Role of Culture in the Acquisition of CSL – From the Perspective of Intercultural Communication Competence

In the past few decades, the demands for coping with the rapid development of information communication technology, internationalization and globalization worldwide have shifted the focus of Chinese as a second language (CSL) towards intercultural communication competence in which the role of culture in the acquisition of CSL and in the pragmatic use of the language is emphasized and promoted. However, most of the present research in this academic area still remains only on a theoretical level.   In order to explore the possibilities and limitations of integrating Chinese culture and implementing intercultural communication theory into CSL education, an action research has been conducted since the beginning of 2013 to review an actual course for beginners. This paper will present the findings of the research: 1) By applying the theoretical framework of intercultural communicative competence, the findings indicated that the existing CSL course provided limited information explaining the cultural elements that are reflected in the Chinese language. 2) The findings also suggested that the cultural skills acquired in the students’ first language do influence their acquisition of CSL. This is demonstrated in the students’ written tasks such as introducing themselves and presenting other people, etc. The findings can be examples and resources for further research in this academic field.     

Enhancing Intercultural Communication in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language : An Action Research Study

Enhancing Intercultural Communication in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language – An Action Research Study Over the past few decades, the rapid development of information communication technology, internationalization and globalization worldwide have required a shift in the focus of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) towards competence in intercultural communication in which the role of culture in the acquisition of CFL and in the pragmatic use of the language is emphasized and promoted. However, most of the current research in this academic area remains only on a theoretical level. Practical examples, particularly with regard to distance learning/teaching of the Chinese language, are very limited. This motivated the implementation of an action research study which aimed at exploring the possibilities and limitations of integrating Chinese culture and applying intercultural communication theory into a contemporary distance CFL course for beginners. By observing and comparing the performance of subjects in the control and experimental groups, this action research study focuses on exploring three basic areas. Firstly, it discloses the cultural elements which underlie effective daily communication. Secondly, it investigates how students acquire cultural knowledge and develop their ability to competently communicate in the target course. And thirdly, it evaluates how the modified course syllabus could enhance students’ intercultural communicative competence. The findings of the research aim to serve as both a resource and reference for educators and researchers who are interested in carrying out reforms and research in this academic domain.

O gênero joke em atividades de inglês: uma proposta intercultural de ensino-aprendizagem para o ensino médio

Our research has arisen from the interest of aligning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom practice to current discussions in the ambit of learning and teaching Foreign Languages (FLs). Because of the need to integrate the linguistic development to the development of notions clung to the practice of citizenship, we have adopted a cultural perspective. We have noticed jokes as a fertile ground for discussing cultural aspects in classroom. Considering such factors, our research question is: how to explore cultural aspects in jokes for the elaboration of EFL activities which aim for the development of intercultural competence and interaction? Therefore, our general goal is to explore cultural aspects in jokes for the elaboration of EFL teaching and learning activities and our specific goals are: (I) to study official suggestions (LDB, 1996; PCNEM, 2000; PCN+EM, 2002; OCEM, 2006) regarding culture at foreign languages teaching and learning, (II) to select 05 (five) jokes and analyze them focusing on their cultural aspects, (III) to identify possible interpretations for jokes; (IV) to elaborate EFL activities which grant a privilege to jokes cultural aspects. This investigation is descriptive and documental and relies on qualitative paradigm (CHIZZOTTI, 2010; FLICK, 2009; CHAROUX, 2006; BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; 1992). The corpus is constituted by jokes taken from Internet sites and by official documents (LDB, 1996; PCNEM, 1998; PCN+EM, 2000; OCEM, 2006). For the elaboration of activities we have chosen a weaker version of Content-based instruction (CBI), in which contents are cultural aspects in jokes and we have undertaken a reflection on methods, approaches and perspectives, among which there are notions about post-method and CBI, which talk to EFL learning and teaching. For theoretical support we have some discussions about FL methods and approaches (BELL, 2003; KUMARAVADIVELU, 2003; WESCHE; SKEHAN, 2002; PRABHU, 1990), a cultural perspective (KRAMSCH, 1998, 1996, 1993; BYRAM; FENG, 2004), some works in Linguistics about jokes (POSSENTI, 2010, 1998; CHIARO, 1992); notions about implicit (MAINGUENEAU, 2004, 1996; CHARAUDEAU; MAINGUENEAU, 2012) and about ambiguity (KEMPSON, 1977; CHARAUDEAU; MAINGUENEAU, 2012; TRASK, 2011), having the adoption of such categories emerged from the analyzes of some jokes

A articulação língua-cultura na coconstrução da competência intercultural em uma parceria de Teletandem (Português/Espanhol)

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Grafismos no projeto Botuáfrica: um diálogo intercultural

This article aims to present the Botuafrica Project and graphism generated by the stencil printing process. We will address the issue of valuing African-Brazilian aesthetics by producing symbols created by the participants of the project and fashion as a vehicle for social inclusion in the context of Botucatu Municipality of state of São Paulo. The study proposes a reflection on the work of professionals that contributed on practices of technical and concept development in order to promote the creation of local fashion and production. This research will verify the implications of act of drawing, printing and wearing the textiles designed by the participants of the project. Botucatu Institute collected and archived photos and drawings during the project between years 2010 and 2012 and provided this material for this research.

