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Teaching of Culture in English as an
International Language

The importance of integrating the teaching and learning of language and culture
has been widely recognised and emphasized. However, how to teach English as an
International Language (EIL) and cultures in an integrative way in non-native
English speaking countries remains problematic and has largely failed to enable
language learners to meet local and global communication demands.
Developing students’ intercultural competence is one of the key missions of teaching
cultures. This book examines a range of well-established models and paradigms from
both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. Exploring questions of
why, what, and how to best teach cultures, the authors propose an integrated model to
suit non-native English contexts in the Asia Pacific. The chapters deal with other critical
issues such as the relationship between language and power, the importance of power
relations in communication, the relationship between teaching cultures and national
interests, and balancing tradition and change in the era of globalisation. The book will
be valuable to academics and students of foreign language education, particularly those
teaching English as an international language in non-native English countries.

Shen Chen is a multi lingual teacher educator at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
In his teaching career of 35 years, he taught in Nanjing Normal University, China, and
Melbourne University and Deakin University in Australia before he moved to the
University of Newcastle in 1993. Since then, he has been a research fellow and a visiting
professor in Cambridge University, Warwick University, UK, University of California,
Berkeley, USA, University of British Columbia, Canada, University of Hong Kong,
Nanjing University, and Beijing Language and Culture University, China. He has
published widely in language education.

Thi Thuy Le is currently teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language), EIL

(English as an International Language), and Intercultural Communication at the
University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University,
Hanoi (ULIS-VNU). She received her PhD from the University of Newcastle,
Australia. She was selected for the Solidarity Award by the Conference Committee
at the 18th World Congress of Applied Linguistics held in Rio de Janeiro in July
2017. She was one of the 14 award winners, and the only winner representing
Australian universities. Her research interests lie in areas such as intercultural
communication, EFL/ESL teacher education, and curriculum development.
Routledge Advances in Teaching English as an International
Language Series
Series Editor: Farzad Sharifian, Monash University, Australia

Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL) is a new paradigm in

English Language Teaching (ELT) that has emerged as a response to the rapid
increase in the global spread of English, which has brought about structural,
functional, and demographic changes to the language. These changes include the
fact that the majority of communicative events in English that are currently taking
place around the world are between so-called “non-native” speakers of the
language. Around 2 billion people on the planet are now using English on a daily
basis, and English has an official role in more than 70 countries and territories.
The rapid spread of English among communities of speakers around the world has
also led to the localisation or nativisation of the language and the development of
many new varieties, such as Chinese English. These recent changes to the English
language and the ways in which the language is being used call for revisiting many
aspects of teaching, learning, and using English. Although an increasing number
of publications have come out on the topic of EIL, no book series to date has
been dedicated to the teaching and learning of EIL.
The series will publish original research and theoretical essays on various aspects
of TEIL. It will also publish books that engage with practical aspects of TEIL,
such as pedagogy, EIL assessment, EIL material development, and intercultural
communication in EIL.

Teaching of Culture in English as an International Language

An Integrated Model
Shen Chen and Thi Thuy Le

For more information about this series, please visit: "https://www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Advances-in-Teaching-English-as-an-International-Language-Series/
book-series/RATEILS"
Teaching of Culture in English
as an International Language
An Integrated Model

Shen Chen and Thi Thuy Le

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Shen Chen and Thi Thuy Le
The right of Shen Chen and Thi Thuy Le to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chen, Shen, 1949- author. | Le, Thuy Thi, 1984- author.
Title: Teaching of culture in English as an international language : an integrated
model / by Shen Chen and Thi Thuy Le.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series:
Routledge advances in teaching English as an international language | Includes
bibliographical references and Index.
identifiers: lccn 2018014631| ISBN 9781138493728 (hardback) | ISBN
9781351027182 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers. |
Language and culture.
Classification: LCC PE1128.A2 C4465 2018 | DDC 428.0071--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014631

ISBN: 978-1-138-49372-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-02718-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard
by Taylor & Francis Books
Shen would like to dedicate this book to his parents and wife.
Thuy would like to dedicate it to her father and husband.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of figures viii

