Critical Cultural Awareness Research Articles

Theoretical Constructs and Practical Strategies for Intercultural Communication

Delving into English language education in Vietnam, this theory-oriented article aims to generate a new debate on critical cultural awareness (CCA) in light of increasing literature on intercultural communication competence (ICC), thus offering practical implementations to academic agents. Once ICC is strongly considered indispensable within communication, CCA can strengthen the power of sociocultural and psychological relationships. This study specifies the role of intercultural communication, aiming to develop Vietnamese learners to reach beyond abstract linguistic features towards language awareness by engaging in cultural and societal plurality. Seemingly, they need use language that advocate the enactment of change, fostering their abilities in their civic life. Coupled with that, they are obliged for learning the power of positive attitudes in terms of intercultural engagement, such as sympathy towards and acceptance of differences. Critical cultural awareness as a contribution to intercultural communication drives two primary aspects, namely social and psychological dimensions. In addition to dragging learners out of traditionally perceived skills related to native-like competences, the framework application expands potential goals and instructional steps that cover learning based on learner voice reflected upon privilege and power. Apparently, it is relevant in response to learning environment driven by social mechanisms which focus on citizenship, expecting that they learn and possess knowledge for certain purposes relating to career goals and social needs. Comprehensively, this study will outline the short examination of language education in Vietnam as a way to understand existing hindrances to be resolved. It anchored this analysis in a theoretical paradigm: critical cultural awareness, which is then critically embedded to involve social and psychological pedagogies. This enables to shift learners’ desire and willingness that hone their learning skills which influences academic success and communicative adaptability. Pedagogical implications are also suggested.

Hearts and minds: goal-orientation and intercultural communicative competence of ROTC cadets learning critical languages

ABSTRACTThis qualitative case study investigates the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) of US Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets and their goals in learning critical languages. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and data were examined through inductive, thematic analysis. Findings indicate that goals appeared in clusters, with mutually reinforcing goals of military application and personal pleasure. This process affected perceived ICC and gains in sociolinguistic competence, leading to change in attitudes and critical cultural awareness.

New Challenges of Anglicisation in the Context of 21st Century Globalization and Their Impact on Higher Education

The paper considers the phenomenon of anglicisation to be predetermined: a) by the multilateral influence of the USA on many countries; b) by the obvious need of unification and standardization of terminological and other layers of lexis referring to various aspects of human activities, and c) by the prestigious role of English as a lingua franca in international cooperation among countries. Attitudes differ towards the process of anglicisation. While some appreciate its political, economic and cultural advantages, others warn against a global, dominating language that might absorb minor cultures. The process of anglicisation has its impact on higher education. One of the challenges faced by universities is to prepare students for effective intercultural communication in order to succeed in a global work environment. Therefore, the purpose of the present work is, first, to analyse the debates concerning the present and future perspectives of the process of anglicisation; second, to overview critically the research related to the integrated teaching of language and culture promoting three-dimensional linguo-cultural methodology of such teaching which facilitates to raise L2 students’ critical cultural awareness, and enables them to develop the essential communicative skills that are necessary for successful international collaboration.

The separation between language and content in Modern Language degrees: implications for students’ development of critical cultural awareness and criticality

ABSTRACTThe paper reports on the findings of a PhD study exploring the implications of the separation between language and content in Modern Languages for students' development of intercultural competence and criticality across four universities – two in the US and two in the UK. In particular, it exposes the diverse views students developed on the relationship between language and culture and the invaluable role of content courses in fostering students' development of critical cultural awareness and criticality. While there was evidence to suggest that all three strands of the curriculum (language, content and the year abroad) contributed to students' development of intercultural competence and criticality, content modules emerged as a key setting to foster critical discussions on interculturality.

Developing Intercultural Awareness and Skills in English Majors: A Constructivist Approach

In the fast-changing modern world of today, learners need global skills for life-long learning and effective communication. Among these skills are intercultural competence and critical thinking. Although teachers have acknowledged the importance of the inclusion of global skills in their actual teaching procedures, they still need more concrete methodology and tangible pedagogical frameworks to incorporate these skills into their teachings. This study has been an attempt to propose a framework based on the constructivist approach to activate critical thinking and, in turn, develop critical cultural awareness and intercultural skills in EFL learners. To achieve this aim, a qualitative study was designed; an intercultural syllabus was developed and implemented through the constructivist approach in an academic semester. The related data were then collected through the participants’ reflective worksheets and interviews. The content analysis of the data indicated that the constructivist approach and the intercultural syllabus were effective in assisting the participants in applying critical thinking strategies and developing critical cultural awareness and intercultural skills of discovery and interaction, interpreting and relating, and evaluation. Meanwhile, the results of the self-report evaluation survey indicated that the participants evaluated most of the aspects of the intercultural experience positively. The findings of the current study have implications for instructors, materials developers, and educational stakeholders who support developing intercultural awareness and skills in learners.

