It is undeniable that English language teaching and learning in Vietnam in these days aims to develop learners’ intercultural communicative competence, which includes both communicative competence and intercultural competence. Intercultural competence is of particular significance for university students of Ha Long University, as they are expected to be able to work and to pursue further studies in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural context. Therefore, English language teaching at Ha Long University needs to address culture as an integrated part of the process. This paper introduces key theoretical issues in the integration of culture into English teaching for the development of students’ intercultural competence.

KEY ISSUES IN THE INTEGRATION OF CULTURE INTO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

                                                                Nguyễn Thành Long – Khoa Ngoại ngữ – Đại học Hạ Long

1. Introduction: Main approaches to culture in language teaching

Four main approaches to culture in language teaching, according to, for example, Liddicoat (Liddicoat 2004) and Liddicoat et al. (2003), have been identified as follows.

• The culture as high culture approach: Within this traditional approach culture is commonly conceptualised as product, primarily the literature of the target language. Culture teaching is typically via the teaching of literary works in the target language.
• The culture as area studies approach: This approach sees culture as group membership, associating culture and country. Culture teaching involves mainly knowledge about the history, the geographical features and institutional issues of the country or countries in which the target language is mainly used.
• The culture as societal norms approach: This static structural and functional conceptualisation of culture focusses on language behaviours, typically the pragmatic and interactional norms, of the members of a certain cultural group. Addressing culture, thus, aims at enabling the language learner to predict the native speakers’ language behaviours and to understand the values and beliefs in the target language culture.
• The culture as practice approach: Within this approach culture is seen as sets of practices in individuals’ lived experiences in interactions. This dynamic view of culture, thus, encourages interactions with members of the target culture in teaching and learning culture. Culture teaching (in language education) aims at assisting language learners to develop their intercultural communicative skills.

The view of culture and the approach to culture affect how culture is taught. When culture is approached as static, it might be treated separately from language (Liddicoat 2002, Liddicoat 2004). For example, within the culture-as-high-culture approach culture is usually limited to literary works in the target language and addressed separately from language teaching. Similarly, within the culture-as-area-studies approach addressing culture means providing and exploring information about, for instance, the society, history and geographical features of a country, usually the country in which the target language is mainly spoken. However, if seen in a dynamic view, and thus within the culture-as-practice approach, culture is integrated into language education and involves language learners’ engagement with both linguistic and non-linguistic practices in particular cultural contexts (Liddicoat 2002, Liddicoat 2004).

2. An intercultural language teaching approach: principles in the integration of culture and language in language teaching

Crozet and Liddicoat (1999) propose a set of five principles for the adoption of an ILT approach as follows.

• Culture is not acquired through osmosis. It must be taught explicitly: Adopting an ILT approach, the language teacher needs to see culture learning as an exploratory process, and to be knowledgeable in and to focus on the interrelationships between language (in both the spoken and the written forms) and culture.
• The bilingual/multilingual speaker is the norm: ILT directly addresses IC development, and sees the bilingual/multilingual speaker (not the native speaker) as the norm. This implies that the language learner’s first language, for example, is necessarily allowed in the learning process and in the classroom.
• Conceptual and experiential learning is required to acquire intercultural competence: As learning a language includes in itself learning about languages, it is necessary to introduce to learners concepts (i.e., meta-knowledge) in order to enable learners (and the teacher) to talk about language and culture. It is also necessary for language learners to be exposed to the target language and culture (or, the linguaculture) and to use it as their own experience of the target language user.
• Role of teachers and learners are redefined: In adopting an intercultural approach, the language teacher needs to become a learner of both language and culture so that he/she can best facilitate his/her students in both learning and exploring the linguaculture.
• New approaches to language testing are needed to assess intercultural competence: As teaching and assessment are interrelated, IC needs to be assessed as an integrative part of language assessment. However, this integration is not yet well established in language assessment. (Summarised from Crozet and Liddicoat 1999)

Newton and Shearn (Newton and Shearn 2010, 2010a) use the term intercultural communicative language teaching (iCLT) to explicitly stress the status of both communicative competence and IC in language teaching and learning. In this term, “communicative” represents the status of the language element, and “intercultural” – the status of the culture element, both being of equal status in the context of languages education in New Zealand (Newton and Shearn 2010, Newton and Shearn 2010a). On the basis of research evidence in language teaching and learning within iCLT, Newton and Shearn have developed a framework of principles for effective iCLT.