Preface and acknowledgements ix
List of abbreviations xi

1 Introduction: A perplexing problem 1

2 Historical development of culture pedagogy 17

3 Teaching culture for education: A model in the UK 42

4 Teaching culture for interaction: A model in the USA 62

5 Teaching culture for globalisation: A model in Europe 82

6 Teaching culture for localisation: A model in Asia 103

7 Developing an integrated model of teaching culture 121

8 Summary and conclusion 139

Index 142
Figures

2.1 Options for teaching culture in foreign language education 36

7.1 An integrated model for culture teaching EIL 124
7.2 Continuing learning circle towards intercultural capacity 136
Preface and acknowledgements

In foreign language education, the importance of teaching culture has been widely
accepted all over the world. However, there are diverse propositions and argu-
ments about the pedagogical treatment of culture in foreign language education,
in particular, the teaching of English as an international language. With a research
question about how to teach culture in English as an international language, this
work has recorded a journey of two non-native English speakers who used to live
in isolated countries in Asia before their countries opened the doors towards eco-
nomic globalization and technology innovation.
As co-authors, a supervisor and a PhD student, we have been so lucky to get
the opportunity to do our research on the same topic in Australia. Shen started his
research in 1983 and Thuy completed her thesis in 2017. The research has been
by two generations and has lasted approximately four decades. We hope that our
joint work will be a valuable contribution to the challenging issue of teaching
culture faced by foreign language educators, shedding light, at least, on the
practice of teaching English as an international language in non-native English
speaking countries in the Asian-Pacific Region or elsewhere in the world.
We could not have completed this work without the support of many people and
organisations, so we wish to extend our sincere gratitude to all of them. We would like
first to express our thanks to Australia, this beautiful and lucky country where we have
been able to do our research in a resourceful and safe environment where academic
freedom is encouraged. Our deepest appreciation goes to our Australian supervisors
and supporters Dr Helen Moore, Dr Doug White and Dr Jennifer Archer, as well as
Professor Ian Malcolm who has been Shen’s mentor and friend since he saw Shen’s first
publication in Australia in the 1980s. In spite of his retirement, he has taken his valuable
time to read through the manuscript of this book and provide constructive comments.
During the long journey of our research, we have been inspired by many
prominent international scholars in this area. The face-to-face discussions with
Professor Claire Kramsch and Professor Michael Byram were extremely beneficial
and productive. Thanks also go to Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey for her kind
invitation to Shen to be a visiting scholar at the University of Warwick where the
proposal for this book was prepared and also to Professor Anthony Liddicoat for
his brief but insightful comment on the book proposal during an international
conference in 2017.
x Preface and acknowledgements
We are deeply grateful to Taylor & Francis Group editor Ms Katie Peace and
Routledge Studies in English as an International Language series editor Professor
Farzad Sharifian for their support and encouragement in the inception of this
book. We also wish to express our thanks to the original book proposal reviewers
for providing us with invaluable critical suggestions and to all the people who
offered us help during the production of our work.
Finally we also wish to acknowledge and extend our thanks to our former col-
leagues and students in Australia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and
Vietnam, who have provided us with encouragement and motivation to conduct
research which has required patience, persistence, and perseverance.
List of abbreviations

AQ Adaptability Quotient
BBC British Broadcast Cooperation
CEFR Common European Framework of Reference
CLT Communicative Language Teaching
C1 Leaners’ native culture
C2 Target’s culture
EFL English as a Foreign Language
EIL English as an International Language
ELT English Language Teaching
EQ Emotional Quotient
ESL English as a Second Language
ESP English for Special Purposes
EST English for Science and Technology
EU European Union
iCLT Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching
ICT Information and Communication Technology
IELTS International English Testing System
IQ Intelligence Quotient
L1 Learners’ first language
L2 Target or second language
LSP Language for Special Purposes
NS Native Speaker
TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language
UK United Kingdom
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation
USA United States of America
VOA Voice of America
This page intentionally left blank
1 Introduction
A perplexing problem

