Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning

Anthony J. Liddicoat, Angela Scarino

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118482100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This wide-ranging survey of issues in intercultural language teaching and learning covers everything from core concepts to program evaluation, and advocates a fluid, responsive approach to teaching language that reflects its central role in fostering intercultural understanding.

• Includes coverage of theoretical issues defining language, culture, and communication, as well as practice-driven issues such as classroom interactions, technologies, programs, and language assessment
• Examines systematically the components of language teaching: language itself, meaning, culture, learning, communicating, and assessments, and puts them in social and cultural context
• Features numerous examples throughout, drawn from various languages, international contexts, and frameworks
• Incorporates a decade of in-depth research and detailed documentation from the authors' collaborative work with practicing teachers
• Provides a much-needed addition to the sparse literature on intercultural aspects of language education

1

Introduction

Language, Culture, and Language Education

The study of an additional language has long been understood as a way of coming to understand another culture and its people. As a goal of language teaching, understanding others has been prominent in educational rationales in different ways, but has often been in the background of educational practice. As the processes of globalization, increased mobility, and technological development have come to shape ways of living and communicating, there has been a growing recognition of the fundamental importance of inte­grating intercultural capabilities into language teaching and learning. One of the challenges facing this integration has been to move from recognition of the need for an intercultural focus in language education to the development of practice. Early in the development of intercultural language teaching and learning, Zarate (1986) argued that the teaching and learning of culture in language education had been problematic because sufficient attention had not been given to considering what is to be taught and how. One important theme to emerge early in consideration of what and how to teach was the need to integrate language and culture in an interculturally oriented view of language education (e.g. Byram, 1991). This theme in turn has led to a rethinking of what is involved in the teaching of a second or foreign language.

Kramsch (2008) argues that in the teaching of any language the focus is not only on teaching a linguistic code but also on teaching meaning. The focus on meaning involves important shifts in understanding the fundamental concerns of language teaching and learning, which do not replace traditional foci, but add broadly to them. In particular it means engaging with broader ways of understanding the fundamental concepts involved in the theory and practice of language education: language, culture, and learning, and the relationships between them. To teach meaning is to actively engage with the processes involved in making and interpreting meaning. These go well beyond processes of comprehension of forms and structures, to consider meanings as subjective and intersubjective, growing out of not only the language in which meaning is communicated but also from the memories, emotions, perceptions, experiences, and life worlds of those who participate in the communication. Moreover, teaching meaning involves recognizing that as part of learning any additional language the learner inevitably brings more than one language and ­culture to the processes of meaning-making and interpretation. That is, there are inherent intercultural processes in language learning in which meanings are made and interpreted across and between languages and cultures and in which the linguistic and cultural repertoires of each individual exist in complex interrelationships. Languages and cultures in language learning are not independent of each other. Phipps and Gonzalez (2004) argue that: “The student of a language other than their own can be given an extraordinary opportunity to enter the languaging of others, to understand the complexity of the experience of others to enrich their own. To enter other cultures is to re-enter one’s own” (p. 3; emphasis in original). That is, language learning, because languages and cultures are always in complex interrelationship, is both an act of learning about the other and about the self and of the ­relationships which exist between self and other.

In this book, we present a view of language education that is a complex engagement with linguistic and cultural diversity through the possibilities that a focus on meaning affords the processes of teaching and learning. We see language teaching as an art that is developed over time and which remains in a constant state of development. It is a ­thoughtful, mindful activity that is not reducible to prescriptions for practice. For us then, it is important to think beyond an understanding of teaching practice as method to consider how the complexity of lived experiences of linguistic and cultural diversity shape both the focus of language teaching and learning and the processes through which it happens in classrooms – what we call a perspective. To frame this idea it is useful to consider the concept of method and how it has been understood in language teaching.

The Concept of Method

“Method” has been a well-established construct in language education and has a long history as an organizing concept in the field. In fact, the recent history of language teaching can be understood as a series of innovations in method, and a number of established named methods have come to be recognized (e.g. Grammar–Translation Method, Audiolingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching). The distinctions between methods and the comparative advantages of different methods have become a key element in debates around language teaching.

