst language of some people who live in the same country. In doing so, I have attempted to avoid the risks of complexity and confusion, the risks inherent in trying to cover all possible teaching and learning situations. My experience of reactions to the fi rst version has shown how easy it is to be misunderstood. FLT does not need, however, to claim sole responsibility for the teaching and assessment of ICC. Other subject areas such as the teaching of geography, history or literature can introduce learners to other worlds and the experience of otherness. History can confront learners with otherness in the dimension of time. Literature can give them an imagined experience of otherness. FLT, including the teaching of literature in a foreign language, has the experience of otherness at the centre of its concern, as it requires learners to engage with both familiar and unfamiliar experience through the medium of another language. Furthermore, FLT has a central aim of enabling learners to use that language to interact both with people for whom it is their preferred and ‘natural’ medium of experience, those we call ‘native speakers’, and with those who use it in lingua franca situations, where it is an estranging and sometimes disturbing means of coping with the world for all concerned. It is thus possible and important to distinguish between intercultural competence that takes place in ‘the same’ language and intercultural communicative competence where a ‘foreign’ language is involved. Let us take some contrasting examples. When a French doctor talks with a French schoolteacher, in French, about a child who is ill, each will bring to the situation their professional knowledge and identity, and with these some specific vocabulary and discourse. They will need to fi nd a common understanding which will require each to engage with the other’s professional culture and language, their ‘languaculture’ (Agar, 1996). To do this, they need intercultural competence. When the same two people meet at their sports club or reading circle, they share an acquired common understanding of the sport or the literature, and the language they need to interact with each other; they need little or no intercultural competence. There are, in the first meeting, linguistic demands as well as a need for intercultural competence, but the language requirements are quite different from a situation where the French doctor talks with a German teacher about a child who is ill while on an exchange visit to France. The impact of at least one of them speaking a foreign language – or both of them if they use a lingua franca such as English – is not just a matter of degree; it requires skills, knowledge and attitudes that are, and are

6

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

experienced as, different in kind. It requires intercultural communicative competence. These examples can be made less Eurocentric by substituting ‘country X’ for ‘French’ and ‘country Y’ for German. Imagine, for example, the competences needed for a European doctor and a Chinese doctor to discuss their respective medical traditions. FLT is concerned with intercultural communicative competence, where ‘communication’ is more than the exchange of information and sending of messages, a view which dominated ‘communicative language teaching’ (Byram, 1988; Trim, 1983). Even the exchange of information is dependent upon understanding how what one says or writes will be perceived and interpreted by someone from another cultural and linguistic group. It depends on the ability to decentre and take up the perspective of the listener or reader. For successful ‘communication’ is not solely a matter of the efficiency of information exchange. It is focused on establishing and maintaining relationships, and the efficacy of communication depends on using language to demonstrate one’s willingness to relate. This often involves the indirectness of ‘politeness’ rather than the direct and ‘efficient’ choice of language full of information. That ways of being polite vary from one linguistic and cultural group to another is widely known, but this is often reduced to the acquisition of particular formulae. Politeness is only the visible symptom of a more complex phenomenon: the differences in beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings through which people interact with each other, differences which may be incompatible and contain the seeds of conflict. ICC is not a panacea but politeness may help, and the introduction of the language of politeness into syllabi for communicative language teaching showed that communication was seen as interaction among people of complex cultural and social identities. Nonetheless, FLT needs to go beyond linguistic realisations of politeness to take account of the ways of living out of which others speak and write. Only then can FLT claim to prepare learners to communicate and interact with people who are ‘other’ and accepted as such, rather than being reduced to people assumed to be (almost) ‘like us’. Teaching and Assessing ICC: A Framework

It follows from the view of communication and interaction presented here that there can be no generalisable syllabus, neither linguistic nor cultural. For each learner brings to the learning process their existing linguistic and cultural competences and identities. A French learner of English needs a different syllabus and methods from a Greek, and different again from a Japanese, and within each of these linguistic groups there are different needs arising from age, purpose, institution and so on. If we substitute Arabic for English, then the differences become even more complex because there are French people with Arabic as their heritage language.

Introduction 7

The complexity could be increased by changing the list of learners and their learning situations; the potential complexity is enormous. Similarly, the assessment of their success as learners needs to take account of their origins, ages, purpose and so on, as well as the nature of the ICC they are learning. It is therefore inevitable that non-specific discussion can provide only a framework, a discussion of principles, illustrated with specific examples, but no more. The framework offered in this monograph is an attempt to clarify principles that give adequate recognition to the view of FLT presented above. It is written above all from the FLT perspective and has a strong link to the teaching of foreign languages in general education. It is thus written particularly for FLT professionals, be they teachers or policy makers or language planners. I considered writing the text in such a way that it would explicitly include second language teaching (SLT), by which I mean the teaching of a language that is routinely spoken outside the classroom, in the society in which the learner lives, e.g. the case of Arabic speakers learning French in France. There are clearly significant similarities between FLT and SLT, and the distinction is not a dichotomous one but rather a question of degree. However, it is precisely these nuances that decided me against trying to take the variety of factors into consideration throughout the text. It would have otherwise been full of digressions and qualifications to cover a range of cases. The intention is to write at a level of abstraction that can be related to FLT or SLT in a wide range of situations, although it is nonetheless necessary to use specific examples and terminology. Thus I shall refer to foreign countries and societies where I might also have referred to communities with a second language within learners’ own countries. It would be tedious to try to formulate the text in such a way that it refers to all possibilities, and I hope readers who consider themselves to be involved in SLT will make their own amendments and qualifications and still fi nd the text useful. I am aware that misreadings which lead to wrong assumptions and critiques may still occur.7 A text of this kind, which attempts to discuss general principles, is difficult to make accessible to all the readers one would wish. It has to be positioned at a high level of abstraction if it is to be valid in its claims, yet this tends to create difficulties in following the argument. Constantly offering examples, however, can cause clutter and even lead readers to reject the argument because a particular example does not hold in their own situation. I have tried to compromise by offering some examples but not exemplifying every point. The monograph will perhaps function best when used in teacher education, where readers can discuss the argument with respect to their own concrete situation, rather than hypothetical illustrations that I might provide. I would nonetheless wish to assure readers that the text arises out of my own experience of concrete situations in many years of teaching and teacher education, and has since its fi rst appearance been used by other teachers, who have taken from it what they

8

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

fi nd useful. I would not want any reader to try to ‘implement’ or ‘apply’ it in some simplistic way. The professional autonomy of teachers is important and should lead them to make their own uses of the text as they feel appropriate. Finally, it will quickly become evident that I am writing from a European perspective, partly because of the ‘biography’ of the monograph, born in work for the Council of Europe, and partly because of my own biography, born and educated in England, with an education that turned me towards other European languages, literatures and societies. It was only much later that I had opportunity to experience and attempt to understand other continents and countries, including the United States (where the first edition of this book was written) and China (e.g. with the help of my colleague and friend Jia Yuxin; see Jia et al., 2019), but it was salutary at an early stage to have a corrective analysis by Parmenter (2003) from an East Asian perspective. That the ideas in this monograph have nonetheless been used on other continents, including Asia, may be an indication either that they are more widely applicable, or that users have not challenged the ideas sufficiently. I cannot pursue the question here and leave it to others to decide. What this Book is …

Chapter 1 sets the scene by discussing the nature of intercultural competence and communication, and makes the point that FLT is an enterprise which takes place always in specific circumstances, is inevitably influenced by those circumstances and should be planned to suit the environment in which it takes place. In Chapter 2, I offer a descriptive model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). This is a description of components of the ability to understand and relate to people from other countries and/or cultural groups, and is intended to be a non-exhaustive but comprehensive and rich description of what is required in the most complex and also the most favourable circumstances of intercultural communication; it does not deal with the competences of conflict resolution. It is not a blueprint for all FLT. Since FLT has to be responsive to its environment, it is frequently the case that FLT quite properly does not attempt to develop in learners the most complex competence possible. Chapters 3 and 4 take the discussion closer to the immediate concerns of FLT professionals, and to what is teachable, learnable and assessable. In Chapter 3, I formulate the description of ICC in terms of competences and objectives. These provide a means of determining what the teacher and learner wish to achieve by suggesting what knowledge, behaviour, skill or attitude might ‘count as’ a part of ICC. Chapter 4 considers how these objectives might also be used to plan a curriculum, and is therefore intended to be particularly useful in setting the parameters within which FLT takes place on a routine basis. Suggestions for how this routine can

Introduction 9

be systematic and consistent in approach are then made in a section which discusses planning by objectives. Chapter 5 is intended for those who are involved in the assessment of FLT, which has hitherto mainly focused on linguistic competence. Policy statements commonly claim that the aims of FLT include knowledge of other countries, changes in attitudes to foreign languages, cultures and peoples and, more recently, the acquisition of the characteristics of (democratic) citizenship. The assessment of the degree to which individual learners achieve those aims, and the evaluation of the success of programmes of study in helping to do so, have on the other hand taken place very rarely. As we shall see, it is often said that such assessment is not possible, or not reliable or valid enough to be used when learners are to be given certification of their abilities, and it is only in the last few years that there has been evidence of assessment methods that meet some of these objections. It is also commonly observed that the lack of assessment leads to insufficient attention to teaching processes that can help learners to achieve what are after all the central aims of FLT. Chapter 5 addresses these issues by discussing the assessment options for the objectives proposed in earlier chapters. It argues that testing is perhaps necessary in some circumstances, but is insufficient to reflect the full complexity of ICC. This chapter then discusses new approaches that have appeared since the first edition of this monograph and how they might be related to the framework proposed here. What this Book is Not …

I emphasised above that both monograph and author have a ‘biography’. In the latter case, the biography includes many years of teaching foreign languages in England and training others to do so. As a result, the monograph was written primarily for other language teachers. It contains a model of ICC which is intended to be useful to teachers of languages, whether ‘modern foreign languages’, ‘langues vivantes’, ‘Fremdsprachen’, ‘world languages’ or ‘additional languages’, to cite just some labels from different countries. It is not a model of intercultural communication, but of some of the competences necessary in intercultural communication – competences that I believe can be taught and assessed. It is a model for planning and implementing teaching; it is not a model of learning. It is, as we shall see, a model which derives much more from ethnography than applied linguistics, which previously dominated as the ‘reference discipline’ for language teaching. Learners become ethnographers rather than applied linguists. If the model is used for other purposes than teaching, users should be aware of its original purpose and the limitations this involves. A corollary of this is that there have been criticisms of the model for what it is not, for not doing what it does not claim to do. Of course people are entitled to

10

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

understand and use it as they wish, but insofar as they go beyond my intention – stated I hope clearly enough – I do not take responsibility for or defend inadequacies, or attempt to remedy them. It is a competence model, but not a reductive one. In the fi rst edition I used ‘competence’ unreflectingly and I might have been justifiably criticised for this, but this has not, as far as I know, happened. Since then I have improved my understanding of ‘competence’, notably with the help of my colleague and friend Mike Fleming (2008, 2009), and am happy to think retrospectively that I did not use the notion in a reductive way, as I might have been tempted to do. Nonetheless, the use of the notion does imply a particular mode of education, one which plans and assesses by objectives with the expectation that learners will acquire increasingly complex competences as they ‘progress’. The challenge is to ensure that this approach does not ignore difficult dimensions of what should be learnt in general education (or Bildung), e.g. the values as well as the skills, attitudes and knowledge which are more easily described in behavioural and observable terms.8 Finally, this is not a handbook. There are several handbooks of different kinds which readers new to the field can use (e.g. Bennett, 2014; Deardorff, 2009; Jackson, 2020; Straub et al., 2007). I have resisted the temptation to engage with the many developments that have happened since 1997 except where they are directly relevant. Notes (1) I have added this new sentence as I have been misunderstood as being focused only on ‘foreign’ languages and peoples. Making this explicit will, I hope, ensure that the following sentences and the text as a whole are read more carefully. (2) Ironically, as I review the text one more time, in April 2020, I am, like the vast majority of people in the world, isolated and forbidden to travel – and in any case there is scarcely any means of public transport – because of the Corona/COVID-19 crisis. On a daily basis I read that this crisis will change the world, with much speculation about what this might mean, and of course as I write we cannot know. Having spent three years, while writing my PhD, living in the 1920s, the events of the ‘Spanish flu’ and the aftermath of World War I are on my mind. One change following from these two events was a move to internationalism and away from nationalism, at least for a decade. Nationalism has again become dominant in the world, both before and during the current crisis, and the need for internationalist intercultural thinking and the contribution that language teaching can make is greater than ever. Unfortunately, in the 1920s in Britain, language teaching did not live up to the challenge (Byram, 2018a). I hope that it will do so in the 2020s (Byram, 2018b). (3) In my own case – to remember older generations too – it was the 1914–1918 war that sent my grandfather for the fi rst time out of his village to other parts of his own country and then to another country, and the 1939–1945 war did the same for my father. (4) That tourism is becoming self-defeating, destroying what people travel to see, is increasingly evident. As I write this, Amsterdam is developing a new policy to change tourist habits and reduce the damage caused. (5) It is also noteworthy that, as Taylor (1965: 1) says: ‘Until August 1914 a sensible lawabiding Englishman [sic] could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of

Introduction 11

the state, beyond the post-office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission.’ Such mobility was, however, only for the few, the tourist on ‘the grand tour’ and perhaps the self-exile. Today we need at least one passport and having more helps in many circumstances. (6) The distinction between ‘evaluation’ and ‘assessment’ is not easily made in some European languages, and bilingual dictionaries often translate these two English words with one single word, with the same etymological roots as ‘evaluation’. The distinction can be briefly defi ned as follows: Assessment is ‘The measurement of a learner’s potential for attainment, or of their actual attainment.’ (Oxford Dictionary of Education) This term is generally used to cover all methods of establishing an individual’s capacity in some aspect of what they have learnt, irrespective of whether they have learnt as a result of being taught in an educational setting or as a consequence of learning through experience. Assessment is often used synonymously with ‘testing’, but it is more useful and accurate to consider testing and tests as one type of assessment. Evaluation is ‘The measuring of the effectiveness of a lesson, course, or programme of study.’ (Oxford Dictionary of Education) Evaluation is the study and reporting of a phenomenon – in our case an aspect of education – to assist an audience to determine its merit and value. The fi rst is a matter of professional standards and the second a matter of societal or individual need. For example, we may wish to know whether the teaching of a specific subject such as astrology is being carried out efficiently and effectively, and the evaluation may show that this is the case. On the other hand, we may wish to know if it is important to teach astrology in our society and the evaluation may show that this is not the case. (7) There have been several critiques of the fi rst version of this book for its supposed focus on ‘national cultures’ (e.g. Boye, 2016; Matsuo, 2012). Baker (2015: 152–153) also argues that my focus is on national cultures, but this is based on a misreading of ‘communities and countries’ and of ‘communities and societies’. He – and many others – misses the distinction between a community and a society: that within one society there are many communities and their associated cultures. This is not a case of ‘methodological nationalism’ even though the examples used in foreign language teaching may suggest this. I should perhaps have clarified the distinctions in case they were not known, although the distinction between community and society (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, in Tönnies’s original words) is an old one. These commentators also miss the point I made at the very beginning of the monograph that the model could be used to describe communication of people of diff erent communities within the same society. I hope that is no longer possible after my clarifications in this version. I shall return to the question of national cultures in a later chapter. (8) In the early stages of my teaching and training career, there was much emphasis on ‘de-schooling’ on ‘progressive education’. This disappeared in teacher education in England, as education became ‘training’ and a reductive view of competence teaching was introduced. The challenge of de-schooling and similar concepts was invigorating, as was the world of the Danish ‘friskole’ which I studied. Language teaching and learning was a challenge for those who implemented these reforming and in some respects revolutionary ideas. Unfortunately, the challenge disappeared as baby and bathwater were thrown out together.

1 Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Introduction

The assessment of an individual’s ability to communicate and interact across cultural boundaries with people of other social groups is facilitated by a detailed description of the process involved and definition of what is expected of the individual. It is an advantage to the assessor but also to both teacher and learner. All three can benefit from clarity and transparency (Council of Europe, 1993: 5) and agree upon the aims and purposes of the teaching, learning and assessment processes in which they are involved. It is important to remember, too, that their aims and purposes are determined in part by the societal contexts in which they find themselves – national, international and intranational – and in part by the preoccupations of institutions, which in turn reflect those of the societies in which they function. In this fi rst chapter I shall begin to describe and defi ne intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as it relates to foreign language teaching (FLT). This will involve building up a view of ICC from a base in existing FLT theory, and adding to it insights from other disciplines, in order to offer a model of ICC capable of informing discussion of teaching and assessment by FLT professionals. I shall, however, also consider how that model relates to some specific contexts, to illustrate the general need always to defi ne models of ICC according to the requirements of the situations in which learners fi nd themselves.1 Communicating Across Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries and Frontiers 2 Communicative competence

For linguists and language teachers the term ‘competence’ is dominated by its use by Chomsky and Hymes, for both of whom competence 12

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

13

is the idealised language ability of a speaker on the basis of which they perform language in a real world in real time, with all the constraints that this implies. This account of competence focuses on linguistic capabilities but the term has been more widely used in education to refer to other capabilities taught and learnt in other disciplines (Fleming, 2009). In the model of ICC developed here, language competence is one aspect complemented by others and a more encompassing defi nition is required. The following is useful for my purposes here 3: [competence is] the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and/or understanding in order to respond appropriately and effectively to the demands, challenges and opportunities that are presented by a given type of context. (Council of Europe, 2018b: 32)

The concept ‘communicative competence’ was developed in the Anglophone world by Hymes’ critique of Chomsky and in the Germanophone literature by Habermas.4 Hymes argued that linguists wishing to understand fi rst language acquisition need to pay attention to the way in which not only grammatical competence but also the ability to use language appropriately is acquired. He thus put emphasis on sociolinguistic competence and this concept was fundamental to the development of communicative language teaching. Then Hymes’ description of first language acquisition and communication among native speakers was transferred into the description of the aims and objectives of foreign language teaching and learning. I shall argue later that this transfer is misleading because it implicitly suggests that foreign language learners should model themselves on first language speakers, ignoring the significance of the social identities and cultural competence of the learner in any intercultural interaction. In fact, Hymes’ argument ought to lead to a greater awareness of the relationship between linguistic and sociocultural competence, since he described linguistic competence as just one kind of cultural competence: From a finite experience of speech acts and their interdependence with sociocultural features, (children) develop a general theory of speaking appropriate in their community which they employ, like other forms of tacit cultural knowledge (competence), in conducting and interpreting social life. (…). From a communicative standpoint, judgements of appropriateness may not be assigned to different spheres, as between the linguistic and the cultural; certainly the spheres of the two will interact. (Hymes, 1972: 279 and 286, emphasis added)

However, in the following decade, in his major review of language teaching, Stern argued that the sociolinguistic might have developed but that the sociocultural had not: As a generalisation, one can say that language teaching theory is fast acquiring a sociolinguistic component but still lacks a well-defi ned sociocultural emphasis. (Stern, 1983: 246)

14

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

This was the case in the 1980s and into the 1990s. For example, even in the work of the Council of Europe, the sociocultural component was not dealt with as thoroughly as the sociolinguistic (van Ek, 1986) until a new version of the Threshold Level was produced (van Ek & Trim, 1991) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment then introduced a more nuanced vision (Council of Europe, 2001). The reasons for this diversion from cultural knowledge/competence are not clear but Roberts et al. (2001: 25–26) argued that the link with the cultural sphere was lost because, despite the origins in Hymes and ethnography, language teaching has been influenced above all by speech act theory and discourse analysis, where the linguistic predominates. Hymes was not writing for the FLT profession and did not pay specific attention to cross-cultural communication; he was concerned to analyse social interaction and communication within a social group using one language. The interpretation of the concept for FLT was undertaken by others, in North America by Canale and Swain (1980) and in Europe by van Ek (1986), working independently of each other. The former developed their work from Hymes and others. van Ek makes no explicit reference to either Hymes or Habermas, but presented his work as part of a developing project under the auspices of the Council of Europe; in fact, van Ek refers to ‘communicative ability’. The work of Canale and Swain and van Ek and the Council of Europe team had much in common and could be analysed comparatively. 5 Here I take van Ek’s work as a starting point, partly because it is more detailed and partly because it was the origin of the model I shall present later.6 van Ek (1986: 33) presents what he calls ‘a framework for comprehensive foreign language learning objectives’, which is explicitly produced in the context of his view of how FLT must be justified through its contribution to learners’ general education. He emphasises that FLT is not just concerned with training in communication skills but also with the personal and social development of the learner as an individual. It is worth quoting him as he explains the purposes of the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Projects, for it is as powerful in the 21st century as it was in 1986: Our educational aim is to give our pupils the fullest possible scope for fulfi lling their potential as unique individuals in a society which is, ultimately, of their own making.7 (van Ek, 1986: 12)

He argues that, in the contemporary world, the presence of subjects in a curriculum can only be justified by their contribution to these general educational aims, and that in a period of increasing internationalisation: Next to the community of those we regularly associate with in our daily lives, and next to the recognition of our ‘national’ community, we are

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

15

developing a sense of belonging to, and functioning in, even larger communities. (van Ek, 1986: 12)

It is worth noting, too, that he puts quotation marks around ‘national’ as a means of problematising the concept of national community without digressing to analyse it in depth. His framework includes reference to ‘social competence’, ‘the promotion of autonomy’ and the ‘development of social responsibility’ which are perhaps inherent in the original discussions of communicative competence but certainly not central and explicit. Nor are they part of the interpretation of communicative competence undertaken by Canale and Swain. Yet, as I suggested earlier, the societal and institutional context in which ICC is taught cannot be ignored, nor can the demands made on FL teachers by the society in which they work. I shall follow van Ek in framing the discussion within a general educational context as this has always been for me a crucial matter. There is no doubt, however, that the definition of communicative competence and ICC is made more complex by this contextualisation, as are the issues of assessment. For example, the assessment of autonomy or social responsibility might not only be technically complex but also involve significant ethical issues, concerning the right of an institution and its members to make judgements about an individual’s degree of social responsibility. van Ek was not concerned with assessment – or methodology – but only with objectives and content. It may ultimately be appropriate to assess only part of what we defi ne as ICC. van Ek’s (1986: 35) model of ‘communicative ability’ comprises six ‘competences’, together with autonomy and social responsibility. He emphasises that these are not discrete elements, but that they are different aspects of one concept (van Ek, 1986: 36). At any point in analysis, one aspect will be in focus but others, and their relationship to that aspect, will also be in view. This is an important and positive dimension of his approach. On the other hand, there are still omissions and also a tendency to posit the native speaker communicating with other native speakers as the underlying phenomenon which the model has to describe, a tendency to retain the native speaker as a model for the learner, which I shall argue against later. The problem would be rendered even more complex if the native-speaker model were retained for purposes of assessment too. Despite these reservations, the model of six competences is a useful starting point and can be summarised as follows: •

linguistic competence: the ability to produce and interpret meaningful utterances which are formed in accordance with the rules of the language concerned and bear their conventional meaning (…) that meaning which native speakers would normally attach to an utterance when used in isolation (van Ek, 1986: 39);

16

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

•

sociolinguistic competence: the awareness of ways in which the choice of language forms (…) is determined by such conditions as setting, relationship between communication partners, communicative intention, etc., etc. (…) sociolinguistic competence covers the relation between linguistic signals and their contextual – or situational – meaning (van Ek, 1986: 41); discourse competence: the ability to use appropriate strategies in the construction and interpretation of texts (van Ek, 1986: 47); strategic competence: when communication is difficult we have to fi nd ways of ‘getting our meaning across’ or of ‘finding out what somebody means’; these are communication strategies, such as rephrasing, asking for clarification (van Ek, 1986: 55); sociocultural competence: every language is situated in a sociocultural context and implies the use of a particular reference frame which is partly different from that of the foreign language learner; sociocultural competence presupposes a certain degree of familiarity with that context (van Ek, 1986: 35); social competence: involves both the will and the skill to interact with others, involving motivation, attitude, self-confidence, empathy and the ability to handle social situations (van Ek, 1986: 65).

• •

•

•

It is above all in van Ek’s defi nitions of ‘linguistic’ and ‘sociolinguistic’ competence that the native speaker as model is implicit. He requires learners to speak or write ‘in accordance with the rules of the language concerned’, without specifying the origins and nature of ‘the rules’. He also requires utterances to ‘bear their conventional meaning’, i.e. ‘that meaning which native speakers would normally attach to an utterance when used in isolation’. Even if this concept of ‘use in isolation’ has to be viewed with some concern – it is not possible to use an utterance isolated from all social contexts, even if the speaker is alone – it might be interpreted as the meanings defi ned in dictionaries. Yet in both cases the authority and evaluation of a learner’s use is vested in the native speaker, not explicitly defi ned, but perhaps implicitly referring to the educated native speaker. Kramsch (1998) argued for a quite different view, namely that the learner has rights to use a foreign language for their own purposes, and makes the very important point that van Ek’s approach places power in social interaction in the hands of the native speaker. Since then, the notion of ‘the intercultural speaker’ has gained recognition without replacing completely the native speaker as model (e.g. Pricope, 2016; Soler & Jordà, 2007; Wilkinson, 2011), and there is an argument for maintaining the native-speaker model as a necessary focus (Davies, 2003). With respect to ‘sociocultural competence’, there is again a tendency to view the learner as an incomplete native speaker. The definition refers to knowledge of the context ‘in which that language is used by native speakers’ and competence presupposes ‘a certain degree’ of familiarity with that

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

17

context. Even in the case where the language is used as a lingua franca, although there will be ‘least need’ for sociocultural competence, nonetheless lingua franca speakers should ‘be aware of the sociocultural implications of the language forms they are using’ (van Ek, 1986: 63, emphasis added). Again the implication of there being only one set of sociocultural implications for a language appears to refer to native speakers. There are two kinds of reason for criticising the use of the native speaker as a model, in which van Ek is just one of many.8 The fi rst is a pragmatic educational one. It is the problem of creating an impossible target and consequently inevitable failure. The requirement that learners have the same mastery over a language as an (educated) native speaker ignores the conditions under which learners and native speakers learn and acquire a language. I suspect it is linked to a misguided belief that, if bilinguals can speak two languages perfectly, then so can learners of a foreign language. This view, which sees bilinguals as if they were two monolinguals in one person, is misguided because it does not take into account the literature which shows that few if any bilinguals are ‘perfect’ in linguistic competence, and equally so in two or more languages; this is even less so in sociolinguistic or sociocultural competence (Baker & Wright, 2017). The second ground for criticism of the native-speaker model is that, even were it possible, it would create the wrong kind of competence. It would imply that a learner should be linguistically schizophrenic, abandoning one language in order to blend into a second linguistic environment, becoming accepted as a native speaker by other native speakers, and then going back to the fi rst. This linguistic schizophrenia also suggests abandoning one social group and its culture and the acquisition of a native sociocultural competence and a new social identity, as a result of ‘passing’ into another group. The strains involved in this process, even if it were desirable and possible, are related to the psychological stress of ‘culture shock’ (Furnham & Bochner, 1986) and could be permanently damaging.9 As I shall argue in more detail later, the more desirable outcome is a learner with the ability to see and manage the relationships between themselves and their own beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings,10 as expressed in a foreign language, and those of their interlocutors, expressed in the same language – or even a combination of languages – which may be the interlocutors’ native language, or not. The value of van Ek’s model is that it identifies a number of components or aspects of communicative and interactional ability for further analysis. It does so by taking a starting point in the analysis of where and how a foreign language might be used, rather than in the analysis of language isolated from use. It also takes into account the place where foreign languages are most widely taught – schools and other educational institutions – and their functions and goals in their society. However, complex though van Ek’s analysis may be, it does not take into account all the social factors necessary for

18

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

the analysis. The history of language teaching is the history of increasing understanding of the nature of language and the attempts to incorporate new discoveries into methods and objectives. There is no reason to believe that we have reached the end of that development. It is partly a function of changes in language use leading to changes in the nature of language, and therefore subject to yet further societal change. All we can do here is attempt to take analyses such as that by van Ek and the further steps required by more recent discoveries. An obvious direction for this work is to introduce discoveries related to van Ek’s linguistic and sociolinguistic competences. More detailed analysis of the grammar of a language, for example, has implications for the specification of linguistic competence. On the other hand, there are other perspectives which are just as important and perhaps less familiar to the FLT profession, those related to sociocultural and social competence. It is these that we shall pursue here because they throw light on non-linguistic aspects of communication and on an understanding of communication as human interaction, not just as exchange of information.

Non-verbal communication

The first area is one that van Ek’s analysis does not cover and that is seldom dealt with at more than a superficial level by FL teachers. In his classic discussion of The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Argyle (1983) identifies eight dimensions of non-verbal communication: • • • • • • • •

facial expression gaze gestures and other bodily movements bodily posture bodily contact spatial behaviour clothes and appearance non-verbal aspects of speech

and four functions in which these modes of non-verbal communication can operate: • • • •

communicating interpersonal attitudes and emotions self-presentation rituals supporting verbal communication.

He points out that there is variation in non-verbal communication between social groups and their cultures and that ‘when people from two different cultures meet, there is infi nite scope for misunderstanding and confusion’

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

19

(Argyle, 1983: 189). He deals briefly with ways of overcoming such problems and suggests that language learning is a valuable but time-consuming approach to other cultures, as are modes of social skills learning which prepare people for contact with other cultures. The former is of course the focus of FLT and the latter is often the focus of cross-cultural training courses that prepare participants for meeting people of other countries without learning a language. Poyatos (1992) addresses these issues from the perspective of the foreign language teacher, arguing that traditional FLT is too narrow in its concerns. Language teachers should be concerned with ‘the triple reality of speech (language, paralanguage and kinesics)’ and these should be seen within a broader context of cultural signs of all kinds. He identifies ten dimensions of communication where the learner may meet problems, the first four of which are familiar to the language teacher, but are insufficient as a basis for intercultural communication: • • • • • • • • • •

phonetics/phonemics morphology syntax vocabulary paralanguage (e.g. tongue clicks, meaningful use of loudness and whispering) kinesics (e.g. communicative gestures, manners and postures) proxemics (e.g. personal or intimate distances between peers, parents, acquaintances) chemical/dermal (e.g. tear-shedding, blushing) body-adaptors/object-adaptors (e.g. cosmetics, clothes, occupational artefacts) built and modified environments (e.g. status objects such as homes and gardens).

Poyatos then proposes an approach to determining a syllabus and a methodology for a course in non-verbal communication, dealing above all with the inter-relationships between language, paralanguage and kinesics.11 Unlike Argyle, who acknowledges the difficulty of acquiring the modes of non-verbal communication of other cultures, Poyatos seems to assume that they can in fact be taught, together with or separate from verbal communication. Argyle suggests the alternative of skills and sensitivity training in view of the difficulty, but neither Argyle nor Poyatos question whether, as an ideal, the learner should attempt to acquire the non-verbal communication of a native speaker. Poyatos sees the problems of learning as including the reduction of ‘interference’ from the learner’s own nonverbal system in order to imitate the native speaker. In the contemporary world where new media have created a combination of verbal and written interaction which creates its own modes of expression, its own scripts and its own use of symbols or ‘icons’, the

20

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

issues identifi ed by Poyatos need to be complemented by further analysis. Yet precisely because many aspects of non-verbal communication, although learned within a given cultural environment, are unconscious, the language learner may not be able to control them, or wish to give up what feels like a part of their personality to acquire the non-verbal communication of others. Here again, therefore, it is important that the learner be able to see similarities and difference and to establish a relationship between their own and other systems, rather than imitate a native speaker.12 Inter-group and cross-cultural relations

A second line of enquiry which may surprise FL teachers by its minimal concern for language, is the research into communication and interaction between groups, pursued by those who might be broadly described as cross-cultural psychologists. In an overview of ‘the study of cross-cultural competence’, Ruben, in a relatively early publication (1989), emphasises how the work he is reviewing arises out of ‘practical problems encountered by individuals living and working overseas, and by their institutional sponsors’ (Ruben, 1989: 229). The problems are described in psychological terms and the general model he offers is dominated by skills in interpersonal relationships: (Cross-cultural) competence has various facets: 1. 2. 3.

Relational-Building and Maintenance Competence: Competence associated with the establishment and maintenance of positive relationships. Information-Transfer Competence: Competence associated with the transmission of information with minimum loss and distortion. Compliance-Gaining Competence: Competence associated with persuasion and securing an appropriate level of compliance and/or cooperation. (Ruben, 1989: 233)

The origins of this model in studies of business people working on projects in other countries are perhaps betrayed in the third competence in particular. What appears to be naive to FL teachers is the following statement: Certainly some knowledges are important to competence – at least some facets of competence as previously mentioned. Knowledge of language, for instance, is obviously important to cross-cultural information transfer. Is such knowledge – and perhaps knowledge of cultural and communication rules – not equally important to compliance-gaining and relationship-building? (Ruben, 1989: 234)

On the other hand, this kind of model reminds the FL teacher of the importance of seeing linguistic competence in a wider context. The model

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

21

begins to expand and add detail to van Ek’s notion of ‘social competence’ and ‘sociocultural competence’. A similar approach has been taken, initially in the 1990s, by Hofstede (1991) which is influential among those who train people involved in international business and commerce, despite being highly contentious. Hofstede identified four characteristics or ‘dimensions’ of culture, later expanded to six, which can be used to describe and compare national cultures – a much contested concept – so that training for people of one culture with a low level on one (or more) dimensions to engage with people from another culture with a high level on the same dimensions can be planned to enable them to overcome the problems created by difference. Criticisms have focused on the source and treatment of data and the reductive nature of this kind of analysis, which creates a belief that everyone from a national culture is ‘essentially’ the same (e.g. Baskerville, 2003; McSweeney, 2002); it is nonetheless widely used although with improvements and modifications (Beugelsdijk et al., 2017). From the language teacher’s perspective, however, it is again the lack of attention to language and its embeddedness in the culture of a social group that is most striking. Gudykunst is another influential writer in the cross-cultural training field and an interesting representative of this work. Also beginning in the 1990s, he argues that ‘the processes operating when we communicate interculturally are the same as when we communicate intraculturally’ (Gudykunst, 1994: x). It is not then surprising when he devotes only two pages to ‘second-language competence’. His model of the ‘competent communicator’ focuses on psychological factors, and he makes the preliminary point that the judgement about competence in communication is one that is context dependent and made by others in the context rather than in some absolute sense. His defi nition is therefore of ‘perceived competence’ and the components are as follows (Gudykunst, 1994: 159ff ): •

Motivation: made up of a number of needs: for a sense of security as a human being for a sense of predictability for a sense of group inclusion to avoid diff use anxiety for a sense of a common shared world for symbolic/material gratification to sustain our self-conceptions. Knowledge: this includes cultural and linguistic knowledge but the implication is that foreign language competence is not essential: ‘If we are familiar with or fluent in other people’s language, for example, we can usually understand them better when they speak our language than if we know nothing about their language’ (Gudykunst, 1994: 169). Other kinds of knowledge are given more emphasis: knowledge of how to gather information ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

•

○

22

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

knowledge of personal similarities, as well as understanding differences knowledge of alternative interpretation (this is not related to linguistic semantics but to interpretation of behaviour). Skills: those skills in particular which are directly related to reducing uncertainty and anxiety: ability to be mindful, above all being ‘cognitively aware’ of the process of communication rather than the intended outcome ability to tolerate ambiguity, to deal effectively with situations even when there is little objective information present and outcomes are difficult to predict ability to manage anxiety ability to empathise, involving cognitive, affective and communication components ability to adapt, especially adapting behaviour to the expectations of others ability to make accurate predictions and explanations of others’ behaviour.