The importance of integrating the teaching of culture with the teaching of language
has been widely accepted by foreign-language educators. However, there are diverse
propositions about the pedagogical treatment of “culture” in foreign-language
programmes, in particular, the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). In
terms of cultural content, what needs to be included in a foreign-language curriculum
is controversial. In terms of the process of teaching culture, the use of productive
pedagogy and teaching strategies is even more debatable. The pedagogical problem of
integrating language and culture has been faced by foreign-language educators all over
the world. The complexity increases with political concerns over national interests and
diplomatic relations with the outside world existing in the country where the teachers
are living and working. Foreign-language education is a part of the general education
of a nation. In any nation, its general education always aims to fulfil the task of main-
taining cultural values and passing them on to coming generations. On the other
hand, foreign-language education introduces other cultures which may conflict with
what is locally accepted and introduce social change rather than maintaining the
national tradition. This paradox of the double-functions of foreign-language education
leads to the perplexing issue of how to deal with the relations between home culture
and foreign culture, which must be clarified by foreign-language educators before they
teach a foreign language, EFL in particular. In this beginning chapter, the changing
status of English as an international language and its impact on teaching culture will be
briefly discussed so that the research question will be defined and the significance of
the research reported in this book can be justified.

1.1 Economic globalisation and English as an international language

According to Sharifian (2017), as a result of globalisation and trans-cultural
mobility, the emergence of World Englishes and the increase of intercultural com-
munication have led to a new trend of teaching English as an international language
(EIL). The economic globalisation has promoted the spread of English all over the
world and vice versa; the spread of World Englishes has enhanced globalisation
(Graddol, 1997). English is widely used in commerce, trade, diplomacy, tourism,
etc. Behind this wide use lies not only the monopoly which English-speaking
countries once held over technological and economic development but also the
2 Introduction
growing number of people in non-English-speaking countries who have chosen
English as their medium for intercultural communication.
In the 21st century, it is believed that around 2 billion people on the planet are
now using English on a daily basis, and English has an official role in more than
70 countries and territories (Crystal, 2001, as cited by Sharifian, 2017). This
incomparably wide use of English has brought about a unique status for English.
It is known as the link language in the world (Crystal, 2001; Fishman, Cooper, &
Conrad, 1977; Kachru, 1982; Smith, 1987; Strevens, 1987; Wardhaugh, 1987;
Sharifian, 2017). The change of status of English from a native language in several
developed countries to an international language has brought about a paradoxical
consequence. According to Cheshire and Moser (1994, p. 451), “As a world
language, free from its ties with any country where it is a native language, English
acts as both linguistic resource and symbolic resource for the different countries
that use it.” English seems to be owned internationally. This international own-
ership of English seems to create a complicated image entailing language and
culture: Could culture be separated from language or not? Could a language be a
culturally neutral vehicle for any cultures?
On the one hand, English is seen as inseparable from Anglo-American culture.
English, like other languages, is strongly associated with particular nationalities,
religion and ideology. According to this point of view, when English is learned or
used, its relevant culture is also learned and spread, “the world-wide spread and
use of English may result in the world-wide diffusion of the ideology and cultural
practices of the English-speaking nations” (Tsuda, 1986, p. 49).
On the other hand, English is different from other languages, since it is widely used
not only in English-speaking countries but also in non-native English countries. In
comparison with many languages, it has the uniqueness of being related to many
cultures rather than one. For instance, some languages are closely related to one
specific culture only: Japanese is a good example. Some languages are used in several
countries but have a special relation with one religion, for example, Arabic. But
English is different. It seems that English can be de-ethnicised and de-ideologised
since it has been employed to represent the cultures of many countries. That is why
Smith (1987, p. 3) concludes that “it can be used by anyone as a means to express
any cultural heritage and any value system.” This view seems to create an impression
that English can be separated from its original culture and can used to give expression
to the cultures of any non-English-speaking countries.
This paradox has confused many foreign-language educators in dealing with EFL:
if they accept the view that English is associated with many cultures, do they still
need to follow a rigid prescription of teaching “authentic standard English,”
namely, British English with the Anglo-Saxon culture? If they admit that English
could be de-enthnicised and de-ideologised, do they have a reason to teach a
“localised” English? In other words, do they recognise and accept the notion of
global localisation or “glocalisation” of English as Sharifian defines (2010a, 2010b).
To clarify the issue, a close look at the growth of EIL is needed from two angles.