Locating the Intercultural Discourse of Leila Aboulela’s The Translator; Cultural Compatibility, Clash of Civilization or a Not-yet-told Story?

ABSTRACTLeila Aboulela’s novel, The Translator, animates diverse critical responses in the context of intercultural narratives within literary studies and beyond. The observation of this paper is that a growing body of research undergoes dialectical cultural controversy whether adopting deeply critical position of the novel or otherwise. The purpose of this paper is to examine these responses in the context of the moral philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism. It takes a further step to address the novel’s dialogic strands and claims that Aboulela’s depiction of intercultural discourse embraces a polyphonic voicedness that is necessary for dialogic negotiations with a difference. With the assumption that intercultural dialogue can reinstate critical cultural awareness as an antidote to “clash of civilizations,” the paper rehearses the “healing” power of dialogism in intercultural narratives. It concludes that moral valuations always exist in “dialogic spaces” that offer moral outlooks for restructuring identities and creating shared orientations.

Do EFL Teachers ‘Critically’ Engage in Cultural Awareness? A Mixed-Method Investigation

ABSTRACTThis study explored 150 EFL teachers’ perceptions of critical cultural awareness (CCA) considering their teaching context, academic degree, and professional development programs. The participants all completed the CCA questionnaire, fifteen of whom also sat a semi-structured qualitative interview. Our findings showed, a) EFL teachers’ perceptions of CCA located at a medium level, b) the PhD participants showed significantly higher engagement in CCA than their BA and MA counterparts, c) private language institute teachers reported higher levels of CCA than their state-run school counterparts and d) local professional development programs did not emphasize culture teaching in general and CCA in particular.

DISMANTLING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE – A PROPOSAL FOR INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF CRITICAL CULTURAL AWARENESS IN AN L2 TEACHING CONTEXT

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.

Exploring Novice Thai EFL Lecturers’ Perceptions of Intercultural Communication Competence

With the rapid changes of world population, people are likely to come into contact with others with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Accordingly, Thai graduates are often required to have intercultural communication skills. The skills are parts of professional communication skills that the students should be acquired so as to respond to employers’ demand. As such, institutions are placing more consideration on intercultural communication competence (ICC). This study, therefore, aims to: 1) investigate teachers’ perceptions of ICC; and 2) investigate how teachers integrated ICC into their classes/lessons. Six novice EFL teachers from Thai universities were interviewed. Then, the interview data was transcribed and grouped into themes. According to the findings, overall, the participants have various understanding of ICC. For the ICC’s integration, participants’ answers can be categorized into five main groups, which are: 1) intercultural attitudes, 2) knowledge, 3) skills of interpreting and relating, 4) skills of discovery and interaction, and 5) critical cultural awareness. This study shows the teachers’ perceptions of ICC and how they could integrate ICC in classes. The results also reveal that the teachers are willing to intercorporate activities regarding ICC into their teaching contexts. Pedagogical implications of this study are proposed. On the basis of these findings, the pedagogical implications and suggestions are included in this paper.

Using Flipped Learning to Facilitate Cross‐Cultural Critical Thinking in the L2 Classroom

The article proposes using the flipped learning approach to gain more classroom time for activities that help learners interact with cultural content so that they may achieve critical cultural awareness, one of the components of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). It first distinguishes between the terms “flipped classroom” and “flipped learning,” and then suggests how the 2017 ACTFL Intercultural Can‐Do Statements can enrich the cultural offerings of conventional L2 textbooks. The second segment of the article describes the practical implications of using flipped learning and provides sample assignments from a flipped learning module that promotes cross‐cultural critical thinking as a means to arrive at the ICC dimension of critical cultural awareness. The third part of the article encompasses reflective analyses from the student and instructor perspectives as well as four pedagogical recommendations for using the flipped learning approach to enhance critical cultural awareness by promoting higher cross‐cultural critical thinking skills.