○

○

•

○

○

○ ○

○

○

A more recent edited volume is also notable for a lack of reference to language (Gudykunst, 2005). There are yet other approaches to describing cultures of social groups – national groups in particular – and the competences needed to interact with them. Again, such approaches are intended to be used to prepare people to live and work in other countries. They need not be all analysed here – they are well reviewed by Spitzberg and Changnon (2009)13 – because such models are surprisingly lacking in reference to linguistic competence, mentioned only as a possible supportive factor. The value of this work for us lies less in the detail than in the perspective they suggest. Gudykunst (1994) is concerned to produce a practical guide to intergroup communication, one that will help in the management of the conflict ‘inevitable in any relationship’. His approach reminds FL teachers that, since they have now become committed to FLT which prepares learners for face-to-face interaction with people of social groups who have a different language, there are new psychological factors that have to be taken into account. FLT cannot confi ne its interest to the psychology of the learning or acquisition of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence, as it has hitherto. One reaction to this situation is refusal to ‘overload the boat’,14 that is, to accept responsibility for other than linguistic and sociolinguistic competence. This attitude is defended by many teachers by referring to the limited amount of time available in most FLT courses, especially in general education systems, and the need to prepare learners for examinations.15 This is obviously an important issue. It might be resolved either by reducing the scope of the linguistic and sociolinguistic competences being pursued, or by extending the time and the nature of the activities in

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

23

courses, but there are increasingly examples of how short but disproportionately effective projects in the language classroom can complement existing methods without reducing the impact of teaching that deals with linguistic and sociolinguistic competences. Such projects change communicative language teaching into intercultural communicative language teaching (e.g. Wagner et al., 2018). Communication and Interaction

One of the needs that Gudykunst includes in his characterisation of ‘motivation’ is ‘the need for a sense of a common shared world’. The qualities of the ‘competent communicator’ he identifies are the psychological preconditions for satisfying this need, but a common shared world has to be created in interaction with other people. It is not simply there, waiting to be discovered and accessed. One of the defi ning characteristics of a social group is the shared world that its members accept, and they in turn are accepted as members because they subscribe to the beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings of that shared world, its ‘culture’. This is, however, not a static condition. People become members of a group through a process of socialisation over time and, when they are members, they are constantly negotiating their common understanding of details, which over time may become major changes in their beliefs, values, behaviours or meanings. At the same time, the interaction among members of a group creates gradual change in its culture just as in its language. Language teachers are familiar with this through their studies of the history of languages.16 They are also aware that they teach a version of a language which is a synchronic representation, the language at a given point in time, captured in authoritative grammars and dictionaries – and in some cases supervised by a language academy. Insofar as they might teach about a culture – a part but only a part of intercultural competence as we shall see – they will also have to take a version which is synchronic and in some sense authoritative or authorised. The problems are, however, more complex, and questions of power have to be considered. National cultures and power relations17

This question of power is treated by Bourdieu (1990) who argues that, within a society, power is differentially held by different social groups. They ensure that access to membership, to a ‘field’ of activity, is carefully controlled by requiring would-be members to have a specific cultural capital, which can be acquired only in particular educational institutions (Bourdieu, 1989). Christensen (1994) took Bourdieu’s theory as the basis for considering how FLT should prepare learners for interaction with speakers of other languages. He writes from the particular perspective of

24

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Western Europe and its concern with political and social integration, an issue to which we shall return later, but his argument is that Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘capital’ should be used to describe what FLT should focus on. FLT should not introduce learners to a ‘national culture’, to a particular combination of beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings dominant in a specific society, precisely because they are dominant, presented as homogeneous – whatever variation there might be in reality – and embody the interests of a powerful minority.18 What is more important is for learners to acquire the potential to interact with any speaker of another language, whatever field or capital they bring to the interaction, and on another occasion (Christensen, 1993) he argued that ‘the quest for culture as essence and object has to be abandoned in favour of method, i.e. a process of investigation where every single social encounter potentially involves different values, opinions and world-views’. This view has since become well known as a critique of ‘essentialism’ (e.g. Guilherme & Dietz, 2015).19 In this way of thinking, learners are not limited to interaction only with those who have access to the dominant cultural capital. Instead their own cultural capital, even if not dominant in their own society, is valued in any interaction, as is the cultural capital of their interlocutors. This is particularly important for those learners who do not have access to the dominant culture in their own or another society and who are therefore not attracted by the worlds that FLT offers them. It is also important when the language is a lingua franca, and neither interlocutor is familiar with the cultural capital of the other. Christensen’s view makes very explicit the issue of power and access to power in society, as argued by Bourdieu, and its significance for FLT and European integration. He argues with others (e.g. Becher, 1996) that European integration cannot take place for the individual – whatever the institutional changes – if they feel cut off from the fields and cultures promoted in schools, including in the FLT classroom. With respect to FLT, therefore, he argues against representation of a society’s culture, because this inevitably means the choice of the culture that a dominant group has managed to make the ‘national’ culture of the society, even though it is accessible only to that group, not to the many other people in the society. Specifically, he argues against the adoption of Geertz’s (1975: 89) definition of culture as ‘an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in a symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life’ (see Byram, 1989a: 82). Apart from the fact that this ‘pattern of meanings’ is likely to be only that of the dominant group, this defi nition is too static for Christensen, not allowing for the negotiation and change which go on within social groups and societies as a whole. The implication of this interactionist perspective is that FLT should not attempt to provide representations of other cultures, but should

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence 25

concentrate on equipping learners with the means of accessing and analysing any cultural practices and meanings they encounter, whatever their status in a society. This would be a complete reversal of traditions in FLT, where the provision of information about a country has been the major and sometimes only approach to equipping learners with sociocultural competence. The information has, moreover, been mainly about the institutions of a society and their history, complemented by an intuitive selection of representations of ‘everyday life’. To replace this approach with one that focuses on processes and methods of analysing social processes and their outcomes is to take seriously the issues of social power in FLT, to provide learners with critical tools and to develop their critical understanding of their own and other societies. The position I take is, however, to combine these two approaches. First of all, let us consider why learners need knowledge about the (dominant) culture of a society. The starting point is the analysis of individuals’ social identity. Social identity/identities is that part of an individual’s selfconcept which derives from their knowledge of their membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership (Ellemers, 2012; Tajfel, 1978: 63). The beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings that make up the practices of the group are what might be termed the ‘content’ or informational dimension of FLT, provided that a means is found to ensure that learners do not perceive these as an objective and static ‘essence’, but changing and negotiated over time by members of the group. Second, since individuals belong to many groups, the analysis of the social world to which they belong may in principle prioritise some groups over others. Bourdieu suggests that, in economically advanced societies, economic divisions are powerful and he proposes that description of a society should be in those terms, but he also points out that: the fact remains that the strength of economic and social differences is never such that one cannot organise agents by means of other principles of division – ethnic, religious or national, for instance. (Bourdieu, 1990: 132)

It has been the tradition of FLT to analyse in terms of national divisions and national identity, tacitly accepting the fact that this is also above all the analysis of the culture of a dominant elite, and thus implicitly economic and social. Is this tradition justified? The learner of a foreign language is likely to use the language in contact with people from another country, either a country where the language is spoken natively or a country whose language they do not speak. In the latter case, the foreign language serves as a lingua franca. In other situations, the learner meets people from their own country (for example Anglophone Canadians learning French) but from a different ethnic

26

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

group. In these three situations, the contact with someone from another group will reinforce their contrasting identities. As Tajfel says: The characteristics of one’s group as a whole (…) achieve most of their significance in relation to perceived differences from other groups and the value connotations of these differences (…) the defi nition of a group (national or racial or any other) makes no sense unless there are other groups around. (Tajfel, 1978: 66)

This means that, in the first two cases, the defi ning, salient characteristics of the encounter will be those of national group identity, whereas in the third encounter it will be intra-country ethnic differences that dominate. 20 The argument for developing learners’ understanding of the beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings of the dominant national group is, then, that it helps learners in inter-country communication and interaction. This argument assumes that all interaction will make some reference to national identity and cultural beliefs and practices, even if the people involved are not part of the dominant social group which has imposed them on the nation. A similar argument applies to the third case, of interethnic communication. In other words, learners will find it useful to know the dominant national culture because it will help their interaction and communication. It can also be useful in another sense, in a sense related to the questions of power. Only if learners know and can critically analyse the dominant national culture can they challenge it, critique its values and take their own position in the exchange with those who benefit from it. It then becomes possible for them to turn this critique back on their own society and become aware of power issues around them, as seen from the vantage point of analysing another society. This will become the focus of ‘savoir s’engager’/‘critical cultural awareness’ in the model presented later. None of this excludes learners acquiring an understanding of other cultures within another country or their own, of course. In the case of lingua franca, however, learners cannot acquire knowledge of all the national identities and cultures with which they may come into contact. In this case, the introduction to the national culture of a country where the language is spoken natively serves as an example, but it must be combined with developing in learners the methods to cope with other situations, based on this example. This supports the argument for a focus on methods, as well as content. It might also be support for an exclusive focus on methods, as we saw Christensen arguing earlier, but would this be justified? The advantages, presented so far, of an emphasis on ‘method’, of providing learners with the means to analyse and thereby understand and relate to whatever social world their interlocutors inhabit, are twofold. Method ensures that the representation of a society only in terms of the dominant elite culture is undermined; it is not the focus of or perhaps even

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence 27

present at all in the course of study. Second, the emphasis on method prepares learners for encounters with cultural practices which have not been presented to them and, in the case of lingua franca, cannot be anticipated. A third advantage is that through learning methods of analysis, learners can also be encouraged to identify the ways in which particular cultural practices and beliefs maintain the social position and power of particular groups, and this analysis can become critical. Furthermore, the analysis can be comparative, turning learners’ attention back on their own practices, beliefs and social identities – and the groups to which they do or do not belong – and this analysis too can be critical (Byram, 1997). A fourth point will become relevant later when I propose a model of ICC which is based on the concept of the ‘intercultural speaker’, but let it be raised here too in the discussion of power relationships in communication. There has long been an assumption in FLT that ‘the native speaker is always right’ (Kramsch, 1998). Native speaker intuitions are called upon to resolve doubts about grammatical issues, idiomatic usage and even pronunciation, although the latter is a problematic area. Language learners have been encouraged to aspire to the mastery of grammar and idiom of the educated native speaker using a standard language, and their accuracy is usually evaluated against that norm. Insofar as a minority of learners can attain the norm with respect to the grammar and linguistic competence, this approach seems acceptable. Even though it condemns the majority of learners to ‘failure’, it can be argued that convergence towards the norm is needed to ensure efficient communication among foreign speakers of a language, just as a standard language is required for native speakers. There is no doubt, however, that in both cases, those who master the norm – which in practice is the same standardised language – have a potential advantage over foreign speakers and non-standard native speakers. When they take advantage of that potential, they exercise power over their interlocutors. A similar situation may arise with respect to culture. The native speaker, especially if they are a member of the dominant group in a society, has the possibility of exercising power over the foreign speaker. The native speaker is ‘always right’, if they and the learner have an expectation in common that the learner shall acquire the (dominant) culture of a country where the language is spoken natively. The advantage of an FLT approach emphasising analysis of the interaction is that it allows learners to see their role not as imitators of native speakers but as social actors engaging with other social actors in a particular kind of communication and interaction which is different from that between native speakers. In this inter-country interaction, both interlocutors have a significant but different role, and the foreign speaker who knows something both of the foreign culture and of their own is in a position of power at least equal to that of the native speaker. I shall return to this point in Chapter 2, in a closer definition of the ‘intercultural speaker’ and ‘critical cultural awareness’.

28

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

The advantages of representing a national culture and cultural identity – the need to prepare learners for inter-country interactions – can therefore be combined with the advantages of a focus on critical and comparative method. The national culture will be seen as only one of the sets of cultural practices and beliefs to which an interlocutor subscribes – or, if they reject it, is at least aware of as a framework for their actions and identity – and yet it provides learners with a basis for interaction. Combining this with ‘method’ and the competences of discovering for oneself the cultures and identities of people, the learner also acquires the means of engaging with unfamiliar situations and the means of coping with new cultural practices and identities. Finally, we must remember that FLT has a particular contribution to make to the preparation of learners for encounter with otherness, a contribution that complements that of other subject areas in the general education curriculum. 21 FLT is centrally concerned with communication in a foreign language. The significance of this is not only the practical question of linguistic competence for communication, central though that is. Its significance also lies in the relationship between the language and cultural practices and beliefs of a group. Since language is a prime means of embodying the complexity of those practices and beliefs, through both reference and connotations (Byram, 1997), and the interplay of language and identity (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985; Risager, 2006), the acquisition of a foreign language is the acquisition of the cultural practices and beliefs it embodies for particular social groups, even though the learner may put it to other uses too. 22 It is also the relativisation of what seems to the learner to be the natural language of their own identities, and the realisation that these are cultural, and socially constructed. Teaching for linguistic competence cannot be separated from teaching for intercultural competence; any attempt to do so turns another language into an encoding of the learner’s language.

Teaching Intercultural Communication in Context

In discussing whether there should be ‘content’ as well as ‘method’ in the cultural dimension of FLT, I gave three examples of intercultural communication: • • •

between people of different languages and countries where one is a native speaker of the language used; between people of different languages and countries where the language used is a lingua franca; and between people of the same country but different languages, one of whom is a native speaker of the language used.

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

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This is a reminder that FLT always takes place in a particular context and that the nature of the ICC required is partly dependent on context. Furthermore, if someone acquires ICC as a consequence of being taught in a formal sense, then they are part of a social institution that has its aims and purposes decided in part by external societal factors. We saw from the discussion of van Ek’s model of communicative competence that he placed it firmly within a general educational framework, where the justification for FLT is partly in terms of its contribution to the personal development of the learner. 23 It is evident from this that before attempting a descriptive model of ICC, we need to consider to what extent contexts of communication and educational institutions might have an influence on the model. I shall discuss the case of FLT as part of general education, from primary through to lifelong, adult education. I shall also discuss how contexts change and with them the purposes of education through FLT. In doing so I shall anticipate my later discussion of how foreign language education (FLE), as I prefer to call it, can acquire and in some circumstances has acquired new purposes that link foreign language education to education for citizenship and the notion of ‘intercultural citizenship’. Let us consider some cases, starting with one from the 1990s where the function of the foreign language included the concept of lingua franca. The Arab Gulf States had a general agreed approach to education, including FLE, to which each state subscribed. It could then formulate its own aims and purposes within the framework. The ‘United Formula for Goals of Subjects in General Education Stages in the Arab Gulf States’ included the following foreign language objectives: At the end of the secondary stage students should: • •

acquire a favourable attitude to the English language; acquire a good understanding of English speaking people on the condition that the above will not lead to the creation of a hostile or indifferent attitude to the students’ Arab/Islamic culture (emphasis added).

Unlike most European statements at that time, which focused on the countries and speakers of the foreign language, here there is a concern about the impact of learning a foreign language on learners’ views of their own culture. There is a fear that the dominance and high status of English might have a negative effect. We shall see below that I argue that FLE should have an impact on how learners see their own culture, that they should be able to critique it and view it differently. This would have been anathema to those who wrote this document, and I have since then heard this fear expressed informally elsewhere, including in China. There is no doubt that my position will not be accepted in every context. It would be dismissed by many people as ‘euro-centric’, and I have heard this said. The question of whether it is justifiable to suggest that so-called ‘European’

30

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

ideas should be recommended for other continents and countries is addressed in the coda to Chapter 2. Taking the specifications from the Arab Gulf in more detail, in Qatar we fi nd that they include aims which are orientated to communication with native speakers of English, for reasons of technological progress and as a means of understanding one’s own as well as the culture of others: •

•

To acquire a basic communicative competence in order to be able to use English appropriately in real life situations, to appreciate the value of learning English as a means of communication with English speaking people, and to gain access to their knowledge in various fields and to the technology which has international currency. To expand one’s own cultural awareness by learning about the cultural heritage of English speaking peoples and by so doing to arrive at a livelier appreciation of both cultures.

Here the phrase ‘livelier appreciation’ is more open than in the overarching document and its fear of negative influences. The aims also include lingua franca aims, both instrumental – to pursue studies – and educational – to develop harmonious relationships: • •

To provide the potential for pursuing academic studies or practical training in English speaking countries or in countries where English is, for some subjects, the medium of instruction. To increase by means of a common language the possibility of understanding, friendship and cooperation with all people who speak that language.

There is also an unusual and interesting particular aim for English as a lingua franca which may be a tacit purpose in many education systems24 but here was made explicit: •

To exploit one’s command of English in order to spread in the world a better understanding and appreciation of one’s own religion, culture, and values and to influence world public opinion favourably towards one’s people and their causes. (Abu Jalalah, 1993: 22–23)

One might infer from the fi nal statement that there was a need to change unfavourable opinions in the world. Events in the Gulf States in the early 1990s clearly created some unfavourable perceptions and, although these statements are all from an earlier date, they might be considered all the more pertinent. The kind of ICC required to fulfi l these aims would involve learners acquiring an understanding of those unfavourable perceptions and how to respond to them, a need which grew as the 21st century passed and terrorist acts became common. The underlying theme is that FLE should provide opportunities for interaction with people from other countries but should not threaten or undermine the Arab and Islamic identity of learners themselves. This fear of ‘Western’ influences may have

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31

been justified by the increase in English-language television and other visual media (Al-Hail, 1995) and by a fear of ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Phillipson, 1992), although, as Pennycook (1994) showed, this view was easily over-simplified. Furthermore, as argued earlier with support from Tajfel, the encounter with otherness itself creates a clearer sense of one’s own identity, an identity which some Arab governments wished to reinforce. During the same period, in Canada, the role of FLE with respect to the teaching of ‘core French’ was seen by some teachers as creating a better understanding of and potential for interaction with Francophone Canadians (Leblanc et al., 1990), an example of language teaching which is not focused only on another country and its language, or on lingua franca situations. Their recommendation was that learners’ awareness of cultures and cultural identities should begin with their own but be gradually extended outwards, to the regional, provincial, national and international. However, the main source of cultural understanding was ‘la présence des francophones [in Canada], leur histoire (en ce qu’elle permet d’expliquer le présent), les parlers francophones, le quotidien des francophones et la dimension internationale de la francophonie’25 (Leblanc, 1990: 10). Although there was no explicit statement about attitudes towards Francophone Canadians, it was evident in recommendations for pedagogy that there was an intention to create more harmonious relationships: À un niveau avancé une prise de conscience des préjugés dominants peut être bénéfique. Il s’agira avant tout de mettre en valeur le caractère exagéré des stéréotypes, non de forcer des attitudes positives à l’égard des francophones. Il ne faut pas sous-estimer les jeunes en évitant ou en sursimplifi ant un sujet difficile. 26 (Leblanc et al., 1990: 39)

As in the case of the Arab Gulf States, the political context, this time within the state, was clearly influencing the aims and methods of FLE. The increased support for Quebec separatism in the mid-1990s made the concerns of these authors, representatives of the ‘Association canadienne des professeurs de langues secondes’, all the more relevant. A third example was the European situation. In the 1990s, the increasing integration and cooperation between European states was a consequence of political union in the West and the opening of political frontiers in the East and Centre. The Council of Europe related these changes directly to FLE through a programme of research and development with the title ‘Language Learning for European Citizenship’. In this context, ‘European Citizenship’ was susceptible of an interpretation referring to closer political unification and also, more loosely, as ‘citizenship in Europe’, without necessarily implying closer political unity. The intention was to emphasise ‘the strengthening of the individual’s independence of thought and action combined with social responsibility as

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a citizen in a participatory pluralist democratic society’. This would combine ‘autonomy with the idea of an emerging European identity and political convergence’ (Trim, 1996). As well as encouraging development in specific areas of FLE – such as FLE in the primary school or in upper secondary  – the programme focused on ways to facilitate mobility between states; the Council of Europe includes both East and West. One purpose was to produce a Common European Framework for Language Teaching and Learning (2001), which enables all involved – teachers, learners, examiners, curriculum designers – to defi ne their work and relate it to a commonly recognised description of aims and objectives and levels of assessment for different aspects of communicative competence. This subsequently influenced national defi nitions of aims, objectives and assessment, and the underlying interpretation of ‘communicative competence’ in Europe and around the world (Byram & Parmenter, 2012). Today, the visions of the 1990s in Europe are under threat from dissonances in societies including radical and extremist views. This has led to the creation of another framework which emphasises citizenship and democracy even more: the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018b). In this new perspective, FLE has an even more important role to play alongside and in cooperation with other disciplines and subjects. Assessment in the Context of Intercultural Communicative Competence

We have seen that the formulation of objectives for FLE is influenced by contextual factors. Clearly formulated objectives are essential to proper assessment, and assessment itself is therefore indirectly affected by contextual factors. If, for example, the Gulf States objective of being able to influence world opinion with respect to one’s own culture is taken seriously, then assessment should include some kind of measure of learners’ ability to do this. Social factors affect assessment more directly too. FLE as part of general education usually takes place in an institution which has the responsibility of guaranteeing the abilities of its graduates. There are therefore very careful processes involved in certification. In some societies more than others, certification is crucial to the individual’s future; it has the function of a laissez-passer through the narrow gates of access to further education or employment, promotion and success. Where large numbers of people wish to use their certificates outside the country of issue, the question of mutual recognition becomes crucial. This is increasingly the case in Europe, and one of the aims of the Council of Europe’s (2001) Common European Framework for Language Learning and Teaching is to facilitate mutual recognition.

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Because certification and its guarantees are crucial to learners and their employers or educators, they have to be open to scrutiny and susceptible of reasoned justification, all the more so where mutual recognition is sought. One approach to this is to concentrate only on those aspects of ICC that can be clearly designated and measured. Yet this does not take account of our increasing recognition of the complexity of communication and interaction across cultural and linguistic borders. There is a risk of oversimplifying and misrepresenting a learner’s ability in order to ensure objectivity in measurement. Nonetheless, the social pressure for clarity in certification cannot be ignored and has to be taken into account in the assessment of ICC. Problems of certification within educational institutions are compounded if learners’ competence acquired in other circumstances is also to be recognised and certificated. It can be argued that competence acquired outside institutional settings, and without the guidance of a teacher, will not necessarily have involved general educational processes and experiences. Should there be certification, and therefore assessment, of a level of general education, of a capacity for insight, of an acquisition of certain humane values and morals, of a potential to act in accordance with these? We have seen in this chapter that the defi nition of ICC is a complex matter. There are different theoretical emphases which can determine our understanding of what is involved and how widely the concept should be defi ned. In matters of assessment, should we emphasise knowledge of cultures and cultural practices or rather the capacity and skills of conscious analysis of intercultural interaction? Should we include non-verbal communication? Should we pay attention to psychological traits or focus only on capacity to act? We have also seen that defi nitions are in practice influenced by social and political factors, by the fact that FLE often takes place within institutions of general education subject to the requirements of society. When we consider assessment, similar social factors also have to be taken into account: assessment is not simply a technical matter for it is often associated with certification and increasingly with recognition across political frontiers. Conclusion: The Language Learner as ‘Ethnographer’ and/or as ‘Applied Linguist’

In the enumeration of competences, van Ek presents us with a learner (and, by implication, their teacher) as someone applying insights from linguistic theory, although not always systematically and consciously, which is why I have put quotation marks around ‘Applied Linguist’. This is important but it is not enough, even though it has been dominant in language teaching and learning for at least a century. It dominated even when language teaching took its inspiration from the work of an anthropologist, Dell Hymes. As we demonstrated in a book with the title Language

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Learners as Ethnographers (Roberts et al., 2001), the notion of appropriacy was not in Hymes’ view simply a matter of linguistic competence as quoted above and repeated here for convenience: From a communicative standpoint, judgements of appropriateness may not be assigned to different spheres, as between the linguistic and the cultural; certainly the spheres of the two will intersect. (Hymes, 1972: 279)

Yet this was largely ignored, and communicative competence work from the 1970s drew more on speech act theory, discourse analysis and the notion of sociolinguistic variation. The opportunity to learn from anthropology was missed, an opportunity we tried to seize and develop in Language Learners as Ethnographers, where the fi rst edition of this monograph was a foundation. The teachers involved in the project described in that book fi rst went through an experience of doing their own ethnographic fieldwork, because their learners, who were university languages students about to spend a year ‘in the field’ (i.e. in a country whose language they were learning), would also do substantial and serious fieldwork. Their learners were then trained in ethnographic methods, concepts and theories and, after their fieldwork, produced an ethnographic report. I do not suggest by this that all language teachers and learners should have the same kind of experience, which is why ‘Ethnographer’ is put in quotation marks like ‘Applied Linguist’. I do suggest that it is important to remember through the following pages that both an applied linguistics perspective and an ethnographic/anthropological perspective on language teaching and learning are necessary. The following pages focus less on the former, about which many other books have been written, but do not deny its importance. It will, however, be helpful to bear in mind that ‘the language learner as ethnographer’ is a fundamental ‘main thread’ (better expressed in French as ‘fil conducteur’) throughout the book. Coda: Intercultural and Pluricultural Competence27

This monograph was much inspired and aided by the work of the Council of Europe and of Jan van Ek in particular. The preliminary work (Byram & Zarate, 1994, 1997) which led to the monograph also impinged on the development of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), especially in Chapter 5 where ‘general competences’ are described. The CEFR referred to both intercultural competence and pluricultural competence but did not include scales or descriptors for either of these. A later Companion Volume with New Descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018a) fi lled the gap. The Companion Volume with New Descriptors first makes a distinction between pluricultural and intercultural competence, pointing out

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence 35

that the latter is mentioned only briefly in the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2018a: 29). It then refers to pluricultural competence – described as ‘skills rather than knowledge or attitudes’ (Council of Europe, 2018a: 52) – or, more frequently, a ‘pluricultural repertoire’, although the latter is nearly always part of the phrase ‘plurilingual/pluricultural repertoire’. The notion of a pluricultural repertoire is, unlike ‘plurilingual repertoire’, not defi ned or described. A plurilingual repertoire includes the ability to: • • • • • • •

switch from one language or dialect (or variety) to another; express oneself in one language (or dialect, or variety) and understand a person speaking another; call upon the knowledge of a number of languages (or dialects, or varieties) to make sense of a text; recognise words from a common international store in a new guise; mediate between individuals with no common language (or dialect, or variety), even with only a slight knowledge oneself; bring the whole of one’s linguistic equipment into play, experimenting with alternative forms of expression; exploit paralinguistics (mime, gesture, facial expression, etc.). (Council of Europe, 2018a: 28)

It is possible to infer that a pluricultural repertoire is similar, mutatis mutandis, with ‘culture’ substituted for ‘language’. When a scale called ‘Building on a pluricultural repertoire’ is introduced (Council of Europe, 2018a: 144), it is influenced by recent literature and descriptors for intercultural competence, as is acknowledged (Council of Europe, 2018a: 142). Progression is described as follows: at the A levels the user/learner is capable of recognising potential causes of culturally-based complications in communication and of acting appropriately in simple everyday exchanges. At B1 he/she can generally respond to the most commonly used cultural cues, act according to socio-pragmatic conventions and explain or discuss features of his/her own and other cultures. At B2, the user/learner can engage effectively in communication, coping with most difficulties that occur, usually able to recognise and repair misunderstandings. At the C levels, this develops into an ability to explain sensitively the background to cultural beliefs, values and practices, interpret and discuss aspects of them, cope with socio-linguistic and pragmatic ambiguity and express reactions constructively with cultural appropriateness. (Council of Europe, 2018a: 144–145)

Examination of the descriptors at the C levels reveals formulations dealing with non-verbal communication such as: Can generally act according to conventions regarding posture, eye contact, and distance from others

In this monograph, as explained earlier in this chapter, non-verbal communication is not included in a model for teaching in foreign language

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classrooms, even though its significance is fully acknowledged. Other descriptors include: Can interpret and explain a document or event from another culture and relate it to documents or events from his/her own culture(s)/ and/or from cultures he/she is familiar with.

This is very similar to what we shall fi nd in subsequent chapters of this monograph, and the distinction between pluricultural and intercultural becomes a fuzzy boundary. It is noteworthy, however, that such descriptors appear only at C levels, which seems to imply that a higher level of foreign/second language competence is needed, and that there is no room for use of the fi rst language to handle tasks such as the one just quoted. This raises interesting questions about the use of learners’ first language in the FLE classroom which are beyond the scope of this monograph. The value of these descriptors is that, having been inspired by the literature, they have been validated empirically; this enriches the approach to assessment that we shall take in later chapters, where other schemes of descriptors will also be discussed. A further distinction can be made between ‘being bicultural’ and ‘acting interculturally’, or pluriculturally (Byram, 2008: 57–73). People become bicultural in a natural way, as a consequence of living in certain situations and learning to interpret what they experience in new ways present in the new contexts. On the other hand, people gain intercultural competence – skills, attitudes, knowledge – for different purposes: to compare, to mediate, to critically analyse familiar and new cultures. That critical analysis, as we shall see in later chapters, is a crucial element of foreign language learning which makes it educational and not just useful. Notes (1)

I do not intend to include here a comprehensive review of the literature. This was done on a number of occasions in the 1990s (Byram, 1989a; Dirven & Putz, 1993; Jæger, 1995; Knapp & Knapp-Potthoff, 1990) and increasingly in more recent years as attention to the topic has increased. Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) is a comprehensive account and there are further analyses from differing starting points (e.g. Leung et al., 2014; Topcu & Eroglu, 2017). (2) In 1997 I used the word ‘boundaries’ here, a general term because of the need to remind readers that boundaries can exist within countries as well as between them. I have added ‘frontiers’ in order to capture some of the social phenomena that have dominated the 21st century as some state frontiers become porous, others are removed and others are reinforced by mental and physical barrages. The impact of these changes on language teaching are complex. They include the use of language tests to prevent people from crossing a frontier, and the introduction of a stronger sense of social responsibility and justice in language teaching. I will return to some of these issues later. (3) In the fi rst edition of this book, I did not include a defi nition or discussion of ‘competence’. It was used in a way that built implicitly on Chomsky and Hymes and it was not challenged in subsequent comments on the book, to my knowledge. This is

Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence 37

therefore a post hoc defi nition but one that coincides with the use of the term in the original and in this version of the text. What is considered to be ‘appropriate’, whether in terms of how people interact or what they interact about, is a matter for those involved in an interaction, a matter of cooperation and negotiation. (4) Habermas’ work was much less influential in language teaching dominated by English as a foreign language, perhaps because of the level of abstraction and the language barrier. It was, however, particularly well used as a basis for discussing sociocultural competence by Melde (1987), discussed in detail in Byram et al. (1994). (5) For a brief comparative analysis, see Savignon (2013). (6) This work was part of the internal development papers for the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference (2001), as explained in Byram (2009). (7) There is a hint here of the notion of ‘Bildung’ which van Ek was doubtless aware of and to which I shall return below. (8) A third dimension of this discussion – the critique of ‘native-speakerism’ – has been linked largely to the teaching of English (Holliday, 2006). It is an aspect of the analysis of power in intercultural interactions which will be addressed later. (9) There is much less research on being bicultural than on bilingualism but personal accounts can be revealing (cf. Paulston, 1992, for a personal description of ‘being bicultural’). For further discussions, see contributions by Francois Grosjean and others: https://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html#Biculturalism__Personality. For an analysis of the difference between being bicultural and intercultural competences, see Byram (2002). More recent research has shown how complex and shifting biculturalism is as experienced by young people in what is described as a new area of research (Marks et al., 2011), and there is interesting work on the negotiation and creation of new identities in Gao (2017). (10) I am not going to indulge here in the almost ritual discussion of the problem of defi ning ‘culture’, but use this rather awkward phrase as a working defi nition which underpins my approach to conceptualising and describing intercultural competence. I shall not review the literature on defi ning culture as I did in the past (Byram, 1989a), or attempt to produce my own watertight defi nition. The phrase is a description of those aspects of culture, however defi ned, which are important for my purposes and which will become evident throughout the text. I shall discuss the issues in more detail in Chapter 2. (11) Poyatos (1993, 2002) gives a wide-ranging and thorough account of this ‘triple structure of communication’ and other paralinguistic phenomena, including examples from different cultures, but does not develop further his proposals for a syllabus. (12) Attempts to introduce non-verbal communication competence into language teaching are still difficult to fi nd (e.g. Schmidt-Fajlik, 2007). (13) I would, however, take issue with their failure to note the pedagogical origins and purposes of my model (which is also poorly reproduced in their text). They are not alone in this. It is a pedagogical model and if people want to use it for other purposes then they may do so but they ought to be aware of the potential distortions this brings. (14) A phrase I fi rst heard used by an inspector of education in France – ‘il ne faut pas trop charger la barque’ – at a time when intercultural competence was not widely accepted. The situation has now changed. (15) There has been a steady stream of research on teachers’ views (e.g. Byram & Risager, 1999; Han, 2011; Oranje, 2016; Sercu et al., 2005; Young & Sachdev, 2011). (16) An apposite example is the changes in the meaning of the word ‘culture’ itself, ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’ as Williams notably says as he traces the historical evolution of the meanings of the word and its cognates in German and French. He also points out that the complications are synchronic because it is used ‘for important concepts in several distinct intellectual

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible systems of thought’ (Williams, 1983: 87). (17) The fi rst edition of this monograph was criticised by some (e.g. Matsuo, 2012; Risager, 2007) for equating ‘culture’ with ‘national culture’. This is a misinterpretation, as Boye (2016: 37–38) noticed. In this version I have tried to make my position as clear as possible although there will doubtless be continuing criticism. (18) This is not to deny the existence of a ‘national culture’. It can in principle be described in terms of a social imaginary, a habitus, a ‘figured world’ (Clammer et al., 2016), and its acquisition in terms of socialisation theory and ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995). It can also be accessed at least in part through a close analysis of what children are taught in a ‘national curriculum’ and could be further determined by analysis of what young people ‘know, believe and value’ by the end of compulsory education. This would be a major but fascinating empirical study. (19) ‘Essentialism’ has become a widely used noun in work on intercultural communication and is often employed disparagingly. It can be used to criticise views that a culture is ‘a physical place with evenly spread traits and membership, associated with a country’ (Holliday, 2011: 5), and could be used to criticise the view I have taken here if I am not read carefully. A version of essentialism in the form of a model – discussed later in Chapter 2 – may be necessary as a pedagogical device without this being a commitment to a view that a culture is ‘a physical place …’. Holliday (2011: 162–163) later explained that he prefers to analyse intercultural communication ‘from the bottom up’ and has focused on ‘small culture formation on the run’. This is certainly a productive level of analysis, but ‘the small cultures idea distances itself from any instrumental educational purpose’ (Holliday, 2011: 162), and is therefore of minimal utility in my attempt to off er teachers ways of teaching and assessing. (20) Borghetti (2019) says that my use of social identity theory is not entirely satisfactory because in this theoretical perspective on interactions and identity salience, ‘[i]ndividuals’ shifting and contextual sense of belonging are predetermined by the groups they participate in, and little space is left for other and new identities to emerge in context’ (Borghetti, 2019: 24). I don’t think these views are mutually exclusive and Borghetti’s ‘little space’ needs to be taken into account in the discussion of what teachers should include in their teaching of knowledge (savoirs) as we shall see below. (21) The ways in which this can be developed across the whole curriculum are well illustrated in Beck et al. (2019). (22) The relationship between language and culture – often seen by language teachers as self-evident – has been authoritatively analysed from the point of view of language teaching by Risager (2006). She demonstrates that in the life of the individual person, language and culture or, better, cultural experience, are inseparable and are ultimately unique to the individual, who may have experience in more than one language and therefore more than one ‘languaculture’. From a sociological perspective, however, language and culture are separable – people use the same language in different contexts to refer to and express different contents. This is most evident in the use of English and Englishes but is also found in other languages. (23) In 1997, I was pleased to be able to refer to the authority of van Ek and the work of the Council of Europe but I think I can now also refer to my own views on this before I knew van Ek’s writings, in my book of 1989 entitled Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education. On the other hand, that title silently acknowledged my debt to and lasting admiration for the work of Raymond Williams. (24) A similar perspective was taken in Japan in the early 2000s when a policy paper entitled ‘Japanese with English Abilities’ was published with a five-year action plan. The rationale included the idea that Japanese people should be able to use English to

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present Japanese ideas and opinions to the rest of the world (http://unpan1.un.org/ intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN008142.htm). (25) ‘The presence of French-speaking people in Canada, their history (insofar as it facilitates an explanation of the present), the varieties of French spoken, the everyday life of French speakers and the international dimension of the French-speaking world.’ (26) At an advanced level, an awareness of dominant prejudices may be beneficial. It is important above all to make clear the exaggerated nature of stereotypes, not to impose positive attitudes with respect to French speakers. We must not underestimate young people by avoiding or over-simplifying a difficult topic. (27) I am aware of the polemic in France around the notion of plurilingual and intercultural education (Antier, 2017; Maurer, 2011) and the counter-arguments (e.g. Forlot, 2012), but have decided not to engage in polemic myself.

2 A Model for Intercultural Communicative Competence

Introduction

We saw in Chapter 1 that descriptions of intercultural communication must take into consideration the social context in which it takes place. They must also take account of the non-verbal dimension of communication, and the limitations of descriptions that focus on language learning as traditionally conceived. I argued that, although the complexities should not be forgotten, the model which might be proposed needs to be accessible to and useful for teachers of foreign languages working within particular traditions and conceptualisations of their role as instructors and educators. This is not to say that a model cannot break out of the existing traditions, but it must be linked to them and usable within the constraints of current and foreseeable1 circumstances. Furthermore, we must also bear in mind that the model should be helpful for both teaching and assessment, and that assessment has a number of purposes, including certification. In this chapter, I propose to describe in more detail the factors involved in intercultural communication and then consider how these factors are related to the competences that foreign language (FL) teachers traditionally attempt to develop in their learners. I shall for this purpose return to the models of communicative competence discussed in Chapter 1. I shall then attempt to categorise the sociocultural factors not usually taken into consideration by FL teachers, with a view to considering how they can be integrated into existing practices. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to propose a model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) which is useful for teachers, for as Box (1979) notoriously remarked, albeit in another context, ‘All models are wrong but some are useful’. The model will not be appropriate for all situations, since foreign language education (FLE) varies from one situation to another as we saw earlier; it will remain a ‘content-free’ model until I suggest ways in which it can be used for specific situations in later chapters. It is first important to clarify what is meant by a model in this context. 40

A Model for Intercultural Communicative Competence

41

We can distinguish five uses of the word ‘model’, based on the Oxford English Dictionary: (1) a model as an ideal, as a perfect exemplar, often presented as what one should strive to be, such as a ‘model pupil’ or a fashion model; (2) a model as a schematisation of reality which simplifies and presents the crucial factors or characteristics of the entity which is represented; (3) a model which minimises the scale of a phenomenon but reproduces every detail without simplification, often in this sense used with ‘scale’ – for example, a 1:100 scale model of a ship; (4) a model as a mould for making many identical copies of an entity; (5) a model as an inspiration for the creation of something new; as with an artist’s model, whether human or ‘nature morte’. The first kind of model is familiar to language teachers in the notion of the (ideal) native speaker whom learners are encouraged to imitate and with whom they are compared in assessment. In language teaching, this approach has been prescriptive, with the notion that learners ‘should’ or even ‘must’ follow rules that will bring them ever nearer to the native speaker. The second kind of model is also one that teachers use, often implicitly, since the complexity of communication and language is too great for learners to handle. Language teachers often provide learners with simplifications – in ‘rules’ of grammar, for example – which learners later realise they have to modify and complexify. This approach too is prescriptive, but it does not pretend to bring learners nearer to the performance of a native speaker since it remains – however complex – a simplification. In language teaching, there are often traces of the type 4 concept since in most education systems large classes necessitate some degree of harmonisation. On the other hand, the notion that learners should be autonomous and decide their own learning purposes and aims is developing rapidly, in part as a consequence of changes in technologies of teaching, and this opens the way to ‘breaking the mould’. At the same time, type 5 modes of thinking are present in discussions of how languages can be appropriated for learners’ own purposes, and in the debate about the development of languages as lingua franca. It will become clear in this and later chapters that the model I propose is a simplification, type 2. One obvious element of simplification, already discussed, is the absence of competences in non-verbal communication. Simultaneously, it will be prescriptive but not as a means of bringing learners nearer to being native speakers. For there will also be an element of type 5 thinking as the notion of an ‘intercultural speaker’ appears, inspired by but diverging from the notion of a native speaker or member of a (nationally dominant) social group with its own (nationally dominant) culture.

