Dismantling Intercultural Competence – A Proposal for Interpreting the Concept of Critical Cultural Awareness in an L2 Teaching Context

Abstract

The marginal role of intercultural competences in L2 teaching in the Polish context has recently been observed (e.g., Sobkowiak, 2015, Róg, 2016). Too general and often confusing definitions of the fundamental concepts underlying intercultural competence might be one of the rea-sons why L2 teachers reluctantly approach the idea of implementing the intercultural component into their teaching repertoires. The paper aims at discussing the importance of raising students’ critical cultural aware-ness, a central component of Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural com-petence, interpreting and extending its definition using 16 indicators or-ganised into five categories: cultural identity, decentring, reflectiveness and meta-awareness, cultural understanding, and attitudes. The paper ends with three examples of reflective tasks, based on the indicators pre-sented, which can be easily incorporated into L2 teachers’ lesson plans.

A text-based approach to developing EFL learners’ intercultural awareness in Higher Education

“…From this standpoint, these findings are critical as they indicate an openness to change and heightened ICA simply because modifying one's own understanding and taking up other perspectives are essential to understanding one's own culture and other cultures (Baker, 2012;Byram, 2021). Furthermore, such a broad understanding of culture holds a critical place in ICA as it is a gateway to identifying a given culture's intricacies (Byram, 2021) and challenging cultural stereotypes and overgeneralizations (Cierpisz, 2019).…”

“…The controversial issues depicted in the texts helped the learners take such a distanced perspective triggering emotional engagement while experiencing otherness and stimulating a sense of common humanity and human rights (Martin et al, 2021;Schat et al, 2021). These findings are critical for ICA because taking such a distanced perspective is considered learners' decentralized position from their own culturallydetermined perspective and is among the indicators of ICA (Byram, 2021;Cierpisz, 2019;Porto & Zembylas, 2020). Furthermore, given that the great majority of them had not been abroad and lacked face-to-face contact with foreign cultures, these findings also indicate that the RaTE approach was an effective tool for understanding otherness in contexts where students do not have the chance to experience otherness through real-time observations of other cultures (Corbett, 2022a).…”

“…The unchanging nature of text also requires the reader to reflect on what is written in the text, to re-read critical parts repeatedly, and to adjust his or her response to the text accordingly (Hoff, 2019). This process is similar to the decentering component of ICA as it entails moving away from one's own perspective in order to gain a fuller, more nuanced understanding (Byram, 2021;Cierpisz, 2019). Accordingly, Quist (2013) argues that the reader, similar to an ethnographer, can read a text from an inside perspective and try to understand the wider cultural environment to which the writer intentionally or unintentionally refers.…”

“…Within the framework of interculturality in language teaching, great importance is attached to any kind of practices through which learners become aware of and identify their own ethnocentric attitudes and behaviours and through which cultural differences are dealt with through an ethnorelative lens (Baker, 2012;Byram, 2021). Besides, as Cierpisz (2019) argues, in the introductory phases of activities aiming to raise ICA, learners' ethnocentric attitudes and discourses can be used to show them ethnocentricity as a threat or offense against other cultures, yet what is more important is to enable them to understand the notions behind and the mechanisms of their ethnocentric thinking patterns. From this standpoint, the learners' acceptance of their own ethnocentric attitudes and explaining the reasons behind those sayings are indicators of ICA.…”