Virtual Cultural Communication: Establishing Dialogues Between China and Poland

The overall aim of the current paper is to establish best practices for developing, engaging and working critically in virtual cultural communication. The need to build practical language communication skills is not a new idea or a new part of methodology. With the development of technology, the range of communicative opportunities has grown and allowed virtual cultural dialogues to take place. The focus of these situations is not only language development and practice, but also critical cultural awareness and intercultural skill development. The paper presents contrasting approaches in the methodological construction of one such programme between young students in Entel Foreign Language School, China, and Krosno State College, Poland. Over the course of the link from Spring to Summer 2017, different approaches were taken by the instructors and students in both countries resulting in varying levels of engagement and critical understanding. The Chinese approach stresses communication as an outcome and delivers more time to oral activities in the classroom which contrasts with the Polish approach of a stricter language based teaching strategy. As a result, the paper will discuss the relative merits of the two methodological frameworks in the communication project. This will be achieved by evaluating the overall success of the communication based on interviews with the student participants and observations of interaction during the link meetings.Finally, the paper will illustrate a methodology for working with such links and developing cross-cultural communication.

Critical Cultural Awareness and Identity Development: Insights from a Short-Term Thai Language Immersion

Critical Cultural Awareness and Identity Development: Insights from a Short-Term Thai Language Immersion

Towards critical cultural and linguistic awareness in language classrooms in Norway: Fostering respect for diversity through identity texts

This article reports the results of a school-based curriculum development project that aimed to support language teachers working with culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in Norway to develop teaching strategies that foster intercultural citizenship and multilingual competence. Three university researchers collaborated with two schools to increase mutual respect and tolerance for cultural and linguistic diversity in language classrooms, to increase awareness of the positive impact of home language maintenance on academic performance, and to improve the engagement of multilingual literacy and student identity in the classroom. Data were collected during teacher workshops and while following the delivery of the project, and consist of lesson planning materials, texts produced by students, and a follow-up teacher survey. The article presents examples of activities and materials the teachers at the cooperating schools designed and implemented, samples of student work, as well as teacher reflections on the extent to which the project promoted multiliteracy and intercultural citizenship. The findings suggest that while the project helped strengthen awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity at the schools, understanding of the relevance of the home language to literacy development and academic success and multiliteracy were not adequately supported. Implications for future work to promote language classrooms that foster linguistic and cultural diversity and multiliteracy are discussed.

Developing a Questionnaire for Assessing Iranian EFL Teachers’ Critical Cultural Awareness (CCA)

Critical cultural awareness as a component of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997, 2012) has received the extensive attention of scholars in the fields of language teaching, cultural studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, communication studies, etc. in the recent decades. However, no instrument has ever been developed to assess this construct among Iranian EFL teachers. To fill this gap, in the first phase of the present study a theoretical framework for critical cultural awareness and its components was developed through reviewing the literature and conducting interviews with ELT experts. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and piloted with 370 participants who were available and willing to participate in the study. More specifically, the 37 items of the newly-developed ‘CCA' scale were subjected to principal component analysis which revealed the presence of three components. These phases led to the development of a questionnaire with three components and 37 items: (1) ‘CCA in ELT Programs' including 20 items, (2) ‘CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials' including 13 items, and (3) ‘CCA in General Terms' including four items. The findings of this study may shed some light on this fuzzy subject and help researchers assess Iranian EFL teachers' critical cultural awareness.

Investigating Language Teachers' Sojourn Experiences: Perspectives on Culture

The more-connectedness of the world has raised a need to have a successful communication across cultural background. As a consequence, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) plays a more pivotal role. One of the means to proliferate ICC is through living abroad, or can be called as doing a sojourn. This qualitative study aims to explore language teachers' sojourn experiences during their two-semester assisting language classes in U.S. universities. Specifically, this study focuses on how their sojourn experiences may affect their perspectives toward their own culture and culture other than their own. There are 19 English language teachers of 12 different nationalities who voluntarily participated in the present study. In analyzing the data, Byram's model of ICC (1997) was utilized to make sense of their experiences. The data was analyzed using NVivo11 application. The finding showed that three out of five aspects in Byram's model of ICC (1997), including intercultural attitudes (savoir etre), knowledge (savoirs), and critical cultural awareness (savoirs' engager) emerged in the data. Two aspects, skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre) and skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire) did not emerge in the data.