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Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

The question then arises whether the model is ‘universal’. I have already emphasised the importance of context, and since the model is primarily a guide for teaching and assessing, the use of the model depends on the degree of match between its inherent characteristics and the traditions of teaching and assessment in the context where it might be used. There are also other factors to consider in the bigger picture: the nature of communication, of hierarchies, of concepts of self and other, and so on. There can be analyses and critiques of the philosophical base, of ideological matters of acceptance or otherwise of work from Europe in other countries, especially former colonies of European countries. Ultimately, whether the model can be used ‘universally’ is an empirical question asking above all whether teachers and learners benefit from using a model developed from work in the European tradition. The ‘benefit’ is also itself an empirical question: whether ICC as described here is what learners need and/or want. I make no absolute universal claims but observe with interest uses and decisions made about benefits by teachers and learners.2 Describing Intercultural Communication and the ‘Intercultural Speaker’

For the sake of clarity, I shall refer to ‘countries’ when discussing interlingual and intercultural communication – and the intercultural communicative competence required – although it is evident that other geopolitical entities may be more relevant in some situations. I do not wish to imply by this that countries and nation-states are the inevitable entities of linguistic and cultural allegiance, but they are currently dominant and are the basis on which education systems are usually organised. I would argue that, mutatis mutandis, my discussion of intercultural communication can also apply to other geopolitical entities, such as ethnic minorities with their own education systems. Furthermore, as argued in Chapter 1, intercultural competence is important in other contexts where other social allegiances and social identities are salient but language competence is not problematic. 3 Whatever a person’s linguistic competence in a foreign language, when they interact socially with someone from a different country they bring to the situation their knowledge of the world which includes in some cases a substantial knowledge of the country in question and in others a minimal knowledge, of its geographical position or its current political climate, for example. Diplomats and foreign correspondents, or visiting teachers and exchange students, can be provided with information from official sources and can often fi nd published guides. Their knowledge also includes their own country, although this may be less conscious, and they may not be aware of its significance in the interaction. Their knowledge of their own country is a part of the social identity which they bring to the situation, and which is salient for their

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interlocutor. For it is important to remember that the interaction between two individuals can only be fully understood when the relationship of the ‘host’ to the ‘visitor’ is included. The mutual perceptions of the social identities of the interlocutors is a determining factor in the interaction. They may share some knowledge of each other’s country and they may share one or more of their social identities – their professional identity, for example in the case of diplomats or FL teachers – or they may be almost completely unknown to each other, as in the first visits of groups from one town to its twin town. It will be evident from this that we cannot describe such an interaction as if there were two ‘native speakers’ of the language involved, one of whom is a true native and the other attempting to be so. Yet, as suggested in Chapter 1, this is often the assumption when only the linguistic competence of each is in question: there is the native and there is a learner attempting to reach native or ‘near-native’ competence.4 Consideration of the interlocutors as social actors with social identities renders the image even more unusable. It is clear that, in a dyadic interaction for example, both interlocutors have different social identities and therefore a different kind of interaction from that which they would have with someone from their own country speaking the same language, whatever level of linguistic mastery of the foreign language they have reached. It is for this reason that I shall introduce the concept of the ‘intercultural speaker’ to describe people involved in intercultural communication and interaction. The success of such interaction can be judged in terms of the effective exchange of information, as has been the tendency in much communicative language teaching, but also in terms of the establishing and maintenance of human relationships. The latter in particular depends on attitudinal factors, for example the willingness of the interlocutors to expect problems of communication caused by lack of overlap in their respective knowledge of the world and of each other’s country. It may depend on the ability of the interlocutors to accept criticism of the values they share with people in their usual social groups, and of which they may not have been consciously aware. It may also depend on their willingness to accept at least initially that they will be perceived by their interlocutor as a representative of a particular country, its values and its political actions, whatever their own views of these. Knowledge and attitude factors are preconditions, although I shall argue that they are also modified by the processes of intercultural communication and that there is a relationship of mutual causality rather than dependence. The nature of the processes is a function of the skills that a person brings to the interaction. These can be divided into two broad and related categories: first, skills of interpretation and establishing relationships between aspects of the two countries; and secondly, skills of discovery and interaction. The former involve the ability to analyse data from

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one’s own and from another country and the potential relationships between them. Skills of discovery can be operated in some circumstances independently of, and in others in combination with, skills of interaction. New data may be discovered in interaction with interlocutors from another country in particular times and places, and new data may also be gathered from other documents and sources without the need for interaction. Whatever their provenance, these data need to be part of the analysis of relationships. These four aspects of interaction across frontiers of different countries – knowledge, attitudes, skills of interpreting and relating, and skills of discovery and interaction – can in principle be acquired through experience and reflection, without the intervention of teachers and educational institutions. If they are acquired with the help of a teacher, there is an option for the teacher to embed the learning process within a broader educational philosophy. For example, the teacher may wish to promote learner autonomy and create modes of teaching and learning accordingly. I shall argue for the integration of teaching for intercultural communication within a philosophy of political education 5 (Byram, 2008; Doyé, 1993; Melde, 1987), and the development of learners’ critical cultural awareness, with respect to their own country and others. Based on these preliminary reflections, I propose the following diagram of the factors involved (Figure 2.1), which I shall then discuss in more detail: SKILLS interpret and relate (savoir comprendre) KNOWLEDGE of self and other; of interaction: individual and societal (savoirs)

EDUCATION political education critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager)

ATTITUDES relativising self valuing other (savoir être)

SKILLS discover and/or interact (savoir apprendre/faire) Figure 2.1 Dimensions of intercultural (communicative) competence

Attitudes

We are concerned here with attitudes in regard to people who are perceived as different in respect of the cultural meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours they exhibit; such attitudes often remain implicit in their

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interaction with interlocutors from their own social groups. They are frequently characterised as prejudice (Allport, 1979; Hughes, 2017), and are often but not always negative, and lead to unsuccessful interaction. Attitudes that are the precondition for successful intercultural interaction need to be not simply positive or tolerant, since even positive prejudice or tolerance can hinder mutual understanding. They need to be attitudes of curiosity and openness, of readiness to suspend disbelief and judgement with respect to others’ meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours. There also needs to be a willingness to suspend belief in one’s own meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours, and to analyse them from the viewpoint of the others with whom one is engaging. This is an ability to ‘decentre’, which Kohlberg et al. (1983) have argued is an advanced stage of psychological development and which Melde (1987) suggests is fundamental to understanding other cultures. In an extreme case it can lead to a ‘resocialisation’, which Berger and Luckmann (1966: 176) call ‘alternation’, where individuals dismantle their preceding structure of subjective reality and reconstruct it according to new norms. It involves a challenge to the norms of primary socialisation and, with respect to FL learning, learners may undergo a process of what Doyé and I have called ‘tertiary socialisation’ (Byram, 1989b, 2008; Doyé, 1992, 2003). The emphasis here on attitudes of curiosity to promote successful interaction and communication begs the question of if and how teachers should address prejudice. Reduction or even elimination of (negative) prejudice is difficult but has received more attention in recent decades. Teachers and others are given advice on various techniques (e.g. Abram, 2010; Hughes, 2017) and language teachers may be able to use these too. Their particular contribution through teaching competences for intercultural communication is in two elements of the model proposed here. First there is knowledge about the processes of communication (see below), which includes knowledge about stereotypes and prejudices towards particular social groups as well as knowledge about the processes of formation of stereotypes and prejudices. Secondly, there is the ability to reflect on one’s own stereotypes and prejudices which comes through ‘critical cultural awareness’ (see below), i.e. the ability to critique one’s own way of thinking and acting and how this is influenced by societal factors.6 The relationship of the attitudes dimension with other dimensions is one of interdependence. Without questioning one’s own and valuing others’ experience, interpreting and relating them is likely to be valueladen and biased. Although entirely value-free interpretation and relating are unlikely, nonetheless the raising of awareness about one’s own values allows a conscious control of biased interpretation. The relationship between attitudes and knowledge is not the simple cause and effect often assumed, i.e. that increased knowledge creates positive attitudes (Byram et  al., 1994). Nonetheless, it is probably easier to question one’s own meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours through comparison with others’

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than to attempt to decentre and distance oneself from what the processes of socialisation have suggested is ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and unchangeable. Furthermore, the skills of discovery and interaction are less difficult to operate and less likely to involve psychological stress (Furnham & Bochner, 1986; Kim, 1988) if the person involved has attitudes of openness and curiosity. Finally, in an educational framework which aims to develop critical cultural awareness, questioning of one’s own and respecting others’ meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours does not happen without a reflective and analytical challenge to the ways in which they have been formed and the complex of social forces within which they are experienced. Knowledge

The knowledge individuals bring to an interaction with someone from their own or another country7 can be described in two broad categories: knowledge about one’s own social groups and their cultures and similar knowledge of the interlocutor’s social groups and cultures, on the one hand; and knowledge of the processes of interaction at individual and societal levels, on the other hand. The first category is knowledge which may be more or less refi ned, but always present in some degree, whereas the second, involving knowledge about concepts and processes in interaction, is fundamental to successful interaction but not acquired automatically. With respect to the fi rst category, the inevitability of some knowledge being present is due to the processes of socialisation. Through primary socialisation largely in the family and secondary socialisation usually in formal education, the individual acquires knowledge, some remaining conscious, some unconscious and taken for granted, of the social groups to which they gain membership, and of other social groups with which they have contact. In countries with formal education systems, the knowledge acquired is often dominated by the notion of a ‘national’ culture and identity, and individuals acquire to varying degrees a national identity through socialisation in formal education. They also acquire other identities – regional, ethnic, social class and so on – through formal and informal socialisation. The knowledge they have of the shared meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours of these different groups includes a conscious awareness of two kinds of characteristic: those which are emblematic for the group – for example, items of dress or modes of greeting; and those which it uses to differentiate itself from other groups and mark its boundaries (Barth, 1969). The latter often include stories from its history, its institutions and its religious values, and are highly conscious, whereas other characteristics are usually taken for granted and only raised to consciousness when there is a need for contrast with other groups. They can be all the more influential

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in contact with other groups because they are unconscious and unanalysed. Knowledge on the part of a learner/intercultural speaker about other countries – or other regions of their own country – and about the identities brought to an interaction by an interlocutor, is usually ‘relational’, i.e. it is knowledge acquired within socialisation in one’s own social groups and often presented in contrast to the significant characteristics of one’s national group and identity. For example, knowledge of the history of another country is through the stories from the history of one’s own nation-state, and is consequently a different interpretation from the story told in the foreign country. Often the stories told are prejudiced and stereotyped, particularly in processes of informal socialisation – within the family or in the media, for example. It follows that the greater the proximity and the more contacts there are and have been between the individual’s country and that of their interlocutor, the more knowledge of each other will be present in the interaction. Of course in the contemporary world, proximity is not only a matter of geographical distance, easily overcome by modern communications networks, but is rather a question of dominance in media and politics. Knowledge – both accurate and inaccurate – of the United States is probably universal, and knowledge of China is becoming so, although differing according to the individual’s country of origin and the power relationships between one’s country and the United States or China, whereas knowledge of a country such as Denmark differs considerably from one part of the world to another. The relational nature of the knowledge of other countries, and the meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours imputed to an interlocutor, are linked to the second category of knowledge in an interaction: knowledge of the processes of interaction at individual and societal level. If an individual knows about the ways in which their social identities have been acquired, how they themselves are a prism through which other members of their group are perceived, how they in turn perceive their interlocutors from another group, and how the process of communication and interaction itself modifies preceding perceptions and creates new identifications, that awareness provides a basis for successful interaction. Knowledge about concepts and processes in interaction is theoretical knowledge about relationships among groups and group identities, including, for example, the concepts of ‘prejudice’ or ‘stereotype’ and how these impact on interactions.8 It includes knowledge about micro-level factors in interaction: for example, how turn-taking works and may differ from one cultural group to another, and how people signal the identity/ies they wish to project in an interaction through the use of language varieties and their plurilingualism and translanguaging practices. It also includes knowledge about factors in different types of written interaction, notably through the internet, and the ability to analyse variation from one written genre to another and from one tradition of writing to another. Some of

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this can be transferred from different areas of learning, different subjects in the curricula of education systems; not everything has to be the responsibility of the language teacher. Theoretical knowledge needs to be taught in age-appropriate ways and is a particular challenge with younger learners.9 This declarative knowledge, although necessary, is not sufficient, and needs to be complemented by procedural knowledge of how to act in specific circumstances. In this sense, it is linked with the skills of interpreting and relating, of using existing knowledge to understand a specific document or behaviour, for example, and to relate these to comparable but different documents or behaviours in their own social group. At one level, it is well known that tea-drinking has different significance in different cultures; at another level, a policy document on ‘the centralisation of education’ might be ‘conservative’ in one context and ‘progressive’ in another. The significance of behaviour or document cannot be taken for granted. Similarly, the skills of discovery and interaction are the means of augmenting and refi ning knowledge about others and knowing how to respond to specific features of interaction with a particular individual. Skills

An individual coming across a ‘document’ – using this word in the widest sense – from another country can interpret it with the help of specific information and general frames of knowledge which will allow them to discover the allusions and connotations present in the document. The knowledge may have been acquired through formal education or by other, informal, means, but is likely to be conscious knowledge, consciously applied. In contrast, interpretation of a document from one’s own environment is usually dependent on both conscious and taken-for-granted knowledge, and the latter in particular may obscure from the individual the ethnocentric values and connotations in the document which would make it difficult to access for someone from another country. The ability to interpret a document from another country, or to identify relationships between documents from different countries, is therefore dependent on knowledge of one’s own and the other environment. Moreover, in establishing relationships, the individual will discover both common ground, easily translated concepts and connotations, and lacunae (Ertelt-Vieth, 1991) or dysfunctions, including mutually contradictory meanings. The interpretation of one document in relationship to another or the translation of a document to make it accessible to someone from another country necessarily includes handling dysfunctions and contradictions in order to resolve them where possible, but also in order to identify unresolvable issues.10 This skill of interpreting and relating draws upon existing knowledge. The issue of how much and which kind of knowledge might be acquired

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through formal education, notably in the FL classroom, is one to which we shall return. Furthermore, this skill can be distinguished from the skills of discovery and interaction in that it need not involve interaction with an interlocutor, but may be confi ned to work on documents. As a consequence, the individual is able to determine their own timescale for interpretation, not constrained by the real-time demands of social interaction. The skill of discovery may also be operated in the individual’s own time, but equally it may be part of social interaction. The skill of discovery comes into play where the individual has no, or only a partial, existing knowledge framework. It is the skill of building up specific knowledge as well as an understanding of the meanings, beliefs, values and behaviours that are inherent in particular phenomena, whether documents or interactions. The knowledge acquired may be ‘instrumental’ or ‘interpretative’. The latter may operate without direct contact with people of another country but nonetheless satisfy curiosity and stimulate openness. Even in a globalised world, there are many people in this situation, where they may never use the foreign language in interaction but nonetheless need to relate to other countries and cultures. In the ‘instrumental’ case, the individual might be geographically mobile and need to discover the ways to gain access to a new society, the institutions giving permissions for travel and residence, the institutions that manage relations between the host country and the country of origin. The skill of discovery is the ability to recognise significant phenomena in a foreign environment and to elicit their meanings and connotations and their relationship to other phenomena. Although the skill is essentially identical in different environments, it may be more difficult to operate in those which have least in common with the individual’s country of origin, so-called ‘exotic’ languages and cultures. However, given the power of international media and popular culture, it is likely that the individual will be able to identify some phenomena in the most distant environments, although it cannot be assumed that they have the same meaning and significance. When skills of discovery are used in social interaction, constraints of time and mutual perceptions and attitudes arise as mentioned earlier. The skill of interaction is above all the ability to manage these constraints in particular circumstances with specific interlocutors.11 The individual needs to draw upon their existing knowledge, have attitudes which sustain sensitivity to others with sometimes radically different origins and identities, and operate the skills of discovery and interpretation. In particular, the individual needs to manage dysfunctions that arise in the course of interaction, drawing upon knowledge and skills. They may also be called upon not only to establish a relationship between their own social identities and those of their interlocutor, but also to act as mediator between people of different origins and identities. It is this function of establishing relationships, managing dysfunctions and mediating

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which distinguishes an ‘intercultural speaker’, and makes them different from a native speaker. Intercultural Communication in Operation

The intention in this chapter so far has been to discuss intercultural communication at a generalisable level of abstraction. I have largely avoided illustrations, although these often help to clarify an argument. I have even avoided as far as possible reference to a ‘culture’, preferring instead the phrase ‘beliefs, meanings, values and behaviours’, in order not to commit the description to a particular defi nition of ‘culture’. On the other hand, I have mainly referred to interaction between people of different countries, and it can be argued that this implies a distinction between inter-country (or intercultural) and intra-country (or intracultural) interaction. This is not necessarily the case, and I need therefore to develop the argument by asking whether there are limitations and conditions to be imposed on the general description given so far. Defi nitions of ‘culture’ are many and rather than adding to the attempts to produce a defi nitive and all-purpose defi nition I want to suggest that we need a defi nition to suit the purposes of the FL teacher. This can begin, as I suggested on an earlier occasion (Byram, 1989a: 81ff ), with the beliefs and knowledge that members of a social group share by virtue of their membership. To describe these as ‘shared meanings’ is to open a link to language, in which they are embodied, and to a view of language learning as learning the meanings of a specific social group. Adding to this the notion of ‘values’ reflects the priorities a group has, in which beliefs about itself and its ways of behaving are most important. As indicated in Chapter 1, this view can be criticised as too static, not taking into account the constant negotiation and production of meanings in any interaction (Street, 1993). It can also be argued that it leads to emphasis on the meanings shared by a politically dominant elite group within a society. Furthermore, it was suggested in Chapter 1 that an account of interaction and communication should include non-verbal behaviour, and this has tacitly been acknowledged in the phrase ‘beliefs, meanings, values and behaviours’. There is also an argument for including behaviour which is not directly related to communication and interaction, such as conventions and taboos of clothing, since the task of the FL teacher is to equip learners with the knowledge, attitudes and skills for relating to whatever experience they might have during a period of residence in another country or in interaction with someone from another social group in their own society. As with other dimensions, the decision on how inclusive the treatment of non-verbal behaviour shall be depends on the purposes of FLE. Where preparation for mobility and a period of residence and face-to-face interaction is insignificant, it can be argued that there is little point in including the non-verbal.

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We have to be aware of the dangers of presenting ‘a culture’ as if it were unchanging over time or as if there were only one set of beliefs, meanings and behaviours in any given country. When individuals interact, they bring to the situation their own identities and cultures, and if they are not members of a dominant group, subscribing to the dominant culture, their interlocutor’s knowledge of that culture will be dysfunctional because they are likely to attribute the wrong cultural identity to their interlocutor. In his argument against the representation of the culture of a particular country by its dominant beliefs, meanings and behaviours, Christensen (1994) suggests, as we saw in Chapter 1, that we should not think in terms of encounters between different language and culture systems, but rather of encounters between individuals with their own meanings and cultural capital: It is not a question of different culture and language systems which confront each other in cultural encounters, but of interacting individuals who produce, negotiate or defend meanings and capitals. Seen in this way there is in theory no absolute difference between encounters between individuals from diff erent countries and within the same country. (Christensen, 1994: 37, my translation, author’s emphasis)

His suggestion that there is ‘no absolute difference between encounters between individuals from different countries and within the same country’ is a means of emphasising the fact that it is individuals who meet and not cultures. In essence he is correct, and although he does not take sufficient account of language, this is a useful reminder and an important emphasis on the individuality of interaction. It raises the question of whether there is, in principle, any difference between communication within or across national/state frontiers, between people of the same or different speech communities. Is there, for example, a difference between communication when two people have different first languages but live in the same country and communication between people with different first languages who live in different countries? Or even between the first case and people who have the ‘same’ language but live in different countries (such as Germany and Austria or Algeria and Morocco)? I have implied earlier in this chapter, by referring to different countries, that there is a worthwhile analytical distinction, which becomes clear if we complement Christensen’s use of Bourdieu’s sociological framework with social psychological and linguistic perspectives. From the social psychological perspective, in a social encounter the participants attribute characteristics and identities to each other (Tajfel, 1981). In an encounter between people from different countries, one of the initial attributions is usually, although not always, that of national identity. This is particularly the case if there are indications, by accent for example, of a person’s native language, even though this may be misleading and influence the other person to impute the wrong identity. In these

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situations the attribution is to a socio-geographical entity, a country, and to the dominant culture within that culture insofar as it is known. Christensen’s point would be that this creates the wrong starting point and introduces issues of power and dominance which we should strive to avoid by giving learners the skills to analyse the dominant representations and their origins, a point with which I would agree, as indicated earlier in this chapter and discussed again below. Nonetheless, the social psychological perspective reminds us that attributions other than nationality occur simultaneously with nationality attributions: gender, race, age, social class and others. Where one of these is more important to the individuals or is given dominance by the particular context of the interaction, national identity and presumed culture will not be an issue or will soon be ignored. Language difference is minimised, although a linguistic perspective suggests that it cannot be forgotten, as Christensen appears to do. Another perspective is afforded by reflection on language learning. The subjective experience of interaction in a foreign language distinguishes significantly between intercultural/country and intracultural/ country communication. Unlike the use of the fi rst language in an intercultural encounter, the FL speaker may experience a degree of powerlessness vis-à-vis a native speaker.12 They may sense the constraints of insufficient knowledge and skill in linguistic competence to meet the specific requirements of the interaction. They should also be aware of the need to compare, contrast and establish relationships between concepts in their own and the foreign language.13 I conclude therefore that, although sociologically speaking there is no difference in principle between communication within and across nation/ state frontiers, for the FL teacher the psychological analysis suggests that the difference is significant. The skills, attitudes and knowledge described earlier in this chapter are clearly related to those involved in withinfrontier communication. The FL learner needs a particular kind of intercultural competence in addition to what they may have already acquired in their own country and language community. This raises a further question: whether a native speaker participant in an intercultural interaction with someone for whom the language is a foreign language needs a competence different from that operating in interaction with other native speakers from their own society. In societies where there is considerable mobility, an individual’s experience of otherness of language and culture may be just as frequently in the role of ‘host’ or recipient, as in the role of traveller and ‘guest’. This has been the case for many Western Europeans for the last three or four decades. The success of interaction being dependent on both interlocutors, the notion of ICC can be used to describe the capacities of a host as much as a guest. Although the host will often speak in their fi rst language, they need the same kinds of knowledge, attitudes and skills as their guest to understand and maintain relationships between meanings in the two cultures. They

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need the ability to decentre and take up the other’s perspective, anticipating and where possible resolving dysfunctions in communication and behaviour. They may have specific knowledge of the other’s culture or only a general awareness of the issues involved in intercultural communication. The former would be the case if they have learnt something of the other’s language and culture, and this suggests that FLE should explicitly include the host role in its aims and methods. For example, someone learning Chinese should learn how to explain their own culture, in Chinese, to a guest from China and/or they should learn how to use their first language (e.g. Spanish) to do the same thing when speaking to a guest from China who has learnt Spanish as a foreign language. It does not require additional skills or knowledge, but rather the development of the individual’s awareness of the differences in the roles of ‘host’ or ‘guest’ and, in particular, awareness of the power held by the interlocutor using their fi rst language, and the means by which that power can be shared with non-native interlocutors. A fi nal operational question is that of degrees of competence and performance. This anticipates our later discussion of the process of assessment and here I shall only raise the issues in principle. One fundamental question is whether there is a ‘threshold’ below which an individual cannot be deemed to have ICC at all. A second question is whether there are degrees of competence beyond the threshold and, if so, whether they are measurable. Already in the last century, work in Europe (e.g. Campos, 1988; Meyer, 1991) focused on the description of levels of competence leading to intercultural competence, and implied that there is a threshold below which individuals cannot be deemed to operate successfully. The discussions did not address the question of whether it is meaningful to seek to describe levels beyond the threshold, or whether they can be measured. Other work, in the United States, suggested four levels of competence (Nostrand et al., 1996) but gave less emphasis to the concept of interculturality and mediation. Moreover, it also described levels below a threshold, its fourth level being closest to our description of the knowledge, attitudes and skills required: Upon reaching each of the stages below, the learner (…): Stage 4

• • •

Recognises the importance of understanding manifestations of the target culture in terms of its own context. Is aware of his/her own cultural perspective and of how this perspective influences one’s perception of phenomena. Can act and react in a culturally appropriate way while being aware of his/her ‘otherness’. (Nostrand et al., 1996: 12)

It was implied that once this stage is reached, there is no further gradation of competence required.

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In recent years, the task of defi ning levels has been addressed vigorously in Europe and the United States, as we shall see in the chapter on assessment. Acquiring Intercultural Communicative Competence in an Educational Setting14

Much acquisition of ICC is tutored and takes place within an educational setting. Some educational institutions may fulfi l functions other than those of general education and focus on vocational skills or shortterm objectives. Otherwise, institutions and teachers, including FL teachers, have a responsibility to pursue general educational aims together with those of the subject taught. In the model proposed here, I want to frame this question in terms of ‘political education’ as a part of general education because it has a particular relationship with ICC. Doyé (1993) draws parallels between FL education and ‘politische Bildung’ (literal translation: political education) as understood in the German tradition of schooling. There are two important elements here: the ‘political’ and the ‘educational’ (Bildung). I begin with the political. Doyé bases his analysis on Gagel’s (1983) distinction of three kinds of ‘orientation’ to be offered across all subjects to young people during their general education: • • •

cognitive orientation: the acquisition of concepts, knowledge and modes of analysis for the understanding of political phenomena; evaluative orientation: the explanation and mediation of values and the ability to make political judgements on the basis of these values; action orientation: development of the ability and the readiness for political engagement.

In the FL classroom, Doyé argues, there is congruence between these dimensions of politische Bildung and the aims and methods of FLE: • •

•

cognitive orientation: the international dimension of the acquisition of knowledge about and understanding of other countries, cultures and societies; evaluative orientation: political education shall lead learners to reflection on social norms, including those of other societies than their own, in order to lead them to a capacity for political judgement; this corresponds to the aims of FLE to lead learners to respect the norms of other societies and to evaluate them in an unprejudiced way; action orientation: both political education and FLE aim to instil in learners a disposition for engagement and interaction with others; in the case of FLE the ‘others’ are usually from another country and the interaction is, psychologically if not sociologically, of a different kind, but it is an extension of engagement with people in one’s own country.

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By establishing this link with politische Bildung, Doyé makes explicit the evaluative dimension which descriptions of knowledge, skills and attitudes frequently ignore. For although attitudes are often included in statements of aims, they are defined in terms of readiness for positive attitudes towards otherness and the reduction of prejudice. The notion of an ‘evaluative orientation’ includes appropriate ‘unprejudiced’ attitudes but goes further. It acknowledges the tendency to evaluate cultures, often through comparison with one’s own. On the other hand, it does not encompass the reflexive dimension of ICC, i.e. the acquisition of a perspective on and analysis of the beliefs, meanings, values and behaviours of one’s own country and the different groups within it. Yet this latter aspect of FL education is crucial not only to successful intercultural communication but also to the contribution of FLE to politische Bildung. FLE should lead to cognitive and evaluative orientation towards the learner’s own country, a questioning of the taken-for-granted and, as a consequence, to an action orientation.15 Politische Bildung in this interpretation does not impose or recommend any particular set of values, any particular standpoint, but it is possible to argue that politische Bildung in FLE should do so. Starkey (1995) argues that an international standpoint is to be found in the concept of human rights and peace education, and Classen-Bauer (1989) produced materials for classroom practice which make the link between FLE and peace studies real. Since then there has been a flowering of work on language and peace studies (e.g. Oxford, 2013). Moreover, since peace education can also be pursued in other subjects taught in general education, there is potential for cross-curricular cooperation. Taking international standards of human rights as the baseline for evaluation is not of course a ready-made solution to the question of what standpoint should or could be recommended, since interpretations of human rights differ (as discussed in more detail in the Coda to this chapter). Nonetheless, it provides a possible starting point for those teachers who feel that they need to offer their learners a rational approach to evaluations of the value systems of cultures. This is particularly important for those who teach languages of societies with very different moral and ethical traditions, with respect to the treatment of women or children, for example. On the one hand, teachers wish to reduce prejudiced and emotional evaluations; on the other hand, their learners react strongly to the marked differences. A human rights standpoint offers one approach to handling strong emotional responses, and I shall return to this in more detail below. However, not all language teachers feel comfortable on a personal level with such an explicit political dimension of language and culture teaching. They may also see it as irrelevant to language teaching for children or even for other beginners whatever their age, arguing that the subject matter introduced in the early stages of language teaching does not require an evaluative attitude. This view is more easily

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defended when one is teaching languages spoken in areas with similar moral, ethical and political traditions, as is the case of much FL teaching within Western Europe. The teaching of Spanish in France or German in Britain or English in the Netherlands does not present learners with radically different societies, whereas the teaching of Arabic or Chinese does. Even so, a realistic representation in teaching materials of the country in question can and soon should introduce learners to different social groups, including those of low status and disadvantage. This can problematise a society’s treatment of all its social groups and, through a refl exive methodology, raise questions about the learners’ own society and its attitude to disadvantaged groups. Such issues can be found implicitly in textbooks, and are sometimes made explicit. For example, in a textbook for teaching English as a foreign language in Germany, young learners are introduced to a fi ctional family of Pakistani origin living in the north of England. The story represents a well-known problem in such communities when the family moves to a predominantly white neighbourhood and experiences racial prejudice. The racial problems are made all the more explicit when the daughter of the family begins to date a white boy. Learners cannot read this story without becoming aware of racial tensions in Britain and, by comparison, in Germany (Doyé, 1991). This example is taken from a secondary school context where the learners are reaching a stage of development when moral issues can, and some would say must, be addressed, since this is a responsibility of institutions of general education. Outside the secondary school, language learners fall into two other broad categories: those in primary or even pre-primary education, and those in post-secondary and adult education, whose ages may range from 20 years to 70 years or beyond. I return to the younger group later in this chapter. The second group, adult learners, often have specific aims in their language learning, even at the beginning stage, which bring evaluative attitudes to the fore. Particularly where the languages involved are from very different traditions, the evaluative attitude is a major concern, whether it is addressed in the classroom and teaching materials or not. This being the case, language teachers need to be explicit and the reference point of international human rights may be a useful one here too. It can help all language teachers and learners to avoid the trap of cultural relativism, an issue to which I shall return below. Even where the issues are not political or moral, FL teaching within an institution of general education has a responsibility to develop a critical awareness of the values and significance of cultural practices in the other and one’s own country. In some educational traditions this may simply mean that FLE should amend its educational goals to correspond more closely to those of other disciplines and to the overall purposes of general education. In the Western European and North American tradition there

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are indications that this is now happening, for example in a statement from Norway: (1) Foreign languages are both an educational subject and a humanistic subject. This area of study shall give opportunity for experiences, joy and personal development, at the same time as it opens greater possibilities in the world of work and for study in many language regions. (2) Competences in language and culture shall give the individual the possibility to understand, to ‘live into’ and value other cultures’ social life and life at work, their modes and conditions of living, their way of thinking, their history, art and literature. (3) The area of study (languages) can also contribute to developing interest and tolerance, develop insight in one’s own conditions of life and own identity, and contribute to a joy in reading, creativity, experience and personal development. (4) Good competence in languages will also lay the ground for participation in activities which build democracy beyond country borders and differences in culture. (www.udir.no/kl06/PSP1-01/Hele/Formaal, our (literal) translation, numbering added; accessed March 2018)

In the first section, the prominence of the words ‘educational’ and ‘humanistic’ is important because they connect to the notion of personal development. The instrumental advantage of speaking other languages is the second main idea here. In the second section, the phrase ‘live into’ is a literal translation which attempts to capture the value of the original and emphasise that culture and language learning should lead to greater understanding of people with other ways of living and thinking. The third section is an important statement of how language teaching and learning should also lead to a better understanding of ourselves, a purpose that has become increasingly part of such documents in the last decade, and corresponds to the concept of critical cultural awareness which includes awareness of one’s own as well as others’ cultures. The fi nal section makes a statement which is as yet seldom found in such documents, but one that has been developed in the last decade (Byram, 2008; Byram et al., 2017) and to which I will return below. It is the assertion that language learning shall enable students to participate in democratic processes beyond the limits of their own country, and this is central to my concept of intercultural citizenship. For, when we look beyond country borders, it is evident that every day there is a new urgency to come together to recognize and solve problems, such as environmental and humanitarian crises, whose consequences threaten us all if we do not fi nd solutions; this is both a practical/instrumental matter and part of our life as social human beings.16 In other traditions, the introduction of a critical analysis, not only of the foreign language and culture but also of one’s own, is a more difficult issue. The fear of Western values as embodied in English as a foreign

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language is evident, for example, in the educational goal of the Arab Gulf states discussed in Chapter 1, and in the debate about neo-colonialism in general. It is here that the defi nition of human rights might be felt to be too much in debt to Western concepts, and a critical cultural awareness too alien to traditions of conformity and acceptance of authority, but Pennycook (1994) makes a strong argument for a critical pedagogy in the teaching of English as an international language. I return to the question of human rights below in the Coda to this chapter. The second element of politische Bildung is notoriously difficult to translate, and many scholars in Germany would not be satisfi ed with my preliminary translation above of ‘Bildung’ as ‘education’. The full meaning of ‘Bildung’ is, to say the least, complex and beyond the scope of this book, but the relationship to ‘competence’ is important. In a thorough analysis of the relationship between ‘Bildung’ and ‘Kompetenz’, Lederer (2014: 562) argues that there is much overlap, albeit dependent on how ‘competence’ is used. The crucial elements are ‘personal competences: self-refl ection, capacity for judgement and critique, autonomy and maturity’ (Selbstreflexivität, Urteils- und Kritikfähigkeit, Autonomie und Mündigkeit). It is in the central concept of critical cultural awareness/politische Bildung that these personal competences are developed, and are the crucial elements which make language teaching ‘educational’.17 I have argued in this section for a view of FLE which is more complex than a process of developing skills and knowledge. It is represented diagrammatically in the model proposed earlier in this chapter by placing ‘Education’ at the centre, and including political education and critical cultural awareness. I do not propose here to discuss the methodological implications – whether, for example, there should be methods for treating the issues explicitly or by permeation; such questions have been addressed elsewhere (Byram et al., 2017). It is nonetheless clear that the focus will continue to be on teaching language and culture, out of which political and critical awareness should arise. Ideally, FLE will be conceived by both teachers and learners as, in the fi rst instance, a means to attain competence in intercultural communication through learning a language and its relationship to the cultural practices and identities interlocutors bring to an interaction. It is for this reason too that it is necessary in the following section to examine the relationships of the knowledge, skills and attitudes discussed so far to the other aspects of ICC. Relationships among the elements of intercultural competence

The representation in Figure 2.1 of the dimensions of intercultural competence – to which linguistic competences will be added later – has no explicit indication of the relationships among the different dimensions. There is a symbolism in the placing of ‘critical cultural awareness/savoir

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s’engager’ at the centre of the figure because this is a crucial element in teaching intercultural competence in general education. The lack of indicators of links among the separate dimensions, for example by arrows, is deliberate. It would be possible to represent the different elements as a list. Although this would lose the symbolism of ‘critical cultural awareness/savoir s’engager’ at the centre, it would emphasise that the model is not a model of learning, but of teaching. It presents the basis for planning teaching and assessment. It does not make any claims about the learning processes. There is a logical priority that appropriate attitudes are needed before other competences can be learned, but it is also possible that attitudes will develop as skills are taught. It is for teachers to decide what combinations of competences and objectives are appropriate for their learners, and these will vary in terms of age and teaching methods.18 Relating Intercultural Competence to Communication

The model proposed earlier in this chapter already includes a communication dimension in the skill of ‘interaction’. It does not specify, however, the modes involved. These could include interaction through an interpreter, for example, but the underlying assumption has been that the dominant mode will be through the individual’s own use of a foreign language, mainly but not exclusively in the spoken mode. I pointed out in Chapter 1 that there is a strong argument for the inclusion of non-verbal communication in a model of intercultural communication, and cited Poyatos’s (1992) proposal that FLE should include training in non-verbal communication. This is clearly an element of interaction which is crucial, but the challenge to the dominance of the native speaker as model applies just as much here as it does to standards of verbal communication. In other words, any teaching of non-verbal skills and knowledge should enhance competences as an intercultural speaker, not imitation of a native speaker. It is, too, an area of cultural practices which should be the focus of the skills of discovery, interpretation and relating to otherness. For, as with other aspects of a culture, the provision of knowledge by a teacher or textbook can be only introductory and focused on major aspects of non-verbal practices. It is more important that learners as intercultural speakers should acquire the skills that allow them to observe practices of non-verbal communication and to relate them to their own. A second perspective introduced in Chapter 1, represented by Gudykunst (1994), emphasised especially the abilities to gather knowledge about another culture and the skills of empathy, management of anxiety and adaptability. In my model these characteristics are included in attitudes and skills of discovery, interpretation and relating. The criticism I made of Gudykunst’s and similar models, well surveyed by Spitzberg and Changnon (2009), is that they pay little or no attention to linguistic competence; neither does the sociological interactionist perspective, also

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analysed in Chapter 1. The reason is essentially the same in both cases: the view that interaction within ‘a culture’ or a country is not different in principle from that involving another language. I argued that this view does not take into account social identities, ascribed by others and selfascribed, nor the relationship of identities to language. In addition to this, it is necessary to consider the relationship between the elements of my model and the partial competences identified in van Ek’s (1986) language-based model, also outlined in Chapter 1. His concepts of ‘social competence’, ‘strategic competence’ and ‘sociocultural competence’ are included in my model and refi ned as a consequence of my replacing the native speaker with the concept of the intercultural speaker. The three other dimensions, repeated here for ease of reference, need to be reappraised: •

•

•

linguistic competence: the ability to produce and interpret meaningful utterances which are formed in accordance with the rules of the language concerned and bear their conventional meaning (…) that meaning which native speakers would normally attach to an utterance when used in isolation (van Ek, 1986: 39); sociolinguistic competence: the awareness of ways in which the choice of language forms (…) is determined by such conditions as setting, relationship between communication partners, communicative intention, etc., etc. (…) sociolinguistic competence covers the relation between linguistic signals and their contextual – or situational – meaning (van Ek, 1986: 41); discourse competence: the ability to use appropriate strategies in the construction and interpretation of texts (van Ek, 1986: 47).

Given the significance I have attached to ‘discovery’, ‘interpretation’ and ‘establishing a relationship’ between an intercultural speaker and their interlocutor who may have little intercultural competence, van Ek’s definitions of linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence need to be refined: • •

•

linguistic competence: the ability to apply knowledge of the rules of a standard version of the language to produce and interpret spoken and written language;19 sociolinguistic competence: the ability to give to the language produced by an interlocutor – whether native speaker or not – meanings which are taken for granted by the interlocutor or which are negotiated and made explicit with the interlocutor; discourse competence: the ability to use, discover and negotiate strategies for the production and interpretation of monologic or dialogic texts which follow the conventions of the culture of an interlocutor or are negotiated as intercultural texts for particular purposes.

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These formulations retain some of the insights of van Ek’s model but imply links with the knowledge and skills of my model. The redefi nition of linguistic competence to exclude reference to meaning involves a redefinition of sociolinguistic competence to include the taken-for-granted meanings learners might have acquired as knowledge of a foreign culture and the ability to discover and negotiate new and unfamiliar meanings, which may also diverge from those of the national culture at the focus of the learner’s attention. Similarly, the redefi nition of discourse competence includes the notion of discovery and negotiation but also adds the possibility that intercultural and native speakers – or intercultural speakers of different language and culture origins – need to negotiate their own modes of interaction, their own kinds of text, to accommodate the specific nature of intercultural communication. This might involve, for example, negotiated agreements on meta-commentary, on when and how to ensure that each interlocutor is able to interrupt the normal flow of interaction to ask for explanation of differences and dysfunctions, or to give a richer account of the presuppositions of a statement than would usually be necessary. The important point in all this is to note that there are connections between language competences and the competences that make up intercultural competence, and that introduction of language competences changes intercultural competence into ICC. This is represented in Figure 2.2. The defi nition of the intercultural speaker as distinct from the native speaker has, therefore, consequences for all aspects of the competence involved. Nonetheless, I shall not discuss in further detail the linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse dimensions but return to a more detailed specification of intercultural attitudes, skills and knowledge in a way that makes them usable for teaching and assessment. 20 Intercultural Competence Defined in Terms of Objectives

By referring in this section to intercultural competence, omitting reference to communication, I want to indicate the emphasis on skills, knowledge and attitudes other than those that are primarily linguistic. It will be evident that the skill of ‘interaction’ is communicative in a broader sense, and that any comprehensive account of teaching and assessing ICC must include all the competences discussed in the previous section. Here I propose to return to the five factors in my model and extend the discussion of them in terms of how they might be formulated as ‘objectives’. The use of the term ‘objectives’ in discourse on education and learning is not consistent. The confusion is compounded if one includes discourse in languages other than English where the superficially equivalent translation is often understood in quite different ways. Here I shall use ‘objectives’ to designate a range of skills, knowledge and attitudes which may not

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Figure 2.2 Intercultural competence and intercultural communicative competence

necessarily be the outcome of learning directly related to language learning, since they may include phenomena already present in the learner before language learning begins. Furthermore, the objectives need not necessarily be formulated as observable and measurable behaviours or changes in behaviour. To require this would be too restrictive in understanding language and culture learning, although it may be necessary later to reconsider this issue with respect to assessment. Finally, objectives are not limited to describing the intentions of the teacher or even of the learner in engaging in a process of language learning. ‘Objectives’ are thus a refinement of the definitions introduced earlier and a step towards describing teaching and assessment.21 Attitudes: Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own

Objectives: •

willingness to seek out or take up opportunities to engage with otherness in a relationship of equality; this should be distinguished from attitudes of seeking out the exotic or of seeking to profit from others;

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• • • •

63

interest in discovering other perspectives on the interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar phenomena both in one’s own and in other cultural practices and products; willingness to question the values and presuppositions in cultural practices and products in one’s own environment; readiness to experience the different stages of adaptation to and interaction with another culture during a period of residence; readiness to engage with the conventions and rites of verbal and nonverbal communication and interaction. What I have in mind here is the kind of learner many teachers will have noticed when they take a group to another country. It is the curiosity and wonder expressed in constant questions and wide-eyed observations, in the willingness to try anything new rather than clinging to the familiar. In the classroom, these attitudes are sometimes evident in the willingness to improvise in using the language, or in the question at the end of a lesson about something noticed in a textbook, or in the learner who talks about what they have heard from relatives about another country. Among university students spending a period of residence in another country, there are those who become fully engaged with their environment rather than living almost encapsulated in the links with home. Often such learners are not the ones most successful in academic work, in the acquisition of linguistic accuracy in the classroom, for example. I also want to distinguish this kind of engagement with otherness from the tourist approach where the interest is in collecting experiences of the exotic, and from the commercial approach where the interest is in a business arrangement and making a profit. Both of these have a rightful place in international relations, but they are not conducive to developing intercultural competence.

Knowledge: Specific knowledge of social groups and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country, and of the general knowledge of processes of societal and individual interaction22

Objectives (knowledge about/of): • • •

historical and contemporary relationships between one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s countries23; the national memory of one’s own country and how its events are related to and seen from the perspective of one’s interlocutor’s country; the national memory of one’s interlocutor’s country and the perspective on it from one’s own;

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•

the national defi nitions of geographical space in one’s own country and how these are perceived from the perspective of other countries; the national defi nitions of geographical space in one’s interlocutor’s country and the perspective on them from one’s own; the processes and institutions of socialisation in one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s country; social distinctions and their principal markers, in one’s own country and one’s interlocutor’s; institutions, and perceptions of them, which impinge on daily life within one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s country and which conduct and influence relationships between them; the processes of social interaction in one’s interlocutor’s country; the means of achieving contact with interlocutors from another country (at a distance or in proximity), of travel to and from and the institutions which facilitate contact or help resolve problems; the types of cause and process of misunderstanding between interlocutors of different cultural origins.

• • • • • • •

Much of the knowledge involved here is relational, e.g. how the inhabitants of one country perceive another country and what effect that has upon the interaction between individuals. It is also related to socialisation, since perceptions of others are acquired in socialisation. In learning the history of one’s own country, for example, one is presented with images of another; in learning about the geography of one’s own country, the boundaries with other countries are the defi ning characteristics. As an example, an English learner of French inevitably meets at some point the two versions of the story – rather than the history – of Joan of Arc. The French collective, national memory of this story is different from the English, and the historical relationships between the two countries encapsulated in the difference is the kind of knowledge envisaged here. There are doubtless similar examples in every country. There is also a more theoretical kind of knowledge. Behind the example just mentioned is the socialisation process itself, and an intercultural speaker needs to understand how this creates different perceptions, rather than having to acquire knowledge of all specific instances and examples. Awareness that one is a product of one’s own socialisation is a precondition for understanding one’s reactions to otherness. Similarly, awareness of how one’s ‘natural’ ways of interacting with other people are the ‘naturalised’ product of socialisation, and how parallel but different modes of interaction can be expected in other cultures, is part of the knowledge an intercultural speaker needs.

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Skills of interpreting and relating: Ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one’s own

Objectives (ability to): • • •

identify ethnocentric perspectives in a document or event and explain their origins; identify areas of misunderstanding and dysfunction in an interaction and explain them in terms of each of the cultural systems present; mediate between conflicting interpretations of phenomena.

Documents depicting another culture – media reports, tourist brochures, autobiographical travellers’ tales or even language learning textbooks – may honestly claim to give an ‘impartial’ or ‘objective’ account. Knowledge about the ways in which ethnocentric perspectives are acquired in socialisation is the basis for developing the skills of ‘reading’ such documents, and identifying the sometimes insidious and unconscious effects of ethnocentrism. Similarly, an intercultural speaker will notice how two people are misunderstanding each other because of their ethnocentrism, however linguistically competent they might be, and is able to identify and explain the presuppositions in a statement in order to reduce the dysfunction they cause.

Skills of discovery and interaction: Ability to acquire new knowledge of cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of realtime communication and interaction

Objectives (ability to): • • • •

elicit from an interlocutor the concepts and values of documents or events and to develop an explanatory system susceptible of application to other phenomena; identify significant references within and across cultures and elicit their significance and connotations; identify similar and dissimilar processes of interaction, verbal and non-verbal, and negotiate an appropriate use of them in specific circumstances; use in real time an appropriate combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes to interact with interlocutors from a different country, taking into consideration the degree of one’s existing familiarity with the country and the extent of difference between one’s own and the other;

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•

identify contemporary and past relationships between one’s own and the other culture; identify and make use of public and private institutions which facilitate contact with other countries and cultures; use in real time knowledge, skills and attitudes for mediation between interlocutors of one’s own and another culture.