In one of the earliest formulations of method, Anthony (1963) makes a basic hierarchical distinction in his model of language teaching between approaches, methods, and techniques. For Anthony, an approach is an overarching category involving a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning and focuses on describing the nature of the material to be taught and learned. Methods are a middle-level construct that outlines the “orderly presentation of language material” (p. 65), given a particular approach. A technique is the most local level: techniques are the particular activities or strategies adopted in the classroom to accomplish a particular learning goal. In Anthony’s model, methods were viewed as procedural accounts of teaching and learning through which broader, philosophical accounts of languages teaching and learning could be enacted in classrooms. It is a point of intersection between theory and practice.

In distinguishing levels of organization in language education, Anthony did not ­elaborate the nature of method as a construct, as Richards and Rodgers (1986) have noted. Beginning with Anthony’s model, Richards and Rodgers argue that an approach is theoretical in its orientation and becomes a method, in Anthony’s sense, through a process of design that maps theory onto practice to create an instructional system. That is, method relates to instruction and is a systematized way of implementing language teaching and learning in classrooms. This system comprises objectives for learning, principles for selecting and organizing content, preferred learning tasks and activities, and roles for teachers, learners, and materials. In their model, Richards and Rodgers propose three tiers, labeled approach, design, and procedures, which essentially replicate Anthony’s model and uses “method” to refer to a superordinate category that encapsulates all three levels. In this case, method becomes a tight fusing of broader philosophy and classroom practice.

Richards and Rodgers’ model effectively removes some of the inherent diversity Anthony articulated in his understanding of method. For Anthony, approach was the prime organizing mechanism for language teaching, with any approach effectively generating multiple methods that could translate the theoretical positions of the approach into practice. For Richards and Rodgers, however, methods are not a collection of diverse ways of enacting theoretical understandings – they are unities of thought and practice that organize how languages are taught and learned. Most conventional discussions of method emphasize the unity of method as the superordinate category, and method itself has come to be seen as a statement of orthodox practice to be adopted in order to achieve effective language learning.

Critiques of Method

Although the idea of method has been powerful in understanding, describing, and evaluating teaching practice, it has not been without criticism. In particular, in spite of research on method in language teaching, the idea of method itself has often been accepted as either self-evident or as little more than a convenient heuristic for talking about ways of doing language teaching and learning. The lack of attention to the idea of method led Clarke (1983, p. 109) to maintain that “the term ‘method’ is a label without substance.” He noted that “method is so vague that it means just about anything that anyone wants it to mean, with the result that, in fact, it means nothing” (p. 111). In many cases, the term has been used in quite different ways and some fluidity is found in the meanings attributed to the term.

The critique of method, however, has not simply focused on the vagueness of the term, but also on its utility for understanding how language teaching and learning actually ­happen. Stern (1983) has suggested that there is a “fundamental weakness” in the concept of method and that the complexities of language teaching could not be reduced to methods alone. He argued that the focus on the comparative benefits of methods had become “unproductive and misguided” (p. 251) and that more sophisticated ways are needed to understand the nature of language teaching and learning in practice. We can see in work on methods a desire to establish unified parameters for language teaching practice, usually based on claims of effectiveness or efficiency, which constitute methods as homogeneous bodies of practice. In reality, teaching practice is highly diverse and variable and is influenced by the complexities of context (Liddicoat, 2004b). This means that the idea of method is insufficient to capture the necessary variability in practice that is responsive to local needs and conditions. In fact, Pennycook (1989) has argued that the debate around method has not led to a developing understanding of how languages can be taught, but rather has limited what can be known about language teaching.

The way in which methods have been presented as unified bodies of practice has led to methods often being understood statements of orthodox practice in language education. As Pennycook has claimed, “the Method concept is ultimately prescriptive rather than descriptive: Rather than analysing what is happening in language classrooms, it is a prescription for classroom behaviour” (1989, p. 611). Thus, there is a powerful discourse around methods as statements of what teachers should or must do, with the result that changes in practice in language teaching and learning have often been understood as processes of transmitting new orthodoxies. The method concept has therefore been a force for promoting homogeneity in practice and has often constructed diversity of practices as deviations from accepted norms. Moreover, the idea of method has privileged the role of the method developer over the role of the teacher as a decision-maker in the practice of teaching, subordinating practice to theory (Clarke and Silberstein, 1988). The prescriptive view of method has reproduced a view of methods as templates that constrain the options for practice. This view effectively constrains what can be done in language classrooms and limits the ways in which teachers and learners can engage with language and culture.