Understanding the repercussions of intercultural communicative competence: a study on the degree of students’ cultural awareness, social and communication skills

Demographic change is transforming the way we communicate. In many parts of the world, the society has become increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic. In this context, intercultural cognizance is one of the pivotal facets for intercultural communication. The recent years has seen the emergence of the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) concept permeating the education field thereby a large and growing body of literature has commenced to investigate the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its repercussion in the context of teaching and learning. The notion of ICC is incepted on the acquisition of several “savoirs” associated with attitudes and values, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness. However, the process of acquiring and negotiating meaning in the context of intercultural communication lies a tremendous challenge and demands a continuous effort. Thus, the objective of this study is to probe on how students’ attitudes towards another culture affect their degree of cultural awareness and to deliberate how social and communication skills can foster intercultural competence that is influenced by the level of ICC acquisition. The findings indicate that the students possess intercultural competence in which they demonstrate positive attitudes towards individuals from other cultures; henceforth is reflected in the high cultural awareness amongst the students. Apart from this, the findings yielded also show that the students are able to exhibit and display significant competencies in both social and communication skills which are allied to the high level of ICC acquisition.

Illustrating the Intercultural in Portuguese Secondary School Foreign Language (FL) Classrooms

Abstract This article reports on a small-scale action research project developed in the context of the practicum of a Teacher Education Masters course at the Faculty of Letters, the University of Porto. The project was focussed on the importance of visual stimuli in the foreign language teaching classroom (English and Spanish), within the context of an intercultural approach. Different strategies, activities and materials were employed with the general aim of helping the learners to develop their critical cultural awareness. The learners played a central role, participating actively, by bringing into the classroom their own knowledge of the world. Simultaneously, the role of the teacher was not without importance in this action research project, presenting herself as an example of a cultural mediator.

Othering: Towards a Critical Cultural Awareness in the Language Classroom

Due to the need of decentering language learners’ conceptions and practices of “othering” against the target culture, it has become necessary to help them grow in critical cultural understanding and positive appreciation towards the richness of difference and plurality, as a transversal dimension of their intercultural competence. Thus, this paper seeks to summarize the literature on the notion of othering and its pedagogical possibilities to promote critical cultural awareness raising in the language classroom. It initially presents some theoretical contributions on the concepts of the “Other” and the “Self” and its dialectical relation, and later, it proposes four pedagogical tools that could enable learners to achieve the already mentioned objective.

The importance of being critical – Polish EFL teachers' beliefs and practices

Sooner or later, countries like Poland will have to welcome immigrants from the Middle East and successfully communicate with the immigrants from different cultural backgrounds. I would like to argue that critical cultural awareness proves to be a cornerstone of the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (Byram, 1997) and should be considered a prerequisite for developing the rest of the components comprising the model. The main aim of the present research paper is to investigate, analyse and discuss Polish EFL teachers' beliefs on the idea of including critical cultural awareness, a crucial component of intercultural competence, in the EFL lessons, teachers' teaching practices with reference to developing particular elements of intercultural competence in the EFL lessons and the possible discrepancies between their beliefs and practices. A questionnaire administered to 125 Polish EFL teachers and a case study of three practitioners, who were observed, interviewed and confronted in a focus-group discussion, were used to collect the relevant data. The results of my research study suggest that a lot of Polish EFL teachers declare that they consider Byram's intercultural communicative competence model (Byram 1997) relevant to foreign language teaching and learning in the present-day and seem to be willing to implement it in their lessons, yet many of those teachers appear not to prioritize intercultural competence in their teaching practice. This apparent discrepancy between language teachers' beliefs and their practices may stem from teachers' lack of sufficient intercultural training during their professional education. A need for implementing critical cultural awareness into the pre-service teacher trainings was identified. Keywords: intercultural competence, critical cultural awareness, EFL teaching and learning

An intercontinental inquiry on multicultural education: Canadian and Hong Kong university students connected through a Web 2.0 learning environment

Adopting Cummins’ model of intervention for collaborative empowerment, this study reports on a transnational project that examines (1) the effectiveness of enhancing critical cultural awareness by engaging culturally diverse university students in online discussions and (2) students’ perspectives on understanding different cultures through mass media and technology advances. Thirty-five Canadian and 47 Hong Kong university students participated in the project integrating aspects of multicultural education. The results of thematic analysis of the scripts of their postings showed that the innovative learning environment provided students an authentic and constructive intercultural learning experience. It enhanced their cultural sensitivity and competence and reinforced their critical awareness of various texts, information, and discourse arising from the use of new technologies. The results indicated that, when paired with appropriate instructional design, Web 2.0 technologies have a great potential to facilitate multicultural education and practices through effectively forming transnational learning communities that harness the strengths of diverse students.