Scientific concepts and public policies: Semiotic-cultural obstacles concerning intergroup and intercultural relationships

I attempt to articulate Jahoda's (2012) critical reflections regarding definitions of culture in recent cross-cultural studies and Moghaddam's (2012) claims of an omnicultural imperative to guide the elaboration of public policies for managing relationships among human groups from different cultural origins. For this, I will approach some aspects of the socio-historical and ontogenetic roots of the notion of culture. The notion of culture and the consequent public policies involving intercultural managing are being transformed as our global society develops. It has been proposed that some ways of dealing with the culture of the other are crucial to achieve awareness in respect of one's own cultural positioning when making science and attempting social interventions. Finally, the experience of Brazilian psychologists working on challenges faced by Amerindians dealing with the national society they live in will be presented as a pioneering work aiming to interfere in the development of public policies ethically concerned with the assurance of cultural integrity of currently marginalized social groups.

Intercultural Performance and Dialogue. From Richard Schechner Performance Studies Onwards

Attraverso un excursus storico, teorico e metodologico, questa tesi di dottorato analizza la nascita, gli sviluppi e l’attuale dimensione costitutivo-identitaria dei Performance Studies, un ambito di ricerca accademica che, nato negli Stati Uniti alla fine degli anni Settanta, ha sempre palesato una natura restia nei confronti di qualunque tentativo definitorio. Se i Performance Studies concepiscono la performance sia come oggetto d’analisi sia come lente metodologica, e se, come evidenziato da Richard Schechner, praticamente tutto può essere “elevato a performance” e quindi indagato secondo le categorie analitiche di questa disciplina, ecco allora che, con uno slittamento transitivo e “meta-metodologico”, questa ricerca dottorale ha scelto come proprio oggetto di studio i Performance Studies stessi, osservandoli “as performance” e avvalendosi degli strumenti metodologici suggeriti dal suo stesso oggetto d’analisi. Questo lavoro indaga come l’oggetto di studio dei Performance Studies sia, seguendo la teoria schechneriana, il “behaved behavior”, e dunque come di conseguenza, il repertorio, prima ancora che l’archivio, possa essere considerato il fedele custode delle “pratiche incorporate”. Soffermandosi su esempi di “reenactment” performativo come quelli messi in atto da Marina Abramović e Clifford Owens, così come sui tentativi condotti dalla sezione dell’Intangible Cultural Heritage dell’UNESCO, suggerisce validi esempi di “archiviazione” della performance. L’elaborato prende poi in esame casi che esemplificano la proficua identificazione tra “studiare performance” e “fare performance”, sottolinea il ruolo cruciale e imprenscindibile determinato dal lavoro di ricerca sul campo inteso come “osservazione partecipante”, ed evidenzia il costante coinvolgimento sociale e politico assunto dai Performance Studies. Questa dissertazione affronta e supporta l’efficacia dei Performance Studies nel proporsi come uno strumento innovativo in grado di analizzare un mondo sempre più performativo nelle sue dinamiche. La loro natura tanto interdisciplinare quanto interculturale sembra farne una lente adeguata attraverso cui promuovere livelli diversi di performance dialogica tra culture localmente distinte ma globalmente assimilabili.

Contingencies for Intercultural Dialogue in Virtual Space: An Empirical Research on the Role of Internet in Fostering Intercultural Competences from the Perspective of Migrant Youth

Against the background of the emerging multicultural migration society, acquisition of intercultural competences is getting vitally important for youngsters to actively and effectively engage with intercultural dialogue in a co-existent life context. Contingencies for such intercultural dialogue and to foster intercultural competences of youngsters are opened in virtual space when youth with different ethnic, social and cultural background go online. However, differences in Internet use and competences acquisition as “digital inequality” also exist among youth with different socio-cultural background. This article reports on a quantitative survey of 300 Turkish migrant youth in Germany as empirical sample about how Internet use generally fosters their intercultural competences, what differences exist among them and which indicators can explain the differences. Preliminary findings show that the contingencies of Internet in fostering intercultural competences are still not much employed and realised by Turkish migrant youth. Four online groups connected with bonding, bridging, both (bonding and bridging) and none socio-cultural networks are found out based on the cluster analysis with SPSS. These different networks, from the perspective of social cultural capital, can explain the differences concerning development of intercultural competences among them. It is indicated in this research that many Turkish migrant youth still lack recognition and capabilities to construct their intercultural social networks or relations through using Internet and further to employ the relations as intercultural social capital or social support in their life context. This therefore poses a critical implication for youth work to help migrant youth construct and reconstruct their socio-cultural networks through using Internet so as to extend social support for competences acquisition.