In Newton and Shearn’s (2010) framework of six principles for effective iCLT, these principles are interrelated. The framework, aimed at the development of ICC in language teaching and learning, begins with principle one as a starting point, which states the interrelationships between language and culture as well as the necessity of addressing culture from the beginning. These six principles in the framework are summarised as follows.

• Principle 1: iCLT integrates language and culture from the beginning. This principle is considered the starting point of the whole set of principles in the framework. It stresses the interrelationships between language and culture, especially the pervasive embedded-ness of culture in language as Crozet and Liddicoat (1999) and Liddicoat (2009) point out. This principle also requires that culture be integrated right from the beginning of the language teaching and learning process. This early integration is not only feasible as cultural content is present in even simple language units to be introduced to the language learner such as ways of greeting, but also necessary in helping the learner to avoid stereotyping and prejudice.
• Principle 2: iCLT engages learners in genuine social interaction. Because of the dynamic nature of culture (i.e., culture as a process of forming, transmitting, and changing, and as practices) and the embedded-ness of culture in language, it is necessary for the language learner to interact and engage with the target language and other culture(s). Furthermore, this “interaction” principle also aims to provide opportunities for the learner to explore the deep-level culture elements (e.g., beliefs, values, and norms) through the culture (in language) input. It also helps the learner to develop, for example, what Byram (1997) terms “savoir comprendre” (i.e., skills of interpreting a document in the target language/culture and relating it with the document in his/her own language/culture).
• Principle 3: iCLT encourages and develops an exploratory and reflective approach to culture and culture-in-language. An iCLT approach, with a dynamic view of culture, sees culture teaching as moving beyond merely transmitting cultural knowledge to the language learner. Instead, culture teaching requires the learner to explore both visible and invisible cultural elements, as well as language-culture relationships. This exploration, thus, enables the learner to construct knowledge from his/her own experience and reflection, as well as to gain understandings about others’ lived cultural experience. Exploration is an on-going process for both the language learner and the language teacher.
• Principle 4: iCLT fosters explicit comparisons and connections between languages and cultures. It is fundamental in an iCLT approach to compare languages and cultures. Exploring culture and culture in language (as stated in principle three) is advantageous in opening up opportunities for the language learner to compare and relativise cultures, hence a development of intercultural awareness and ability to mediate between cultures. It is necessary to address intercultural issues explicitly in the language classroom.
• Principle 5: iCLT acknowledges and responds appropriately to diverse learners and learning contexts. In educational contexts in which the language class is characterised by learners’ diversity in cultural and linguistic backgrounds, iCLT entails recognising and embracing this diversity. Each of these cultures needs to be respected, represented and participated in during the culture teaching and learning process (e.g., exploration of cultures, comparison of languages and cultures, and engagement with cultures via interactions).
• Principle 6: iCLT emphasises intercultural communicative competence rather than native-speaker competence. In an iCLT approach, the goal of language teaching and learning is ICC with the components proposed by Byram (1997): knowledge, skills (both for interpreting and relating and for discovering and interacting), attitudes and critical cultural awareness. That is, the norm is the intercultural speaker, who can be competent in communicating with both native and non-native speakers of the target language.

3. Conclusion

In an ILT approach (Liddicoat 2002, Liddicoat, Papademetre et al. 2003) and an iCLT approach (Newton and Shearn 2010), general principles concern: the interrelationships between language and culture; the dynamic nature of culture which requires exploration, comparison and engagement; the necessity to explicitly address culture and its diversity; and, the goal of developing IC for the language learner with the intercultural speaker as the norm. For such an approach, culture needs to be integrated into language teaching. Language teachers who want to work in this approach need to take these principles into careful consideration in their preparation of lessons, organization of teaching and learning activities as well as in their assessment of their students.