Moving beyond Methods

One response to the constraining effects of methods is that teachers have come to use them eclectically in language teaching, selecting from various recommendations for different purposes from the range available (e.g. Fanselow, 1987; Hammerley, 1991; Rivers, 1981). Thus, advocates of eclecticism resolve the problem of the prescriptivity of methods by challenging the prescriptivity and favoring teacher selection. Such views, however, remain located within a method paradigm and continue to imply a conceptual unity in methods themselves. Eclecticism does not address the prescriptivism of methods, nor does it address critique of methods themselves, rather, it locates practice in a problematic relationship with theory. If methods are considered theoretically coherent and defensible, then eclecticism runs the risk of being seen to work outside or even in contradiction to theory, and the gap between theory and practice is reinforced. In fact, even sympathetic treatments of eclecticism in teaching typically contrast eclectic approaches with “scientific” approaches. Freeman and Richards (1993) contrast theory-based teaching and “art/craft” teaching, with the former systematic and principled and the latter more ad hoc and intuitive. Diller (1975) contrasts eclecticism with reason, noting a transformation in language teaching in which a “temporary phase of eclecticism is giving way to a reasoned choice of methods and techniques” (p. 65).

By leaving methods intact, eclecticism may attempt to deal with the limitations that methods can impose on practice but risk diverse practice being considered in some way less rigorous or inferior when compared to methods-based practice. Other ways of dealing with method have tried to address the utility of methods as ways of describing language-teaching practice. Prabhu (1990) contrasts arguments for eclecticism – that different ­methods apply to different contexts or that methods are only partial truths – with an argument against the notion of a best method. He maintains that the pursuit of an objectively best method is misplaced and unrealistic because methods omit much that is important in teaching. Rather than defining good teaching as the implementation of a good method, Prabhu argues that it is necessary “to think of good teaching as an activity in which there is a sense of involvement by the teacher” (p. 171). That is, the engagement of the teacher in the act of teaching is fundamental to good teaching. A prescriptive method implemented routinely or mechanistically will not constitute good teaching because the method does not embody the teacher or the learner. Rather than focusing on methods as templates for teaching, he argues that the focus should be on more subjective aspects of teachers’ understanding of their work: “There is a factor more basic than the choice between methods, namely, teachers’ subjective understanding of the teaching they do. Teachers need to operate with some practical conceptualisation of how their teaching leads to the desired learning – with a notion of causation that has a measure of credibility” (p. 172). Prabhu calls this subjective understanding teachers’ sense of plausibility and argues that the important issue for good teaching is whether the sense of plausibility is demonstrably active and alive, not whether it is based on some particular method. In effect, this decouples the idea of the use of a method as an instructional system from good language teaching and opens up greater complexity for understanding what constitutes teaching. Prabhu sees the sense of plausibility not as an entrenched body of subjective knowledge, but as an open capacity to evolve in the process of teaching; and he maintains that openness to investigate practice, to change and to draw on experiences, is fundamental to teachers’ professional learning. At the same time, teaching practice must be accepted as inherently open to diversity both between teachers and for individual teachers at different times.

Kumaravadivelu (1994, 2003) contends that language teaching now faces a post-method condition, that is, language education has moved beyond method as a basic organizer of practice. He argues that the post-method condition gives more recognition to the role of the teacher in the act of teaching and constructs the relationship between theory and ­practice as closer and multivalent. In particular, there is a recognition that practice needs to be location-specific and student- and classroom-oriented rather than imposed from outside. This idea gives the teachers the ability and the responsibility of drawing on their experience as language learners and language users in constructing learner experiences.

