Intercultural Learning I. Introduction—gap between languag

Intercultural Learning
    Good morning, welcome to our discussion. Today’s lecture will deal with the topic of intercultural awareness and learning.
    For too long, we have been concentrating on structures and forms and producing materials that may help our students to have perfect diphthongs or a flawless command of the third conditional while leaving out anything approaching real, valid, meaningful content.(1)If our students are to have any hope of using their language skills to genuinely comprehend and communicate in the global village, intercultural awareness is crucial.
    The concept of culture is quite expansive, nearly covering every aspect of society under the sun.(2)It could be a way of life, a set of social practices, a system of beliefs, or a shared history or set of experiences. A culture may be synonymous with a country, or a region, or a nationality or it may cross several countries and regions.(3)A culture may be synonymous with a religion, though followers of Christianity and Judaism or Islam may also come from different cultures. It is highly possible to belong to or identify oneself with more than one culture.
    What is intercultural learning? The process of becoming more aware of and better understanding one’s own culture and other cultures around the world.(4)The aim of intercultural learning is to increase international and cross-cultural tolerance and understanding.(5)This can take lots of forms—intercultural learning is by no means only a part of EFL, but has exponents in all fields of education.
    Intercultural awareness in language learning is often talked about as though it were a "fifth skill"—the ability to be aware of cultural relativity following reading, writing, listening and speaking. But, as Claire Kramsch points out: "If language is seen as social practice,(6)culture becomes the very core of language teaching. Cultural awareness must then be viewed as enabling language proficiency... Culture in language teaching is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing."
     (7)Following on from what Kramsch says above, intercultural awareness is not really therefore a skill, but a collection of skills and attitudes better thought of as a competence. What are these attitudes and skills that make up the competence? Among them are:
    —observing, identifying and recognizing
    —comparing and contrasting
    —negotiating meaning
    —dealing with or tolerating ambiguity
    —(8)effectively interpreting messages
    —limiting the possibility of misinterpretation
    —defending one’s own point of view while acknowledging the legitimacy of others
    —accepting difference
    These are very similar to many of the skills we teach normally. So what makes intercultural learning different? Raised awareness of what we do and of the vital importance of these skills already makes intercultural communicative competence a more attainable goal. Moreover—and despite the fact that the competence is more than just a body of knowledge—(9)intercultural awareness skills can be developed by designing materials which have cultural and intercultural themes as their content, a kind of loop input, if you like.
    Anyway, in the practical way when shall we introduce intercultural learning?(10)Intercultural awareness, as a fundamental feature of language and an integral part of language learning, is important at all levels.
    So much about today, I hope this lecture could help you realize the importance of intercultural learning. Thank you for listening.