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Abstract
Language teaching, after the 'intercultural turn' of the 1990s which more recently made it possible
to speak of Foreign Language Education or Intercultural Foreign Language Education (IFLE),
proposes broadening the aims of language education to include among its main concerns students'
intercultural competence (IC), personal growth, and intercultural critical citizenship. This
educational broadening of language-teaching horizons raises delicate and controversial issues, first
of all concerning the relationship intercultural objectives have with communicative objectives at
both curriculum and methodology levels. This issue, crucial since teaching a foreign language is
clearly a priority for IFLE, is addressed in the present article through a proposal to integrate two
models: the Methodological Model of Intercultural Competence (MetMIC) (Borghetti 2011), and
the Teaching Unit Model (TUM) (Freddi 1975, 1994; Porcelli 1994; Zorzi 1995; Balboni 2002).
These two frameworks, each within its own area of application (intercultural education in the case
of MetMIC and foreign language teaching in the case of TUM) are focussed on curriculum planning
and put forward methodological suggestions for teachers. Their integration, as suggested in this
article, can be carried out on three levels (general and educational, ‘macro’ or curricular, and
‘micro’ or methodological) and allows for coherently pursuing intercultural and communicative
objectives through theoretically-informed methodological choices about curriculum structure and
teaching methodologies.
Introduction
Any well-grounded form of teaching involves some contemplation about the ultimate goals of the
learning process: Will it prove useful to the individual student and/or to society at large? Will it
foster individual success within a specific job sector, distinction within specific social circles,
and/or personal development? And when the aims behind teaching/learning are above all social in
nature, is the objective to educate individuals so that they can develop 'a convergent way of thinking
about what it means to be a citizen in a given state' (Martin and Feng 2006: 53), or that individuals
learn to participate in today's global society with a heightened degree of awareness and a more
critical eye? Or is the underlying goal one of shaping students who will go on to help build a better
society (Giroux 1992)? No single response exists to these questions, especially within today's
'global knowledge' society where there are so many different contexts and reasons for teaching and
learning. Even if we were to limit the scope of our analysis exclusively to formal education, a large
number of factors (such as the various educational policies of different countries or disciplinary
mainstreams) would still make for a highly diversified picture within meta-educational reflection
and discourse.
The history of foreign language teaching (FLT) itself could be reinterpreted in the wake of
the roles that FLT has created for itself within and among societies, as well as within and among
individuals, through its different approaches and methods. Without presenting an exhaustive
historical review, it is possible to affirm that it was primarily a greater awareness of the importance
of the questions raised above, as well as of the educational and social roles played by foreign
language teaching and learning, which formed the basis of what could be termed the 'intercultural
turn' taken by the discipline since the 1990s. Indeed, Foreign Language Education (Byram 1989) -
also referred to as 'Intercultural Foreign Language Education' (IFLE) (Borghetti 2008, 2011) -
disputed the mainly instrumental value of language and culture learning as it was implicitly
assumed in communicative language teaching. If the emphasis placed on the appropriateness and
efficacy of communication by the communicative methods resulted in the introduction of some
cultural content within language curricula, this content was often isolated and simplified, while at
times stereotyped and strictly functional, for communicative objectives (Swan 1985; Byram 1989;
Cherrington 2004). It was in objection to this conception of the role of language and culture
teaching that Byram (1989) emphasized the profound educational and social role which linguistic
teaching could assume if only it were to tap into the cultural aspects of the language being studied.
Therefore, for IFLE, the study of a foreign language becomes an opportunity for students to acquire
and develop knowledge, attitudes, and skills beyond the specific languaculture (Agar 1994) studied,
which as a whole constitute intercultural competence (IC) (Byram 1997). Definable as 'an integral
whole of cognitive, affective and behavioural factors that influence the understanding of, and
interaction with, diversity in a broad sense, and which can be developed through education and/or
experience' (Borghetti 2011: 143), IC is not a content in the syllabus but an educational goal of
superior order which redefines the roles of communicative and cultural competences. More recently,
the educational impact of IFLE has been additionally reinforced by a shift from a mainly 'national
paradigm' - which pedagogically implies comparing the source and the target (national)
languacultures - to a 'transnational' paradigm, according to which 'languages spread across cultures,
and cultures spread across languages' (Risager 2007: 2). In addition, IFLE is being discussed and
related to post-structuralist discourse about diversity, as well as a multiple, hybrid, fluid identity. An
emphasis on personal, relational and contextual identities was already implicit in the concept of the
'third place' as expressed by Kramsch (1993) and the 'third space' as defined by Bhabha (1994) in
order to emphasize that individuals manoeuvre beyond their target or source cultures since 'they
move to a position in which their developing intercultural competence informs their language
choices in communication' (Kramsch 2009: 244). Studies such as Guilherme (2002) and Block
(2007) or the state-of-the-art article by Norton and Toohey (2011) have further explored identity in
language education. However, much of the research on this topic is concentrated on offering
students 'multiple identity positions from which to engage in the language practices of the
classroom, the school, and the community' (Norton and Toohey 2011: 432) and does not explore in
depth the view that students should become aware of unequal power relations and multiple
identities so that they can better give voice to others, starting with their own classmates. This latter
kind of recognition and educational direction, which more openly addresses the others, their
diversities and their rights, is often preferred within IFLE: By means of the stimulation of students'
intercultural competence, surely teachers are invited to guide them to explore and understand their
sense of cultural belonging, included the intrinsic instability and context-related nature of such
affiliations; however, this educational aim is seen as inseparable from the attempt to open a
dimension of agency for students as critical intercultural individuals (Byram 2008) and world
citizens committed to social transformation (Giroux 1992) towards more equal and fair societies.