In the first place, it is undeniable that English is unique because of its close link
with several cultures in native English-speaking countries. This fact indicates that
 Introduction 3
the relationship between language and culture is dynamic rather than static. Both
language and culture have been changing over time. The existence of varieties of
English reflects a historical development of the links between English and the
culture from which it originated. English was originally the native language of
England. As a result of the early days of colonisation, the language first spread
over the rest of the British Isles, then to North America and other continents. The
migration of English-speaking people brought not only their language but also
their culture to new territories. English-speakers settled in these new territories
and continued to use English such as American English and Australian English.
Their ways of life were more or less changed in accordance with the new envir-
onments. The development of the original culture in the environments of new
colonies and the continuing use of English have resulted in several varieties,
namely, American English, Australian English, Canadian English, New Zealand
English and South African English.
The development of the links between the language and the culture lies in two
facts. One is that any culture is the product of its history. A new way of life is not
created in a vacuum in any way. It must be related to the past. The Anglo-Saxon
culture was the product of several cultures coming together. Similarly, the so-called
American culture and Australian culture, etc., have a close link with the Anglo-Saxon
culture but they have their own identities. The other fact is that language is always
ready to record, reflect and express the process of historic change and development as
Kramsch (1998) points out: language expresses cultural reality; language embodies
cultural reality and language symbolises cultural reality. Taking Australian English as
an example, Wierzbicka conducted a research in 1986 and revealed that Australian
culture is not only recorded in the lexicon, but also grammatically. She analysed the
conception of “mateship” among Australians as it is expressed in several linguistic
forms such as abbreviations, depreciatives, fixed expressions and speech act verbs. In
more recent research, Malcolm (2017) investigates the development of Aboriginal
English in Australia and identifies the changing process as four stages of “retention,
elimination, modification and extension.”
The second angle is from English learned and used in non-native English-speaking
countries where English is associated with the local cultures. This fact also reflects a
dynamic relation between language and culture. But unlike the case of varieties of
English in English-speaking countries, this dynamic relation is different: the language
changes as a result of interaction between the original culture of English and the
native cultures as distinct from the development and changes of English-speaking
cultures. In the research on English used in Singapore, Platt, Weber and Ho (1984)
used the term New English to describe the varieties of English used in these non-
English-speaking countries. According to them, a New English must meet the four
criteria: (1) it has developed through the education system; (2) it has developed in an
area where a native variety of English was not the language spoken by most of the
population; (3) it is used for a range of functions among those who speak or write it
in the region where it is used; (4) it has become “localised” or “nativised” by adopt-
ing some language features of its own, such as sounds, intonation patterns, sentence
structures, words, and expressions (Platt, Weber, & Ho, 1984, pp. 2–3). According
4 Introduction
to these criteria, Indian English, Philippine English, Singaporean English and African
English in countries like Nigeria and Ghana are all New Englishes. In more recent
research, Kirkpatrick (2015) examines many new varieties and uses the term World
Englishes to describe all the New Englishes. In his new work on Cultural Linguistics,
Sharifian (2017) introduces how to use the theoretical framework of cultural lin-
guistics to analyse the features of World Englishes. The study of World Englishes has
widened our view on how English is associated with many cultures.
World Englishes in non-English-speaking countries are also primarily a product
of British colonisation. Most of these countries were previously under British
administration and have become independent nations. In these countries, English
may not be used as a national language but an official language for administration,
education, commerce, science, technology and so on. Anglo-Saxon culture and
the existing way of life of these countries came together in interaction which is
manifested in English and its use. A concern for sovereignty and the rejection of
the former colonial status among these nations have resulted in an emphasis on
the cultural identity of their own English use. For example, the broadcasting
authorities in Ghana wanted the announcers to sound authentically Ghanaian in
speaking English. Even in schools, the students are expected to “speak English like
Ghanaians” (Loveday, 1982, p. 172).
The content of the language is another aspect distinguishable from British
English. Kachru (1976, p. 223) believes that most Indians have made English
their own and invented an Indian English which “is used as a language of inter-
action, for maintaining Indian patterns of administration, education and the legal
system and also for creating a pan-Indian (Indian English) literature which forms
part of the world writing in English.” In some other countries, the political and
cultural authorities are very cautious about “cultural imperialism” in using English.
Therefore the use of English and the use of the native language are carefully
handled and balanced since it is believed that “preserving one’s language is pre-