• •

These are the skills that enable some people quickly to establish an understanding of a new cultural environment and the ability to interact in increasingly rich and complex ways with people whose culture is unfamiliar to them. They are able to draw upon whatever knowledge they have, but above all have the skills of the ethnographer entering into a new ‘field’ of study, whether in a remote community, a street-corner gang or the staff room of a school. The foreign correspondent of a newspaper or television is another example of someone who develops such skills, quickly discovering the streams of thought, power and influence underlying the events on which they are to report. The intercultural speaker has different purposes from the ethnographer and the correspondent, but operates similar skills under similar constraints of time and place. Critical cultural awareness/political education24: An ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of an explicit, systematic process of reasoning, 25 values present in one’s own and other cultures and countries

Objectives (ability to): • • •

identify and interpret explicit or implicit values in documents and events in one’s own and other cultures; make an evaluative analysis of the documents and events based on a conscious process of reasoning; interact and mediate in intercultural exchanges on the basis of a reasoned analysis, negotiating where necessary a degree of acceptance of them by drawing upon one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes. The important point here is that the intercultural speaker brings to the experiences of their own and other cultures a process of reasoning and reflection on the ends they might pursue. Teachers are familiar with learners of all ages who condemn some particular custom in another country as ‘barbaric’. They have no rationale other than that of the original meaning of ‘barbaric’, i.e. that it is different and from

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beyond the limits of our ‘civilised’ society. Although the teacher may not wish to interfere in the views of their learners, for ethical reasons, they can encourage them to make the process of their reasoning explicit, and expect them to be consistent in their reflections on their own society as well as others.

The Developmental Factor

Research on young people’s knowledge and feelings about their own and other nations shows that developmental change is complex. Barrett (2007) analyses the many influences: parental discourse, choice of abode, of school and of access to the media, as well as influences from peers and encounters with people from other countries. Among these, the school curriculum and textbooks are one location where children begin to grasp the geography of their surroundings, and that their home is part of, and is located within, a country and a state. 26 With respect to children’s perceptions of other social groups, Barrett says that Social Identity Development Theory predicts four phases: In the fi rst undifferentiated phase, which occurs before 2–3 years of age, racial and ethnic cues are not yet salient to young children. In the second phase, which starts at about 3 years of age, awareness of racial and ethnic cues begins to emerge, and children gradually become able to identify and distinguish members of different groups (a process which can continue up to 10 or 11 years of age). (…) In the third phase, which begins at about 4 years of age as a consequence of self-identification, a particular focus on, and preference for, the in-group emerges (…) in the fourth phase, which begins at around 7 years of age (…) the focus shifts from the in-group to out-groups, and instead of preferring the in-group, the child begins to actively dislike out-groups. (Barrett, 2007: 276–277)

Barrett points out, however, that this theory does not account for all empirical data, and himself opts for a theorisation which focuses on influences from all possible sources, rather than on stages of change. It is nonetheless a useful starting point for reflection on attitudes. Research on other aspects of intercultural competence in early childhood and on teaching intercultural competence is still underdeveloped compared to research on older learners. 27 What little research there is does not deal substantially with the crucial element of ‘critical cultural awareness/politische Bildung’. Driscoll and Simpson (2015) refer to the model presented in the first edition of this book but do not refer to critical cultural awareness at all, and conclude that there is some focus on developing children’s curiosity and openness (savoir être) and their knowledge about other countries (savoirs) but in general ‘evidence suggests limited cultural learning within language

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lessons’ (Driscoll & Simpson, 2015: 14) despite ‘intercultural understanding being a core standard in the languages curriculum’. On the other hand, more recently, teachers working with children aged 9–10 years have had some success in using the model to plan lessons and obtain interesting levels of reflection on and analysis of aspects of life in their own and other countries (Conlon Perugini, 2018; Silvey & Gräfnitz, 2018) Calliero and Castoldi’s (2013) book proposes a way to promote and assess intercultural competence within primary/elementary school (from 6–11 years old) and junior high school (from 11–14 years old). 28 Their assessment criteria refer inter alia to critical understanding of ‘similarities and differences between elements of different cultures’ and one criterion is related to the notion of critical cultural awareness and fi nding a shared understanding: [The learner can] Compare and relativize his/her own positions taking into account the point of view of the other, overcoming egocentrism and deconstructing stereotypes and prejudices in order to create shared positions. (Lo Bue, 2013: 147)

There appears, however, to be an assumption that young learners can be assessed in the same way as older ones, with no explicit attention to developmental change. Further interesting developments in Greece include the teaching of concepts from Socratic philosophy in the fi fth grade of primary school which presumably develops critical thinking although not directed at cultural practices in another country (Papadopoulos et al., 2016) and, secondly, the teaching of critical literacy to 6–7 year olds (Karagiannaki & Stamou, 2018). Finally, work on the assessment of ICC in the United States acknowledges that young children’s competences are in development, from skills such as observing and comparing to higher skills such as recommending and planning: The development of cognitive and affective skills is a factor in intercultural reflection and growth. Young learners need guided experience and can benefit from parental or caregiver involvement at home. Observing, noticing, discovering, comparing, considering, thinking, and higher level skills such as recommending, planning, hypothesizing and creating, are among the cognitive acts associated with reflection and are vital to the evolution of attitudes. Affective components such as receiving, feeling, imagining, valuing, appreciating, and preferring need to be taken into account, as they, too, play an important role in the reflective process. (Intercultural Reflection Tool, see https://www.actfl.org/publications/ guidelines-and-manuals/ncssfl-actfl-can-do-statements; accessed March 2019)

I shall return to this document in the chapter on assessment.

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Questions of Power in Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication is no different from other communication in that there are often power differentials present which are articulated and sometimes consciously manipulated through language, through choice or imposition of the language(s) used, for example. I have already discussed the presence of power in terms of dominant cultures in societies and to what extent it is important that learners should be aware of this phenomenon. Here, the question is not how to analyse power differentials, but what should be done in teaching and learning. Models of intercultural competence have for the most part not paid explicit attention to power. Spitzberg and Changnon’s (2009) review contains almost no references to power differentials. They do not refer to Hofstede’s work (e.g. 1991) where the ‘power-distance’ dimension is presented as one way of comparing societies. Kramsch’s (Kramsch, 2011a; Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008) notion of ‘symbolic competence’ is the exception, which Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) appear not to be aware of. Her analyses of complex multilingual and multicultural interactions is focused inter alia on how intercultural and linguistic competences can be used to wield power; in a discussion of ‘The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural’, she makes a link to critical and analytic reflection, and in doing so refers to the fi rst version of this present book (Byram, 1997): If intercultural competence is the ability to reflect critically or analytically on the symbolic systems we use to make meaning, we are led to reinterpret the learning of foreign languages as not gaining a mode of communication across cultures, but more as acquiring a symbolic mentality that grants as much importance to subjectivity and the historicity of experience as to the social conventions and the cultural expectations of any one stable community of speakers. (Kramsch, 2011a: 365)

Kramsch and Whiteside (2008: 667–668) emphasise that it is ‘not a mere component of communicative competence’ but rather ‘a mindset that can create “relationships of possibility” or affordances’. However, in the later article cited above, Kramsch discusses the teaching of symbolic competence on the basis of observations of classes in German as a foreign language. She emphasises that the classes were focused on ‘communicative language teaching’ and missed opportunities to develop symbolic competence, which she says is ‘an important dimension of intercultural competence’ (Kramsch, 2011a: 360). She does not enter into what other dimensions there are, but in her earlier explanation of symbolic competence she gives an example of what is needed in addition to communicative competence when an American engineer might cooperate with an Iraqi engineer to (re-)build a bridge. This includes knowing when not to speak, the ability to use knowledge not only of Arabic but of other languages, and knowledge of the Muslim world, of the history of the Middle East and of relationships between Western powers and Middle Eastern countries.

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In terms of pedagogical implications, she says: One could imagine making the following recommendations to teachers eager to include a symbolic dimension to their language teaching: (1) Use communicative activities as food for reflection on the nature of language, discourse, communication and mediation. (2) Pay attention to what remains unsaid, or may even be unsayable because it is politically incorrect or disturbing (e.g. social class or the bombing of Dresden). (3) Bring up every opportunity to show complexity and ambiguity (e.g. the grammatical tense of dreams, or responsibility in the bombing of Dresden). (4) Engage the students’ emotions, not just their cognition. (Kramsch, 20011a: 364).

In this and a related article (Kramsch, 2011b), she identifies three major components of symbolic competence: the production of complexity, the tolerance of ambiguity and an appreciation of form as meaning. She explains and illustrates how literary texts can be the basis for developing these in language learners. In an earlier article, she discusses the relationship of symbolic competence to the savoirs of the model in this book and then asks whether symbolic competence can be taught in the FL classroom or indeed in the school as a whole. There is no precise answer but she argues that: In this sense, symbolic competence based on discourse would be less a collection of savoirs or stable knowledges and more a savviness, i.e. a combination of knowledge, experience and judgment. As such, it should be the outcome of any good secondary school education, not a side-benefit of learning a foreign language. (Kramsch, 2009a: 118)

and then moves to assessment – or more precisely testing – and concludes that: Trying to test symbolic competence with the structuralist tools employed by schools and businesses is bound to miss the mark. Instead, symbolic competence should be seen as the educational horizon against which we measure all learners’ achievements. (Kramsch, 2009a: 118)

Other teachers have explained how they work with the concept of symbolic competence in the classroom (Heidenfeldt & Vinall, 2017) but do not take the perspective here, i.e. that a competence model can help teachers to plan systematically to ensure that symbolic competence is developed. On the other hand, Keneman makes a plea for making symbolic competence a part of teaching and learning because inter alia it allows learners to challenge the dominance of the native speaker not only as a model of linguistic and communicative competence but also as a source of knowledge: ‘pedagogical approaches that use the native speaker as a model for students to emulate can provoke the perception that there is one

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authoritative source of knowledge’ (Keneman, 2017: 88), leading them to accept information unquestioningly. This is an important dimension of the argument about ‘native-speakerism’ (Holliday, 2006, 2015), but then Keneman says that; [i]nstead of learning functional skills that allow them to code and decode the language and give them a sense of some dominant cultural values, language learners deserve to feel like they participate in society in a variety of contexts and in a transformative way, which means that they can not only respect but also flout cultural norms. (Keneman, 2017: 88)

In doing so, she makes a clear and useful distinction between knowing about another social group and its culture – and seems to be thinking of a national group since she refers to a society – and the rights of learners to use the language they are learning in their own way. This adds a power dimension to the concept of the intercultural speaker but the ‘either/or’ formulation is unfortunate since these purposes for learning are not mutually exclusive. Kearney (2016) too introduces the model from this present book in its fi rst version and Kramsch’s writings on symbolic competence but, although she references both in her analysis of empirical data from the teaching of French in US universities, she does not say what relationship she sees between them. Nor does she critique either of them. It might, however, be possible to subsume symbolic competence under the aspect of savoirs which focuses on knowledge about processes of interaction, and this would certainly increase the strength of the model. It might then be appropriate to add to the section on knowledge/savoirs, under ‘Knowledge (…) of the general processes of societal and individual interaction’, an explicit reference to symbolic competence, despite Kramsch’s reluctance to see it as a stable savoir and more as a ‘savviness’. For in this way, it becomes explicit as a teaching objective and this is the purpose of the model. The relationship between ‘structuralist’ and ‘post-structuralist’ views of language teaching, which might be represented by this book (structuralist) and Kramsch (and Matsuo, 2015) (post-structuralist) is still a moot point. Matsuo (2015: 5) asserts that ‘a structural theory of language is incapable of being taught communicatively’ and recommends a dialogic method based on the writings of Bakhtin. Hosack (2018: 42f) surveys recent literature and argues that communicative language teaching can and should be dialogic. They lack, however, a clear theory of language acquisition, focusing, as Bakhtin tends to do, on words and their complex meanings in actual use. Important as this is, it is not enough. The way forward may be to have a balance of structuralist and post-structuralist approaches with a, not exclusive, emphasis on the former in the early stages of learning and on the latter in later stages, when Kramsch’s recommendations would be easier to implement.

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In the model introduced in this monograph, the notion of ‘critical cultural awareness/savoir s’engager’ is the place where the analysis of power differentials can be made explicit in the fi nal element: •

interact and mediate in intercultural exchanges in accordance with explicit criteria, negotiating where necessary a degree of acceptance of them by drawing upon one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes.

In formulating this in 1997, I was thinking of how interaction and mediation might lead to mutual understanding of perspectives, of the values and beliefs people hold to some degree unconsciously. Mutual understanding depends on language as Kramsch demonstrates through the notion of symbolic competence, but it also depends on all involved in the communication becoming conscious of their own values and beliefs and comparing and contrasting them with those of others present. Understanding does not automatically lead to condoning, nor does it necessarily lead to a relativist acceptance or toleration of what one does not condone, and I shall return to the question of moral relativism below. I can now make explicit another element of intercultural competence which has to become conscious: the notion of power differentials. This becomes particularly evident where an intercultural speaker might be acting as mediator, for they will need not only to be conscious of power differentials but also to fi nd ways of overcoming them in order to ensure mutual understanding. This is both a matter of establishing equality for all – a moral position on how relationships should work – and also a practical question of ensuring that each person involved has the right to question and interact (savoir apprendre/faire) in an effective way. In the fi nal analysis, the critiques which have emphasised the absence or weakness of my attention to language are at least in part justified and more attention to the language/culture nexus (Risager, 2006) and symbolic competence is necessary, as will be seen in the next chapter. At the same time, it is important to recognise that my purpose is not that language learners should become applied linguists. They should become ethnographers and political activists who can use their critical awareness of languaculture and the power differentials that inhere in dialogue to pursue the more important (sic!) aims of ‘political education’ or ‘intercultural citizenship’. It is important to remember that the model I offer is not a model of communication and interaction but of the teachable, learnable and assessable objectives or learning outcomes which are feasible for classrooms in existing education systems. 29 Coda: Moral Relativism, Pluralism and Human Rights

Language teachers are well accustomed to the challenges of moral judgements. Whether they are teachers of English asked about the use of the ‘inhuman’, ‘barbaric’ death penalty in the United States or about the

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bleak social inequalities of the United Kingdom, or they are teachers of Chinese challenged on the ‘inhuman’, ‘barbaric’ treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang – not to mention German and Nazism or French and colonialism, Spanish and the conquest and so on – they know that their students ask awkward questions. They are expected to answer them because they are seen as representatives of the country (or countries) whose language they teach, and in some cases are denizens of the country in question. What shall they answer? Some might reply that they are language teachers and questions of morality are not their responsibility; they ‘instruct’ in the skills and knowledge required for language competence. This will not do if, at the same time, they think that language and culture are two sides of the same coin. Nor will it do if they consider themselves not just instructors but educators who do not simply ‘mould’ (Latin: educare) but ‘lead out’ (Latin: educere) and develop their pupils, the people for whom they have responsibility or, to use the more evocative German, they are involved in Bildung 30 Another response is moral relativist, but this too is a way of avoiding the challenge. It is the response which asserts that ‘we’ cannot and should not judge what ‘they’ do or think. Each ‘culture’ has its own traditions and ways of behaving, and each has the right to make its own decisions without being judged, and certainly without interference. Relativist positions are founded on the belief that there are no universal values or rights against which particular behaviours can be judged. This is a position easy to take, but it is a lazy position; it absolves people of responsibility. It is one that I reject, and am pleased to fi nd support for my rejection in the view of Bernard Williams, a prominent moral philosopher who said it is ‘possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced even in moral philosophy’ (Williams, 1971: 34). 31 A third option is more complex and demanding. It is a position which seeks a common ground, a basis for making judgements, but it must not be confused with a simple universalism, i.e. the assumption that there are universal values which all should hold and follow in their behaviour. There are a number of overlapping approaches to this third option which are helpful for language teachers. The first of these is Isaiah Berlin’s notion of ‘values pluralism’32 which, it must be said immediately, can easily be confused with relativism or universalism, but is in fact quite different. Values pluralism has several characteristics which are important for language teachers. First, there is the idea that there is a vast variety of values and behaviours observable in human individuals and groups of individuals. This is a matter of variety, not variation. ‘Variation’ implies that there is a singular foundation on which variations are constructed. ‘Varieties’ are plural, not singular; there is no single, simple, ‘universal’ foundation, and therefore no point in searching for it. Furthermore, among the varieties and, just as importantly, within each variety of values

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and behaviours, there is incommensurability, i.e. contrasting and clashing values which cannot be resolved into one set of values by reasoning or argument. This makes values pluralism hard to live with, for there is no stable, universalist position. Thirdly, there can be no rationally developed judgement about one variety being superior to another. This is what makes values pluralism sound like relativism, but there is a difference. The difference lies in the notion of a ‘core’ of values in pluralism, not to be confused with a defi ned set of universal values, as in ‘universalism’. In pluralism, that core of values and behaviours distinguishes human values and behaviours from the non-human, the ‘inhuman’ and ‘barbaric’, the very words that teachers may hear from their learners. The core is not static. It changes over time, because human beings and societies evolve, through self-analysis and self-realisation. The core is not a single set of values and behaviours found in all varieties; that would be a universal set of values. If there were such a set of values, then there would be variation, rather than varieties. There are some core values in every variety but not necessarily the same ones. The core is, rather, a matter of ‘family resemblance’, not identity; there are some characteristics shared by some members of a family but not all, and yet there is overlap which makes it possible to see that all are of the same family. It is a matter of recognising that all moral varieties belong to a family but there are no identical twins. For example, there are family resemblances between concepts and values such as European democracy and ‘socialist democracy’ as practised in China (Shi, 2015). They are different and people might be tempted to say that they are so different that each must be understood and allowed to flourish in its own environment, i.e. a relativist view. However, it is the ‘family resemblances’ between the two concepts and the values inherent in them which make communication about both concepts possible, so that Chinese readers can ‘live into’33 European democracy and vice versa. In other words, it is the family resemblances that make it possible for individuals and groups with different varieties to communicate with each other. There is enough resemblance to allow this. This is a matter of empirical fact and, for language teachers, it is a crucial fact. For we know that it is possible to ‘live into’ or ‘enter into’ another variety, to use one’s skills of empathy and one’s linguistic competence in order to understand the structure and coherence of another variety of values and behaviours (cf. Winch, 1964). In other words, it is possible to imaginatively engage with another variety of values and behaviours, and language teachers need to fi nd ways of doing this which are appropriate to their learners; fiction, poetry, drama and other literature have a special role to play here. If that other variety includes values and behaviours which offend against the human core, which are inhuman, only then are we justified in judging and condemning. The process is difficult and the difficulty must not be underestimated. Unlike universalism which would offer easy to follow, binding rules, with

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values pluralism we must seek to understand, to examine the context, the history and other relevant factors – a much more demanding process – but we must do so without abandoning the right to make a moral judgement; values pluralism is not relativism. When discussing the content of the core, Berlin (1990: 3) refers to the importance of ‘truth, love, honesty, justice, security, personal relations based on the possibility of human dignity, decency, independence, freedom, spiritual fulfilment’. To establish the full content of the core, Berlin would say, is a question for anthropology, observing many varieties of values and identifying what they have in common in terms of family resemblance. It is a matter of recognising empirically what is ‘human’ and clarifying what we mean by ‘human’ through communication and discussion with others. This again is crucial for language teachers who know that the efficacy of the discussion depends on intercultural competence and, in some circumstances, on FL competence. In contrast to Berlin’s reliance on anthropologists to defi ne the core, Martha Nussbaum (2011) turns to philosophers and in particular Aristotle. She argues that philosophers in the Aristotelean tradition have presented a vision of what it is to lead a good life, and that there can be a universal consensus on what human beings need in order to live a life worthy of human dignity. She proposes a minimum, a threshold, of 10 ‘central capabilities’ related to: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, sense, imagination and thought, emotions, practical reason, affi liation, other species, play, control over one’s (political and material) environment. Each of these is formulated as ‘Being able to’, e.g. ‘bodily health’ means ‘Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter’. Or for ‘Control over one’s (political) environment’: ‘being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association’. These capabilities belong ‘fi rst and foremost to individual persons, and only derivatively to groups’; she sees ‘each person as an end’ (Nussbaum, 2011: 35). Nussbaum posits a strong relationship between capabilities and human rights because, if capabilities are to be realised or to ‘function’, then there have to be guarantees, or rights, to allow this to happen. She argues, for example, that the right to political participation or to freely exercise religion, to freedom of speech and so on, is the condition for corresponding capabilities to function (Nussbaum, 1997). Rights and capabilities have in common that they are of the individual person. Taking a Berlinian view of capabilities/rights and their realisations or functionings, we must expect that there will be many different varieties of them. We can also expect that there will be different emphases and different realisations, and that, in particular, the priority of individual over group may be problematic. In societies where social harmony is the highest value and is understood in terms of individuals accepting designated

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roles – often with differentiated statuses – in order to maintain social harmony, then a capabilities/human rights position is challenged. It can be challenged from a relativist position, e.g. by claiming that human rights and capabilities are an external imposition, that this is a ‘Western’ philosophy which is irrelevant to Asia, for example, that there are distinctive ‘Asian values’. This is, however, problematic. On the one hand, in its simple form of rejection of ‘Western values’, it is a position which has been discredited and revealed to be, often, a means of maintaining a status quo to the advantage of some groups over others. 34 On the other hand, the challenge has to be taken seriously because it is important to analyse the ways in which human rights are interpreted and developed in other traditions (Bauer & Bell, 1999). Such analysis depends on communication to facilitate mutual comprehension, even when two positions are incommensurable. Yet discussions of communication in this context seldom problematise it, assuming it will simply happen and that any problems that arise are problems stemming from the statuses of persons and the pragmatics of the interaction, not the language competence – the syntactic, morphological and semantic competences – of those involved, let alone the intercultural competence needed to enter into the other person’s way of thinking. In practice, interactions involve at least one person using a language different from their main one, and ICC is crucial. This means that if the language teacher is to help learners to understand the values behind capital punishment in some US federal states or the imprisonment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, then they must ensure that their learners’ ICC is commensurate with the task of communication about values. For ICC includes the use of skills of empathy and facilitates the grasp of the internal coherence of the position taken by interlocutors. The language teacher, secondly, needs to help learners to judge whether the values that underpin the behaviour they observe – execution and imprisonment in our examples – are ‘human’, are within the core of human values, or not. The point that Berlin makes is that such behaviour may be comprehensible within its own rationality, and may be a variety of values which are within the core, but that nonetheless ‘their’ way of behaving and ‘their’ rationale for that behaviour is still incommensurable with ‘ours’. In that case teachers need to help learners to accept that the other standpoint is not ‘beyond the pale’ of human behaviour, not ‘inhuman’ or ‘barbaric’. They then need to clarify that when a choice has to be made between two incommensurables it will be tragic; there will be suffering for some human beings. Again, at this point, the power of literature, of the literature of tragedy, to embody this must not be forgotten. 35 Finally, it is important to remember that language teachers need not be the only ones dealing with these complex matters, and an interdisciplinary approach is helpful, since similar issues will arise in other subjects.

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Notes (1) The situation has not radically changed since 1997. There is a major expansion of academic literature on matters that are ‘intercultural’ and a substantial growth in journals and associations that include ‘intercultural’ in their titles. There is also increased societal attention to a need for ‘intercultural dialogue’, ‘intercultural education’ and so on, as ‘globalisation’, ‘mobility’ and associated words become part of daily discourse. There are also signs that policies and purposes for language teaching are taking account of these changes, as we shall see later, but the nature of language teaching has not yet fundamentally changed. (2) Several of my doctoral students have used the model but, however much I encourage criticism, others may argue that it is inevitable that my students will be biased. Readers can judge for themselves by consulting, for example, Houghton (2007) working in Japan, Qin (2015) working in China and Nemouchi (forthcoming) working in Algeria. Other models of ICC have been developed in Chinese-language literature which I cannot, unfortunately, read myself and are scarcely discussed in sufficient detail elsewhere for me to be able to have a view of them. Tong (2020: 289) gives a detailed account and translates key words and reports in his translation of an article in Chinese, where Shen and Gao (2015)) state that the models are ‘adapted’ from the fi rst edition of this monograph and Deardorff ’s model. (3) This paragraph was in a footnote in 1997, but I have brought it into the text as it became evident that some readers do not read footnotes and then argue that my text is concerned only with national cultures which are problematic, a point that I also made in Chapter 1. (4) The debate about the native speaker as an ideal model has grown rapidly in the last two decades and has become intertwined with discussion of the legitimacy or otherwise of native and non-native speakers as teachers. It need not be summarised here since the basic point I make is that the native speaker is irrelevant when intercultural communicative competence is defi ned and a model proposed. (5) I use the literal translation of ‘politische Bildung’, discussed later in this chapter, despite the difficulties this raises in the Anglophone world with its fear of ‘indoctrination’; other phrases are current, such as ‘education for citizenship’ in the UK or ‘education for democracy’ in the United States (see Tibbitts (1994), for a comparison with ‘political-education’ in Central and Eastern Europe). An alternative would be to follow developments in Germany, in particular where ‘politische Bildung’ has been challenged with the term ‘Demokratie Lernen’ (Himmelmann, 2001), but this is in some contexts just as problematic and seen as a ‘Western’ concept imposed on ‘Eastern’ countries. Later, I will discuss if and how specific political and human values might be introduced through ‘critical cultural awareness’ in specific contexts. (6) That this ability to self-analyse is important in the reduction of prejudiced behaviour has been suggested with reference to ‘automatic’ and ‘controlled’ responses to otherness (Devine, 1989). Stereotyped and prejudiced behaviour towards others which is ‘automatic’ can be ‘controlled’, especially in the presence of social norms (Blinder et al., 2013) – articulated in laws, for example – by reflection and self-analysis, and this can lead to non-prejudiced interaction. (7) It may be useful to repeat here that I refer to ‘country’ for convenience rather than repeating all the possible relevant entities, and to add that the country need not be one where the language being learnt and used is the fi rst language of the majority of the population. Learners of French need not be focused only on France. (8) In the fi rst version of this monograph I did not elaborate enough on knowledge about concepts and processes of interaction, and it is often overlooked in accounts of the model by others. The theory of group interaction and social identities was introduced earlier in the text but was not re-introduced here as it might have been. In the

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meantime, the focus on identity has become ever stronger in postmodern times and heterogeneous societies. It is a strong element of Kramsch’s (2009a, 2011a) work on symbolic competence and multilingual people. Borghetti (2019) has even suggested that ‘identity’ rather than ‘culture’ should be ‘a main theoretical construct’ in intercultural language education, and demonstrates how this could be grafted onto the model and what teaching methods could be used. She does not, however, refer to ‘knowledge about concepts and processes in interaction’, suggesting that it is a matter of ‘awareness’ and ‘critical cultural awareness’ which can be modified to deal with ‘identity’. All this is important but it is also important to remember that many people continue to live in relatively homogeneous societies, where encounters with people of other social groups are relatively rare or limited to media, both traditional and modern (social) media. (9) There is no doubt that even with advanced learners this is a difficult area. In work with Master’s students in an Algerian university, Lamia Nemouchi (forthcoming) found that they could articulate this kind of knowledge only with difficulty and almost always needed to refer to specific knowledge about a country. Here, for example, is a short exchange which demonstrates general knowledge but is related to specific examples, which the students elaborate thereafter: Student1: ‘I think smile is not just culture dependent but it also depends on the situation, if we go to a funeral and laugh it doesn’t mean that we are nice’ Student2: ‘but in some countries in their funerals they make it as a celebration just as we celebrate weddings’ (10) As stated, ‘documents’ is a term used for a wide range of textual and visual artefacts. They can include the texts of ‘high’ or of ‘trivial’ literature as well as the multimodal documents created with modern technologies. The skills needed for dealing with these are not the sole responsibility of those who teach intercultural competence and can be transferred from other spheres of teaching and learning – other subjects in a curriculum, for example. (11) It is likely that ‘extrovert’ personalities will cope with the demands of such situations more easily than ‘introverts’, but at this stage I am concerned with the competences involved rather than the question of aptitude. (12) This is not to deny that issues of power also exist within a country and culture, as has been shown by Fairclough (1989) for example, but the person who is struggling with a foreign language is more aware of the source of their difficulties than someone speaking their fi rst language. It is precisely the value of Fairclough’s and others’ work that they uncover the power relationships of which speakers in their own culture and country are not aware. (13) Agar’s (1991: 176–177) concept of ‘rich points’ is helpful here. Referring to the Whorf hypothesis, he describes his own experience of language learning and identifies the difficult places – using the metaphor of crossing a mountain range – where there are challenging ‘cliff s’ to scale. He refers to these as ‘rich points’: I need a name for this language location, this Whorfian cliff, this particular place in one language that makes it so difficult to connect with another. I will call it ‘rich,’ with the connotations of tasty, thick, and wealthy all intended. The rich points in one language are relative to the other language that is brought into contact with it. The juxtaposition of American English and Austrian German may highlight rich points in both that a juxtaposition of English and Hopi wouldn’t, and conversely. (14) In the years following the publication of the fi rst version of this monograph, the model has been used for other purposes than pedagogical, for example in research which seeks to identify and characterise competences in intercultural interaction. Researchers who do this need nonetheless to keep in mind that this was not my purpose and make adjustments accordingly.

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(15) In another publication (Byram, 2008), I developed this connection with ‘action orientation’ and the concept of ‘intercultural citizenship’, where the ‘disposition for engagement’ becomes actual engagement as an integral part of the aims of language teaching. (16) Another statement of aims, from Portugal, demonstrates that the Norwegian document is not an isolated example, as the ideas begin to spread: Within the context of a plurilingual and pluricultural Europe, access to different languages becomes more and more valuable to European citizens, not only as a means of communication with others but also as a basic pillar of civic, democratic and humanistic education. In the educational context learning languages takes on a relevant role in the global education of students, not only regarding the acquisition processes of curricular content knowledge, as in the construction of citizenship education. In fact, learning languages is part of a more comprehensive process, beyond mere linguistic competence, including aspects related with the personal and social development of learners, leading them to construct their identity through contact with other languages and cultures. Learning languages supports the development of an inquiring, analytical and critical attitude, thus contributing to educating active engaged and autonomous citizens. (Ministério da Educação, 2001) I am grateful to Ana Matos for fi nding and translating this example for me. (17) It is interesting to note that, as I revise this text, the fear of the reductive nature of ‘competence’ is leading to a renewed interest in ‘Bildung’ or, in Danish and Norwegian, ‘dannelse’. Even if the suspicion of ‘competence’ is misplaced, as I have made clear from the beginning of this monograph, more attention to Bildung/dannelse is welcome, not least as it is interpreted by some as a matter of critical thinking and social responsibility (Tranekjær et al., 2019). (18) An interesting contrast is Deardorff ’s oft-cited pyramid model, in which ‘Requisite attitudes’ are the base on which ‘Knowledge and Comprehension’ and ‘Skills’ are placed which in turn support ‘Desired internal outcome’ on top of which are placed ‘Desired external outcomes’. Her model, as she says, ‘eliminates long fragmented lists by placing components of intercultural competence within a visual framework’. She also says that the framework ‘can be entered from various levels’ and that ‘having components of the lower levels enhances upper levels’ (Deardorff, 2006: 254). This is then a model of learning with assumptions about relationships among the elements and with, as she says, a ‘unique’ emphasis on internal outcomes. (19) Neither van Ek nor I, in the fi rst version of this book, addressed the question of pronunciation. ‘Knowledge of the rules of a standard version of the language’ implies that, in this respect, the intercultural speaker should follow norms of grammar and that these norms are also followed by native speakers. Following such norms, and the ability to do so, introduces certain connotations connected with being an ‘educated’ user of the language whether native speaker or not. There are also norms of pronunciation and they too carry connotations, indicating the social groups to which native speakers belong and these carry over into non-native use. Learners of English in Germany, for example, are expected in many universities and schools to use ‘received pronunciation’ which would, if they were native speakers, place them in a specific English social class. This may not be their wish. A ‘perfect’ accent can lead to misidentification and misunderstandings. It can also be an imposition on learners by teachers which learners feel uncomfortable with. They also run the risk of being ‘fluent fools’, i.e. speaking a language well but not understanding the social and philosophical content (Bennett, 1997). Intelligibility is the crucial criterion and learners need to be made aware of the ways in which accent colours how they are seen and understood – and then make their own choices.

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This was illustrated for me by a Dutch learner of English. She told how, when spending a year studying in Glasgow, she initially tried to develop the ‘received pronunciation’ English accent expected of her at her home university, and felt a constant failure. When she realised that Glaswegians have their legitimate way of speaking English and she could have her own legitimate way of doing the same, the pressure disappeared and she could enjoy her language learning for the rest of her studies. (20) Risager says that my model does not fully address the question of the relationship between language and culture, an issue that she deals with in detail. She says that I ‘keep a low profi le’: There is no hypothesis of the inseparability of the two, nor any analysis of what the relationship between them might be. Language and culture are treated as two separate entities – and here Byram’s approach is completely different from that of Kramsch, as Kramsch underlines that linguistic practice is cultural in itself. (Risager, 2007: 121) The contrast with Kramsch is useful and I see Risager herself as occupying a position between my focus on intercultural competence as a phenomenon which may be separable from ‘communicative competence’ as understood by FL teachers, and Kramsch’s focus on language competence above all, although her concept of ‘symbolic competence’ (Kramsch, 2011a) is much more complex than ‘communicative competence’, as I shall point out later. I did not ignore the question entirely in the fi rst version of this monograph, since I discussed the relationship between linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence on the one hand and intercultural competences on the other. I also wrote a short article written about the same time as the 1997 book, suggesting practical ways of dealing with it in the classroom and developed these ideas in a more recent discussion of language awareness and intercultural competence (Byram, 2012). On the other hand, the potential separation of intercultural competence from communicative competence makes it a basis for work beyond the FL classroom and has the potential too to act as a channel for interdisciplinary work among FL teachers and other teachers (Wagner et al., 2019). (21) The following section draws heavily on Byram and Zarate (1994) and Byram (1993). See also Byram and Zarate (1996). (22) The second element of this competence, knowledge of processes of interaction, is just as important as the fi rst, but has not been noticed in applications of the model as much as might be desirable. I have tried to make it more visible by adding ‘specific’ and ‘general’ to the two parts. (23) As this is a book above all for FL teachers, I have used here the word ‘country’ rather than adding other possible entities such as ‘region’, ‘ethnic group’, ‘social group’, ‘religion’ and so on. This risks again my being misunderstood as concerned only with countries and national cultures, but to specify all the options each time becomes tedious for author and reader alike. (24) Guilherme (2002) further developed the notion of ‘critical cultural awareness’ to include ‘intercultural responsibility’, and explains the differences in Guilherme and Sawyer (in press), leading to the following defi nition: A reflective, exploratory, dialogical, and active stance toward cultural knowledge and life that allows for dissonance, contradiction, and confl ict as well as for consensus, concurrence, and transformation. It is a cognitive and emotional endeavour that aims at individual and collective emancipation, social justice, and political commitment. (p. 219) (25) The phrase ‘systematic process of reasoning’ replaces ‘explicit criteria’ in the fi rst version of this book. The change is due largely to Wringe’s (2007) discussion of moral education, in which he argues that moral education should not lead to learners

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adopting one option only but that the outcomes of moral education should be an ability to deal with moral dilemmas through reasoning, which draws on all of the possible options presented by moral philosophers. Reasoning may lead a person to make an evaluation according to criteria of rationality or of ‘maximizing happiness’ or ‘communitarianism’ or ‘caring’, to use Wringe’s keywords – and to acting accordingly (Wringe, 2007: 105–106). (26) The specific impact of language learning on young people’s perceptions of other countries is not treated in Barrett (2007) as a category, and empirical research is still not much advanced since the fi rst study I carried out, the results of which were influential in the direction my work took and led to this monograph (Byram et al., 1991). (27) It is noteworthy that Barrett and others decided that there should be a ‘younger learners’ (i.e. up to approximately age 10) version of the Council of Europe’s Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, based on their pedagogical and research experience (see www.coe.int/lang-autobiography). (28) I am grateful to Mattia Baiutti for this information and his translation of elements of the book. (29) This does not preclude the addition of other elements to the model. Houghton (2012) has notably suggested the notion of savoir se transformer. With her university students, she shows how learners can ‘exert selective control over their own identity development orienting themselves to otherness in the process’, and adds this to the 1997 model, although without defi ning objectives in detail. Her work demonstrates how values can be the focus of attention in teachers’ purposes, with carefully conceived and tested procedures. Gonçalves Matos (2012) adds the concept of ‘savoir interpréter’ with respect to the use of literary texts to develop intercultural competence. (30) Both meanings of ‘educate’ are cited by Bass and Good (2004) from Craft (1984), and the relationship of Bildung to ‘liberal education’ is discussed by Løvlie and Standish (2002). (31) For a detailed refutation of relativism in the context of the significance of human rights, see Perry (1997). (32) There are several introductions to Berlin’s work. I have found Gray (2013), Crowder (2018) and Hardy (2018) useful. (33) In the statement on language education in Norway quoted earlier, the phrase used, in apposition to ‘understanding’ and ‘valuing’, is ‘live into’. (34) Tatsuo (1999: 29) asks a ‘bluntly skeptical question: Is [the Asian way] anything more than the ruling establishment’s attempt to perpetuate its power by taking advantage of people’s resentment against the Western world?’ (35) At the time of writing, the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjian Province by the Chinese authorities is, to a European, barbaric. There is surveillance and compulsory residence in re-education centres which are contrary to human rights and have been strongly criticised because of the infringement of those rights. The Chinese authorities explain that these measures have led to a decrease if not a total absence of violence perpetrated by Uighur people and therefore, they would say, the ‘tragic’ choice of surveillance and re-education is logical and justified.

3 Objectives for Teaching, Learning and Assessment

Introduction

By the end of Chapter 2, I had proposed a model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (comprising linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and intercultural components), discussed the factors involved in intercultural competence (skills, knowledge, attitudes and critical cultural awareness) and suggested how intercultural competence components can be formulated as ‘objectives’. The terms ‘competence’ and ‘objectives’ are notorious in the literature on education and curriculum analysis. It will have been evident in earlier chapters that I have used the term ‘competence’ in a sense derived from Chomsky and Hymes, who are familiar to and influence the thinking of language teaching professionals, and my defi nition of intercultural competence includes knowledge, attitudes and skills. However, it is important, as we approach questions of curriculum design and assessment, to make explicit that I am not using them in the sense developed by the literature on performance objectives and competence-based curricula. I already criticised the narrowness of this work, which can be traced to the behaviourism that Chomsky refuted, in an analysis of performance objectives in language teaching in the 1970s (Byram, 1978, 1979). More recently, Fleming analysed the term historically and also specifically for language education and came to the conclusion that: Both teacher and learners need some statement of intended learning outcomes to support classroom activity and to bring an element of transparency to assessment processes. Whether these are called competences, standards, descriptors or indicators is less important than that they are used with the appropriate attitude. They need to be seen as a dynamic rather than static tool, constantly open to negotiation and revision and not divorced from processes of moderation and exemplification. (Fleming, 2008: 92)

I have therefore used these terms in an open-ended way so as not to exclude factors simply because they might not correspond to existing notions of language learning. In this chapter, I shall attempt to refi ne the 82

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formulations in ways that bring them closer to activities undertaken by learners, teachers and assessors. I shall argue that objectives formulated in this way oblige us to envisage various modes and locations for learning and a variety of relationships between the three groups involved. A diagrammatic representation of all these different dimensions is provided and explained in the fi nal section of this chapter, and readers may fi nd it helpful to consult that section during the discussions of detail which are the main body of this chapter. The purpose of this chapter is then to attempt to answer questions of principle which will provide the link between the definition of ICC, and in particular intercultural competence, and the planning of curricula and assessment. I do not propose in this monograph to make suggestions or give detailed examples of teaching processes since, as argued in Chapter 1, these will be dependent on context, With respect to assessment, too, I propose in this chapter and later to discuss principles rather than case studies of practice, whether in classrooms or other locations, but there are plenty of such cases in books where teachers have been influenced by the model presented here or have planned their work with direct reference to it (Byram et al., 1994; Byram et al., 2001; Byram et al., 2017; Wagner et al., 2018). Formulating Teaching, Learning and Assessment Objectives

The advantages to be gained from the formulation of objectives are those of coherence and transparency recommended in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001: 36) as well as comprehensiveness and precision. The formulation should ensure that all aspects of ICC are included (comprehensiveness), that their relationship to each other is made evident (coherence) and that they can be understood and agreed by all involved, i.e. the three groups mentioned earlier and also educational planners and policymakers (transparency). The search for precision is of particular value in the detailed planning of curricula and the realisation of curricula in teaching, learning and assessment processes. Precision is often sought by defi ning objectives in terms of observable behaviours on the part of learners, behaviours that can also be measured. It is assumed that the observation and measurement should be by someone other than the learner and might even exclude the teacher. Furthermore, the measurement should be in terms of quantification which is assumed to make the measurement ‘objective’. An alternative approach is to take a more nuanced view of competences (Fleming, 2008, 2009), and replace quantification of observations with qualitative characterisations of behaviour related to agreed criteria (criterion-referenced assessment). This retains the role of the external observer, who might, for example, be the teacher attempting to verify the efficacy of their teaching by looking for changes in behaviour. A further refi nement is to allow the learner to check their own behaviour against

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agreed criteria, perhaps with the help of another learner, but nonetheless retaining some external qualitative characterisation and encouraging the learner to reflect as an outsider on their own performance. I propose, then, to ignore the constraints of defi ning objectives always in behavioural terms externally observable and always measurable. In order to make the defi nitions of objectives proposed in Chapter 2 more precise, I shall ask the question: ‘What might count as …’ about those objectives, irrespective of whether the answer is in terms of observable behaviours. In doing so it becomes clear that the relationship between skills, attitudes and knowledge discussed in Chapter 2 leads to overlap and repetition among objectives descriptions. This would clearly also be the case with more precise descriptions of linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competences. Actual performances would make this even more evident, as the various competences are integrated in real-time interaction (savoir apprendre/faire).