How these theoretical arguments should be concretely translated into curriculum planning
and teaching methodology is a critical issue which continues to be debated. Any attempt in this
direction must begin by examining how communicative and intercultural objectives might coexist in
the pursuit of IFLE's educational goals at both curriculum and teaching methodology levels. This is
because the development of students' communicative competence in the target language still
remains a priority, even in the broader educational framework of IFLE. At the same time, questions
about what relationship intercultural objectives have with communicative ones within the
curriculum, and what methodological principles should be adopted in order to promote them jointly
in the foreign language classroom, are still largely unexplored. Most existing models of intercultural
competence do not specify how IC is linked to communicative competence in the foreign language,
in part because many of these have arisen from contexts outside of FLT (see Brislin and Yoshida
(1994), Fantini (2009) or Deardorff (2006), and in particular Borghetti (2012) for a review of twelve
models of IC). Byram's model (1997) is the only one which defines the relationship between
intercultural and communicative objectives; such relationship is implicitly founded upon the
distinction between IC and ‘intercultural communicative competence’): In the former case
individuals have the ability to interact in their own language with people from another culture; in
the latter case, while interacting, they also put into practice their linguistic, socio-linguistic and
discourse competences in the foreign language (Byram, 1997: 70-71). The significance of the issue
of connecting intercultural and communicative competences is illustrated by the fact that, even
when language teachers recognize the importance of developing students' intercultural competence,
they often drop intercultural aims in planning their courses, since they feel that 'language and
culture cannot be taught in an integrated way' (Sercu et al. 2005: 164).
This article aims to indicate how teaching (curricular and methodological) practice can
follow from IFLE theoretical stances and principles. It suggests integration of the Methodological
Model of Intercultural Competence (MetMIC) (Borghetti 2011) with the Teaching Unit Model
(TUM), which has been largely known and adopted - for communicative purposes exclusively -
within the Italian FLT tradition since the 1970s (Freddi 1975). Since the two models are based on a
number of conditions relative to (inter)cultural and language learning respectively, and share an
operational approach in their conception of curriculum structure and teaching methodologies, their
integration can help in the objective of jointly pursuing communicative and intercultural
competences in the language class. In what follows, each model is presented and discussed, and
then, on the basis of the characteristics emerging from the two reviews, the integration of the two
frameworks is proposed and commented on, in order to pursue in a holistic manner IFLE
educational aims as they result after the 'intercultural turn' and the more 'traditional' FLT
communicative objectives.
The Methodological Model of Intercultural Competence (MetMIC) (Borghetti 2008, 2011) aims to
offer a reformulation of IFLE principles so that they can be easily translated into choices relative to
curriculum planning and teaching methodologies (materials, activities, and procedures). Firmly
rooted in IFLE literature (above all Byram's 1997 proposal for developing intercultural
competence), it attempts to help bridge the gap between theoretical formulation of intercultural
competence on the one hand and educational practice on the other. MetMIC accepts Byram’s above-
mentioned distinction between IC and ‘intercultural communicative competence' and, consequently,
postulates a relative independence of intercultural education and language teaching.
Notwithstanding its assumptions and even the original name of the framework, 'Methodological
Model of Intercultural Communicative Competence' (Borghetti 2008), MetMIC mainly addresses
foreign language on metacultural and metalinguistic levels rather than in its communicative nature
and function. It suggests ways for students to use languages as a key through which to read cultures
and as systems to be aware of, while it partially sidesteps the issue of the actual use of the foreign
language in and beyond the class. As a consequence, it has done little to resolve the issue central to
this article: the integration of intercultural and communicative objectives.