Increasing intercultural competence and tolerance in multicultural schools: A Training Program and its effectiveness

This study reports the implementation of a Training of Intercultural Competence and Tolerance (TICT) for upper-secondary school students and the empirical evaluation of its effectiveness. The TICT program was developed to counteract increasing interethnic conflicts in the North Caucasus Federal District of Russia. It is based on the theoretical and empirical framework of social psychology and cross-cultural psychology. The training effectiveness was assessed by conducting pre- and post-surveys among the training participants. The results indicate that TICT contributes to the development of a positive ethnic identity and the formation of a civic identity among the participating youth. It also increases their optimism regarding the future of interethnic relations in Russia and the subjective level of intercultural competence of majority group youth towards minority cultures. Thus, the evaluation of the training effectiveness of the TICT has shown that the aims of the training have been achieved to a large extent and that the Training of Intercultural Competence and Tolerance can be effectively used to prevent interethnic conflicts and promote interethnic relations in multicultural schools. Suggestions for the practical implementation of the TICT as well as for future research on the training's effectiveness are discussed.

Courses in the language and culture of origin and their impact on youth development in cultural transition: A study among immigrant and dual heritage youth in Switzerland

Elena Makarova traces how the concept of intercultural education in German-speaking European countries promotes the inclusion of courses in the Language and Culture of Origin (LCO) for immigrant youth in the school curriculum of host countries. Such courses are assumed to have positive effects on the development of immigrant youth in the host country. Particularly, it has been suggested that participation in LCO courses increases the self-esteem of immigrant youth, facilitates the development of their bicultural identity and improves their integration in the host society. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the nature of the effects of LCO course attendance on the acculturation of immigrant youth and their cultural identity. Accordingly, the aim of the study detailed in the chapter is to examine the impact of immigrant youth’s attitudes towards LCO courses and of their attendance of such courses on their acculturation and cultural identity.

La competencia comunicativa intercultural en el aula de español de los negocios: análisis de materiales para su enseñanza

RESUMEN La adquisición de la competencia comunicativa intercultural en la enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras (LE) y/o Lenguas para Fines Específicos (LFE) debe ser un proceso de aprendizaje consciente y explícito cuyo fin es la transmisión de conocimientos teóricos, el desarrollo de habilidades comportamentales y de actitudes positivas a través del contacto con la/s cultura/s meta. Esta tesis tiene como objetivo general contribuir al desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa intercultural comercial del estudiante de español de los negocios (EN). Para ello se ha realizado un análisis de los manuales para su enseñanza. En concreto, hemos auditado los manuales de EN con el fin de conocer la metodología didáctica que emplean en la enseñanza de la competencia comunicativa intercultural comercial, tomando como marco de referencia el enfoque intercultural para la enseñanza de las Lenguas de los Negocios. Para alcanzar este fin se ha dividido la investigación en tres partes: 1) la revisión de los antecedentes sobre la enseñanza del componente intercultural y del análisis de materiales en los cursos de LFE; 2) la configuración de un constructo teórico que permitiera a la vez, seleccionar el objeto de estudio, diseñar el instrumento de análisis y disponer de un marco de referencia valorativo; 3) y la creación, pilotaje y aplicación del instrumento de análisis, y la auditoría de los datos. Los resultados muestran que, en líneas generales, predomina una visión tradicional de la cultura; un escaso tratamiento de la relación lengua-y-cultura; un seguimiento parcial de los principios pedagógicos para la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa intercultural; un tratamiento bajo de las habilidades interculturales específicas en las interacciones comerciales; y una cobertura parcial de las habilidades interculturales generales, las cuales se centran fundamentalmente en la adqusición de saberes teóricos. PALABRAS CLAVE: competencia comunicativa intercultural; comunicación intercultural comercial; español de los negocios; español para fines específicos; auditoria de manuales didácticos. ABSTRACT The acquisition of intercultural communicative competence in Foreign Language (FL) and / or Languages for Specific Purposes teaching (LSP) must be a conscious and explicit learning to develop knowledge, skills and positive attitudes through contact with the target culture/s. The overall objective of this thesis is to assist the development of the intercultural communicative competence of the student of Spanish for Business (SB) through the audit of the teaching textbooks published in the last decade through a multidisciplinary approach to teaching LSP. The audit was carried out in order to ascertain the underlying approach and course design for the development of the intercultural communicative competence; to state the methodological approach to culture, language-and-culture relationship, culture teaching, culture acquisition and course design. To achieve this objective, the work has been divided into four parts: 1) review of the background on teaching the intercultural component and the analysis of materials in a courses of LSP through a multidisciplinary approach, 2) configuration of a theoretical construct allowing to select the object of study, to design the analytical instrument and to have an evaluative framework, together with the selection of a corpus of Spanish for Business textbooks, 3) development of the analytical instrument and 4) application of the analytical instrument and audit of selected textbooks. The results show that, in the textbooks analyzed, dominated a traditional view of culture, a low ratio treatment of the language-and-culture relationship, a partial implementation of the pedagogical principles for the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence; poor treatment of specific intercultural skills in business interactions, and partial coverage of the general cultural skills, which focus primarily on the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. KEY WORDS: Intercultural communicative competence; Intercultural communicative competence; Spanish for Business; Spanish for Specific Purposes; Textbook audit

