Developing the intercultural dimension Developing the intercultural - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Liang Wang SOAS, University of London

Developing the intercultural dimension Developing the intercultural dimension in teaching and assessing Chinese as in teaching and assessing Chinese as a foreign language a foreign language

– – A proposal from the EBCL Project A proposal from the EBCL Project

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About EBCL Project

Common European Framework

• f Reference for Languages:

Learning, teaching assessment (2001) European Benchmarking Chinese Language Project (Nov 2010) http://ebcl.eu.com/

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EBCL project objectives

Objectives Language competence Intercultural understanding Networking Database

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Chinese as a foreign language – 1

Different backgrounds and varieties of Chinese

language

Use of Chinese in Europe vs. use of Chinese in Greater

China

Internationalising Chinese Localising Chinese

e.g. 1 What do you expect your students to address you and what do your students address you? e.g. 2 ‘A Germany learner would not likely to associate with the word 认真 when describing someone.’

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Chinese as a foreign language – 2

Lack of interactional perspectives and

pedagogical practices

Culture as products Culture as practice Culture as perspectives Individual experience? Made implicit in most language courses

‘My students are all mature students so I assume that they are already culturally competent to some degree and actually there is no particular way of teaching intercultural competence.’ ZZ (personal communication, 28/04/12)

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IC dimension in FLE

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Theoretical perspectives on culture and communication

Essentialist view

Background studies: a range of knowledge to be transmitted (monocultural) Cross-cultural comparison: over-generalization, stereotyping (bi-cultural) Intercultural communication: interaction, but binary tradition of ‘Us’ & ‘Them’

Negotiated/non-essentialist view (Scollon and Scollon 2001; Piller 2007)

Interdiscourse communication: a process of assertion, negotiation, construction, reflection, and the dynamics of interaction between individuals (interpersonal and social)

The changing goal of FLE

‘Native-speaker’ ‘Intercultural-speaker’ Communicative competence (CC) Intercultural CC (ICC)

(Byram 1997; Byram, Gribkova and Starkey, 2001; Corbett 2003; Kramsch 1998, 2001)

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‘a central objective of language education [is] to promote the favourable development of the learner’s whole personality and sense of identity in response to the enriching experience of otherness in language and culture.’ CEFR (2001:1) ‘to achieve a wider and deeper understanding of the way of life and forms of thought of other peoples and of their cultural heritage.’ CEFR (2001:3)

Educational objective Social objective

IC dimension in CEFR - 1

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‘To promote mutual understanding and tolerance, respect for identities and cultural diversity through more effective international communication. To maintain and further develop the richness and diversity of European cultural life through greater mutual knowledge of national and regional languages, including those less widely taught. To meet the needs of a multilingual and multicultural Europe by appreciably developing the ability of Europeans to communicate with each other across linguistic and cultural boundaries, which requires a sustained, lifelong effort to be encouraged, put on an organised footing and financed at all levels of education by the competent bodies.’ CEFR (2001:3)

Political objective

IC dimension in CEFR - 2

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IC dimension in CEFR - 3

Emerging but under-developed

‘intercultural awareness’, ‘intercultural skills’, ‘existential

competence’ CEFR (2001) ‘although the CEF included a discussion of intercultural competence and intercultural awareness, the question of assessment and the defining of levels of intercultural competence, had to be left aside as the CEF went to press.’ Neuner, Parmenter, Starkey and Zarate (2003)

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IC dimension in CEFR - 4

Lack of clarity

‘the influence of the CEFR in Europe and other countries does not include the question of intercultural competence and pluriculturalism. Neither does it include the notion of “mediation”.’ Byram (2011:68)

Competence of mediation

finding a solution to the conflict or problem rather than merely translation/interpretation Byram et al. (1994, in Byram 2011)

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IC dimension in ICCLE

International Curriculum for Chinese Language

Education (2008)

Cultural awareness model Cultural knowledge Cultural understanding Cross-cultural awareness Global awareness Lack of progressive description Abstract vs concrete

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ICC/IC assessment models

Byram (1997) – most comprehensive and well worked-out

with objectives for teaching and assessment; prescriptive more than descriptive

Deardorff (2006) – synthesis of existing expert views,

which justifies Byram’s model

LOLIPOP portfolio (2004) – online interactive version of

ELP with an enhanced intercultural dimension

INCA (2004) – a framework, a suite of tools for

intercultural competence assessment in work contexts linked to language and subject knowledge competence

CEFcult (2010) – a framework for enhancing language

proficiency for intercultural professional communication

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ICC model

Communicative competence

Linguistic Sociolinguistic Discourse

Intercultural competence (IC)

Knowledge Attitude Skills Critical cultural awareness

knowledge Skills (interpret, relate) Attitudes Critical awareness Skills (discover, interact)

Byram’s model

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Deardorff’s models

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The IC dimension within EBCL

Generic and illustrative descriptors: Reception Spoken/Written Production Spoken/Written Interaction Spoken/Written Communication Strategies Pragmatic components (List of language functions) Sociolinguistic components (List of themes and topics) Linguistic components (vocabulary/character, grammar, grapheme, etc.) Intercultural components (knowledge, attitude, skills, critical cultural awareness)

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Proposals

A portfolio approach to building up can-do statements

• pen list on the basis of Byram (1997)

knowledge-related (themes/notions) action-oriented (behaviours/language functions) Collection of learners’ intercultural experiences for data Experiential learning in real-life contexts intercultural ‘communicative’ experience with linguistic evidence, supplemented by

EBCL List of Themes/Topics EBCL List of Language Functions

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What’s coming up…

Revising the framework

Updated information about the project, please visit http://ebcl.eu.com/

Contact: Liang Wang, l.wang@soas.ac.uk

BCLTS 2012, University of Central Lancashire, Preston