In the post-method condition, methods can no longer be framed as the core way in which practice is organized or developed and so the elaboration of new methods is not a valid response to any desire to change practice in language teaching and learning. Rather, taking language education into new directions necessitates articulating theories of ­language, culture, and learning in ways that generate new possibilities for teachers to develop and theorize their own practices of teaching and learning. The focus is not, however, one which proposes an eclectic view of teaching. If eclecticism is understood simply as selection between available possibilities, it runs the risk of becoming a random assortment of techniques assembled unsystematically and uncritically. Rather, what is needed for post-methods language teaching is what Kumaravadivelu (1994) calls “principled pragmatism.” Principled pragmatism encompasses both practice and theory in an integrated and mutually reinforcing way. It recognizes diversity in pragmatism but bases this diversity on a clear articulation of the nature, purpose, and context of teaching and learning. In this way, selections of aspects of practice are guided by a rationale for practice that allows possibilities to be evaluated critically. The alternate to methods, therefore, is not simply eclecticism but rather a principled and professional selection to address teaching and learning needs.

Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) propose the idea of stance as a way of understanding how teachers adopt principled positions in their teaching. Stance emphasizes the idea that, in teaching, teachers are positioned in particular ways, intellectually and in practice, in relation to what and how they teach:

In our work, we offer the term … stance to describe the positions teachers and others who work together … take toward knowledge and its relationships to practice. We use the metaphor of stance to suggest both orientational and positional ideas, to carry ­allusions to the physical placing of the body as well as the intellectual activities and ­perspectives over time. In this sense, the metaphor is intended to capture the ways we stand, the ways we see, and the lenses we see through. Teaching is a complex activity that occurs within webs of social, historical, cultural and political significance. (pp. 288–289)

The stance that teachers adopt in relation to their teaching provides a framing in which choices about practice are shaped and in which theory and practice are brought into relationship. In all teaching, teachers, and also their learners, adopt a stance in the sense of a set of valued positions about what is to be taught and learned and how this is to be done.

We understand intercultural language teaching and learning as an intercultural ­perspective, that is, as the self-awareness of the language teacher as a participant in linguistic and cultural diversity; it is therefore not simply a way of teaching, but a way of understanding lived experiences of language and culture as the framing for teaching. For us, an intercultural perspective can be understood as the lens through which the nature, purpose, and activity of language teaching and learning are viewed, and the focus which students develop through their language learning. The intercultural in language learning is then a way of viewing the nature of language, culture, and learning as they come together in the acquisition of a new language. The starting point for such a perspective is the view that language learning is fundamentally engagement in intercultural communication and that the addition of a new language to a person’s linguistic repertoire positions that person differently in relation to the world in which they live. Language learning from an intercultural perspective is therefore an exploration of the intercultural, used as a lens for understanding ­language teaching and learning as both theory and practice.

We use the ideas of stance and perspective to highlight that this book does not intend to provide a “method” or prescriptions for teaching and learning languages. What we present in this book is an attempt to explore what is involved when considering language education from an intercultural perspective. In three key senses, it is not a method. First, it is not a method because it does not seek to formulate practice in particular ways, but rather to open up thinking about theory and processes of language teaching and learning in ways that can inform more elaborated understandings of both theory and practice. The act of teaching and learning is intricate and cannot be reduced to methodological prescriptions. Furthermore, the role of teachers is not one of simply receiving prescriptions from others that are subsequently “implemented” in their context. In addition, it is not a method because it sees language teaching as a fundamentally ecological activity in which those aspects of practice that are normally classed as method cannot be dissociated from the rest of the ecology. Language education is a synthesis of theory and practice, of teaching and learning, of pedagogy, resources, assessment, and evaluation. We see teaching, therefore, as a holistic process that is not reducible to compartmentalized categories such as approach, method, and technique. Finally, what we present is not a method because we understand teaching as dialogic relationships ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Languages, Cultures, and the Intercultural
• 3 Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, and Language Learning within an Intercultural Orientation
• 4 Language Teaching and Learning as an Intercultural Endeavor
• 5 Designing Classroom Interactions and Experiences
• 6 Resources for Intercultural Language Learning
• 7 Technologies in Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning
• 8 Assessing Intercultural Language Learning
• 9 Programming and Planning
• 10 Evaluating Language Programs
• References
• Index