Attitudes: Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own

Objectives: (a) willingness to seek out or take up opportunities to engage with otherness in a relationship of equality, distinct from seeking out the exotic or the profitable The intercultural speaker: • is interested in the other’s experience of daily life in contexts not usually presented to outsiders through the media nor used to develop a commercial relationship with outsiders; is interested in the daily experience/culture of a range of social groups within a society and not only the culture of the dominant group (b) interest in discovering other perspectives on the interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar phenomena both in the cultures of the social groups to which one belongs and in other cultures and cultural practices • does not assume that familiar phenomena – cultural practices or products common to themselves and the other – are understood in the same way, or that unfamiliar phenomena can only be understood by assimilating them into their own cultural phenomena; aware that they need to discover the other person’s understanding of these, and of phenomena in their own cultures which are not familiar to the other person

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(c) willingness to question the values and presuppositions in cultural practices and products in one’s own environment and social groups • actively seeks the other’s perspectives and evaluations of phenomena in the intercultural speaker’s environment which are taken for granted, and takes up the other’s perspectives in order to contrast and compare with the dominant evaluations in their own society (d) readiness to experience the different stages of adaptation to and interaction with another culture during a period of residence • is able to cope with their own different kinds of experience of otherness (e.g. enthusiasm, withdrawal) during residence and place them in a longer term context of phases of acceptance and rejection1 (e) readiness to engage with the conventions and rites of verbal and non-verbal communication and interaction • notes and adopts the behaviours specific to a social group in a way which they and the members of that group consider to be appropriate for an outsider; the intercultural speaker takes into consideration the expectations the others may have about appropriate behaviour from foreigners

Knowledge: Of social groups and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction

Objectives (knowledge of/about): (a) historical and contemporary relationships between one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s countries2 The intercultural speaker: • knows about events, significant individuals and diverse interpretations of events which have involved both countries and the traces left in the national memory; and about political and economic factors in the contemporary alliances of each country (b) the means of achieving contact with interlocutors from another country (at a distance or in proximity), of travel to and from, and the institutions which facilitate contact or help resolve problems • knows about (and how to use) telecommunications, consular and similar services, modes and means of travel, and public and

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private organisations which facilitate commercial, cultural/leisure and individual partnerships across frontiers (c) the types of cause and process of misunderstanding between interlocutors of different cultural origins • knows about conventions of communication and interaction in their own and other cultures, about the unconscious effects of paralinguistic and non-verbal phenomena, about alternative interpretations of shared concepts, gestures, customs and rituals (d) the national memory of one’s own country and how its events are related to and seen from the perspective of other countries • knows the events and their emblems (myths, cultural products, sites of signifi cance to the collective memory) which are markers of national identity in one’s own country as they are portrayed in public institutions and transmitted through processes of socialisation, particularly those experienced in schools; and is aware of other perspectives on those events (e) the national memories of one’s interlocutor’s country and the perspective on them from one’s own country • knows about the national memory of the other in the same way as their own (see above) (f) the national defi nitions of geographical space in one’s own country, and how these are perceived from the perspective of other countries • knows about perceptions of regions and regional identities, of linguistic varieties (particularly regional dialects and languages), of landmarks of significance, of markers of internal and external borders and frontiers, and how these are perceived by others (g) the national defi nitions of geographical space in one’s interlocutor’s country and the perspective on them from one’s own • knows about perceptions of space in the other country as they do about their own (see above) (h) the processes and institutions of socialisation in one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s country • knows about education systems, religious institutions, and similar locations where individuals acquire a national identity, are introduced to the dominant culture in their society and pass through specific rites marking stages in the life-cycle, in both their own and the other country

Objectives for Teaching, Learning and Assessment

(i) social distinctions and their principal markers, in one’s own country and one’s interlocutor’s • knows about the social distinctions dominant in the two countries – e.g. those of social class, ethnicity, gender, profession, religion – and how these are marked by visible phenomena such as clothing or food, and intangible phenomena such as language variety – e.g. minority languages and socially determined accent – or non-verbal behaviour, or modes of socialisation and rites of passage (j) institutions, and perceptions of them, which impinge on daily life within one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s country and which conduct and influence relationships between them • knows about public or private institutions which affect the living conditions of the individual in the two countries – e.g. with respect to health, recreation, fi nancial situation, access to information in the media, access to education (k) the processes of social interaction in one’s interlocutor’s country • knows about levels of formality in the language and non-verbal behaviour of interaction, about conventions of behaviour and beliefs and taboos in routine situations such as meals, different forms of public and private meeting, public behaviour such as use of transport, etc. (l) the significance of symbolic competence • knows how different languages position their speakers in different symbolic spaces; how languages evoke historic cultural memories; how language performance can create alternative realities3

Skills of interpreting and relating: Ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents or events from one’s own

Objectives (ability to): (a) identify ethnocentric perspectives in a document or event and explain their origins The intercultural speaker: • can ‘read’ a document or event, analysing its origins/sources – e.g. in the media, in political speech or historical writing – and the meanings and values which arise from a national or other ethnocentric perspective (stereotypes, historical connotations in texts) and which are presupposed and implicit,

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leading to conclusions which can be challenged from a different perspective (b) identify areas of misunderstanding and dysfunction in an interaction and explain them in terms of each of the cultural systems present • can identify causes of misunderstanding (e.g. use of concepts apparently similar but with different meanings or connotations; use of genres in inappropriate situations; introduction of topics inappropriate to a context, etc.) and dysfunctions (e.g. unconscious response to unfamiliar non-verbal behaviour, proxemic and paralanguage phenomena; over-generalisation from examples; mistaken assumptions about representativeness of views expressed); and can explain the errors and their causes by reference to knowledge of each culture involved (c) mediate4 between conflicting interpretations of phenomena • can use their explanations of sources of misunderstanding and dysfunction to help interlocutors overcome confl icting perspectives; can explain the perspective of each and the origins of those perspectives in terms accessible to the other; can help interlocutors to identify common ground and unresolvable difference

Skills of discovery and interaction: Ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction

Objectives (ability to): (a) elicit from an interlocutor the concepts and values of documents or events and develop an explanatory system susceptible of application to other phenomena The intercultural speaker: • can use a range of questioning techniques to elicit from informants the allusions, connotations and presuppositions of a document or event and their origins/sources, and can develop and test generalisations about shared meanings and values (by using them to interpret another document; by questioning another informant; by consulting appropriate literature) and establish links and relationships among them (logical relationships of hierarchy, of cause and effect, of conditions and consequence, etc.)

Objectives for Teaching, Learning and Assessment

(b) identify significant references within and across cultures and elicit their significance and connotations • can ‘read’ a document or event for the implicit references to shared meanings and values (of national or other cultural memory, of concepts of space, of social distinction, etc.) particular to the culture of their interlocutor, or of international currency (arising, for example, from the dominance of Western media); in the latter case, the intercultural speaker can identify or elicit different interpretations and connotations and establish relationships of similarity and difference between them (c) identify similar and dissimilar processes of interaction, verbal and non-verbal, and negotiate an appropriate use of them in specific circumstances • can use their knowledge of conventions of verbal and nonverbal interaction (of conversational structures; of formal communication such as presentations; of written correspondence; of business meetings; of informal gatherings, etc.) to establish agreed procedures on specific occasions, which may be a combination of conventions from the different cultural systems present in the interaction (d) use in real-time an appropriate combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes to interact with interlocutors from a different country or culture taking into consideration the degree of one’s existing familiarity with the country, culture and language and the extent of difference between one’s own and the other • is able to estimate their degree of proximity to the language and culture of their interlocutor (closely related cultures; cultures with little or no contact or little or no shared experience of international phenomena; cultures sharing the ‘same’ language; cultures with unrelated languages) and to draw accordingly on skills of interpreting, discovering, relating different assumptions and presuppositions or connotations in order to ensure understanding and avoid dysfunction (e) identify contemporary and past relationships between one’s own and the other culture • can use sources (e.g. internet sites, reference books, newspapers, histories, experts, lay informants) to understand both contemporary and historical political, economic and social relationships between cultures and analyse the differing interpretations involved

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(f) identify and make use of public and private institutions which facilitate contact with other countries or cultures • can use their general knowledge of institutions facilitating contacts to identify specific institutions (consulates, cultural institutes, etc.) to establish and maintain contacts over a period of time (g) use in real time knowledge, skills and attitudes for mediation between interlocutors of one’s own and another culture • can identify and estimate the significance of misunderstandings and dysfunctions in a particular situation and is able to decide on and carry out appropriate intervention, without disrupting interaction and to the mutual satisfaction of the interlocutors

Critical cultural awareness/political education: An ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of a systematic process of reasoning, values present in one’s own and other cultures and countries

Objectives (ability to): (a) identify and interpret explicit or implicit values in documents and events in one’s own and other cultures The intercultural speaker: • can use a range of analytical approaches to place a document or event in context (of origins/sources, time, place, other documents or events) and to demonstrate the ideology involved (b) make an evaluative analysis of the documents and events which is based on systematic and conscious reasoning • is aware of their own ideological perspectives and values and evaluates documents or events with explicit reference to them (c) interact and mediate in intercultural exchanges, negotiating where necessary a degree of acceptance of those exchanges by drawing upon one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes and ability to develop a reasoned response • is aware of potential conflict between their own and other ideologies and is able to establish a shared evaluation of documents or events, and where this is not possible because of incompatibilities in belief and value systems, is able to negotiate agreement on places of conflict and acceptance of difference5

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Acquiring Intercultural Competence

Describing the objectives of intercultural competence more precisely makes it evident that they are very demanding and more complex than those that usually guide the work done in classrooms. It is clear that some objectives can be introduced as curriculum development, those of discovery skills for example, but others may not be compatible with classroom work as usually conceived. Furthermore, it should be noted that teachers whose professional identity is that of the linguist, educated in a tradition of philology or linguistics, may fi nd the range of objectives introduced here difficult to accept. On the other hand, teachers whose professional identity includes an education in literary criticism will probably fi nd analogies in the skills of interpreting and discovering with the traditions of some approaches to literature, and the use of literary texts in teaching for intercultural competence is another area that teachers may fi nd appealing (e.g. Bredella & Delanoy, 1996; Gonçalves Matos, 2012; Nemouchi & Byram, 2019). The limitations of the classroom can be overcome by learning beyond the classroom walls, where the teacher still has a role. As foreign language education (FLE) is increasingly seen as linked with education for mobility, there is a corresponding interest in visits, exchanges and other forms of contact, both real and virtual (e.g. Fantini, 2019; O’Dowd & Lewis, 2016). The teacher can structure and influence the learning opportunities involved, even when not physically present. The aim may be, for example, to develop learner autonomy within a structured and framed experience of otherness outside the classroom. It is then a short step to experiences of otherness without the involvement of the teacher, through social media, independent vacations or periods of residence or exchanges whose main purpose is not pedagogical, for example in town-twinning. The learner who has acquired autonomy in learning can use and improve their intercultural competence through performance. Furthermore, as we take more seriously the concept of lifelong learning (UNESCO, 1996), the significance of self-directed learning in engagement with otherness becomes all the more evident.6 There are thus three broad and overlapping categories of location for acquiring intercultural competence: the classroom, the pedagogically structured experience outside the classroom and the independent experience. In order to pursue the purpose of this chapter, i.e. to clarify the roles of learners, teachers and assessors and to provide principles for planning curriculum and assessment, I shall relate the different categories of location to the objectives described above.

The classroom

The traditional emphasis in cultural learning in the language classroom has been on the acquisition of knowledge about another country

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and culture. In the worst case, this involves decontextualised factual information with minimal relationship to the language being learnt. In better scenarios, information is structured according to principles developed from sociological or cultural anthropological analysis and linked to the acquisition of language. Clearly the classroom has advantages. It provides the space for systematic and structured presentation of knowledge in prolongation of the better traditions of language teaching. In addition, it can offer the opportunity for acquisition of skills under the guidance of a teacher. Thirdly, the classroom can be the location for reflection on skills and knowledge acquisition that has happened within and beyond the classroom walls, and thence for the acquisition of attitudes towards that which has been experienced. Of course there is usually an assumption that classroom learning is in preparation for experience ‘in the real world’ and ‘later’, but in contrast to that view I want to suggest that engagement with otherness in the contemporary world is simultaneous. It happens through the media on a daily basis, through occasional visiting and receiving visitors, or working and learning together with people of another culture as a consequence of increasing migration. This means that the dichotomy of ‘classroom’ and ‘real world’ is a false one; the learning process is integrated and can be structured. Learners do not metamorphose on the threshold of the classroom. Thus one of the crucial issues is deciding what the nature of the relationship should be between learning inside and outside the classroom, for it is not simply a question of classroom ‘theory’ and real-world ‘practice’, or ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ knowledge. Let us consider the knowledge dimension fi rst. One significant feature in the definition of objectives is knowledge of relationships: relationships among different perceptions of one’s own and another culture and, secondly, relationships in the processes of individual and societal interaction. This should be the focus of classroom teaching. With reference to objectives involving knowledge of one’s own and other cultures – for example, knowledge of ‘national (or other ethnocentric) memory’ – learners need to know not only about the emblems, myths and other features of national memory in their own and other countries but also about mutual perspectives on them. Some learners will be already familiar with their own country’s national memory and others will be in the process of acquiring it. Some will have knowledge already of features of another country’s national memory and others will have none. The precise nature of the curriculum therefore depends on learners’ needs. In the case of children, the FL teacher may need to cooperate with other teachers to develop learners’ knowledge of the national memory of their own country, i.e. the perspective of the dominant social group, together with alternative, minority views. Teachers of adult learners can usually assume greater familiarity with learners’ own and other countries. In both cases, however, the focus should be on the

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relationships among cultures, which implies a comparative method (cf. Byram & Zarate, 1995; Byram et al., 1994). The classroom is also the place where learners can gain knowledge of the processes of intercultural communication, including the significance of ‘symbolic competence’. There is a link with knowledge about mutual perceptions between countries and cultures since these are the bases of intercultural relationships. As learners are introduced to features of the national memory of another country, how they are perceived in its dominant culture and how they are perceived by other societies including the learners’ own, they acquire knowledge of presuppositions, including prejudices, which influence communication. The development of this involves knowledge about dimensions of communication which may produce dysfunctions. These include non-verbal processes, knowledge of which can be acquired through analysis of examples of communication breakdown. They also include taboos, on topics of communication or on proxemic behaviour, for example. The advantage of placing relationships at the focus of knowledge teaching is that they are more easily linked to communication and the acquisition of language. On the other hand, the enumeration of areas of knowledge about one’s own and other cultures in the defi nition of objectives ensures that the learner acquires a systematic knowledge and not one that is simply the outcome of other factors such as the choice of teaching materials dominated by a linguistic syllabus. The language classroom also provides opportunities for teaching the skills of interpreting and relating documents or events. Knowledge and skill are interrelated (‘declarative’ and ‘procedural’) and the classroom allows teachers and learners to practise and reflect upon the skills of ‘reading’ a document – or an event within a document such as a videorecording – in a time dimension where the pressures of interaction can be neutralised. Skills of interpreting and relating draw upon knowledge, and methods need to be devised which combine the two in pedagogically appropriate ways, as illustrated in some textbooks.7 These skills can also be linked with the skill of discovery. Although the latter includes objectives of ‘eliciting from an interlocutor the concepts and values of documents and events’ which presupposes personal contact, that contact need not be outside the classroom. The use of the internet can bring immediate communication into the classroom, but the less immediate exchange of information through international mail should not be neglected as it can bring both textual data and other tangible artefacts into the classroom. In all cases, the advantage of the classroom is that learners can acquire, under the guidance of the teacher, the skills of eliciting meanings, and can reflect on the efficacy of their attempts to do so. It is also possible for the teacher to provide data collected from sources ‘in the field’, as many teachers already do, but with a focus on fi nding data which is useful for exercising these skills rather than giving information.

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A common factor in the teaching of skills and knowledge is the potential for reflection which the classroom offers by virtue of the teacher’s control over the factor of time. Even the interaction by telecommunication can be slowed down to the timescale of the classroom if necessary. So the classroom has a potential for two kinds of relationship with learning outside: a prospective relationship of developing skills in anticipation of learning through fieldwork, and a retrospective relationship in which learners can reflect on learning in the field. This critical reflection is particularly important and can focus on the efficacy of the skills learned in the classroom and the need for further development. It can also focus on learners’ affective responses to learning outside the classroom, for example in response to media representations of otherness8 or in response to the complex experience of visiting or residing in another country and culture. This suggests that the teacher has a role to play in realising the attitude objectives discussed earlier. Although this role is unlikely to be one of systematising and structuring learning in a way similar to the teaching of cultural knowledge or skills of discovery and interpretation, teachers and learners together can again take advantage of the time-frame of the classroom to reflect upon the experiences they have had in real-time interaction. This differs from learners simply exchanging or giving expression to emotions outside the classroom in discussion with friends and family, because it is the teacher’s responsibility to bear in mind the attitude and educational objectives of ICC and develop methods that help to realise them. Fieldwork

I distinguish ‘fieldwork’ from ‘independent’ experience of otherness outside the classroom. In fieldwork there is a pedagogical structure and educational objectives determined by the teacher often in consultation with learners. Fieldwork may be a short visit organised by a teacher for a group of learners who continue to work as a class with their teacher. It can also be long-term period of residence organised for and by an individual learner who has limited or no contact with the teacher or other learners during the stay, but this kind of fieldwork has nonetheless a prospective and retrospective relationship with the classroom.9 In this second example, classroom learning is likely to be separated in time and space from fieldwork, but in cases where teacher and learners are together in the field they can also work simultaneously in the classroom, and the relationship between classroom and field is all the more close. Fieldwork clearly allows the development of all the skills in real time, particularly the skill of interaction. It allows learners to bring their knowledge of relationships to bear on specific situations, and to discover and interpret new data. When those new data also lead to a generalisable system of explanation, learners continually add to the knowledge base

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provided in classroom learning. In interaction, learners have the opportunity to experience communication under time pressures, and in particular the significance of non-verbal behaviour. None of these needs to be left to chance, however, and the responsibility of the teacher to provide a pedagogical structure and systematic experience is what differentiates fieldwork from independent experience. Furthermore, the development of the notion of study abroad into online experience makes it available to many more students than in the past and applies and adapts some of the existing approaches (Jackson, 2019). The methodology involved and the evident need for teacher training and education for fieldwork are not the focus here but have been treated elsewhere (Alix & Bertrand, 1994; Byram & Zarate, 1995; Howard, 2019; Roberts et al., 2001; Snow & Byram, 1997). Perhaps the most significant advantage of fieldwork is in the context of attitude objectives. The experience of a total environment affecting all five senses challenges learners in ways that the classroom can seldom imitate. Experience of fieldwork, particularly over a longer term where learners are separated from other learners and teachers, and from their family and friends (if this is experience is not mitigated by constant use of social media), provides them with the opportunity to develop attitudes which include ability to cope with different stages of adaptation, engagement with unfamiliar conventions of behaviour and interaction and an interest in other cultures which is not that of the tourist or business person. This experience does not necessarily lead to learning, however, unless it is related to the reflection and analysis of the classroom (Kolb, 1984). It is here that the teacher’s role in attitude objectives is important. In the classroom, the unconscious responses to otherness which are important in attitude development, can be made evident and isolated for reflection. Here again there are implications for teacher training. Independent learning

Independent learning is a factor in lifelong learning and can be both subsequent to and simultaneous with the classroom and fieldwork. It will be effective only if learners are able to continue to reflect upon as well as develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes, as a consequence of previous training. Otherwise, experience of otherness in one’s own environment or in another country remains mere experience. For experience to become learning, learners must become autonomous in their capacity for refi ning and increasing their knowledge, skills and attitudes. This in turn suggests a classroom methodology which allows learners to acquire explicitly the underlying principles of the skills and knowledge they are taught, and the means of generalising them to new experience. In that case one could properly speak of a learning biography and expect that far more cultural learning will take place outside the classroom than inside, whether consecutively or simultaneously. If this were the case, then issues

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of assessment change too. Assessment would have to focus on proficiency rather than achievement, to include all learning, whether inside or beyond the classroom. There would also be opportunities to include selfassessment, and the basic question would be what learning has taken place, rather than whether what has been taught in the classroom or in fieldwork has been acquired. A Comprehensive Model of Intercultural (Communicative) Competence

We have come to a point where the defi nition phase is almost complete, and where the model proposed at a general and abstract level raises questions about approaches to teaching and assessment. As suggested in the discussion of the locations for cultural learning, the implications are far reaching and concern teaching methods, modes of learning, teacher education and professional identity, curriculum design and assessment. The main purpose of this monograph is to address the latter two, but before turning to these issues in more detail I shall summarise the model and its purposes. There are three fundamental features of the model of ICC: • • •

it proposes an attainable ideal, the intercultural speaker, and rejects the notion of the native speaker as a model for foreign language learners; it is a model for the acquisition of ICC in an educational context, and includes educational objectives; because it has an educational dimension, it includes specifications of locations of learning and of the roles of the teacher and learner.

The model is intended to be comprehensive, i.e. a rich description of ICC and the intercultural speaker which corresponds to the needs and opportunities of a foreign language learner with personal experience of interaction with people of another culture involving the use of a foreign language. The limitations that it does not refer to non-verbal communication are, however, also explicit. It is inclusive of other kinds of interaction – receiving a foreigner in one’s own environment while speaking one’s own language, or interaction through telecommunications, for example – where only some of the competences included in the model are required. It is thus possible to distinguish intercultural competence from intercultural communicative competence. In the first case, individuals have the ability to interact in their own language with people from another culture, drawing upon their knowledge about intercultural communication, their attitudes of interest in otherness and their skills in interpreting, relating and discovering, i.e. of overcoming cultural difference and enjoying intercultural contact. Their ability to do this will probably derive from their experience of language learning, even though they do not use the specific

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language on a given occasion. A second example might be the individual’s ability to interpret a translated document from another culture, which does not require knowledge of the language but does involve the skills of interpreting and relating, some knowledge about the other culture, and attitudes of interest and engagement. There is a link here with the teaching of foreign literature in translation, and other examples would be legal pronouncements, business agreements, dubbed television programmes or even kitchen recipes. It can be argued that language teaching should include these kinds of engagement with otherness, and ensure an appropriate method which makes the value of intercultural competence apparent. Another example extends the distance between language learning and intercultural competence. This might be interaction with someone who lives in the same country, speaks ‘the same’ language but has at least one different social group identity. When that different identity and group culture is salient in an interaction, then the situation and the competences needed are the elements of intercultural competence. However, even here what appears to be ‘the same’ language might have different meanings and values when used in the two social groups, and thus creates communicative problems and a need for communicative competence, an awareness of language which may be enhanced from foreign language learning. Nonetheless, this kind of situation suggests that intercultural competence can also be taught in other subjects, and opens the opportunity for interdisciplinary teaching (Wagner et al., 2019). In contrast, the emphasis in the concept of intercultural communicative competence is on the ability to interact with people from another social group in another language.10 They are able to negotiate a mode of communication and interaction which is satisfactory to themselves and the other and they are able to act as mediator between people of different origins. Their knowledge of cultures of other social groups – often but not exclusively in other countries – is linked to their language competence through their ability to use language appropriately – sociolinguistic and discourse competence – and their awareness of the specific meanings, values and connotations of the language. They also have a basis for acquiring new languages and cultural understandings as a consequence of the skills they have acquired in the fi rst. The relationship between intercultural competence and intercultural communicative competence is one of degrees of complexity and the ability to deal with a wider range of situations of contact in the latter than in the former. Decisions about which factors should be included in teaching aims cannot be made in the abstract but depend on circumstances, on the needs and opportunities of the learners involved and on the possibilities of interdisciplinary teaching. In both kinds of competence, however, educational objectives are included and this reflects the fact that most language learning begins in educational contexts. The model does not therefore depend

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on a concept of neutral communication of information across cultural barriers, but rather on a rich defi nition of communication as interaction, and on an educational philosophy of critical engagement with otherness and critical reflection on self. There are corollaries of this educational dimension. The fi rst is the need to include consideration of the locations where ICC is acquired and I have argued that there are three categories – classroom, fieldwork and independent learning – each of which is differently linked to the objectives of the model. The teacher and learner have differing roles and relationships in each of these. The second issue is related to the argument that the aim should be the intercultural and not the native speaker, which includes

Figure 3.1 Intercultural communicative competence and locations of learning

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the view that this aim can be and often is attained. Two questions have been raised in the earlier discussion: whether it is appropriate and feasible to identify levels of proficiency beyond a ‘threshold’ of ICC; and, secondly, whether a particular level of cognitive development is a precondition for the attainment of ICC. The second question is significant in educational contexts where young children are acquiring ICC and suggests that a different kind of ICC has to be expected from young children who have not yet reached an age where the required level of cognitive development can be expected. The fi rst question, about levels of proficiency, becomes particularly significant in educational contexts where institutions are expected to assess and certificate learners. Neither of these points can be introduced to a general and abstract model, for they are examples of issues which arise in specific circumstances. They are nonetheless indicative of questions to be treated in following chapters. Figure 3.1, provided as a summary of the model, remains biased towards the explication of the details of the cultural competence factors. It does not attempt to provide the same detail for the factors involved in language competence, although they are represented, but unlike the earlier diagram (Figures 2.1 and 2.2), it attempts to demonstrate that the different elements of intercultural competence are interwoven. It cannot, however, represent in two dimensions the complexity of the relationships among all the factors. On the other hand, it includes a summary of the locations where ICC can be acquired in order to reflect my emphasis on the educational dimension. Coda: Mediation

The word ‘mediation’ has appeared many times in the descriptions of objectives in this and other chapters. It is used to describe one of the functions of the intercultural speaker. In fact in the original writings from which this monograph emerged, the term ‘intercultural speaker’ was used in apposition to ‘cultural mediator’ (Byram & Zarate, 1997) to suggest that the two are equivalent, and the term cultural mediation was subsequently taken further by Zarate and colleagues (Zarate et al., 2003). In this book, ‘mediator’ and ‘mediation’ are an element of ‘intercultural speaker’. The original documents were written as a contribution to the development of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) and when published it included ‘mediation’ as a ‘language activity’ (Council of Europe, 2001: 14). It was argued that mediation covers two activities, translation and interpretation (Council of Europe, 2001: 99), but there was no attempt to describe mediation in detail or in terms of levels of competence. This was remedied in the Companion Volume with New Descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018a)11, and a significant analysis of the complexity of mediation in education as

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a whole, not just in language education, was published about the same time (Coste & Cavalli, 2015). In the meantime, references to mediation in language teaching have become more common. A thorough analysis of the term as it is used in other disciplines as well as in language teaching is presented by Stathopoulou (2015). She also analyses strategies learners use when given tasks of written mediation and discusses the implications for language teaching and assessment. Kohler (2015) focuses on language teachers and how they act as mediators of a new language and culture to their learners. The Companion Volume with New Descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018a) is likely to have the most impact. In particular it extends mediation from ‘activities to mediate a text’, as was the focus in the CEFR, to ‘mediating concepts’ and ‘mediating communication’ (Council of Europe, 2018a: 50). It also makes explicit that mediation can happen within the same language or from one language to another. The general defi nition of the concept uses the metaphor of the bridge: In mediation, the user/learner acts as a social agent who creates bridges and helps to construct or convey meaning, sometimes within the same language, sometimes from one language to another (cross-linguistic mediation). The focus is on the role of language in processes like creating the space and conditions for communicating and/or learning, collaborating to construct new meaning, encouraging others to construct or understand new meaning, and passing on new information in an appropriate form. The context can be social, pedagogic, cultural, linguistic or professional. (Council of Europe, 2018a: 99)

The Companion Volume then provides several scales of descriptors to deal with the different kinds of mediation. Those which deal with ‘facilitating pluricultural space’ and ‘facilitating communication in delicate situations and disagreement’ correspond most closely with mediation as understood in this monograph. The key concepts for ‘facilitating pluricultural space’ are described as: • • •

using questions and showing interest to promote understanding of cultural norms and perspectives between speakers; demonstrating sensitivity to and respect for different sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspectives and norms; anticipating, dealing with and/or repairing misunderstandings arising from sociocultural and sociolinguistic differences.

and for ‘facilitating communication in delicate situations and disagreement’: • •

exploring in a sensitive and balanced way the different viewpoints represented by participants in the dialogue; elaborating on viewpoints expressed to enhance and deepen participants’ understanding of the issues discussed;

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• • •

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establishing common ground; establishing possible areas of concession between participants; mediating a shift in viewpoint of one or more participants, to move closer to an agreement or resolution.

In the second group there is a stronger sense of mediation as negotiation than in this monograph. In the first group there are some of the skills of comparing and contrasting for understanding, of discovery of new knowledge and of interacting which are present in the model here. Other scales describing level of competence in mediating text and concepts are beyond the scope of this monograph and its model. In a text parallel to the Companion Volume, Coste and Cavalli (2015) argue that schools as a whole function as mediators and facilitate learners’ social and other mobilities. Language teaching is a crucial element. Language teachers may, for example, have within their classroom learners of different origins – social, ethnic, religious – and play their part in creating mutual understanding. Mediation is thus a much richer concept than can be discussed here where I have focused on the narrower, linguistic dimension. Notes (1) There are a number of theories and much empirical research on what is often called ‘culture shock’, which could be used to analyse experience of living in another cultural environment (see Fitzpatrick, 2017, for a review), but it would mean a major digression to analyse these in detail. (2) I have explained earlier that my focus is on the use of my model in foreign language education which means that here the reference is to countries. I have also explained that intercultural competence is necessary in other types of intercultural communication, including within a country. It would be possible, but laborious and confusing, to include here reference to all the variations, and I leave readers to substitute other terms for their own uses. (3) The descriptions here are taken from Kramsch and Whiteside (2008). (4) The question of mediation is developed further in the Coda to this chapter. (5) The question of inevitable incompatibilities is discussed in more detail in the Coda to Chapter 2. In an insightful analysis of the elements of Bildung in my model, Hoff comments on my approach to confl ict. Drawing on Ricœur and Bakhtin, she argues that my model is too focused on seeking harmony and does not pay enough attention to the ‘potentially constructive and beneficial aspect of intercultural communication’, arguing that ‘What is lacking in Byram’s model is a recognition of how disagreement and confl ict may often lead to meaningful communicative situations in which the participants are deeply engaged, thus contributing to a higher level of honesty and involvement’ (Hoff, 2014: 514). This assertion is in principle and in theory possible, but I would also like to see some empirical support. I certainly acknowledge that my model is more focused on ‘agreement’ and ‘acceptance’ than on confl ict, but always have in mind that cultural awareness is critical and that in some circumstances agreement is not possible. (6) The learning biographies of significant numbers of people in contemporary societies routinely include exchanges during formal education, tourism in other countries, visits in the framework of town-twinning and youth exchanges, and the reverse of

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these: receiving visitors, meeting tourists, working with immigrants. The potential for improving the quality of learning in such experiences has yet to be properly explored. (7) Typisch Deutsch? (Behal-Thomsen et al., 1993) – no longer published but still available – was an excellent example of a comparative method of teaching German language and culture to Americans. For example, it includes techniques for comparison of culturally specific concepts of space and time, or ‘private’ and ‘public’. Sichtwechsel (Bachman et al., 1995) – also out of print – was a similar workbook containing techniques for developing learners’ ability to decentre and to take a different perspective on the familiar through the new, ‘making the familiar strange’. (8) The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (see https://www.coe.int/en/web/ autobiography-intercultural-encounters) is based on a model of intercultural competence closely related to the one presented in this monograph, and provides a means of analysing and reflecting on media and internet encounters. (9) Fieldwork can also be carried out on the internet, as Karen Risager has pointed out (personal communication), but here again the crucial factor would be guidance by the teacher. (10) This may occur with someone from another country and also with someone living in the same country. Examples from interactions among people of diff erent ethnic groups, with different languages, living in the same country are and have long been easy to fi nd. Examples of interactions between people of migration and indigenous inhabitants of a country are a modern phenomenon and usually involve the use of a ‘second’ or ‘additional’ rather than ‘foreign’ language. The kind of intercultural competence needed and the locations of learning differ but the principles remain the same. (11) As this book is in press a revised version of the Companion Volume was published but as there are no differences in the two texts with respect to the points I quote from them, here and in Chapter 5, I have not changed the citation. The revised version can be found at: www.coe.int/lang-cefr.

4 Curriculum Issues

Introduction

In order to move from a model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) to the question of assessment, we need to consider the relationship between assessment and curriculum, and between curricular aims and the defi nition of ICC and its component parts. It is of course possible to argue that one can move directly from defi nitions of objectives to assessment, if one takes the view that the purpose of assessment is only proficiency. However, the view I have taken and the model proposed include educational objectives – not just proficiency objectives – as an integral part of ICC. This means there is a specific role for the language teacher as educator concerned with values and not just as instructor focused on skills and knowledge. This, in turn, requires a curriculum in which the teacher-educator’s role can be realised, a curriculum where values objectives are important. The teacher may then also take the role of assessor, either providing formative feedback to the learner or determining the learner’s level of achievement of objectives at the end of a course, or both. The introduction of the curriculum factor puts a further responsibility on the teacher: to determine the order in which learners encounter and acquire different aspects of ICC. This responsibility is usually shared with others: with curriculum designers who provide a more or less detailed framework; with other teachers planning a course together; with writers of teaching materials; and with learners, who specify their needs and interests. The curriculum is therefore more than a syllabus; both terms are frequently used in a variety of ways. A syllabus is a list of what is to be taught, sometimes including a list of appropriate materials, whereas a curriculum involves a proposal for creating an order in what is to be taught in order to arrive at specific objectives.1 Since I have argued that language teaching is context dependent, it is not possible to defi ne either one curriculum, or one means of assessment, for all situations. What I intend here is to identify the issues involved, examine some existing curricula and distil some principles for curriculum design for ICC, always bearing in mind the further goal of discussing the assessment of ICC, which will be the subject of the following chapter.

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Concepts of Progression

In language teaching, progression in learning is often thought of as linear and cumulative, with each stage depending on preceding ones, ‘a journey or pilgrim’s progress, a series of steps up a mountain, a straight and narrow path beset with difficulties and dangers, towards a distant goal which few but the truly devoted ever reach’ (Trim, 1978: 5), the early steps being easier than later ones. Trim’s metaphors describe learning which is dependent on how teachers create an order in the grammar of a language. That order is deemed to be pedagogically appropriate in various ways, of which some are intuitive or claim to be logical, others are related to anticipated use of the language by learners, others are derived from the order of learning by native speakers, and others again appear to represent the structures of the language. This process of creating a pedagogical grammar often involves simplification of language structures in the early stages of learning, returning to present the full complexity at a later stage in a spiral curriculum. In fact, it is only at the earlier stages of learning that the notion of each step depending on previous ones is evident. At later stages, the image of climbing a mountain can be replaced by the metaphor of completing a jigsaw puzzle, where the early stages have provided the edges and corners and at later stages learners, sometimes with the help of teachers, gradually complete elements of the whole picture without necessarily making connections among them until the picture is nearing completion, although it may never be completed. The concept of step-by-step progression is also evident in currently dominant modes of assessment where a quantified scale suggests progress upwards. Those higher up the scale know the same as those lower down, and more. For certification they are considered to be better qualified than those lower down; the metaphor of a ladder for the scaling of qualifications (in French the same word, échelle, is used) is reinforced in some cases by the names of certificates (e.g. Scottish ‘Highers’). This approach serves well the requirements of societies, namely that certificates should be used for allocating individuals to positions in the economy, and then in society as a whole – the gate-keeping function. The objections to this view of progression include one from the learning perspective and one from the perspective on defi nitions of what is to be learnt. The former suggests that learning is not necessarily linear and step-by-step (Gipps, 1994). Learners often need to revisit issues and encounter them in different contexts and perspectives. Furthermore, their needs may suggest a different order from that usually taken, and their needs may change and require different priorities at different points in their learning process, especially when that process is lifelong. A particularly important aspect of this perspective is the question of the cognitive development of young learners, discussed in the preceding chapter. For

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both teaching and assessment purposes, it can be argued that some aspects of ICC, although in defi nitional terms fundamental, cannot be acquired by young learners and therefore should be omitted until later. From the perspective afforded by defi nitions, I have argued that each component of intercultural competence (IC) is interrelated with others, and with language competences in ICC. This excludes the possibility of presenting one before others – knowledge before skills, for example. I have also argued that, according to circumstances, some components may be given less emphasis or ignored because they are and will not be required. This view also excludes the notion of requiring learners to have equal competence in all components in order to qualify for a certificate at a given level. With respect to assessment for certification, an alternative solution of giving equal status to different combinations of competences within ICC, and perhaps to different levels within the combinations, is an issue to which I shall return in the next chapter. Another issue raised in the earlier discussion of defi nitions of IC and ICC is also relevant to curriculum planning. I suggested that the ‘ideal’ of the intercultural speaker is one that can be attained by learners and that it may be reasonable to conceive a ‘threshold’ at which learners become interculturally competent. This implies a minimal element of progression and raises the question as to whether a curriculum should use such a threshold as a point of orientation. The curriculum might be designed to ensure that the threshold is attainable, but it might also include elements that take learners beyond the threshold, although not necessarily in a linear or step-by-step fashion. The threshold is also a possible point of orientation for assessment purposes. A Threshold of Intercultural Communicative Competence?