The model should be read from left to right. The two smaller arrows represent teaching actions
aimed at stimulating students’ cognitive (A) and affective (B) processes respectively. The larger
arrow (C) depicts the first and most immediate effect of the educational effort, the evolution and
structuring of students’ cultural, intercultural and self-awareness and, at the same time, the teaching
actions aimed at this development. Cultural and intercultural awareness are closely tied together,
since one can become aware that culture exists and influences values, attitudes and behaviour
(cultural awareness) only after experiencing difference and realising, indirectly, that all cultures
influence every aspect of human life in an equivalent, be it different, manner (intercultural
awareness). Self-awareness is of a different nature, as the object of cognition is the person who
recognises their (and therefore the other's) fluid, changing, and context-related identities. These
various forms of awareness gradually lay the foundations (i.e. of critical evaluation, intra- and
interpersonal monitoring) which allow for fully reaching ‘critical cultural awareness’ (Byram 1997),
defined as the engaged component of the competence, thanks to which students affirm their own
position as critical intercultural individuals and committed world citizens.
The lines crossing all three arrows indicate the skills that students progressively develop,
based on the dynamics arising between emotional and cognitive components on the one hand, and
educational actions carried out with the aim of promoting these skills on the other. Skills represent
both IC 'external outcomes' (i.e. mediating among interlocutors' conflicting perspectives) and
'internal outcomes' (i.e. willingness to question one’s own values) (Deardorff 2006). However, their
true singularity consists in the fact that skills can translate all the other IC dimensions into external,
observable behaviour, therefore linking competence to performance.
Various references to intercultural learning are implicit in the diagram; its arrow shape
(which alludes to students' continuance of IC development after module completion), the increasing
width of the arrows (which signals a hypothetical and hoped for progress in competence
acquisition) and, finally, the suggestion made to teachers to privilege teaching activities primarily
aimed at developing cognitive processes at the beginning of the module.
This last point is a key feature of the model: since it is expressly designed for foreign
language (FL) teaching contexts - conceptually distinct from second language (SL) contexts -
teaching activities that most affect students' cognitive and awareness processes are given
precedence and more ample space. In most foreign language contexts (multicultural classes
representing significant exceptions) students usually do not have urgent emotional needs tied to
diversity in the foreign culture but tend to spontaneously adopt an analytical point of view on
cultural matters (Byram 1989; Block 2007). Beyond this, since working with emotional and identity
processes is a very delicate task, in monocultural and multicultural classes alike, it is advisable for
teachers not to intervene in the emotional dimension until they have clearly deciphered the power
dynamics at play within the class, student and teacher-student relations have solidified, and learners
have reached a good level of cultural, intercultural, and self-awareness (Borghetti 2008).
The hypothetical 'teaching block' is divided into three phases. The first aims at developing
students’ cognitive processes, the second their affective processes and the third their IC in terms of a
broader ethical and socio-political commitment. To reach these general educational goals, each
phase of competence stimulation assumes a set of skills (or teaching objectives) that students must
put into use and develop in the given moment of the teaching process. On the basis of the objectives
identified for each of the three phases, MetMIC proposes three taxonomies of methodological
principles which can help guide teachers in their selection or creation of the most effective activities
for a given moment. The methodological requirements that activities must meet for each phase are
summarised in Table 1:
Input presentation
The activities proposed above act in preparation of the second phase, a fundamental stage in the
teaching unit. Here students are presented with the pivot ‘text’, which may be oral or written, comics,
images, TV programmes or even events or persons, chosen to introduce them to exploration and use of
the foreign language. Given that linguistic input can be acquired only when it is meaningful and
comprehensible (Krashen 1981), in this phase it is important that students concentrate on
understanding the text. To this end, and in line with the Gestalt theory of perception, teachers propose
reading and listening activities which help students explore the text first in its global meaning, and then
in a more analytical way. Students are thus guided in exploiting contextual and co-textual redundancy
as much as possible so that they can formulate hypotheses on the overall meaning of the text. They
then verify their ideas by applying reading strategies which gradually become more and more
analytical (i.e. skimming and scanning) (Balboni 1994: 65-66).
Focusing
The analytical reading strategies adopted at the end of the last phase constitute a bridge leading into
this phase, where there is a focusing on the various aspects of communicative competence. The text
offers cues which help tackle the unit objectives in terms of its functional, phonological, lexical,
morphosyntactic and textual elements. Here the teacher aims to highlight what they would like to call
to the students' attention in the text, so as to guide them in additional activities involving metalinguistic
experimentation and reflection. More specifically, in this phase, students are guided in: 'noticing'
(Schmidt 1990) certain aspects regarding the language used in the text; formulating hypotheses on the
function of language in terms of regularity and irregularity; testing those hypotheses, either through
other easily understandable texts or activities created for this purpose; and summarising what they have
learned in the form of a metalinguistic reflection. In short, this procedure is what Ellis would call an
implicit proactive instruction, since 'tasks are designed to elicit the use of a specific linguistic target,
and performance of the task naturally creates opportunities for experiencing the target feature' (2009:
17).
