Abstract
Sri Lanka is a multicultural country with a diverse population coming from three major ethnic groups, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Though they have been living together for several centuries in the country, it is not without conflict. After three decades of an atrocious war which erupted as a result of these ethnic clashes, currently the country is enjoying some peaceful times. To make this peace last for long the government has taken several important measures and teaching the second national language in the school for children, and appointing the first language speakers as the second national language teachers is one of the most important. Nevertheless, second national language teachers have a very different interaction with their students when compared to other teachers. They are required of an unusually high level of cultural nuance as members of a different culture to their students and need to develop cultural intelligence to overcome this challenge. This study attempts at finding the present cultural perceptions of these teachers and suggesting ways of changing practices to bridge this gap.
Highlights
Iceland is considered to be the only culturally homogeneous country with a population of 94% of Norse/Celtic descendants and only 6% population with a foreign origin, which is the exception (Tennekoon, 2001)
In the second stage randomly selected sample of the student teachers were observed during their teaching practice sessions in order to identify how they handle their students in the classroom such as using of any cultural material in order to make the students acquainted with the culture of the second national language and develop their intercultural competence
3.2 Findings of the Background Information from the Questionnaire 1 that Supposed to Have Impact on Intercultural Competence One of the most important factors the researcher’s attention was paid was the language competence of the respondents since it was expected that the language competence of the students might have contributed to their intercultural competence since the ability of communicating with other cultural groups may give an opportunity to understand them better
Summary
Iceland is considered to be the only culturally homogeneous country with a population of 94% of Norse/Celtic descendants and only 6% population with a foreign origin, which is the exception (Tennekoon, 2001).
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