The notion of a threshold in language competence was introduced in the work of the Council of Europe team. 2 There the concept is closely related to the use of the native speaker as a model for the language learner: Until he has reached full native-like command of the foreign language, the learner, qua learner, may be regarded as always being on his way towards this full command. (van Ek, 1980: 95)

Until the native-like ‘full’ command is reached, it is argued, learners need to perform ‘adequately’ in communication situations they meet. ‘Adequacy’ is, however, difficult to defi ne, since it involves social acceptance by native speakers, 3 as well as differing degrees of precision in linguistic performance according to the demands of the role the learner has in a given situation. Furthermore, van Ek suggests that a level defi ned as adequate must also have ‘pedagogical adequacy’, i.e. the potential for further development towards the native-like ideal. Consequently, van Ek argues that a defi nition of a threshold in terms of ‘the minimum needs of

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the majority of foreign language learners’ would be too high, take too long to reach for many learners and discourage beginners. He therefore proposes a threshold which is ‘attainable in a relatively short period of time’ (van Ek, 1980: 96), somewhere between the level of minimum needs and zero-level. It is evident from this that the threshold level is determined in part by intuitions about learners’ needs and pedagogical concerns about motivation. A defi nition of a threshold level for ICC would differ from van Ek’s approach in a number of ways. First, since the competence of the intercultural speaker is different from that of the native speaker,4 and is attainable by language learners, the notion of ‘adequacy’ as an interim and imperfect stage of learning is replaced by adequacy defi ned as the ability to function as an intercultural speaker in a given situation. When the language learner has reached this stage, they need go no further. For even if they venture into new situations with new demands, the demands may be parallel rather than more complex, requiring a new application of an acquired skill. The question nonetheless arises as to whether they can go further and whether for certification purposes it is necessary to defi ne more advanced stages. van Ek’s proposal is pragmatic since it balances what is necessary with what is motivating. Defi ning adequacy in terms that help in maintaining learner motivation in fact leads to a threshold which, he admits, is less than adequate for the ‘minimum needs of the majority of foreign language learners’. The concern about motivation and attainability is a pragmatic issue and context dependent. In principle it should not affect a theoretical defi nition of a threshold for ICC. On the other hand, since the model proposed in this monograph has educational objectives related to locations of learning in educational institutions, it is necessary to take account of the pragmatic issue for ICC too, i.e. to take into account which objectives are realisable in a given situation. This position means that there cannot be a common curriculum for all learners and that there has to be selection of content for different learner groups, a position related to my general argument that realisations of an abstract model must take account of the factors in particular circumstances. A threshold for ICC is therefore likely to differ from context to context with respect to which components are emphasised and which objectives are prioritised in, or even excluded from, each component. The decision will be partly in terms of foreseeable needs and opportunities for intercultural communication and partly in terms of the cognitive and affective development of the learners. In fi ne, a threshold for ICC will be defi ned for each context and will not be an interim attainment, a stage on the way to a goal, but rather the goal itself, i.e. the ability to function as an intercultural speaker in defi ned and foreseeable contexts. The notion of stages on the way to a desirable goal is replaced by the notion that the goal may be more complex in some

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circumstances than others and therefore the demands on learners greater and more complex. This will depend, for example, on opportunities for face-to-face interaction, or on the emphasis given to each skill, or on what knowledge of another country or culture is thought to be necessary. In a given case, a learner can be deemed to perform adequately when they can perform to the satisfaction of all concerned – including themselves – in all the situations they actually meet. This presupposes that the prediction of what a learner is likely to meet has been accurate and those situations do not require competences or objectives within them which were excluded in the original defi nition for the particular learning context. This in turn implies that performance can be ‘less than satisfactory’ and ‘more than satisfactory’ and perhaps even more refi nements of judgement can be devised, as an answer to the question as to whether it is necessary and possible to defi ne different levels of attainment for purposes of certification. It is also important to bear in mind that ‘performance’ is used here to cover all the objectives of ICC, including those of knowledge (savoirs), critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager) and attitudes (savoir être) for example, which do not necessarily involve interaction with others. I am aware that this proposal defi ning a threshold in ICC raises problems for traditional methods of assessment and I shall return to the issues in Chapter 5. Planning a Curriculum for Intercultural Communicative Competence

Although I have argued that curricula must be planned for each context, I propose to set out the general processes involved as a consequence of the view of ICC taken here. I shall do so by suggesting a number of separate stages of analysis and decision making, although some overlap is inevitable. Stage 1: The geopolitical context

An analysis of what might be meant by ICC in the situation in question. If learners live in a situation where they have no foreseeable faceto-face interaction with speakers of a language, native or non-native, their needs will be different from those who are in constant contact, as visitors or hosts. This analysis has to draw upon a societal as well as an individual perspective; individual learners’ foreseeable needs may differ from the general level of intercultural contact in a society as it currently exists and as its body politic perceives the future. In cases where there is no specific or specifiable country or culture with which learners will interact, such as the learning of English or other languages that serve as a lingua franca, the question of knowledge (savoirs) appears to disappear. However, even here, knowledge about the processes

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of intercultural interaction remains important, and even more so. Furthermore, the pedagogical need for a focus on specific cultural others remains. Learners need to at least imagine interaction with specific people and not a generalised ‘other’. In practice, this has advantages since a teacher can choose – in consultation with learners – who they want to learn about and with whom they want to imagine their interaction. They do not have to focus on a country where the language they are learning is the national language, as has been shown by teachers of English and Spanish (Byram et al., 2017; Wagner et al., 2018). Stage 2: The learning context

An analysis of the learning locations and other parameters. In some circumstances, the option of fieldwork may not exist or the opportunities for independent learning through the media may be limited. Since curricula are usually determined to some degree by bodies other than the teacher and learners, it is also necessary to analyse the parameters set by such bodies in order to see whether there are constraints imposed which contradict the objectives of ICC, for example by those responsible for certification who might insist that there is ‘progression’ from level to level. Stage 3: The developmental factor

An analysis of the cognitive and affective development of the learners. Although individual learners develop at different rates and in different ways, consideration must be given to this element in teaching and learning. It need not be a constraint in that teachers may decide that exposure to certain kinds of learning experience in various locations can be successful despite the apparent lack of readiness of the learners involved. It may, however, be the case that teachers decide that some objectives are inappropriate for their learners. Stage 4: Identification of objectives

The decision about which objectives should be set as the guidelines for the curriculum is made in the light of the preceding stages of analysis. Objectives and further specifications as suggested in Chapter 3, for the skills, knowledge and attitudes for intercultural competence, need to be complemented by similar objectives and specifications for linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence. Stage 5: The ICC threshold/goal

At this point it is useful to specify, as a summary of preceding stages, the threshold/goal of ICC for the learners involved. The defi nition should include reference to the following: •

the geopolitical context: the present and foreseeable needs and uses of the particular language for learners of the country in question,

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•

•

described in terms of the country’s political, commercial and other relevant relationships with countries where the language is spoken natively, and/or in terms of the use of the language as a lingua franca and the advantages that that might bring; the locations and parameters of the teaching and learning situation: the time available for learning and the methods and materials that might be included; the availability and nature of contact with other speakers of the language, native or not, and the cultures that they embody; the situations in which it is foreseen that learners will draw upon their ICC: specimen examples of intercultural communication situations and of the competences needed, from a situation where learners have no personal contact with speakers of the language and do not need the skills of real-time interaction, for example, to a situation where learners’ daily requirements and experience depend on successful interaction with a constantly changing flow of other intercultural speakers of the language as lingua franca.

Stage 6: Sequence in the curriculum

Ordering and prioritisation of objectives. Although I have argued against traditional conceptions of linear and cumulative progression, it is possible to prioritise the ‘edges and corners’ of the jigsaw and consider their relationship to the different locations and opportunities for learning. Since some objectives may have been excluded for a particular group of learners, each jigsaw will be different. After the frame has been prioritised, the choice of elements within the jigsaw can be made as a function of the interests of the learners, and it is at this point that consultation with learners is productive. The implication of this is that not all curriculum planning decisions can be taken in advance, and that some elements of the jigsaw will be in that part of the curriculum which is in the future, as well as contemporary independent learning. What I have called the ‘edges and corners’ needs further explanation. It refers to a combination of all components of ICC. There are established views on priorities in linguistic competence, although these are not inviolate. There are intuitive views on priorities in ‘knowledge’ (savoirs). These priorities are also determined in part by consideration of learners’ perceived needs and levels of psychological development. In some institutional settings it is also possible to take into consideration learners’ experience in other subject areas and the possibility of cooperation across the curriculum. There is much less existing consideration of priorities in the skills and attitudes dimensions of ICC, and even less with respect to the educational objectives (savoir s’engager). Some attitudes can only develop in fieldwork or independent learning locations, for example ‘the readiness to experience different stages of

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adaptation to and interaction with another culture during a period of residence’. There are also some skills that depend on the opportunity for real-time interaction with an interlocutor from another country and/or culture. I have pointed out the significance of the developmental factor too. These considerations apart, skills and attitudes have to develop holistically in relation to all the cultural and linguistic contents of a proposed course, i.e. it is not appropriate to cut the relationships and links between the different components. The degree of difficulty in the skills and the maturity in attitudes will depend on the nature of the content and the teaching and learning techniques proposed. The priorities of linguistic competence will undoubtedly continue to be significant, but be tempered by consideration of the need to develop attitudes and skills simultaneously. Finally, the notion of a ‘spiral curriculum’ provides a frame for revisiting and deepening familiarity with all aspects of ICC. Two Contrasting Examples: Teaching French in an East Coast Region of the United States5 and English in Taiwan6

Although it would be fascinating to critique the language teaching policies in question, the purpose here is to use the comparison to highlight the importance of the process of curriculum decision making by contrasting the two cases, and nothing more. Learning French in (East Coast) United States Stage 1: The geopolitical context

Pupils learning French in secondary education in this region of the United States live in a society which has limited direct connections with France or other Francophone countries. There is no foreseeable societal need for substantial numbers of speakers of French as a foreign language. Even if trade with the European Union is a significant part of US policy, the use of English in Europe allows access to all the member states, even after the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, including France and Francophone Belgium.7 Furthermore, travel to Francophone countries by individuals for business or leisure reasons is likely to be relatively insignificant and not sufficient justification in itself for teaching French. Finally, the numbers of native or heritage speakers of French in the United States are small and geographically distant from this region; again, this is an insufficient justification. In 1996, therefore, the fundamental justification for language learning was described in the National Standards document as follows: Even if students never speak the language after leaving school, for a lifetime they will retain the cross-cultural [in my terminology: ‘intercultural’] skills and knowledge, the insight, and the access to a world beyond traditional borders. (National Standards, 1996: 24)

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In this context, intercultural communicative competence in French might not be a long-term goal, even if it is used as a learning goal for the medium term, i.e. the end of high school, but the Standards view suggested that intercultural competence, transferable to encounters with otherness in later life, is at least as important as linguistic competence. Some 20 years later, a somewhat different view was taken and the key phrase of ‘world-readiness’ appeared in the title of the document describing standards – ‘World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages’. In this new context, ‘world readiness’ or ‘global competence’ is crucial to learning languages, which are no longer designated as ‘foreign’ since they are ‘the languages of many of our learners and many of our local communities’ (ACTFL, 2015: 19). By this time the emphasis on intercultural understanding is the starting point for an explanation as to why languages should be learnt: The ability to communicate with respect and cultural understanding in more than one language is an essential element of global competence. This competence is developed and demonstrated by investigating the world, recognizing and weighing perspectives, acquiring and applying disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge, communicating ideas, and taking action. Global competence is fundamental to the experience of learning languages whether in classrooms, through virtual connections, or via everyday experiences. (ACTFL, 2015: 11)

Indeed it is implied that the rationale for language learning is founded on the underlying concept of world-readiness/global competence. Stage 2: The learning context

There is considerable variation in starting times and amount of time devoted to language learning from school district to school district. In some schools, pupils begin to learn French in Grade 9, at age 13/14, and continue to do so for six years, although they may opt out at the end of any year. Their curriculum is/will be framed by the World Readiness Standards document which establishes ‘what students should know and be able to do’ by the end of high school. These recommendations are then realised in state and local curricula, and the teaching plans of the individual teacher. Pupils have, typically, five hours of classroom instruction per week. Other opportunities for learning are very limited. The nearest location for fieldwork would be Francophone Canada but in practice this is not normally included in the curriculum. There are, however, opportunities to watch television programmes from France and there are substantial numbers of native speakers of French in some parts of the region, not least due to the international community in Washington, DC. Finally, there is some opportunity for help and support from the French Embassy. All this suggests that the principal learning location is the classroom and

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that there are some opportunities for independent learning in the immediate environment; a fieldwork location does not exist, although interactions through the internet can provide a kind of substitute (Byram et al., 2017). Stage 3: The developmental factor

At age 13/14, learners have a well-developed knowledge of their own country as a geographical entity and the better this knowledge, the stronger their identification with it. They have acquired some knowledge of other countries but this varies in any group of students depending on factors such as gender, social class, nationality and experience of travel. They may be positively oriented to countries they have visited or know about but this is not necessarily the case. They have a much stronger preference for their own country than for others (Barrett, 2007: 70–71). These learners will also have a substantial knowledge of their state and its power over their own and others’ lives through such matters as the raising of taxes. There may, however, be considerable variation in knowledge and attitudes in a group of learners of this age. Much of what they know has been influenced by schooling, the curriculum and textbooks (Barrett, 2007: 94–96). All this means that teachers need to be aware of the preferences young people have for their own country and the nature of their knowledge about and identification with it. They cannot just ignore it and introduce knowledge of other countries without developing learners’ ability to interpret through comparison and contrast on the basis of which learners may acquire ‘critical cultural awareness’ and an ability to take other people’s perspectives. Stage 4: Identification of objectives

In a learning context where the predominant location is the classroom, some objectives are much less easily attained than others. The lack of opportunity for real-time interaction with interlocutors from a Francophone country or community means that the competences which include skills of interaction or negotiation can only be partially attained and are unlikely to be needed. These skills include: in sociolinguistic competence, negotiating or making explicit presupposed meanings; in discourse competence, negotiation of conventions for intercultural interaction and texts; and in intercultural competence, the skill of interaction and the skill of discovery. The competences and objectives which can be pursued and serve as end-of-course aims are: •

linguistic competence: the ability to apply knowledge of (some of) the rules of a standard version of the language to produce and interpret spoken and written language;

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• • •

(part of) sociolinguistic competence: the ability to give to language produced or interpreted, meanings which are taken for granted by interlocutors; (part of) discourse competence: the ability to use and discover strategies for the production and interpretation of monologue or dialogue texts which follow the conventions of the culture; (part of) intercultural competence (see descriptions in Chapter 3): attitudes: objectives (a), (b), (c) knowledge: objectives (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), (i), (j), (k), (l) skills of interpreting and relating: objectives (a), (b) skills of discovery and interaction: objectives (a), (b), (e) critical cultural awareness: objectives (a), (b) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Given the minimal opportunities for interaction, much classroom work will be focused on documents provided for learners, complemented by opportunities to reflect upon and analyse their independent learning from the media. Stage 5: The ICC threshold

ICC for a pupil/student in this region of the United States will include attitudes of interest in otherness and willingness to question the assumptions of their own social groups and cultures, comparing them with assumptions in others. They will have a substantial knowledge of the (dominant national) culture of at least one Francophone country and parallel phenomena in their own country. They will be able to observe, analyse and interpret documents or events in the other country and in their own, drawing upon their existing knowledge to do so, and able to discover further knowledge where necessary. They will be able to identify the value assumptions in such documents and events and make a judgement on them from an explicit perspective and explicit criteria. In order to analyse and interpret documents or events, they will draw on their knowledge of and ability to use the standard language of the country in question, drawing on their knowledge of the meanings and conventions most frequently associated, in that country, with the language and genres of the documents or events in question. The situations in which learners will draw upon their ICC, once they have attained a threshold, will be of two kinds. First, they have many opportunities to encounter otherness within their own country, with its many diverse cultures. The diversity can be marked by use of different languages and language varieties, only some of which will be known, and the competences upon which they will draw most frequently are the intercultural and the sociolinguistic, rather than linguistic and discourse competences. They will be interested in and able to interpret and relate to the emblems, values and meanings of otherness within their own country. A second kind of encounter is with otherness of foreign countries. Here too,

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the opportunity to use their linguistic competence is likely to be infrequent, but their awareness of the interdependence of language and cultural meanings – their understanding that another language is not simply an encoding of their own language and meanings – will be a significant contribution to their readiness to take a different perspective and to expect that speakers of other languages will have different conceptualisations of (parts of) their shared reality. They will also be aware that nonnative speakers of English will use it in a different way from themselves, and that they will need to take account of this in English-medium interaction. Stage 6: Sequence in the curriculum

Given the age and development of the pupils, one priority in establishing the ‘edges and corners’ should be a juxtapositioning of (dominant) Francophone and American cultures (Knowledge objective (a)). Taking into consideration other work across the curriculum it is also possible to prioritise ‘geographical space’ in the two countries (Knowledge objectives (f) and (g)). Neither of these would be treated exhaustively, neither at this point nor in the future, but would be revisited in accordance with a ‘spiral curriculum’. The issue of priorities in linguistic competence would be met by the selection of documents, authentic and contrived, which reflect the rules of the standard language, and the sociolinguistically determined meanings in the documents. These might involve generalised and stereotyping statements by, for example, a French native speaker on the geography and regional identities of the United States, and a parallel document from an American perspective on France, presented in accessible language. The documents should be conceived in such a way as to allow easy analysis of ethnocentric perspectives and values in order to begin the development of skills of interpreting and relating, together with the identification of values, with a view to developing a critical framework over time. (A possible theme for the study of ‘national memory’ in France and the United States would be the sale of territory by Napoleon to the US government.) The knowledge objectives for medium-term treatment would be those focusing on the processes of misunderstanding and dysfunction and those concerned with the means of achieving contact with interlocutors from another country (Knowledge objectives (c) and (b)). The lack of significance of contacts at a geopolitical level and of the possibilities of real-time contact locally mean that these objectives will only become meaningful to learners when they have acquired some knowledge and developed attitudes of interest in otherness. The attitude objectives identified as relevant here cannot be prioritised. They must be considered in the context of psychological development. The inclusion of teaching documents which have ethnocentric attitudes inherent in them and which are subject to analysis, provides

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ethnocentric learners with a familiar perspective on others but also subjects that perspective – and by implication their own – to a critique. Provided the critique is not aggressive and, for example, the documents chosen demonstrate the benefits of suspending one’s ethnocentric perceptions, the classroom process may help to initiate development of understanding in individual learners. Learning English in Taiwan Stage 1: The geopolitical context

The attitudes to learning English in Taiwan have been described as ‘English fever’ (Hsieh, 2009: 1ff.) or ‘national movement’ (Lin, 2019: 3). This is part of a complex situation in which, from the late 1940s, Mandarin Chinese was promoted as the national language, and a number of local minority languages were at times suppressed and at best given symbolic support, the latter particularly since the beginning of the 21st century. English is seen as crucial to the economic success of the society and as having substantial instrumental value, and learners are encouraged to take this same view of why they should learn English, i.e. to help them obtain a good job and corresponding remuneration. Not all students are persuaded by this, and a humanistic purpose and methodology built on intercultural language teaching can improve motivation and enjoyment (Hsieh, 2009). In pursuit of this instrumental, economic purpose, government policy has created an increasingly bilingual situation, with Chinese-English signs in public places, news programmes in English and encouragement to schools to create a ‘bilingual environment’ (Lin, 2019). In 2018, a policy to make Taiwan bilingual by 2030 was approved, including the use of English as a medium of instruction: In accord with the ‘Blueprint for Developing Taiwan into a Bilingual Nation by 2030’ announced by the National Development Council (NDC) on December 6, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has now set ‘implementing full scale bilingualization of Taiwan’s educational system and cultivating bilingual talents to bring Taiwan to the world’ as its goal. To reach this goal, five policies will be launched: 1. Adopt a dynamic teaching approach with focus on daily English use, 2. expand human resources required for English education, 3. make effective use of digital technology and promote individualized learning, 4. accelerate the internationalization of the educational system, and 5. relax current regulations to allow for flexible mechanisms. (https://english.moe.gov.tw/ cp-13-17790-80201-1.html; accessed April 2019)

[Comparison: the difference between the two cases is striking, even without considering matters of the size and political status of the two locations. The economic, instrumental purpose of language learning is negligible for French in the United States and all-important for English in Taiwan. The corresponding focus on the learning of any language as a

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pathway to a readiness not only to work but also to live in a globalised world in the United States contrasts with the attention only to English in the workplace in Taiwan. Although the US documents refer to the presence of ‘foreign’ languages in the learners’ own society, French is not as strongly present as other languages, notably Spanish; if the United States were to become de facto bilingual it would be in Spanish and English. In Taiwan, bilingualism is an explicit aim but there is no question of any language other than English.] Stage 2: The learning context

Children begin to learn English from Grade 1, at the age of six, and have 12 years of compulsory education up to senior high school with English taught throughout. At the primary/elementary school level, students have one to two hours per week of English, in a ‘bilingual environment’ as noted above. Although in those early years the time spent on English is outweighed by time spent on Chinese, the number of hours for English gradually increases (Lin, 2019). The bilingual environment allows learners direct access to English in school and beyond, and any people from other countries they meet will almost certainly use English as the lingua franca. There is then an affordance of English inside and outside school, although it may not be noticed or taken up by young children. [Comparison: There is far less variation in the starting point and time devoted to language learning in Taiwan, where policy is decided centrally. The starting age is much younger in general in Taiwan although in some school districts in the East Coast region of the United States children also begin a language from the fi rst grade. Whereas learners in the United States must rely on the classroom as their almost exclusive location for learning, in Taiwan English is around them, is given high priority and will increasingly become part of their linguistic landscape.] Stage 3: The developmental factor

At the age of five to six, children’s development is happening rapidly. Their knowledge of their own country as a geographical entity is beginning to appear but their knowledge of other countries begins rather later, about age eight. At this early stage, they already begin to prefer their own country over others and this preference will become stronger (Barrett, 2007: 70–71). This means that, in the first grade at least, teachers must assume that their learners have little conceptualisation of countries, including their own, and it is perhaps best to focus on linguistic and sociolinguistic competence and wait some years before introducing concepts of other countries. By the third or fourth grade there is good evidence of success in teaching intercultural communicative competence (Conlon Perugini, 2018; Porto et al., 2017).

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[Comparison: The age difference between learners in the two cases is a major issue with respect to teaching intercultural competence. The development of knowledge, understanding and feelings among children – at least in research from Europe and North America – about own and other countries determines what is feasible. In both cases, however, it is likely that identification with ‘own country’ is a factor that language teachers must be very much aware of. The special situation of Taiwan as ‘Republic of China’ means that identification is probably very complex, and suggests a need for research.] Stage 4: Identification of objectives

From the third or fourth grade, when children are nine or ten years old, the focus on linguistic and sociolinguistic objectives can be complemented by intercultural objectives. In the case of linguistic objectives, the presence of people using English as a lingua franca in the society allows interaction from an early stage. Skills of intercultural competence to be pursued from Grades 3 or 4 can therefore also include interaction and discovery, e.g. as learners are given a task of fi nding out about some aspect of another country from someone in their community from that country. Because English is a lingua franca8 in Taiwan, learners will meet people from multiple countries and no single one is necessarily more important to them than another. It is therefore unrealistic to focus on relations between one’s own country and another (Knowledge objective (a)), although it is still important that learners are aware of the role of national memory and historical icons. The competences and objectives which can serve as aims for the end of primary/elementary school after six years of compulsory schooling are: • • • •

linguistic competence: the ability to apply knowledge of (some of) the rules of a standard version of the language to produce and interpret spoken and written language; (part of) sociolinguistic competence: the ability to give to language produced or interpreted, meanings which are taken for granted by interlocutors; (part of) discourse competence: the ability to use and discover strategies for the production and interpretation of monologue or dialogue texts which follow the conventions of the culture; (part of) intercultural competence (see boxed descriptions in Chapter 3): attitudes: objectives (a), (b), (c) knowledge: objectives (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (h), (i), (j), (k), (l) skills of interpreting and relating: objectives (a), (b) skills of discovery and interaction: objectives (a), (b), (d) critical cultural awareness: objectives (a), (b) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

[Comparison: The crucial difference in deciding objectives between the two locations is the question of opportunities for ‘interaction’ –

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opportunities being afforded to a greater degree in Taiwan. The focus on English as a lingua franca in Taiwan and French as the language of la Francophonie and in particular France in the United States also impacts on the ‘knowledge’ objectives it is reasonable to set. There are likely to be differences, too, in the nature of the critical thinking of younger and older learners although ‘critical cultural awareness’ objectives are desirable and possible in both locations.] Stage 5: The ICC threshold

ICC for a child of 9 or 10 years old in Taiwan will include attitudes of interest in otherness and willingness to question the assumptions of their own culture, comparing them with assumptions in the other. They will have a developing knowledge of their own country but know less about other countries, and in English lessons there will not be a focus on a specific country (whether Anglophone or other). They will be able to observe, analyse and interpret documents or events in another culture and in their own, and be able to discover further knowledge where necessary. They will be able to identify the value assumptions in such documents and events and make a reasoned judgement on them. They have opportunities to encounter otherness within their own country, which has many connections with other countries, although the opportunities will be unequally distributed, for example between city and countryside. The diversity will also mean that they encounter varieties of English pronunciation and mainly non-native speakers. They will be interested in and able to interpret and relate to the emblems, values and meanings of otherness within their own country. [Comparison: Whereas American learners may not use their linguistic competence but draw on their intercultural competence in engagement with others at home and abroad, Taiwanese children will have the opportunity to use their language competences in English as well as intercultural competence. In other respects, however, there is much similarity in opportunity even if the transferability of intercultural competence acquired with one language to other situations is acknowledged and pursued much more explicitly in the United States than in Taiwan.] Stage 6: Sequence in the curriculum

As these young learners will have up to this point focused on developing linguistic and sociolinguistic competences, objectives should not be over-ambitious, since their knowledge of and feelings about their own country are still in relatively early stages, and their knowledge of and feelings about other countries are very limited. They need to be introduced to another country where they could imagine using their English to engage with people on specific and concrete matters (Knowledge objectives (b) and (f)). Alternatively, they need tasks and opportunities which bring them in contact with people – of their own age and older – who live in the

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same environment and use English as a lingua franca, again with an emphasis on concrete issues they can engage with (Skills of discovery objectives (a) and (d)). They can be helped and encouraged to collect data and documents which they can compare with parallels in their own environment (Skills of interpreting and relating objective (a)). The attitude objectives need to be constantly present and related to the development of young children’s feelings about their own and other countries. The increasing identification with their own country is an important factor and any critical awareness that can be developed may be counterbalanced by these feelings. Teaching tasks and comments which are ethnocentric need to be juxtaposed with parallel documents from another country and techniques of helping learners to place themselves in other people’s shoes are crucial teaching techniques. This may then lead to a critique of own and other ways of doing things. [Comparison: In both locations, the decisions about the sequencing of objectives are above all a matter for the teacher and a systematic approach to lesson and course planning, to which we return below. There may be a degree of centralised syllabus which has to be taken into account. There may be opportunities for interactions outside the classroom – both planned and unexpected – which influence planning. The difference in ages between the learners in the two cases will have an impact. However, one can imagine that teachers in both situations would fi nd much in common if they were to discuss their planning processes and the decisions they make, and this takes us to the next section dealing with lesson and course planning.]

Lesson and Course Planning

The advantages of specific descriptions of competences come to the fore in lesson planning. Teachers can be precise about their purposes with respect to intercultural competence just as they are accustomed to be with language competences. They can defi ne the learning outcomes they seek, and the means they might use for assessment, as we shall see in the next chapter. The established and useful distinction between procedural and declarative knowledge, which can be traced to Ryle (1949), provides an initial categorisation to apply to the elements of both language and intercultural competences. It is also useful to plan in terms of three kinds of objective to reflect the importance of the aims of communicative language teaching. The three are: • • •

linguistic competence communicative (sociolinguistic and discourse) competence intercultural competence (the five savoirs)

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Not all lessons need to include all three types of competence but, over the period of a course of study, the objectives which have been determined as suitable for the age group, the context, the threshold anticipated and the planned sequencing, should be included in a systematic way using the procedural/declarative formulation ‘By the end of this lesson/period of study, learners will know that/how to …’. For example, with respect to linguistic competence: •

By the end of this period of study/series of lessons, learners will: know that e.g. (for English as FL) 3rd person singular takes ‘s’ know how to produce written English in which the 3rd person singular ‘s’ is used accurately (in this case the teacher has decided that it is expected that the declarative knowledge will lead to procedural performance only in the written language and that they will not insist on this when the learner is speaking. Other teachers might have different expectations) ○ ○

And in communicative competence the focus might be on sociolinguistic competence with a formulation such as: •

By the end of this period of study/series of lessons, learners will: know that e.g. the use of colloquial expressions is acceptable among friends but not with teachers, and know how to talk about their holidays in two styles, colloquial and formal ○

○

Some of the five elements of intercultural competence are chosen according to the specific circumstances and a similar formulation can be used: •

By the end of this period of study/series of lessons, learners will: know that e.g. stereotypes are a hindrance to good communication and interaction know how to monitor and reduce their own use of stereotypical thinking when they meet someone from another country know how to discover data about stereotypes of their own country held by others know how to compare and contrast documents which create stereotypes (for example, guide books used by tourists) and evaluate and critique them ○

○

○

○

On the basis of this systematic planning, teachers can then begin to plan a course of study which includes, in appropriate ways for the learners and the circumstances, the materials and methods needed for success, inspired perhaps by existing descriptions of intercultural communicative language teaching. An alternative approach is to modify existing practices and purposes. In an example from the teaching of Spanish in the United States in the primary/elementary school, a pre-established series of lessons on the topic

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of ‘Fruit’ (Byram et al., 2013) was modified to introduce the aims of intercultural competence, and the teacher listed the changes as follows. Knowledge

From: Teaching names in Spanish of familiar fruit which are part of learners’ everyday life so they can describe what they like and eat To: Names of unfamiliar fruit, fruit eating habits of the local community, fruit grows according to climate, the cost of fruit, that not all questions have answers, availability of fruit has changed over the years (due to transportation changes). Skills of interpreting and relating

From: An absence of these skills To: Comparing fruit eating norms in one’s own life and environment with those of other countries. Skills of discovery and interaction

From: Students asking each other basic questions about fruit such as ‘What is your favourite fruit?’, ‘Which fruits are sour/sweet?’ To: Carrying out surveys and asking people outside school about the fruit they eat. Attitudes

From: Not much explored in previous approach because the content was mainly language based and minimally cultural To: Students show curiosity about each other’s cultural norms and mores, Spanish-speaking cultural norms and mores can also be found within our national boundaries. Critical cultural awareness

From: No attention to this previously To: Questioning the price of fruit and having it available at all seasons – and the environmental costs of this. A full description of the lessons can be found in Appendix 1. Coda: Intercultural Citizenship9 and the Teacher’s Ethical Responsibilities

The notion of ‘critical cultural awareness’ is associated with ‘politische Bildung’ and the choice of the label ‘savoir s’engager’ is a conscious allusion to political engagement. It is the emphasis on critique, or critical understanding, which implies that there are moral responsibilities on the part of the teacher. The teacher actively encourages critique which potentially reveals weaknesses as well as strengths in the learner’s own hitherto unquestioned and ‘natural’

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viewpoint. Since the critique is not simply of the individual’s viewpoint but of what they have learned from and share with others in their society, the teacher encourages challenge to social norms and (aspects of) a society’s conviction of the truth of its beliefs and values. The foreign language teacher, in short, encourages and expects learners to challenge their own society, and this is a major responsibility. Political engagement can also be taken further. Reading Barnett (1997), Gagel (2000) and Himmelmann (2001, 2003, 2006) opened up the possibility that critical cultural awareness can lead, in education for democratic citizenship, to action in the world, and that the international orientation of foreign language teaching can ensure that the ‘world’ in question is more than the local or the national. In Byram (2008), a comparison of aims and objectives in education for democracy (Demokratie Lernen) and foreign language education provided a framework for ‘intercultural citizenship’.10 The framework has been used by language teachers in several countries cooperating across the internet. Learners from primary to university education levels have engaged with issues which are ‘internationalist’ and beyond the scope of a merely national perspective. Using their IC, they have ensured that their active engagement with such issues at a local level is infused with intercultural understanding (Byram et al., 2017). Intercultural citizenship need not be the responsibility only of language teachers, just as citizenship education or Demokratie Lernen is a cross-curricular endeavour. Other experimental projects have involved teachers of mathematics and social sciences and a systematic planning across the curriculum can be achieved and implemented (Wagner et al., 2019). One vignette illustrates the approach: It is the end of year open-air fair at a primary state school in Argentina and 5th and 6th graders are distributing the awareness-raising posters they have created in their English lessons. The message on one of the posters, written in English, Spanish and Danish, is: ‘Sorting waste is taking care of the environment. We help you, will you help us?’ As guests enter the school, they see a banner hung across the street with this same message in Spanish. Children enthusiastically tell the school community about the project they have been working on with Danish children during the year. They have also ‘gone global’. Two months ago, they were interviewed by a local journalist and this banner for the fair and the trilingual posters they had designed with their Danish peers appeared in the local newspaper. They also posted a video summarising the project to YouTube. They have taken their learning in the English lessons beyond the classroom: they went to a local square on a Saturday afternoon, accompanied by parents, and recorded an awareness-raising song on video about the theme, which they shared on Facebook. They distributed to passers-by a leaflet they had designed, with a call to ‘Save electricity’ and ‘Turn off the light’. In short, they had developed a sense of responsibility to protect the

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environment for future generations and were eager to persuade others to join them so that ‘The future will be a success and a joy’. (Byram et al., forthcoming)

The competences needed for this kind of work have also been analysed with the Council of Europe’s notion of ‘competences for democratic culture’ and the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe, 2018b). Behind the concept of ‘democratic culture’ lies that of ‘liberty’ (Berlin, 2017), which is not associated with ‘democracy’ in every country.11 The RFCDC includes competences that align with those of intercultural citizenship, although the latter also includes the ethnographic competences of ICC which are not found in the RFCDC. An important consequence of this work is that language teachers are no longer concerned only with skills, which appear to be value-free. Teachers encourage and sometimes require their learners to make judgements, as in ‘critical cultural awareness’, and then, in a major change of purpose, to take action, to become involved in ‘political engagement’. There are ethical questions involved in this work which language teachers – and perhaps teachers of other subjects too – have not faced hitherto, and for which they have not been prepared in teacher education. ‘Political engagement’ is a phrase which causes unease among teachers and needs to be clarified. In British English, as captured in the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Political’ means ‘Relating to or concerned with public life and affairs as involving questions of authority and government; relating to or concerned with the theory or practice of politics’. The definition of Politics is ‘The political ideas, beliefs, or commitments of a particular individual, organization, etc.’. On the basis of these two definitions, to say that ‘Learners are or become politically engaged’ means that they ‘develop their own ideas, beliefs and commitments, become involved in public life and practice politics, and may therefore challenge authority [at any level – family, school, sports club, national and international government]’. This is the defi nition on which intercultural citizenship is based. In the European and North American traditions most if not all teachers would agree that ‘developing ideas’ and becoming ‘involved’ in practical politics/activities, are necessary and widely accepted aims in education. Most, too, would agree that learners should ‘challenge’, and be independent thinkers. Being ‘political’ in this sense is therefore not problematic as an aim for teaching.12 A teacher who accepts this understanding of political action and encourages and expects their learners to be involved in action has to accept responsibilities for saying what learners should do, that they should become involved in action in their community. Once the teacher has accepted these responsibilities, they can fi nd help in making intercultural citizenship an integral part of their planning and

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teaching both from other teachers’ accounts of their teaching (Byram et  al., 2017) and in the RFCDC which includes papers addressing the appropriate pedagogy, curriculum design, assessment and teacher education. Notes (1) Other uses of the term ‘curriculum’ are more inclusive than this, and refer to teaching methods, learning styles and implicit and explicit values – the ‘hidden curriculum’ – but I shall use the term only to include objectives and a description of what needs to be learnt to attain them. A discussion of designing curricula for ‘competences for democratic culture’, a concept with strong similarities to intercultural competence, can be found in the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018b). (2) Cummins (1984) also uses the term to describe levels of competence in bilingual children which enable them to benefit from academic work in their languages. This is a related issue but has not, to my knowledge, been directly compared. (3) In the case of learning a language as a lingua franca, acceptance by native speakers is not necessarily a matter of concern. A full discussion of learning of a lingua franca is, again, an issue which is beyond the scope of this book. (4) van Ek’s discussion here should not be confused with the eventual text of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), as is emphasised in the later Companion Volume: It should be emphasised that the top level in the CEFR scheme, C2, has no relation whatsoever with what is sometimes referred to as the performance of an idealised ‘native-speaker’, or a ‘well-educated native speaker’ or a ‘near-native speaker’. Such concepts were not taken as a point of reference during the development of the levels or the descriptors. (Council of Europe, 2018a: 35) (5) This example was chosen in 1997 because I was writing much of the text while spending a sabbatical at the National Foreign Language Center in Washington, DC. In more recent times, that connection has been renewed by working with colleagues in schools and universities in Connecticut and it seems appropriate to keep the same example. (6) Since 1997, the geopolitical and economic role of China has come to dominate discussions in language teaching as in much else. I have had the pleasure of working with colleagues – some of whom are former students – in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, in Beijing, in Harbin and elsewhere in some of the provinces. Here I will draw upon the work of colleagues in Taiwan. (7) There is a warning, however, from a newspaper debate about the teaching of language in Britain, from the well-known academic Mary Beard (2017), rejecting, with some panache, the view that English and translations are all that is needed: Even where in Europe the lingua franca of (academic) papers is English, I can promise you that the language of the bar isn’t (or the toilets, for that matter). You get left out of an awful lot of what is really going on if you can only communicate in English. (Beard, 2017) What she says is doubtless true of many other kinds of encounter too. (8) A detailed discussion of intercultural competence and lingua franca is beyond the scope of this monograph. Suffice it to say, with Risager (2015: 47), that ‘Lingua franca communication is not culturally neutral; on the contrary, all languages carry linguaculture (culture in language), and all human beings develop their own linguacultural profi les’. For a rich collection of views, see Holmes and Dervin (2016).

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(9) Soon after completion of this manuscript, I learnt of the imminent publication of Risager and Svarstad’s (2020) new book, Verdensborgeren og den interkulturelle læring (The World Citizen and Intercultural Learning), the manuscript of which the authors kindly allowed me to see. We have much in common, as the authors say, but they emphasise much more the notion of the ‘world’ citizen and also include analysis of visual communication and the ‘new’ media. It is a book which introduces Danish teachers of languages to important issues and I hope it will appear in an English version for other teachers. (10) The term ‘intercultural citizenship’ can be criticised and others such as ‘global’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ citizenship used. These may be more appropriate in some respects, but I chose ‘intercultural’ to maintain the link with intercultural communicative competence (for a detailed discussion, see Hosack, 2018). (11) In 2018, I gave the opening lecture at the Conference of the Chinese Association for Intercultural Communication where I explained the development of the RFCDC and gave a defi nition of democracy as reflected in policy papers of the Council of Europe. In the publication of this lecture in 2019, all reference to democracy was censured, despite the fact that democracy is a ‘core socialist value’ (Shi, 2015). (12) In other parts of the world this is problematic and I can already hear readers objecting to my proposals here as being an imposition from the ‘centre’ to the ‘periphery’ or a ‘neo-colonial’ attitude. It would be disingenuous to say that I do not have a view on this and remain neutral. My position is that of ‘values pluralism’ as presented in Chapter 2 above.