Practice
At this point students experiment with the aspects previously focused on in various contexts beyond
the initial text. The teacher proposes new texts and situations in which students can practice what they
have learned in a progressively free manner: at first through pattern drills, games or guided dialogues;
then through more unstructured teaching techniques such as information-gap activities or role-plays.
This progression is used in order to arrive at forms of communication that are as authentic as possible,
helping students to practice and develop their communicative skills. In short, this phase is the most
focussed on linguistic production in all its forms. Student-student and student-teacher interaction
continues to play an important role throughout the entirety of the teaching unit.
Both models presented above are theoretical frameworks, and each within its own area of
application (intercultural education in the case of MetMIC and FLT in the case of TUM) focuses on
curriculum planning and puts forward methodological suggestions for teachers. In other words,
based on their respective literatures, they propose 'provisional specifications, not prescriptions'
(Ellis 1997: 83) about teaching progression, procedures and methodologies, that practitioners can
and must evaluate in their own contexts of action. This shared characteristic makes their integration
possible and allows for conceiving courses where intercultural and communicative objectives are
fully integrated.
In order to combine these two models it is first necessary to postulate a higher or secondary
education module/course that aims at developing students' intercultural and communicative
competence in a given foreign language. While the duration of this course could vary, depending on
the institution, national education policies, number of credit hours, here an overall length of 60
hours is postulated as an example. This time-span is dedicated to number of teaching units (inspired
by TUM) aimed at reaching set FL communicative objectives. Since each unit would have a
duration of 6 to 8 hours, an organization of the course into a total of 7-10 teaching units (TUs) is
conceivable. Integration of the intercultural dimension takes place as this structure interacts on
various levels with MetMIC. On a first general and educational level, MetMIC shapes the ultimate
aims of the entire course. On a second level, which could be defined as ‘macro’ or ‘curricular’, the
concatenated sequence of teaching units is inscribed into MetMIC so that the first 3-4 TUs of the
curriculum aim at developing students' IC cognitive processes, while the following 3-4 TUs aim at
promoting IC affective processes, and the last 2-3 TUs aim at cultivating students' IC in terms of
their ethical and socio-political commitment as well as their intercultural citizenship. The third level
of interaction, termed ‘micro’ or ‘methodological’, takes place at the level of TUM, since the
methodological principles indicated by MetMIC are adopted in selecting the intercultural activities
to be proposed throughout the instructional phases of each teaching unit.
Conclusion
The main objective of this article is to contribute to the joint pursuit of intercultural and
communicative objectives in IFLE contexts by making suggestions about curriculum planning and
methodological issues. In particular, it proposes the integration MetMIC and a version of TUM as it
is known in the Italian FLT tradition. MetMIC translates IFLE educational goals into curriculum
and methodological choices; at the same time, chains of TUMs, which, in general, are mainly
focussed on communicative objectives, are informed by the MetMIC framework on the educational,
curriculum, and methodological levels.
This proposal is put forward on the basis of models that are neither exclusive nor necessarily
complete and definitive. As a consequence, it retains some of their defects: from MetMIC for
example, some theoretical doubts regarding the internal processes of intercultural learning and an
excessively stringent distinction between FL and SL teaching contexts. The innovation of this
proposal, however, lies in its offering a complete framework thanks to which both course planners
and teachers can easily make theoretically-informed methodological choices about their IFLE
courses and classes in whatever teaching contexts they work, regardless of the specific target
language, language level, and age of students.
Another crucial feature of this integration of MetMIC and TUM is its attempt to tie IFLE back into
the teaching contexts from which it began, and from which it can draw much of its future vitality. It
is reasonable to suppose that language teachers' reticence to pursue the educational goals of IFLE is
largely due to the fact that no sufficient curriculum planning and methodological guidelines have
yet been offered towards the effective integration of communicative and intercultural objectives
(Sercu et al. 2005). Given this, Ellis's reflection that 'researchers need to attend to the how of
application as well as the what' (1997: 88) appears all the more true. In the specific case of this
contribution it is thus of primary importance that the suggested integration of MetMIC and TUM is
tested and evaluated through classroom experimentations in order to shed more light on the concrete
potential of this proposal.
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