Teachers’ perception of the concept of intercultural competence in teaching English

Intercultural competence (IC) as an essential part of conceptualization of the cultural dimension in FLT has been promoted by educationalists as the most preferred type of competence. One of the challenges of incorporating IC into FLT is to move from the recognition of IC as a model of teaching (Byram, Nichols and Stevens, 2001) to the development of practical applications. This can be due to the fact that teachers do not have sufficient knowledge of the theory behind the concept and consequently, have difficulties to implement the curriculum requirements with regards to IC into their teaching. The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers of English in upper secondary schools in Sweden interpret the concept of IC and, accordingly, what is their view of culture in English language teaching. In order to answer the research question, I used an exploratory investigation by adopting a qualitative research method in form of semi-structured interviews. The results are similar to the previous studies (Lundgren, 2002; Larzén, 2005) and suggest that teachers lack theoretical background and central guidance with regards to IC and do not always integrate language and culture into an intercultural model of the English language pedagogy.

Translation and intercultural communication: similarities and differences

Despite increasing attention in the last decade, both Intercultural Communication Studies (ICS) and Translation Studies (TS) seem to have reached a stage where some of the key concepts and assumptions are being challenged. This paper looks at similarities and differences in the use of shared concepts, especially the concept of intercultural communicative competence. It begins with a brief sketch of the development of the discipline of Translation Studies and goes on to present some assumptions which TS shares with ICS. However, the two disciplines operate with a different concept of communication and intercultural communicative competence: ICS is researching natural communication for independent acting, whereas TS is concerned with a specific kind of professionally enabled communication. The paper then presents a definition of a translationspecific cultural competence (based on Witte 2000) and illustrates the development of translation competence in the context of translator training at universities.

Intercultural training for international placements

Despite its increasing popularity, much intercultural training is not developed with the same level of rigour as training in other areas. Further, research on intercultural training has brought inconsistent results about the effectiveness of such training. This PhD thesis develops a rigorous model of intercultural training and applies it to the preparation of British students going on work/study placements in France and Germany. It investigates the reasons for inconsistent training success by looking at the cognitive learning processes in intercultural training, relating them to training goals, and by examining the short- and long-term transfer of intercultural training into real-life encounters with people from other cultures. Two cognitive trainings based on critical incidents were designed for online delivery. The training content relied on cultural practice dimensions from the GWBE study (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman & Gupta, 2004). Of the two trainings, the 'singlemode training' aimed to develop declarative knowledge, which is necessary to analyse and understand other cultures. The 'concurrent training' aimed to develop declarative and procedural knowledge, which is needed to develop skills for dealing with difficult situations in a culturally appropriate way. Participants (N-48) were randomly assigned to one of the two training conditions. Declarative learning appeared as a process of steady knowledge increase, while procedural learning involved cognitive re-categorisation rather than knowledge increase. In a negotiation role play with host-country nationals directly after the online training, participants of the concurrent training exhibited a more initiative negotiation style than participants of the single-mode training. Comparing cultural adjustment and performance of training participants during their time abroad with an untrained control group, participants of the concurrent training showed the qualitatively best development in adjustment and performance. Besides intercultural training, multicultural personality traits were assessed and proved to be a powerful predictor of adjustment and, indirectly, of performance abroad.