5 Assessment

Introduction

Why assess? In the first edition of this book, I did not address this question. It seemed to me self-evident that teaching should be followed by  – and further teaching preceded by – assessment. Since then the increase in assessment everywhere and with varying purposes – including international comparisons such as PISA – and the reaction of people like Claire Kramsch quoted in an earlier chapter, makes me think that the question needs to be addressed in this edition even though the issues are well known and the discussion familiar. I will therefore be brief. The fi rst point to make is that assessment is not limited to testing. This is important because many objections to assessment are in fact objections to testing, and when testing or any kind of assessment oversimplifies and misrepresents learners’ abilities in the name of objectivity, those objections are justified. I shall therefore focus on other kinds of assessment in this chapter. Assessment provides evidence of learning, and achievement assessment – as opposed to proficiency assessment – has various uses, including: to trace learners’ progress; to identify specific strengths and weaknesses, which can be the basis for planning further teaching and learning; and to provide information in processes of evaluation of the effectiveness of a course or of a particular teacher or teaching technique. Assessment can also be accompanied by a certificate and help a learner to have access to further education or employment. Assessment has impact on teachers and learners, who tend to pay more attention to what is assessed. This can also mean that assessment can be stressful for both, and there is a need to ensure as little stress as possible, especially in testing but also in other kinds of assessment. It is the attention to testing, to comparisons of results of individuals, of institutions and of education systems which has created most stress in recent years, and the OECD testing of ‘global competence’ (www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa2018-global-competence.htm) is related to the topic of this book and may well create further stress. With this caveat in mind, the value of assessment is almost self-evident and we can now proceed. 126

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One of the main arguments in this monograph has been that foreign language teaching is a social (and political) phenomenon which is in part determined by the nature of the particular context in which it takes place. In Chapters 1 and 4, I described a number of cases in order to show their relationship to the configuration of circumstances and the effect on decisions about aims for foreign language education (FLE). At the same time, it has been my purpose to discuss intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in such a way that the discussion is of value in any situation. In Chapters 2 and 3, I attempted to define and describe in a comprehensive way the kind of ICC which can be taught in ordinary classrooms, while being aware that in some situations something less than comprehensive ICC would be an appropriate aim for FLE. This was all the more evident in Chapter 4, when I suggested that the selection of objectives for learners from a comprehensive model would be the fi rst step in the design of an appropriate curriculum for a specific situation. The selection would be a function of the social and geopolitical factors in the learners’ environment. This basic issue of context is equally important with respect to assessment. It is, fi rst of all, obvious that a selection of objectives from the comprehensive description of ICC, for teaching in the classroom or in fieldwork, means that achievement assessment should focus on those objectives only, i.e. on determining to what extent learners have reached the competence described by those selected objectives, this is ‘assessment of achievement’. Context is the second issue: the purposes of assessment are determined by context, which includes the aims of the particular educational institution and the societal and geopolitical factors to which educational institutions and the education system as a whole must respond. This is most evident with respect to certification, through which the education system opens opportunities for individuals and at the same time helps societies and their governments to plan for predicted needs in the workforce. As societies change – increasingly in the contemporary world in response to forces at trans-societal levels – the predicted needs also change, and lead to changes in certification. Existing certificates may be altered to emphasise different purposes – with a consequent effect on curricula – and new certificates and curricula are developed to accommodate the ambitions of individuals and the predictions of governments. On the other hand, education systems can also be proactive, not just reactive. They have their internal dynamic, with views on how best to reach the goals set for them, how the objectives should be formulated or how best to organise certification. New methods of teaching and learning arise mainly from within the education profession, as do new approaches to assessment. In particular, the hope that teaching, learning and assessment – and therefore also certification – can be treated holistically has led to a reappraisal of assessment. Gipps (1994) argues that what is needed is a ‘paradigm shift’:

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Assessment is not an exact science, and we must stop presenting it as such. This is of course part of the post-modern condition – a suspension of belief in the absolute status of ‘scientific’ knowledge. (Gipps, 1994: 167)

She describes this as a ‘shift from a psychometric model of assessment to an educational model’, and argues that ‘educational assessment’ is characterised by its potential for enhancing good quality learning. What are needed are assessment programmes which have a positive impact on teaching and learning (Gipps, 1994: 158). This position will be fundamental to my discussion of the assessment of ICC, and I shall rely to a considerable extent on Gipps’ analysis.1 The purpose of this chapter is to consider, at a level of principle, what might be appropriate ways of assessing those dimensions of ICC that have been the focus of earlier chapters: knowledge (savoirs), skills (savoir comprendre, savoir apprendre/faire), attitudes (savoir être) and critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager). This will be done on the continuing assumption that FLE takes place in educational institutions and has educational objectives (Bildung and political education), and it is for this reason that Gipps’ argument for educational assessment is important here. Secondly, I shall continue to assume a model of ICC which includes linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competences, a model which is holistic and which is analysed into its components only in order to develop a better understanding of what is essentially one competence. The analysis of components allows us to determine more precisely what our teaching aims should be, as I argued in earlier chapters, and if and how we can assess the different dimensions of ICC separately or as a whole. I shall not focus in detail, however, on the assessment of linguistic, sociolinguistic or discourse competence, except with respect to the links and relationships with other competences. 2 Assessing the Five ‘Savoirs’

As a fi rst stage in this discussion of assessment I propose to put in abeyance the question of whether ICC should be assessed holistically. The identification of five savoirs allowed me to defi ne them in terms of objectives and further specifications for teaching and curriculum planning and I propose to use this as a basis for discussing the assessment of learners’ achievement with respect to those objectives. I shall return to the issues of holistic or separate assessment and related questions of validity and reliability in a later section. Here I shall take the objectives and specifications from Chapters 2 and 3 and discuss the implications for assessment. Throughout my discussion I have used the term ‘competence’, and as we come to issues of assessment it is important to focus again on the implications of the term. It was introduced in order to maintain links with existing conceptualisations in FLE. Such links are important in ensuring that proposals for change in concepts and practice are understood, and

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considered by FLE professionals to be feasible. Nonetheless, it is evident that terminology carries within it views which need to be made explicit. First, there is the relationship of competence to performance and the related question of ‘performance assessment’ as opposed to psychometric, ‘objective’ testing. Since the five savoirs include attitudes (savoir être), dispositions or orientations to act (savoir s’engager), knowledge (savoirs) and skills (savoir comprendre, apprendre, faire), it is evident that the distinction of competence and performance which is familiar to many language teachers, introduced by Chomsky and developed by Hymes, is not adequate. It is here that the advantage of using the term ‘savoir’ holistically becomes clear, since it includes the whole range of skills, attitudes and knowledge, and simultaneously allows us to distinguish among them by adding a second infi nitive. 3 Secondly, as stated in Chapter 2, the ‘objectives’ defi ned for each savoir are not restricted to those that are observable as behaviour or changes in behaviour. This was done in order to develop a more complex and comprehensive definition. As a consequence, performance assessment cannot be the only approach if all aspects of the five savoirs are to be assessed, since performance assessment relies on what is observable: there is agreement in the educational assessment profession that: ‘Performance measurement calls for examinees to demonstrate their capabilities directly, by creating some product or engaging in some activity’ (Haertel, 1992) and that there is heavy reliance on observation and/ or professional judgement in the evaluation of the response (Mehrens, 1992) including teacher-examiners grading coursework and marking essay scripts. (Gipps, 1994: 99)

It might be argued that assessment for certification has to be restricted to performance assessment as defi ned here, omitting any aspect of the five savoirs which is not observable. I shall consider this later but initially ignore that constraint in order to explore all the possibilities. Another interpretation of a competence/performance distinction is to identify underlying understanding, metacognition and the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking and response to experience. Entwistle (cited in Gipps, 1994) makes a distinctions between ‘deep learning’ and ‘shallow learning’, the former being characterised as: • • • • • •

an intention to understand material for oneself interacting vigorously and critically with the content relating ideas to previous knowledge and experience using organising principles to integrate ideas relating evidence to conclusions, and examining the logic of the argument. (Gipps, 1994: 24)

In order to achieve many of the objectives of the five savoirs, such learning is a sine qua non; for example: savoir apprendre involves relating new

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information to existing knowledge; savoir comprendre requires the use of organising principles to relate conflicting interpretations of phenomena; savoir s’engager involves interacting vigorously and critically with knowledge and experience. One of Gipps’ main arguments is that such learning cannot be assessed, or encouraged, by psychometric objective testing, and it is clear that her argument is eminently applicable to ICC. The specifications of the five savoirs in Chapter 3 cannot, in most cases, be tested by multiple choice questions, for example. The evidence for judging whether a learner has achieved objectives related to ‘deep learning’ has to be interpreted, either by the teacher/assessor or by the learner in self-assessment. If the interpretation of evidence is itself to be open to scrutiny, for example by parents or by agencies outside an education system, it has to be based on explicit and agreed criteria. A step towards the development of criteria for judgement was made in Chapter 3 when I suggested for each objective what might ‘count as’ a specification of that objective. In the first instance, these further specifications can be used to decide on curricula and lesson plans, as in Chapter 4, but they can also be a starting point for deciding on criteria for assessment. For example, in savoirs, the specification of the first objective indicates the significance of ‘events’, ‘individuals’ and ‘diverse interpretations of events’ with respect to knowledge about ‘historical and contemporary relationships’: The intercultural speaker: •

knows about events, significant individuals and diverse interpretations of events which have involved both countries and the traces left in the national memory; and about political and economic factors in the contemporary alliances of each country

In order to develop assessment criteria from this, it would be necessary to decide whether knowledge of a ‘prescribed list’ of events and individuals is required, or whether learners should know of some examples and be able to explain what they exemplify. In the latter case, assessors would also have evidence of ‘deep learning’, whereas the former case might only draw upon ‘shallow learning’ of information about historical relationships, acquired without a fundamental understanding of the issues and principles involved. In both cases, the question of whether the learning has been adequate has to be addressed too, and this cannot be divorced from the discussion of progression and a ‘threshold’ raised in Chapter 4, to which I shall return in a later section of this current chapter. This example from savoirs lies within familiar frameworks for assessment. More complex and novel issues arise with respect to other savoirs, notably savoir être, and I propose, as a next stage in the discussion, to work through the five savoirs in order to show how assessment can be applied, in different ways, to all of them. I begin with ‘attitudes’ and the first objective.

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Attitudes (savoir être): Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own

Objective (a): Willingness to seek out or take up opportunities to engage with otherness in a relationship of equality, distinct from seeking out the exotic or profiting from others The intercultural speaker is interested in the other’s experience of daily life in contexts not usually presented to outsiders through the media or used to develop a commercial relationship with outsiders; is interested in the daily experience of a range of social groups within a society and not only that represented in the dominant culture. In order to develop assessment criteria for this objective, it is necessary to ask what would count as evidence for interest in ‘daily experience’ or for interest in ‘a range of social groups’, rather than that which is the focus of commercial or media relationships with another society. One kind of evidence would be an expression of preference for ‘daily experience’ and an interest in other than dominant social groups. An expression of preference would have to be more than an attitude – ‘if I had a choice, I would …’ – and might be elicited by asking learners to make and explain a choice as part of assessed performance. For example, learners might be asked to choose between two representations of an aspect of a foreign country in order to use the representation – a text, an image, an audio- or video-recording – as a basis for explaining this aspect of the other culture to an interlocutor from their own country. The choice of text would be evidence of their focus of interest. The way in which they then use the chosen text would be the basis for assessing other objectives. Objective (b): Interest in discovering other perspectives on the interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar phenomena both in one’s own and in other cultures and cultural practices The intercultural speaker does not assume that familiar phenomena – cultural practices or products common to themselves and the other – are understood in the same way, or that unfamiliar phenomena can only be understood by assimilating them into their own cultural phenomena; aware that they need to discover the other’s understanding of these, and of phenomena in their own culture which are not familiar to the other. Criteria on which to judge learners’ interest in other perspectives would need evidence of their not prioritising their own over other perspectives, of their choosing the other’s explanation of phenomena in the learner’s own culture. As with Objective (a), this evidence would have to be action demonstrating preference, rather than a statement about preference. In Objective (b), it would be important not to formulate preference in terms of evaluative comparison – ‘the other’s perspective is better than

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mine’ – but to ensure that there is preference for an explanation which is a better fit to the perspective of the other. The preference in Objective (a) is also a decision about what is more suitable for the purpose of explaining an aspect of another culture, a better fit. Objective (c): Willingness to question the values and presuppositions in cultural practices and products in one’s own environment The intercultural speaker actively seeks the other’s perspectives and evaluations of phenomena in the speaker’s environment which are taken for granted, and takes up the other’s perspectives in order to contrast and compare with the dominant evaluations in their own society. Evidence for learners’ willingness to question the values of their own cultural environment might involve their choosing other interpretations and evaluations of phenomena which are fundamental to the learners’ society and rarely questioned within it. Again this would be a performance rather than an attitude. These first three objectives are related. In practice it would probably be necessary to assess them together, as three aspects of savoir être. It would also be possible to obtain evidence from the same performance for learners’ savoirs and their savoir comprendre. Indeed, if the view is taken that ICC must be assessed holistically, then it would be important to invent a method of assessment which produces evidence for some or all of the five savoirs simultaneously. This is based on the assumption that the assessment will be undertaken at one point in time by an assessor not otherwise involved with the learner, not their teacher. There are two other approaches. First, it is possible to assess over a period rather than at one given point in time. Evidence can therefore be identified as it arises in the course of learning, and need not be multipurpose. This is possible, for example, when the assessor is also the teacher and in contact with the learner frequently. Secondly, it is also possible for learners to be their own assessors and this too allows for other modes of collecting evidence. The learner could, for example, assemble evidence in a portfolio. It is noteworthy that a learner able to do this would need a high degree of self-awareness and ability to reflect on their own actions. This is of the same nature as the defi ning characteristics of ‘deep learning’, i.e. an ability to relate (their own) actions and ideas to principles and to the abstract defi nitions of objectives such as those offered here.4 Objective (d): Readiness to experience the different stages of adaptation to and interaction with another culture during a period of residence The intercultural speaker is able to cope with different kinds of experience of otherness (e.g. enthusiasm, withdrawal) during residence, and place them in a longer period of phases of acceptance and rejection.

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Evidence for this objective will not be directly observable to an external assessor, since the objective describes the individual’s ability to reflect on their experience and affective responses and to analyse them in terms of a framework of ideas on ‘culture shock’ (e.g. Furnham & Bochner, 1986). This requires a high degree of self-awareness, the ability to analyse one’s own feelings of enthusiasm or of dismay and to see them as part of a developmental reaction to otherness. The analysis may take place simultaneously (‘I know I am experiencing culture shock and this phase will pass’) or retrospectively (‘I remember that I thought everything was perfect at the beginning’). The stimulus for this self-analysis can come from within the learner, particularly if they have had previous experience of culture shock. It can also come from another person, a teacher or mentor who urges the learner to reflect on their aff ective responses by referring them to a framework of ideas on culture shock. In both cases the evidence comes from the learner’s reflections, rather than from a closely structured assessment instrument. 5 The evidence is also likely to appear at a number of different points in the experience, and this suggests that it needs to be collected over time, for example as part of a portfolio. Objective (e): Readiness to engage with the conventions and rites of verbal and non-verbal communication and interaction The intercultural speaker notes and adopts the behaviours specific to a social group in a way in which they and the members of that group consider to be appropriate for an outsider; the intercultural speaker thus takes into consideration the expectations members of the group may have about appropriate behaviour for foreigners. What is at issue here is the fact that native speakers do not necessarily accept that intercultural speakers should adopt and imitate the conventions of interaction (particularly the non-verbal) which are the norm for their group. The intercultural speaker too may not wish to adopt conventions which engage their whole personality and cultural identity, again particularly non-verbal conventions which are often unconscious. They may be able to accept intellectually that a particular gesture is a norm of greeting, but resist doing it themselves because it is very different from their own non-verbal behaviour. For example, the convention of men greeting each other by kissing on both cheeks is, for members of some societies, breaking a taboo on male-male physical contact. Such taboos are difficult to overcome because they are part of early socialisation. The ability of a successful intercultural speaker is to fi nd a modus vivendi satisfactory to themselves and their interlocutors.6 As with Objective (d), the evidence for this objective is likely to appear over time, to be provided by learners themselves as they reflect on and analyse the process of fi nding a modus vivendi, and therefore become part of a portfolio.

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Table 5.1 Summary of modes of assessment for attitudes Objective

Kind of evidence

Where

(a) ‘Equality’

Choice of representations of ‘daily life’

Test and/or portfolio

(b) ‘Other perspectives’

Choice of analysis from a ‘better fit’ perspective

Test and/or portfolio

(c) ‘Question own values’

Choice of other evaluations of phenomena in own society

Test and/or portfolio

(d) ‘Culture shock’

Self-analysis, simultaneous or retrospective, of affective responses at different points

Portfolio

(e) ‘Conventions of interaction’

Self-analysis of processes of adaptation

Portfolio

Attitudes (savoir être)

Knowledge (savoirs) of social groups and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction

The assessment of declarative knowledge is familiar ground but, as suggested earlier, the distinction between deep and shallow learning adds a fresh perspective and implies that techniques are also needed to assess deep learning as well as learners’ ability to reiterate facts. This too is familiar ground, since traditional methods of assessment such as essay writing seek to explore the ability to use ideas in new situations, to relate factual knowledge to argument, to draw upon logical relationships within frameworks of knowledge and to interpret and come to sound conclusions. For example, an analysis of examinations at the end of upper secondary education in England (Byram et al., 1994: 140–145) revealed that essays written in French on aspects of French culture were marked under four main categories: understanding the question and providing relevant answers; structuring and organising the essay competently; displaying a breadth of knowledge; and demonstrating analytical skills and understanding. The second and last in this list are attempts to identify deep learning, and considerable emphasis is given to these categories. In fact, our criticism of these examinations was that too little attention was paid to the assessment of cultural knowledge and too much to these other factors, which can also be found in the assessment of learners’ knowledge of other subjects. The potential problem of reliability in assessing, for example, ‘analytical skills’ and understanding can be handled by formulating explicit and detailed criteria. It is then usual practice to provide a number of exemplars for the criteria, together with the training of assessors to ensure that they operate the criteria in the same way. The process is time consuming but is accepted as necessary to guarantee the quality of assessment.

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There are three interrelated categories of savoirs included in the definition of the knowledge objective: about aspects of a foreign society; about one’s own society; and about relationships among cultural groups at societal and individual level. The latter depends on the other two. Learners need to understand how aspects of one society and its dominant culture are perceived from another cultural perspective and how this link between two cultures is fundamental to interaction and communication. If assessment of savoirs is to take this into consideration, then techniques which reveal deep learning are essential. At intermediate and advanced level, the essay or similar approach can be appropriate. At beginner level, learners can be asked to comment on and explain illustrations of specific objectives. At all levels, learners can also be assessed on their factual knowledge and this can include ‘objective’ questions. Let us take two examples, one focused on knowledge about the two countries and the second focused on relationships. Objective (h): Knowledge about the processes and institutions of socialisation in one’s own and one’s interlocutor’s country The intercultural speaker knows about education systems, religious institutions, and similar locations where individuals acquire a national identity, are introduced to the dominant culture in their society and pass through specific rites marking stages in the life-cycle, in both their own and the other country. A beginning learner of German might have been introduced, under this objective, to the tradition of Konfirmation in Protestant Germany with the information that most young people go through this ceremony, whether they normally attend church or not. At intermediate and advanced levels, further knowledge would be acquired about practices in Catholic parts of Germany, about practices in the former German Democratic Republic, about statistical analyses of young people’s attendance at church, about rites of passage for young Germans of Turkish or Jewish origin. The quantity of knowledge would depend on the length of the course as well as the age and learning level of the students. At all levels, learners’ factual knowledge can be assessed as a function of what they have had the opportunity to learn during the course. It is also possible that they have acquired further knowledge from other sources and a decision has to be made as to whether such knowledge is given credit. The decision will depend on the function of the assessment, whether it is to evaluate achievement during the course or whether it is to record learners’ proficiency at a given point in time, in order, for example, to take up a particular post. The techniques could be question and answer, or might include a stimulus such as a photograph of young people in their Konfirmation dress and an invitation to comment and explain. In the second technique it is to be expected that learners will also demonstrate their ability to relate Konfirmation to a framework of

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knowledge about the role of the church in Germany, to their knowledge of rites of passage and to the role of the church in their own country. They might also be invited to comment critically on rites of passage as such, and draw upon their critical cultural awareness. As is often the case, a single technique can provide evidence for more than one savoir. Objective (c): Knowledge of the types of cause and process of misunderstanding between interlocutors of different cultural origins The intercultural speaker knows about conventions of communication and interaction in their own and the foreign cultures, the unconscious effect of paralinguistic and non-verbal phenomena, alternative interpretations of shared concepts, gestures, customs and rituals. Knowledge about intercultural communicative breakdown can be formulated in abstract terms, drawing upon theories of interaction such as conversation analysis or theories dealing with stereotypes and prejudice. It is more likely to be taught through examples. A learner of French might be taught to analyse conversation transcripts demonstrating conventions of turn-taking. An assessment exercise could involve analysis of comments by two individuals describing their feeling of discomfort in a conversation where one feels constantly ‘cut off ’ and the other feels that their interlocutor is ‘slow to respond’. The learner would need to refer to their knowledge of turn-taking in certain uses of French and in equivalent situations in their own country and language. This could also be linked with a text in which apparently similar concepts, which in fact have different significances, are the cause of misunderstanding. A parallel example to Konfirmation would for an English learner of French to refer to ‘la première communion’ and misunderstand it as ‘first communion’, the former being a widely accepted rite of passage irrespective of religious belief, the latter being confined to a minority of young people who attend church regularly. The ability to explain this misunderstanding would require reference to factual knowledge but also demonstrate the learner’s capacity to draw upon a general framework of knowledge about socialisation practices to explain a specific instance. Table 5.2 Summary of modes of assessment for knowledge Objective

Kind of evidence

Where

Knowledge (savoirs)

[Same for all aspects (a) to (j)]

[Same for all aspects (a) to (j)]

(a) Historical and contemporary relationships (d & e) National memories (f & g) Definitions of geographical space (h) Socialisation (i) Social distinctions (j) Institutions

(i) Factual knowledge elicited by question and answer (ii) Deep learning knowledge elicited by techniques requiring comment and analysis

(i) Test (ii) Continuous assessment (not self-assessment)

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Skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre): Ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents or events from one’s own

Since the skills of interpreting and relating are dependent upon knowledge, it will be evident that assessment is also interrelated. In fact, in suggesting that knowledge can be assessed through techniques which collect evidence of deep learning, I have already introduced the skills of interpreting and relating, by requiring ‘comment’ and ‘analysis’. An additional dimension is included in Objective (c): Objective (c): Ability to mediate between conflicting interpretations of phenomena The intercultural speaker can use their explanations of sources of misunderstanding and dysfunction to help interlocutors overcome conflicting perspectives; can explain the perspective of each in terms accessible to the other; can help interlocutors to identify common ground and unresolvable difference. This skill could be used in the written mode, when the intercultural speaker is a translator, for example, who would provide a commentary where they see potential misunderstanding or dysfunction. This reduces the pressures of real-time interaction, allowing time for analysis and reference to existing knowledge or the use of skills of discovery (savoir apprendre) to acquire more knowledge. It is, however, likely that mediation will often take place in real-time interaction, with all the constraints and demands that this places on the intercultural speaker. The assessment of this skill can therefore be discussed in combination with the assessment of savoir faire. Skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire): Ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices, and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction

Skills of discovery (savoir apprendre) have a pivotal place in my model of ICC. They allow the learner to escape the constraints of what can be learnt in the classroom. They are the means whereby skills of interpreting and relating can be supplemented when the learner meets unknown material. They are also connected with skills of interaction (savoir faire), since much although not all discovery is effected through interaction with other people. Discovery takes place in many instances in real time and depends on the ability to ask the kinds of questions which elicit further knowledge especially when the interlocutor is unable to explain what is self-evident for them in their taken-for-granted reality.

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This is the significance of Objective (a): Objective (a): Ability to elicit from an interlocutor the concepts and values of documents or events and to develop an exploratory system susceptible of application to other phenomena The intercultural speaker can use a range of questioning techniques to elicit from informants the allusions, connotations and presuppositions of a document or event, and can develop and test generalisations about shared meaning and values (by using them to interpret another document; by questioning another informant; by consulting appropriate literature) and establish links and relationships among them (logical relationship of hierarchy, of cause and effect, of conditions and consequence, etc.) Objective (b): Ability to identify significant references within and across cultures and elicit their significance and connotations The intercultural speaker can ‘read’ a document or event for the implicit references to shared meanings and values (of national memory, of concepts of space, of social distinction, etc.) particular to the culture of their interlocutor or of international currency (arising, for example, from the dominance of Western satellite television or internet streaming); in the latter case, the intercultural speaker can identify or elicit different interpretations and connotations and establish relationships of similarity and difference between them. The assessment of this skill is difficult. In one experiment (Byram et al., 1994: 163–165), students prepared and carried out an interview with a native speaker in order to explore the concept of regional identity. The interviewees were asked about how and to what extent they felt their social identity was related to their place of origin, e.g. what it means to say ‘Je suis breton/alsacien …’. This could be combined with a discussion with the assessor in which the student is invited to reflect on their findings, explain their approach and questioning technique, and suggest what generalisations they could hypothesise and how they would test them. For intermediate students this proved to be a difficult but productive task requiring considerable linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence. Advanced language learners trained in ethnographic data-collection skills can be highly successful in eliciting many kinds of data (Roberts et al., 2001) and the possibility of assessing their skills from an audio-recording of an interview, combined with a discussion, would be worth further consideration. Another objective and specification focuses on the use of skills of discovery where an interlocutor is not essential and where knowledge can be found in other sources too: Objective (e): The ability to identify contemporary and past relationships between one’s own and the other culture and society

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The intercultural speaker can use sources (e.g. internet sites, reference books, newspapers, histories, experts, lay informants) to understand political, economic and social relationships between cultures and societies, and analyse the differing interpretations involved. It is possible to envisage a simulation where learners are provided with sources and asked to compare and analyse documents from their own and the other society. It is, however, also possible for evidence for this skill to be collected over time by learners and their teachers, for inclusion in a portfolio. Similarly, Objectives (a) and (b) need not be assessed in a test situation, but can be achieved in fieldwork or in coursework in the classroom. This approach to assessment, it is important to note, requires a high degree of self-awareness and understanding of the abstract principles Table 5.3 Summary of modes of assessment for skills Objective

Kind of evidence

Where

(a) Identify ethnocentric perspectives

Part of evidence from assessment of savoirs [above]

Test and/or continuous assessment as for assessment of savoirs

(b) Identify misunderstanding and dysfunction

Part of evidence from assessment of savoirs [above]

Test and/or continuous assessment as for assessment of savoirs

(c) mediate between interpretations

Part of assessment of interaction (see below)

(i) Interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre)

(ii) Discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire) (a) Questioning a native speaker

Use of interviewing techniques

Test simulation

(b) Identify significant reference

Use of interviewing techniques

Portfolio

(e) Use sources to understand relationships

Use of internet sites, reference books, etc. to illuminate specific documents

Test and/or coursework

(c) Agree conventions

Retrospective analysis and documentation by self and others

Portfolio

(d) Respond to distance/ proximity of other culture

Retrospective analysis and documentation by self and others

Portfolio

(f) Institutions for contacts

Retrospective analysis and documentation by self and others

Portfolio

(g) Mediate between interlocutors

Retrospective analysis and documentation by self and others

Portfolio

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underlying the use of skills of discovery. If learners are to select evidence appropriately, they need to be able to relate particular instances to general principles, and this suggests a capacity for abstract thinking which is often only developed in secondary education. Where learners have not acquired this degree of reflection, teachers can select evidence on their behalf. The main characteristic of skills of interaction (savoir faire) is their operation in real time. They involve the operationalisation of the other components of ICC and integrate them in highly complex ways. Evidence of success in interaction is unlikely to be available directly, precisely because it takes place in real time and usually in circumstances that do not allow data collection. Indirect evidence can be provided post hoc by learners themselves or by others involved or able to observe. The learner who is able to negotiate agreement on conventions of interaction for a specific occasion (Objective (c)), or to act in accordance with the degree of proximity to another language and culture (Objective (d)), or to use institutions to maintain contacts in another culture (Objective (f)), or to mediate between interlocutors from their own and another culture (Objective (g)), would be able to reflect on and document the occasions, identifying in retrospect the issues and problems involved and the indicators of success. Critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager): An ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of a systematic process of reasoning, values present in one’s own and other cultures and countries

This ‘educational’ component of ICC adds the notion of evaluation and comparison not just for the purposes of improving the effectiveness of communication and interaction but especially for the purposes of clarifying one’s own ideological perspective and engaging with others consciously on the basis of that perspective. The consequence may include conflict in perspectives, not only harmonious communication. As with the other components there is some degree of overlap, so that skills of interpreting and discovery are linked to the first objective (a): Objective (a): The ability to identify and interpret explicit or implicit values in documents and events in one’s own and other cultures. Similarly, Objectives (b) and (c) are related to skills of interpreting, relating and interaction but add the evaluative dimension: Objective (b): The ability to make an evaluative analysis of the documents and events based on a conscious process of reasoning. Objective (c): The ability to interact and mediate in intercultural exchanges on the basis of a reasoned analysis, negotiating where necessary a degree of acceptance of them by drawing upon one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes

Assessment

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It will be evident that the opportunities for and constraints on assessment are similar to those for other components. The analysis and evaluation of documents and events can be through testing which asks for commentary and analysis, whereas Objective (c) takes place in real time and is a particular version of the skills of interaction for which there can be only indirect evidence. In the above proposals for modes and locations of assessment, there is included in all but the assessment of savoirs the option of self-assessment to complement assessment by a teacher or other assessor. Self-assessment presupposes a high degree of self-awareness, the ability to reflect on one’s own learning and achievement, which suggests in turn a particular mode of learning and teaching. The theory of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) which argues that there is a need for alternation between engagement and reflection as discussed in Chapter 3, and the increasing attention to giving learners autonomy and control over their learning through developing their understanding of the processes of learning, their metacognition (Gipps, 1994: 24), are both sources to guide teaching. As well as facilitating the acquisition of skills, knowledge and attitudes, teaching can include reflection on what these consist of in more abstract terms. This will enhance the transferability of skills and attitudes so that learners have a generalisable critical cultural awareness as a basis for study of other cultures and languages or for coping with interaction in other cultural and linguistic environments. If these metacognitive capacities for self-analysis are to be recognised in assessment, neither the testing of knowledge nor the evaluation of observable performance are sufficient. It is in the self-analytical and often retrospective accounts by a learner of their interaction, their savoir faire and savoir s’engager that the main evidence will be found. However, such evidence is not part of the traditions of assessment and may not be admissible in all circumstances. In order to refi ne the Table 5.4 Summary of modes of assessment for critical cultural awareness Objective

Kind of evidence

Where

(a) Identify values

Part of evidence from assessment of savoirs and savoir comprendre (see above)

(See savoirs and savoir comprendre, above)

(b) Evaluate by reasoning

Part of evidence from assessment of savoirs and savoir comprendre (see above)

(See savoirs and savoir comprendre, above)

(c) Interact and mediate

Part of evidence of savoir faire (see above)

(See savoir faire, above)

Critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager)

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discussion, we need to consider the variety of purposes and circumstances for which assessment is needed. Purposes for Assessment

Following Gipps (1994), I begin the discussion of the purposes in the assessment of ICC in terms of the contrast between assessment for accountability and educational assessment. Gipps writes from an AngloAmerican perspective where there was and increasingly still is strong societal pressure to hold educational institutions accountable for the quality of the education they are providing and the fi nance they need to do so. Accountability is sought through quantifiable evidence of learners’ abilities gained in compulsory, further and higher education. Moreover, the comparisons between institutions on the basis of qualifications obtained by their students give these an increased importance. In these circumstances, the question of reliability is particularly significant and there is a tendency to seek modes of assessment that break knowledge and abilities into closely defi ned and observable sub-sets. These can then be related to the teaching process, by asking whether what has been taught has in fact been learnt by students. Secondly, they can be assessed separately and with high reliability. ‘Input’ can be related to quantifiable and objectively observable ‘output’. This approach carries a number of presuppositions and implications. First, it assumes a ‘transmission’ view of teaching, i.e. that knowledge and abilities can be identified, isolated and transferred to the learner. Second, what is to be transmitted can be put into an order of difficulty, and learners acquire knowledge and abilities in that order, ‘progressing’ in a linear fashion. Third, the progress can be measured on a linear scale and the individual’s progress can be reported in terms of comparison with what would be expected of any cross-section group from the general population to which the individual belongs, i.e. the assessment is norm-referenced. Fourth, such assessment usually takes place at the end of a course of learning, often corresponding to a point of transfer in the education system when students leave an institution to go into employment or move to another educational institution. In this case the students’ achievement is certificated on the basis of assessment and the certificate is a passport to new opportunities for employment or study. The importance of the certificate for the individual reinforces the need for reliable assessment and objective testing of component parts of their knowledge and abilities. In language testing this general approach has been realised as the assessment of each defi ned skill separately from others. The techniques used have been chosen for their reliability as well as their validity, particularly the possibility of assessing students’ work without variation from one assessor to another. In terms of the assessment of ICC, this approach would mean the testing of each savoir separately, perhaps each objective

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within each savoir, using techniques where there was little or no room for disagreement among assessors about the evidence for learners’ different skills and knowledge. The problem with this approach in general is that it atomises knowledge and abilities and does not reflect the dependency relationships between component parts. It does not reflect how individuals use their knowledge and abilities nor the psychological reality for the individuals concerned. There is a lack of face validity. With respect to the five savoirs of ICC, the problem would be similar: there would be no reflection of the interdependence among the five savoirs and linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourses competences. Yet this interdependence is a crucial part of the defi nition of each competence and the savoirs within intercultural competence. The psychological reality of ICC would not be adequately represented in this approach to assessment either. The experience of communicating and interacting in interculturally competent ways is difficult to describe in its complexity and would certainly not be described by isolated tests. As suggested in the previous section, where I attempted to identify means of assessing each savoir, the evidence provided from a learner’s work on a text or interaction with a person would be attributable to more than one savoir or competence. An alternative approach is to assess knowledge and abilities as they are used and evident in activities which might be an application of what has been learnt. Since this kind of evidence is complex and can seldom be quantified in terms of component parts, it is usually assessed holistically against descriptions of what is a satisfactory performance (criterion-referenced). In this perspective, progression need not be defi ned as increasing, quantifi able acquisition of knowledge and abilities on a linear scale. Instead, there is also the possibility of defi ning progression in terms of different kinds of acquisition of knowledge and abilities – ‘completing the jigsaw’, to use my earlier analogy for curriculum planning. Progression from one criterion to another would involve a qualitative rather than a quantitative change, a move to a different skill, for example. With respect to ICC, progression in this approach might mean that savoir comprendre is described in terms of different kinds of understanding of other people’s practices. Progression from one to the other, to a stage closer to what is defi ned as savoir comprendre for the intercultural speaker, does not depend on an increase in quantity of knowledge but rather on a leap in insight. Gipps (1994) cites a distinction made in cognitive science between novices and experts: they diff er from each other not just in terms of quantity, that is the extent of their knowledge, but also in the types of models they have constructed for themselves, the types of conceptions and understandings they bring to a problem and the strategies and approaches they use. (Gipps, 1994: 25)

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I suggested in the previous section that learners might provide their own evidence and assessment of, for example, savoir faire, because of the diffi culties of collecting evidence in real time. The self-analysis required in this might itself be the subject of assessment by criteria, to establish levels or models, in Gipps’ terms, of self-understanding as well as performance in intercultural communication. The difficulty of formulating criteria is, however, easy to see, as is the accompanying problem of reliable use of the criteria by diff erent assessors in diff erent situations.7 Such problems are serious where assessment is done for purposes of accountability and in particular for certification in its usual form. Since certification is usually used as a guarantee that the individual has acquired certain more or less clearly defi ned knowledge and abilities, differing interpretations of criteria undermine the guarantee. This is all the more the case when there is no specification in the certificate of the guaranteed knowledge and abilities to accompany the certificate. The gate-keeping function of certification does not require evidence of knowledge and abilities, but only confidence in the guarantee. An alternative perspective arises, however, when certification is uncoupled from its function in accountability procedures and gate-keeping and when certification is seen as a means of documenting an individual’s knowledge and abilities. The most comprehensive form this might take is the portfolio, in which learners keep evidence and evaluations thereof collected by themselves and their teachers. That evidence could be classified according to the various competences and savoirs, with some evidence contributing to the attestation of more than one of these, and to the interdependency of all of them. The portfolio could of course also include test results of a traditional kind where separate components of competences – notably linguistic competence – can be reasonably assessed by objective tests. Given the still prevailing dominance of psychometric assessments, these would doubtless continue to be the main evidence consulted by the gate-keepers of education and employment, but such people could not ignore the existence of other evidence and its significance in the prediction of performance, of the learner’s savoir faire in intercultural communication. At this point the validity of the evidence is seen to be more important than reliability understood as uniformity of judgements made by different assessors. Reliability in a second sense – the assumption that learners will perform equally well each time they are assessed or, more importantly, each time they apply their knowledge and abilities in the future – is also of importance to those who accept the evidence of the portfolio. The validity of the portfolio – the degree to which it embodies ICC – and the reliability of predictions of equal performance on every occasion – are closely related. In addition, there remains the question of the level of performance.

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Assessing Levels of Intercultural Communicative Competence

In the discussion in Chapter 4 of the concept of a threshold level for ICC, I suggested that several factors should be considered: that a threshold is not a stage on the route to native-speaker competence; that the setting of a threshold as a qualification must take pedagogical and motivational issues into account; and that a threshold would be defi ned according to the environment in which learning is taking place. I pointed out that van Ek’s suggestion for a threshold was to set it at a lower level than ideally required in order to give learners an attainable goal, rather than one which seemed distant and out of reach. I further suggested that a threshold can be better defi ned as the attainable goal of being a competent intercultural speaker in a given situation, rather than a stage on the way to the unattainable goal of native-speaker competence or indeed of a universally applicable intercultural competence. The discussion in this chapter of assessment of atomised components or of holistic performance of ICC is also relevant to the question of defi ning a threshold, and other levels below and above. Assessment of separate components could allow a threshold and other levels to be set for each one.8 The use of a portfolio to document competence allows a combination of atomised and holistic assessment. It also provides the means of maintaining a close relationship between assessment and teaching since some documentation would be chosen from the teaching and learning process. A portfolio would therefore allow levels to be set for each component and for holistic performance, with criteria specifying levels of attainment appropriately for each competence and savoir. A portfolio also allows a combination of criterion-referenced documentation with normreferenced tests, for example where the portfolio is to be used as a passport to further education opportunities. A portfolio might thus contain: examination certificates and a specification of the linguistic skills examined; a copy of an audio-recording and commentary in which the learner has interviewed someone in the foreign language about their understanding of the political system and/or their own social identities and socialisation; a reflective account of the learner’s experience of a visit to a country where the language is spoken natively; a reflective account of an occasion when the learner had to act as guide and interpreter to a visitor to their own institution; a reflective account of an experience of using the foreign language as a lingua franca; the content and results of a test of the learner’s factual knowledge of the history and/ or contemporary events of a country whose language they are learning; an example of an annotated translation from the foreign language with the teacher/assessor’s comments and assessment; a linguistic and cultural curriculum vitae describing the learner’s experience both within and outside formal learning; one or more completed examples of the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (or one of its derivatives). The curriculum

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vitae would be the organising frame, allowing the reader of the portfolio to see the biographical progression in ICC, and the relationship of documents to each other. Let us consider the nature of a threshold and associated levels for each savoir. Although attitude measurement is well developed in the social sciences (Oppenheim, 1992), albeit constantly under revision (e.g. Goerres & Prinzen, 2012), the defi nition of savoir être in terms of ‘willingness’, ‘readiness’, ‘interest’ and the ability to act accordingly does not fit well with attitude scales. This is partly because the specifications suggested in Chapter 3 are not simply attitudinal – dispositions to act, ‘I would do …’, if the opportunity arose – and the kinds of assessment exercise suggested in this chapter require a shift of perspective, not a movement along a scale. This being the case, the notion of threshold relates to the existence or absence of perspective shift, rather than to a defi nition of a critical point on a scale. On the other hand, learners may be able to shift perspective on some occasions but not all, and progress could then be defi ned in terms of frequency of perspective shift. Establishing levels for knowledge (savoirs) is less problematic. It is possible to quantify the knowledge retained from a course or the knowledge acquired at a given point on a given topic. The decision to include a topic in assessment would have to be taken on grounds of learners’ predicted needs and/or a rationale for what are central issues and topics in the knowledge of a society and its dominant cultural practices. Since I suggested that ‘deep learning’ needs to be assessed by techniques such as essay writing, levels in this case would be determined by criterion referencing. On the other hand, it is difficult to envisage a defi nition of a threshold for knowledge unless learners’ predicted needs could be defi ned very precisely, when a threshold in absolute terms would mean mastery of the knowledge so defi ned. The objectives for the skill of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre), it was suggested earlier, can be assessed in connection with the assessment of savoirs and savoir faire. Where the emphasis is upon identifying perspectives and the sources of dysfunctions or misunderstandings, the level of success can be measured in terms of how comprehensive the interpretation of a document or an event has been. Criteria would thus involve a degree of quantification, although precise measurement is unlikely to be possible. Where savoir comprendre includes mediation in real time, and is linked to savoir faire, a threshold can be defi ned as the satisfactory resolution of a problem or misunderstanding, i.e. satisfactory to those concerned. This is therefore a pragmatic assessment. Criteria to determine levels above or below the threshold could include reference to the speed of the resolution. Such criteria would not include precise measurement. It is also the case here, as with savoir être, that learners might be assessed on the frequency of success, documented over time, since the complexity of mediation

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processes militates against the possibility of assessing savoir comprendre on one occasion only. The same argument is relevant for savoir faire (and that part of savoir s’engager which is to be assessed with savoir faire). There is no guarantee that success on one occasion means success on a later and more complex occasion. The situation is made more difficult because savoir faire is probably best assessed through analysis of performance by learners themselves, retrospectively. It is extremely demanding to ask a learner to reflect on the degree of complexity of the interaction in order to determine a level of success against a criterion description of a threshold. Documentation of frequency of success remains the only practical option. Finally, savoir apprendre is parallel to savoir comprendre in that the degree of success of identifying significant references, or using sources or interactions with others to identify significant references in an event or document, can be assessed in terms of the degree of comprehensiveness of a learner’s explanations and interpretations. The assessor would need to determine which references are crucial to understanding and which are complementary. The threshold performance would therefore be a satisfactory interpretation and explanation of the crucial references. Inclusion of complementary references would be deemed better than satisfactory. Again the issue is how comprehensive the interpretation is, as with savoir comprendre, but with the requirement that the learner be able to cope with data that are new to them. Clearly, one document or event can include both familiar and new data, so that some of the objectives of both savoir apprendre and savoir comprendre can be identified and assessed within the same performance. On the other hand, it is also possible to isolate objectives for assessment purposes by giving the learner specific data, separately or within a document or event, to which they have to pay particular attention. The degree of difficulty of the task would be dependent on the complexity of the data and the location and frequency of occurrence. Conclusion

I referred earlier to Gipps’ distinction between accountability assessment and educational assessment. Her characterisation of the latter corresponds to many of the approaches to assessment which I have suggested here. This similarity is due in part to my agreement with her stance on assessment, in part to my view that the development of ICC is an educational process and in part to the nature of the competences I have been considering. It seems to me inevitable that, once the objectives and specifications have been defi ned as they were in Chapters 2 and 3, the forms of assessment follow logically from them. The cultural dimension of ICC – as opposed to linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence – is inseparably linked with educational values, as well as

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having pragmatic and skills-based significance. In this sense, traditional claims that language learning has educational value are borne out in the acquisition of the knowledge, skills and attitudes of intercultural competence. One important aspect of all assessment is its effect upon teaching and learning. When both teachers and learners can see that complex competences are assessed in complex ways, they are reassured in the pursuit of their objectives. It is the simplification of competences to what can be ‘measured’ in an ‘objective’ way which has a detrimental effect: the learning of trivial facts, the reduction of subtle understanding to generalisations and stereotypes, the lack of attention to interaction and engagement because these are not tested. When assessment recognises all aspects of ICC, even if they cannot be quantified and reduced to a single score, then learners can see their efforts rewarded, and the teacher and curriculum planner can give full attention to the whole phenomenon of ICC rather than only that which can be represented statistically. Coda: Measurement of Intercultural and Related Competences

The drive for measurement and comparisons already noted in this chapter in 1997 has exploded in the intervening years. In the United States, the National Council for State Supervisors for Languages and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages published in 2017 ‘Can-do statements’ which include descriptions of levels of proficiency in ‘intercultural communication’ (www.actfl.org/publications/ guidelines-and-manuals/ncssfl-actfl-can-do-statements). The Council of Europe published in 2018 the CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors (https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-newdescriptors-2018/1680787989) which includes inter alia scales of descriptors for ‘Building on pluricultural competence’ and ‘Mediating communication’. In 2018, the Council of Europe also published its Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC; www.coe.int/en/web/education/competences-for-democratic-culture) which includes descriptors at three levels for the 20 competences in the model, including, for example, ‘Openness to cultural otherness’ and ‘Linguistic, communicative and plurilingual skills’ which refers to mediation. In late 2017, the OECD launched its Global Competence Framework (www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2018-global-competence.htm) and includes as one of its ‘dimensions’ the ability to ‘Understand and appreciate the perspectives and world views of others’. These had all been anticipated by the UNESCO publication in 2014 of Global Citizenship Education: Preparing Learners for the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century (https:// en.unesco.org/news/global-citizenship-education-preparing-learnerschallenges-twenty-first-century-0) and this in turn refers to contemporary projects involving assessment, although without a detailed account.

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The process of producing descriptors is complex and described at some length in Council of Europe documents. The stages of development for the RFCDC were modelled on the approach taken in the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2001) and are described as follows: The process consisted of several stages:

1. Defi ning criteria for formulating descriptors. 2. Formulation of an initial large bank of draft descriptors. 3. Selection of descriptors based on feedback from experts and education professionals. 4. Piloting of the selected descriptors in various educational settings across Europe. 5. Scaling the descriptors to different levels of proficiency. (Council of Europe, 2018b, Vol. 2: 53) Although there is much overlap among the various documents and with elements of the model of ICC in this book, there are also differences created through the starting point and purpose of the different documents and projects. The Companion Volume takes the CEFR as its starting point and focuses on pluricultural competence rather than intercultural competence, for example. The OECD document points out that documents differ because of their starting point but have a common goal: Despite differences in their focus and scope (cultural differences or democratic culture, rather than human rights or environmental sustainability), these models share a common goal to promote students’ understanding of the world and empower them to express their views and participate in society. (OECD, 2017: 7)

In the accompanying questionnaire, there are problems with the normative assumptions about what is considered good participation and the reference to Twitter and Facebook as sources of, presumably, reliable information is strange. Participation is operationalised as: —

—

— —

—

—

I reduce the energy I use at home (e.g. by turning the heating or air conditioning down or by turning off the lights when leaving a room) to protect the environment. I choose certain products for ethical or environmental reasons, even if they are a bit more expensive. I sign environmental or social petitions online. I keep myself informed about world events instantly via or . I boycott products or companies for political, ethical or environmental reasons. I participate in activities promoting equality between men and women.

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I participate in activities in favour of environmental protection. I regularly read websites on international social issues (e.g. poverty, human rights). The notion of participation in society is not present in the model in this book although it is crucial to the idea of ‘intercultural citizenship’ discussed earlier and expanded in Byram (2008). Intercultural citizenship in operation in the projects described in an earlier chapter involves more than the specified activities here (such as boycotting products or signing petitions) although the more general statements about participation might encompass the activities from those projects. The selection of the foci on (only) ‘equality between men and women’ and ‘environmental protection’ excludes, on the other hand, many kinds of other participation and other foci. The selection is not explained. Again we meet the limitations of objective, psychometric testing and the advantages of richer descriptions, self-assessments and portfolios of data collected over time. Taking the view that assessment must serve teaching and learning, as I have done here, these advantages outweigh the limitations. — —

Progression

The view I have taken emphasises that intercultural competence is a matter of ‘competence in context’, i.e. that a learner can be competent in one context but not in another, even though some aspects of their competence can be transferred from one context to another. An absolute competence is not possible. Progression and improving competence is therefore also a matter of context as learners become more competent in one context but not necessarily in another. On the other hand, the various schemes of descriptors mentioned above present levels of proficiency in absolute terms. For example, the Companion Volume (Council of Europe, 2018a) has a scale entitled ‘Building on a pluricultural competence’ which, at the highest level, has these descriptors: •

• •

Can initiate and control his/her actions and forms of expression according to context, showing awareness of cultural differences and making subtle adjustments in order to prevent and/or repair misunderstandings and cultural incidents. Can identify differences in sociolinguistic/-pragmatic conventions, critically reflect on them, and adjust his/her communication accordingly. Can sensitively explain the background to, interpret and discuss aspects of cultural values and practices drawing on intercultural encounters, reading, film, etc. (Council of Europe, 2018a: 145)

‘[A]ccording to context’ here seems to suggest that the learner can adapt to any context. The notion of progression is that learners can do

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everything on a lower level and acquire additional competences at the next level. In the United States, the NCSSFL-ACTFL approach to intercultural competence deals with progression differently (www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/ncssfl -actfl -can-do-statements). In this document, intercultural communicative competence is defined as ‘the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from other language and cultural backgrounds’, and is described as being ‘essential for establishing effective, positive relationships across cultural boundaries, required in a global society’. Intercultural communication consists of the ability to ‘investigate’ and to ‘interact’. Each of these has a ‘benchmark’ describing the competence involved and a ‘performance indicator’, i.e. an observable behaviour which is a realisation of the benchmark competence. A comparison of the ‘Intermediate’ level and the level immediately above it, ‘Advanced’, for ‘Investigate’ illustrates how progression is conceived. In my own and other cultures I can make comparisons between products and practices to help me understand perspectives. AND In my own and other cultures I can explain some diversity among products and practices and how it relates to perspectives.

There is a progression from comparison to explanation, from establishing that diversity exists to explaining it in terms of ‘perspectives’, i.e. the beliefs and values of a group. In ‘Interaction’, the progression is conceived as a distinction between ‘functional’ and ‘competent’ interaction and between ‘familiar’ and ‘familiar and some unfamiliar’: Intermediate: I can interact at a functional level in some familiar contexts. Advanced: I can interact at a competent level in familiar and some unfamiliar contexts.

In both approaches, the notion of what the learner ‘can do’ is crucial, whether assessed by themselves or by their teacher/assessor and, if there is to be reliability in assessment, training is needed – as in all criterionbased assessment – to establish common understandings among those who assess. ‘Subjective’ assessments can be externalised, shared and become ‘objective’, but have to be related to specific contexts. What are we to make of these various schematic descriptions? They each have their histories and their contexts, although their authors may also hope that their proposals have a transferable, even universal, relevance. Above all, in the context of this book, they offer approaches to

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scaling which I have studiously avoided because of my emphasis on competence being a matter of ‘competence in situation X’. That the demand for grades and scales is likely to continue unabated means nonetheless that readers may be obliged to consider these approaches despite my caveats. Notes (1) Despite Gipps having said this two decades ago, psychometric assessment is still strong. The OECD PISA tests are a prime example. Many existing and proposed assessments are, furthermore, focused on proficiency rather than achievement (e.g. Griffith et al., 2016). What I propose here is a matter of assessment of educational achievement which has ‘face validity’ and must be convincing for learners. (2) This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves that, although much of what I have written focuses on cross-border encounters and intercultural communicative competence, the model of intercultural competence presented in this book is valid for all encounters. This chapter, like previous ones, is written with foreign language teachers in mind, but mutatis mutandis can be used by others (Cardetti et al., 2019). It is above all with respect to savoirs that most changes would need to be made since here, in an FLE context, the focus is on other societies and/or countries. Savoirs about other social groups in one’s own society would need to be described in appropriate ways. (3) This is just one, but the most visible, of the advantages I found in working interculturally and interlingually with Geneviève Zarate and I would like to state again my indebtedness to her. (4) The question of using portfolios with younger learners is addressed in the Council of Europe’s work on portfolios for its Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018b), the principles of which can also be transferred to proposals made here. To do this within this book would lead to a substantial digression which I have decided to avoid. (5) The Council of Europe’s (2009) Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters is an example of this approach (https://www.coe.int/en/web/autobiography-interculturalencounters). The Autobiography allows users to describe any kind of intercultural encounter, whether within their own country and society or across country borders. (6) In an account of the genre of ‘toasting’ in Georgia, Kotthoff (1996) describes how foreigners are expected not to attempt to follow the conventions of long and complex toasts but to contribute a toast which is that of an outsider. She also tells how, on one occasion, she could not accept a toast to the reunification of Germany which was intended as a compliment, thus creating a tension in relationships which had to be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides. (7) Where the ambition is to establish criteria for use internationally as with the Council of Europe’s (2001) framework of reference for language learning and teaching, the difficulties are compounded by translation. Establishing a common understanding of criteria is crucial to reliability and difficult enough with assessors who share a native language. If they are using criteria in a foreign language or translated from a foreign language, the problems are obviously much increased. (8) These questions were also addressed in the Council of Europe’s (2018b) Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC; https://www.coe.int/ en/web/campaign-free-to-speak-safe-to-learn/reference-framework-of-competencesfor-democratic-culture), which is discussed in the Coda to this chapter.

Conclusion

In the first edition of this monograph, I used the Conclusion to raise questions about ICC and the learning of a language as a lingua franca, and about the designation ‘foreign language teaching’. In the meantime, the position of English as a lingua franca has become ever more dominant1 and the notion that a language is ‘foreign’ to a particular country ever more doubtful. Mobility due to economic globalisation is the prime reason for both. English has become – at least for the foreseeable future – the global lingua franca and, as people take their languages with them, most countries have speakers of many languages resident in them, meaning that the languages are no longer ‘foreign’. For convenience, in this edition I have continued to use ‘foreign’ as I explained at the beginning since every designation raises its own problems. In the first edition I also emphasised that ‘teaching’ should be replaced by ‘education’. The fi nal quotation from 1997 remains as powerful as ever and one which should fittingly close this second edition too: What we may learn by studying other cultures [and languages, I would add] are not merely possibilities of different ways of doing things, other techniques. More importantly we may learn different possibilities of making sense of human life, different ideas about the possible importance that the carrying out of certain activities may take on for a [person] trying to contemplate the sense of [their] life as a whole. (Winch, 1964: 321) Paralipomena

The first version of this monograph was written in the 1990s when I first began to work with the Council of Europe. Because I had published a book on Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education in 1989 and carried out a large-scale empirical research project around the same time, my work came to the notice of John Trim who led the Council of Europe work on languages. John had been head of Linguistics in Cambridge when I was an undergraduate and he had invited me when he was Head of CILT in the 1980s to be a member of a group dealing with Language Awareness, where I also met the other doyen of language teaching in the UK, Eric Hawkins.

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I began to lecture and act as animateur on Council of Europe workshops in the 1990s and was then invited to write a supporting paper on the assessment of intercultural competence for the group which was writing what became the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In the meantime I had also worked with Albane Cain of the Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique in Paris and met Geneviève Zarate at the Bureau pour l’Enseignement de la Langue et de la Civilisation Françaises, also in Paris. I invited Genevieve to be my partner in responding to the Council of Europe’s request. Subsequently I was invited to spend a few months in Washington, DC at the National Foreign Language Centre, where I wrote almost the whole of the fi rst edition of this monograph. Other people have helped me throughout all this. Pat Allatt, although not a linguist, saw the possibility of developing the empirical project and taught me a lot about designing and running projects. Joe Sheils, Johanna Panthier, Philia Thalgott and Christopher Reynolds at the Council of Europe encouraged me in my work there and became good friends over many years. Martyn Barrett began to work with the Council of Europe and brought his psychologist’s way of thinking which opened new vistas for me; Martyn too became a good friend. This is, however, not a list of acknowledgements, as that has been done at the beginning. It is a reflection and afterthoughts about academic writing, and it is the link with the Council of Europe which is central to this. For, although the School of Education in Durham was a good place to teach and research, it was the stimulus of working at the European level and meeting a wide range of pleasant and intelligent – and I do not hesitate to use the word – people which was crucial for me from the 1990s until today. It is all the more that I regret that the Language Policy Division has now disappeared. It had a unique way of working which gave space for ideas but a space which was always connected directly with policy and practice. The space was both metaphorical and real since workshops took place not just in Strasbourg but throughout Europe, which in turn ensured meeting people with many different ways of thinking about languages and language teaching. The space was also flexible and from the early 2000s, when I had become an adviser to the Language Policy Unit with Jean-Claude Beacco, we changed the focus from modern foreign languages to all languages, including fi rst languages/languages of schooling. Once that project was well launched I ‘retired’ from my position and continued only with the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, with the intention that it would be the last thing I would do. Then I was invited to become part of the group which would write a new ‘framework’ for intercultural competence and democratic citizenship, modelled on the CEFR and, in a sense, carrying on the attempt to deal systematically with interculturality in ways that the CEFR had not manged to do. The eventual publication of

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the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) became a major, ‘flagship’ project of the Council of Europe, of which I am sure John Trim would have approved. The impact of all that on my academic writing can in some ways be traced quite clearly, from the first request to write for the CEFR team, to further documents, often written with Jean-Claude Beacco, over the following two decades, and later with the RFCDC group. Yet there are many other influences which cannot be traced; they are just there. In one of his interviews, John Trim said that when he was beginning his academic career, one just read everything that others had written and then wrote one’s own text, without attempting to give references; the CEFR was originally written in this way, with no list of references. Pressures of contemporary academe require references and these were later added as a bibliography of relevant books and articles. Yet it was surely not exhaustive and could never be. It seems today impossible to read ‘everything’, since there is so much written. Yet, although I was a generation behind John Trim, it was possible to do so in the 1960s when I did research on bilingualism. There were just three or four authors – Fishman, Weinreich, Jones and Haugen – and after that one was free to think for oneself. My PhD thesis, on a different topic, had a bibliography of less than two pages. Today students have to read for months and months and often feel anxious if there is not much to read. Yet it should be a liberation to be able to work things out for oneself, and this was indeed my experience when writing this monograph. The National Foreign Language Centre had no library of its own and, although I could go to Georgetown University, it was a similar liberation to just write and then ask colleagues – and here I again acknowledge the help from Mimi Met and Ross Steele – to comment, and then keep writing. Adding references, to suit the contemporary mode, came later, and I hope will be useful for readers. The liberation of reading little and simply working things out is, however, a pleasure I recommend. Note (1) There are of course many other lingua francas, but it is interesting to note that Holmes and Dervin, having planned a book on lingua francas and interculturality, say that ‘we attracted very few contributions that dealt with lingua francas other than English’ despite the world being ‘full of others’ (Holmes & Dervin, 2016: 1).

Appendix: Glastonbury Public Schools Project

The Glastonbury Public Schools1 Foreign Languages in Elementary School (FLES) program has a common curriculum taught across the district. FLES teachers have access to district-wide unit plans which include the unit’s ‘essential questions’, ‘enduring understanding’, target vocabulary and grammar structures, and common cross-curricular connections. The teachers are responsible for creating their own daily lesson plans that accomplish the unit goals. For the purpose of this project, we decided to demonstrate how a common elementary language unit can be modified to incorporate activities that help students develop intercultural competence while still working to develop the students’ linguistic communicative abilities. After considering several units, we chose the ‘Fruits from around the World’ unit (…). As the name of the unit implies, the students would have opportunities to discover different fruits eaten worldwide, and thus acquire factual information – corresponding to the knowledge element of the framework above – with the supporting lessons focused on language acquisition. In other words, the intercultural aspects of this unit are often disseminated from the teacher as facts rather than as new knowledge being discovered by the students themselves. (Example: students were told ‘pineapples are tropical and are grown in warm places’. (…) Before beginning the unit, Dorie gave the students an exit slip that the students completed in the classroom with their teachers. The exit slip asked: What questions do you have about fruit from around the world? The purpose was to see what kinds of questions the students were wondering and the questions were used to guide Dorie’s teaching. What fruit do people eat? Do people in other countries eat the same fruit as we do? Are there places that don’t have fruit? Is fruit the same around everywhere? After using five classes to introduce the students to fruit and fruit-related vocabulary as well as grammar structures, Dorie gave the students an opportunity to access prior knowledge about their cultural environment 156

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by having them complete a survey. This was done in the target language and used language the students were already familiar with from class (…). When it was time to discuss the results of the survey, Dorie, like most language teachers, worried that the subtleties of the responses might be missed by her students unless they were able to discuss the results in English. To overcome this, and for a variety of additional reasons we will mention later, she partnered with the classroom teachers. Dorie met with the third grade classroom teachers to discuss the feasibility of co-teaching a mathematics class in which the students would use the results of the survey in a graphing lesson. The classroom teachers expressed excitement at the possibility of using authentic data rather than textbook examples. The collaboration was mutually beneficial in that the classroom teachers were able to provide real-life connections in their mathematics lesson and Dorie was able to expand her Spanish instructional time by discussing some of the more complex ideas with the students in their native language during the co-taught math lesson. (…) Dorie and the third grade team discussed a backup plan in case the co-taught lesson would not be possible. If this were the case, the classroom teachers were willing to use the survey data during their regular math class time and provide the graphs to Dorie to use during her regularly scheduled FLES classes. During the 45-minute math lesson, Dorie would ask, in Spanish, each of the questions represented in the survey and the students would read their answers aloud. The classroom teacher recorded the answers on chart paper and the data were then transferred into an Excel sheet. The teacher would then create two graphs to represent the answers to each of the questions: a pie chart and a bar graph. Students would then not only debate which graph more clearly represented the information collected, but they began to examine their own cultural environment as they interpreted the data (…). Some notable student observations from the co-taught math lesson: Related to fruit: • Little kids probably try to eat as much fruit as their parents. • Most people think they are eating the right amount of fruit. • Do Fruit Snacks count as fruit? • I think it’s interesting that some people’s favourite fruit is someone else’s least favourite fruit. • We all have very different tastes. • One class has favourite fruits we have never heard of. I think it’s because those students lived in different countries. (…) Related to graphing: • The pie chart is prettier. • The pie chart makes it easier to see the percent. • The pie chart is less easier [sic] to tell how many people voted for each thing. • The bar graph makes it easier to see the numbers of people voting. (…)

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The next step was to discover how these graphs might have looked different if the students had asked people from outside of our country. We accomplished this by giving the students an opportunity to interact with people from our local community. Students were given a similar survey that they would use to interview people they knew who were born in other countries. Here the ‘skills of discovery’ are complemented by ‘skills of interpreting and relating a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate to documents or events from one’s own’. Linguistic comparison and relating are linked to language awareness and are part of the process of ICC. Rather than graphing this new data, Dorie decided to create a Google Map to show the students which fruits were most and least popular in different countries around the world. Students were given one Spanish class to explore the map in the computer lab. In an effort to not allow this activity to lead to overgeneralising which can lead to stereotyping, she also discussed the concept of sample size. They were able to have this conversation in Spanish because the students were already familiar with the concept from previous discussions of sample size as part of the math lesson. For example, Dorie would point to one pin on the Google Map and ask the students in the target language: ‘How many people does this pin represent? Does it represent the entire country? Would the answer be the same or different if we asked every person in the country?’ Another piece of formative assessment of the unit was the ‘exit slip’, which is a slip of paper on which the students either answer a question or reflect on a certain aspect of the class. When the students returned to their classroom, the classroom teacher gave the students five minutes to complete an exit slip, which asked students to write any interesting new ideas or concepts they learned that day. Quotes from student exit slips: • There are so many different foods around the world. • I learned that there are two names in Spanish for a passion fruit. • Albania has a very different fruit there than us and it is hard to pronounce. • The most interesting thing I learned today was the Breadfruit because the picture of the Breadfruit did not look like bread, it looked like an apple. (…)

Note (1) Glastonbury is a small town in Hartford County, Connecticut, USA.

Reference Byram, M., Conlon Perugini, D. and Wagner, M. (2013) The development of intercultural citizenship in the elementary school Spanish classroom. Learning Languages 18 (1), 16–31. Extract: pp 19–21. [I am grateful to the Editor of Learning Languages for permission to quote.]

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Index

Note: n refer to the note. accent 51–52, 79 n(19) accountability 142, 144, 147 ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) 68, 111, 148, 151 action orientation 54, 55 adaptability 59 adult language learners 56–57 affective skills 68, 70, 133 Agar, M. 5, 79 n(13) Allatt, Pat 154 alternation 45 ambiguity 70 anthropology 34, 75 anxiety 59 applied knowledge 143 ‘Applied Linguists’ 33–34, 72 appropriateness 33–34, 36 n(3) Arab Gulf States 29–30, 31, 58 Argyle, M. 18–19 Aristotle 75–76 assessment 3, 126–152 achievement assessment 126 certification 105, 126, 127, 142, 144, 145 communicative competence 15 context of intercultural communicative competence 32–33 criteria for 130–142, 143–144, 146 criterion-referenced assessment 83–84, 143, 145 and curriculum design 103 ethical issues 15 framework 6–8 holistic 127, 128, 132, 143, 145 intended learning outcomes 82, 119 objectives 82–102 performance 129 psychometric testing 128, 129, 130, 144, 150 purposes for assessment 142–144

qualitative assessment 83 savoirs 128–142 symbolic competence 70 transparency 82 attitudinal factors assessment 129, 130–131, 146 curriculum design 107, 109–110 model for intercultural communicative competence 43, 44–46, 59, 62–63 objectives 84–85, 95 transferability 141 Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (Council of Europe) 102 n(8), 145, 152 n(5), 154–155 autonomy 15, 32, 41, 44, 58, 91, 95, 141 Baiutti, M. 81 n(28) Baker, C. 17 Baker, W. 11 n(7) Bakhtin, M. 71, 101 n(5) Barnett, R. 122 Barrett, M. 67, 81 n(27), 112, 116, 154 Barth, F. 46 Bauer, J.R. 76 Beacco, J-C. 154, 155 Beard, M. 124 n(7) Beck, S. 38 n(21) behaviourism 82 Bell, D. 76 benchmarks 151 Bennett, M.J. 79 n(19) Berger, P.L. 45 Berlin, I. 73, 75, 76, 123 Beugelsdijk, S. 21 bicultural, being 36, 37 n(9) Bildung 37 n(7), 54, 58, 73, 101 n(5) bilingualism 17 Bochner, S. 17, 46, 133 Borghetti, C. 38 n(20), 78 n(8) boundaries 36 n(2), 46 170

Index

Bourdieu, P. 23, 24, 25, 51 Box, G.E.P. 40 Boye, S. 38 n(17) bridge metaphor 100 Byram, M. 4, 6, 24, 27, 28, 32, 44, 45, 50, 57, 58, 69, 82, 93, 95, 99, 112, 121, 122, 124, 134, 138, 150 Cain, A. 154 Calliero, C. 68 Canada 31 Canale, M. 14, 15 capabilities 75 Cardetti, F. 152 n(2) Castoldi, M. 68 Cavalli, M. 100, 101 certification assessment 105, 126, 127, 142, 144, 145 curriculum design 104, 105, 107 foreign language education (FLE) 32–33 objectives 99 Changnon, G. 22, 59, 69 China 29, 47, 53, 74, 124 n(6) Chinese 115, 116 Chomsky, N. 12–13, 82, 129 Christensen, J.G. 23, 24, 26, 51, 52 citizenship education 122 Classen-Bauer, I. 55 classroom, advantages/limitations of 91–94 code switching 35 cognitive orientation 54–55 coherence 83 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001) xvii, 14, 32, 34, 83, 99–100, 124 n(4), 149, 154–155 communication, definition of 98 communicative competence 4, 12–18, 21, 23, 29, 32–34, 96–99, 120 communicative language teaching (CLT) 6, 43, 69, 71, 119–120 communities, internationalisation of 14–15 community versus society, definition 11 n(7)

171

Companion Volume with New Descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018) 34–35, 99, 100, 124 n(4), 148, 149, 150 comparative methods 28, 93 competence, definition 10, 13, 21, 36 n(3), 82, 128–129 ‘competence,’ use of term 10 conflict 101 n(5) Conlon Perugini, D. 68, 116 Coste, D. 100, 101 Council of Europe 8, 12, 13, 14, 31–32, 34–36, 81 n(27), 83, 99, 100, 105, 123, 148, 149, 150, 153–154 course planning 119–121 COVID-19 xv, 10 n(2) criterion-referenced assessment 83–84, 143, 145 critical cultural awareness assessment 140–142 attitudinal factors 45–46 curriculum design 109 developmental factors 66–68 in educational settings 57, 58 objectives 90 power relations 26, 72 relationship with other elements of intercultural competence 58–59 teacher’s ethical responsibilities 121–124 thresholds of competence 107 critical methods 28 critical reflection 45–46, 94 critical self-reflection 98 critical thinking skills 68, 118 cross-cultural relations 20 cross-curricular cooperation 5, 55, 76, 92, 122 Cultnet xiv cultural capital 24 cultural competence 13–14, 99 cultural identity 28, 31, 51, 133 cultural relativism 56 culture definitions of 37 n(10), 50–51 national cultures 11 n(7), 23–28, 46 ‘culture shock’ 17, 101 n(1), 133 Cummins, J. 124 n(2) curiosity 45, 62–63, 131–134

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curriculum 103–124 assessment 103 attitudinal factors 107, 109–110 certification 104, 105, 107 critical cultural awareness 109 hidden curriculum 124 n(1) knowledge 109, 134–136 linguistic competence 105, 109, 114, 120 national curriculum 38 n(18) objectives 82, 108, 112–113, 117 sequencing 109–110, 114, 118–119 thresholds of competence 105–107, 113–114, 118 Davies, A. 16 Deardorff, D. 79 n(18) decentring 45, 53 declarative knowledge 48, 93, 119–120, 134 decontextualisation 92 deep learning 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 137, 146 democracy 57, 74, 122 see also Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe, 2018) Dervin, F. 155 n(1) de-schooling 11 n(8) developmental factors 67–68, 108, 112, 116 dialects 35 dialogic teaching 71 dictionaries 16, 23 diplomacy 1, 42 discourse analysis 14, 34 discourse competence 16, 60, 61 discovery skills 43–44, 46, 49, 59–61, 65–66, 88–90, 93, 137–138 Doyé, P. 45, 54, 55, 56 Driscoll, P. 67 education policy 83 educational philosophies 44 elementary school learners 56, 68, 104–105, 116, 120–121, 152 n(4), 156–158 Ellemers, N. 25 emotion, engaging 70 see also affective skills

empathy 59, 76 English as a Foreign Language 57–58 English as a Lingua Franca 30, 117, 153 English as an International Language 58 environmental crisis 57, 122, 149–150 Ertelt-Vieth, A. 48 essentialism 24, 38 n(19) ethical issues 15, 121–124 ethnic identities 26, 42 ethnocentricity 48, 65, 114–115 ethnography 14, 33–34, 66, 72, 123, 138 Eurocentrism xi, 6, 29 European integration 31–32 evaluation 3 evaluative orientation 54–55 exchange students 42, 91 experiential learning 141 extremism 32 Fairclough, N. 79 n(12) fascism 1–2 fieldwork 94–95, 108, 109–110, 139 first language acquisition 13 Fleming, M. 10, 13, 82, 83 foreign language education (FLE) assessment 32–33, 127 beyond the classroom 91 communicative competence 13, 14, 15, 22 context 29 host status 53 national cultures 23–25 native-speaker models 16–17, 27 non-verbal communication 19, 59 otherness 28 perspective of book 7, 12, 153 political education 54–59 power relations 25 terminology 4–6, 153 Foreign Languages in Elementary Schools (FLES) 120–121, 156–158 form as meaning 70 Forster, E.M. 2 French 31, 110–115 friskole 11 n(8) frontiers 36 n(2) fruit lesson 120–121, 156–158 Furnham, A. 17, 46, 133 Gagel, W. 54, 122 Gao, F. 37 n(9)

Index

gate-keeping 104, 144 Geertz, C. 24 genre 47 Gipps, C. 127–128, 129, 130, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147 Glastonbury Public Schools Project 156–158 global citizenship 148 ‘global competence’ 111, 126 Global Competence Framework (OECD, 2017) 126, 148 globalisation xv, 49, 77 n(1), 153 Gonçalves Matos, A. 81 n(29), 91 Gräfnitz, S. 68 grammars 23 group identity 3, 23, 25–26, 97 Gudykunst, W.B. 21–22, 23, 59–60 guest roles 52–53 Guilherme, M. 80 n(24) Habermas, J. 13, 14 habitus 38 n(18) Hawkins, E. 153 Heidenfeldt, W. 70 hidden curriculum 124 n(1) Himmelmann, G. 122 Hofstede, G. 21, 69 holistic approaches 110, 127, 128, 132, 143, 145 Holliday, A. 37 n(8), 38 n(19), 71 Holmes, P. 155 n(1) Hosack, I. 71, 125 n(10) host status 43, 49, 52 Houghton, S.A. 81 n(29) Hsieh, J.J.C. 115 human rights 55, 56, 58, 72–76 humanistic approaches 57 humanitarian crises 57 Hymes, D. 12–13, 14, 33, 82, 129 icons 19–20 idealised language ability 13, 41 identity cultural identity 28, 31, 51, 133 ethnic identities 26, 42 group identity 3, 23, 25–26, 97 national identity 26 postmodernism 78 n(8) savoir se transformer 81 n(29) social identities 25, 27, 28, 32, 42–43, 46, 50, 60, 91, 97

173

idioms 27 independent learning 95–96 instrumental knowledge 49 interaction, skills of 42–44, 47–49, 59, 61–67, 88–90, 137–140 interactionist perspectives 24, 59–60 intercultural citizenship (ICit) 4, 29, 72, 122, 150 intercultural communicative competence definitions 3–6, 9–10, 12–39 model 40–81 intercultural competence 34–36, 60, 61–67, 113, 152 n(2) Intercultural Reflection Tool 68 intercultural responsibility 80 n(24) intercultural speakers 16, 27, 41, 42–44, 60, 61, 96–99, 105 interdependency 45 interdisciplinary approaches 76, 97 see also cross-curricular cooperation inter-ethnic communication 26 inter-group relations 20–23 internationalisation 14–15 internationalism 122 internet 93, 102 n(9), 112 see also social media interpretation skills 48–49, 65, 87–88, 93, 97, 137, 146–147 Jackson, J. 95 Jaeger, C. xv Japan 38 n(24) Jia Yuxin 8 jigsaw metaphor 104, 109, 143 Johnson, S. xv Karagiannaki, E. 68 Kearney, E. 71 Keneman, M.L. 70–71 kinesics 19 knowledge see also savoirs applied knowledge 143 assessment 146 curriculum design 109, 134–136 declarative knowledge 48, 93, 119–120, 134 deep learning 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 137, 146 instrumental knowledge 49

174

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

knowledge (Continued) lesson planning 120 model for intercultural communicative competence 46–50, 59–60, 63–64 objectives 85–87, 92 procedural knowledge 48, 93, 119–120 process knowledge 47 relational knowledge 47 theoretical knowledge 47–48, 64 unconscious knowledge 47, 48 Kohlberg, L. 45 Kohler, M. 100 Kolb, D.A. 95, 141 Kotthoff, H. 152 n(6) Kramsch, C. 16, 27, 69–70, 71, 72, 78 n(8), 80 n(20), 126 languaculture 5 language academies 23 Language Learning for European Citizenship (Council of Europe) 31–32 language planning/policy 7, 38 n(24) Le Page, R.B. 28 learning biographies 95–96 Leblanc, C. 31 Lederer, B. 58 lesson planning 119–121 levels of competence 53–54, 145–147 see also progression lifelong learning 91, 95–96, 104 Lin, W.-C. 115, 116 lingua francas in academia 124 n(7) Arab Gulf States 30 and cultural capital 24 English as a Lingua Franca 30, 117, 153 foreign language education (FLE) 5, 29 geopolitics of 107–108 globalisation 153 models of communicative competence 41 social identities 25–26 sociocultural competence 17 Taiwan 117 linguistic competence curriculum design 105, 109, 114, 120 definitions 15

foreign language education (FLE) 18, 20–22, 28 model for intercultural communicative competence 59–61 objectives 97 linguistic imperialism 31 literature 74, 76, 81 n(29), 97 ‘live into’ 57, 74 Lo Bue, C. 68 Luckmann, T. 45 Marks, A.K. 37 n(9) mastery 17, 27, 43, 146 Matsuo, C. 11, 38 n(17), 71 media 19–20, 47, 49, 92, 94, 108 mediation 49, 53, 72, 88, 99–101, 137, 146–147 Melde, W. 37 n(4), 44, 45 Met, M. 155 metacognition 129, 141 meta-commentary 61 methods of analysis 25, 26–27, 28, 58 migration 1, 2, 102 n(9) misunderstandings 64, 65, 88, 136, 137, 146 Modern Languages Projects (Council of Europe) 14 moral issues 56 moral relativism 72–76 motivation 106 mutual causality relationships 43 national communities 14–15, 42 national cultures 11 n(7), 23–28, 46 national curriculum 38 n(18) national identity 26 national memory 63–64, 86, 92, 93 nationalism xv, 11 n(7) native-speaker models concepts of progression 104 foreign language education (FLE) 15, 16–17 and the intercultural speaker 61 language teaching 41 non-verbal communication 19, 59 power relations 27, 52 social identities 43 thresholds of competence 105–106, 145 unquestioning acceptance of authority 71

Index

negotiation skills 61, 101 Nemouchi, L. 77 n(2), 78 n(9), 91 neo-colonialism 58, 125 n(12) non-language subjects 5 see also cross-curricular cooperation non-verbal communication in the classroom 93 foreign language education (FLE) 18–20 importance of 35–36 model for intercultural communicative competence 50, 59 models of communicative competence 41 objectives 96 savoir être 133 Norway 57, 81 n(33) Nostrand, H.L. 53 Nussbaum, M. 75 objectives assessment 129, 130, 131–142 curriculum design 108, 112–113, 117 model for intercultural communicative competence 61–67, 82–102 OECD 126, 148, 149 orientations to act 54, 129, 146 otherness in assessment 132–133 in the classroom 92 foreign language education (FLE) 5, 6, 28 in the media 94 model for intercultural communicative competence 52, 59, 63 models of communicative competence 96–97 objectives 91 specific versus general ‘other’ 108 unconscious responses to 95 outsiders 3–4 Panthier, J. 154 Papadopoulos, I. 68 paralanguage 19, 35 paralipomena 153 Parmenter, L. 8, 32 partial competences 49, 60

175

participation 123, 149–150 peace studies 55 Pennycook, A. 58 performance 53–54, 91, 107, 129, 143, 147 performance indicators 151 philosophy 68, 75 PISA 126, 152 n(1) planning 119–121 pluralism 72–76 pluricultural competence 34–36, 150 pluricultural space 100 plurilingual repertoires 35, 47 politeness 6 political education 44, 54–59, 66–68, 72, 90, 121–124 political engagement 123 populism 1–2 portfolios 132, 133, 134, 139, 144, 145–146 Porto, M. 116 Portugal 79 n(16) post-structuralism 71 power relations 3–4, 23–28, 52, 69–72 Poyatos, F. 19, 59 prejudice 39 n(26), 45, 47, 55, 56 presuppositions 61, 63, 65, 138 primary school learners 56, 68, 104–105, 116, 120–121, 152 n(4), 156–158 procedural knowledge 48, 93, 119–120 process knowledge 47 proficiency 96, 99, 105, 126 progression 104–105, 109, 130, 142, 143, 150–152 progressive education 11 n(8) pronunciation 51–52, 79 n(19) psychology 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 51–52, 154 psychometric testing 128, 129, 130, 144, 150 Qatar 30 qualitative assessment 83–84 Quebec 31 racism 56 radicalism 32 real world/classroom dichotomy 92 real-time interactions 13, 84, 94–95, 110, 140

176

Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe, 2018) x, 32, 123, 124, 124 n(1), 148, 152 n(8), 155 reflection 56, 66, 84, 94, 129, 132–133, 147 relational skills assessment 137, 146–147 cross-cultural relations 20–21 relational skills (Continued) model for intercultural communicative competence 43–44, 49, 65 objectives 87–88, 92–93, 97 relational knowledge 47 relativism 56, 73–76 re-socialisation 45 Reynolds, C. 154 ‘rich points’ 79 n(13) Ricoeur, P. 101 n(5) Risager, K. xi, 28, 38 n(17), 38 n(22), 72, 80 n(20), 124 n(8), 125 n(9) Roberts, C. 14, 138 Ruben, B.D. 20 Ryle, G. 119 savoir apprendre/faire 72, 84, 129, 137–140, 141, 147 see also discovery skills; interpretation skills savoir comprendre 129–130, 137, 146–147 savoir être 107, 129, 130–134, 146 see also attitudinal factors savoir interpréter 81 n(29) savoir se transformer 81 n(29) savoir s’engager 26, 58–59, 129, 130, 140–142 see also critical cultural awareness second language teaching (SLT) 7 self-assessment 83–84, 96, 130, 133, 141, 144, 147 self-awareness 132–133, 139 self-identification 67 sensory information 95 sequencing in curriculum 109–110, 114, 118–119 shared meanings 46, 50 shared worlds 23, 46 Shi, B. 74

Shiels, J. 154 Silvey, P. 68 simplifications 41 Simpson, H. 67 social competence 15, 16, 21, 60 social distinctions 64 social group theory xv social identities 25, 27, 28, 32, 42–43, 46, 50, 60, 91, 97 Social Identity Development Theory 67 social media 19–20, 47, 149 social psychology 51–52 social responsibility 15 socialisation 3, 23, 45, 46, 47, 64, 86, 135 sociocultural competence 13–14, 16–17, 21, 25, 60 sociolinguistic competence 13–14, 16, 18, 22, 34, 60, 61, 113 sociological interactionist perspectives 24, 59–60 socio-pragmatics 35 soujourners 1–3 Spanish 53, 56, 108, 116, 120, 156–158 speech act theory 14, 34 speech communities 51 spiral curricula 110 Spitzberg, B.H. 22, 59, 69 Stamou, A.G. 68 Starkey, H. 55 Stathopoulou, M. 100 Steele, R. 155 Stern, H.H. 13 strategic competence 16, 60 Street, B. 50 structuralism 71 study abroad 95 super-diversity xv Svarstad, L.K. 125 n(9) Swain, M. 14, 15 syllabus 6, 19, 37 n(11), 93, 103, 119 symbolic competence 69–72, 78 n(8), 80 n(20), 87, 93 taboos 93, 133 Tabouret-Keller, A. 28 Taiwan 115–119 Tajfel, H. 25, 26, 31 Tatsuo, I. 81 n(34) Taylor, A.J.P. 10 n(5) teacher education 7–8, 95

Index

teacher professional identity 91 teachers’ ethical responsibilities 121–124 teaching intercultural communication in context 28–32 tertiary socialisation 45 testing 11 n(6), 70, 126, 128, 129, 130, 144, 150 textbooks 56, 59, 63, 65, 93, 112 Thalgott, P. 154 them and us 3–4, 6 theoretical knowledge 47–48, 64 thresholds of competence assessment 130, 145–147, 151 curriculum design 105–107, 113–114, 118 model for intercultural communicative competence 53–54 objectives 99 tourism 1–3, 63 town-twinning 91 transferable skills 141 translanguaging 47 translation 48, 61, 97, 137 ‘transmission’ views of teaching 142 transparency 82, 83 Trim, J.L.M. 6, 14, 32, 104, 153, 155 turn-taking 47, 136

UNESCO 91, 148 United States 47, 68, 110–115, 116, 120–121, 148, 151 universalism 74

unconscious communication 20 unconscious knowledge 47, 48

Zarate, G. 80 n(21), 93, 95, 99, 152 n(3), 154

177

values 26, 33, 43, 44–45, 46, 50, 63, 66, 132 values pluralism 73–74, 125 n(12) van Ek, J.A. 14–15, 16, 17–18, 21, 29, 33, 34, 60, 61, 79 n(19), 105, 106, 124 n(4), 145 Vinall, K. 70 virtual contacts 91 Wagner, M. 23, 80 n(20), 83, 97, 122 Western-centricity 24, 56, 57–58, 76 ‘what would count as’ 84, 130, 131 Whiteside, A. 69 Williams, B. 73 Williams, R. 37 n(16), 38 n(23) Winch, P. 153 ‘world readiness’ 111 Wright, W.E. 17 Wringe, C. 80 n(25) written interactions 47 young (primary/elementary) learners 56, 68, 104–105, 116, 120–121, 152 n(4), 156–158