serving one’s culture” (Hofman, 1997, p. 277). This point was made very clear by
Fishman (1982, p. 17) who notices that, in the Philippines, English as a medium
of education was restricted to mathematics and natural science, the “ethnically less
encumbered” subjects. It is obvious that learning and using English is not a
question related to education only. Behind the education policy, there is a more
serious political concern for handing the interaction between the native culture
and foreign culture.
In some cultural contexts, the use of English is politically motivated for a different
reason. English is used as a lingua franca in some countries where several languages
and cultures exist together. English is regarded as a “politically neutral language
beyond the reproaches of tribalism.” English is believed to have a neutrality in
multilingual nations in the sense that it gives no group the advantage of having its
own language singled out for official status (Moag, 1982, p. 271). English is adop-
ted as a “neutral” language in countries with a multi-ethnic situation like Nigeria
(Akere, 1982).
The emergence of World Englishes is evidence that English can be used creatively
to express the cultures of non-English-speaking countries. In this sense, “there is no
 Introduction 5
intrinsic reason why the structures and vocabulary of one language cannot be used
in many domains of communication within other speech communities to express
the cultures of those communities, and in ways in keeping with their rules of
appropriate behaviour” (Saville-Troike, 1982, p. 107). English can be used to
express the culture of a non-English-speaking country if there is a need for a lingua
franca for international communication.
Nevertheless, the emphasis on keeping the cultural identity of the non-native
varieties of English and the resistance to “cultural imperialism” through the use of
English do not mean that English can be separated from its original culture. The
reason why English is chosen as an international language itself implies a link
between the native culture and the culture to which English originally related. The
outcome of the cultural interaction has been perpetuated through change in
English and its use. World Englishes are a product of cultural interaction rather
than a replacement of the original culture embodied in the language with a new
culture. It does not mean that English can be learned as a purely linguistic code to
convey any culture without regard to the relation between the local culture and
the culture to which English relates. The increasing recognition of World Eng-
lishes by more and more language educators is based on the acknowledgement of
the dynamic relations between language and culture, hence “it is wrong to believe
the claim of this group to be liberalising their attitudes; they are just admitting
sociolinguistic reality” (Loveday, 1982, p. 173).
Compared with the above-mentioned non-native English-speaking countries, the
role of English in countries like in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and a lot of
Asian countries differs. English is neither an official language nor a lingua franca,
but an entirely foreign language. In other words, English has no internal function.
Taking China as an example, Chinese people certainly do not need to learn English
to communicate with each other. Therefore, there is no need to impose a “Chinese
cultural identification” on the English which Chinese people learn as a foreign lan-
guage and use it as an international language to communicate with people from
native English-speaking and non-native English-speaking countries. There may be
some linguistic characteristics in the English used by Chinese learners who are
influenced by their mother tongue and their cultural norms. But it is unnecessary to
perpetuate those characteristics by creating a Chinese English. Quirk (1981)
believes that countries like India have a reason to have their own English but that
the adoption of local norms of culture in English is not a valid choice. There is no
reason to invent Japanese English, German English or Russian English as models for
the foreign-language learners in those countries (Quirk, 1981, p. 164).
As a matter of fact, the combination of the linguistic patterns of foreign language
with the cultural values of the mother tongue will cause a problem at two levels: “at
one level this can produce simple bewilderment; at another it can lead to charges of
ignorance, rudeness or arrogance” (Corson, 1989, p. 334).
Nevertheless, since English has become an international language, foreign-language
educators in non-native English-speaking countries must realise, recognise and
acknowledge the change of its status. At the same time, they should not assume that
there would be a culture-free variety of English which can be used in international
6 Introduction
communication among the people from native-English-speaking countries and non-
English-speaking countries. This point was made very clear by Bentahila and Davies
(1989, p, 110):

a language might remain culture-free if its users were also outside any culture;
but since it seems unlikely that such persons exist, we can say that in practice a
language could be culture-free only if it remained unused, since once it was
exploited for communication between people it would inevitably by used in
accordance with one or another set of cultural norms.

What the EFL educators could do is to regard the varieties of English as a source
of knowledge of foreign cultures and a means of interaction with foreign peoples.
The change of status of EIL due to the economic globalisation has brought
unpredictable challenges to EFL educators, more accurately, EIL educators, all
over the world. This is because in a non-native English-speaking country, a learner
of English may start his or her learning English as a foreign language, then go to
English-speaking countries to study and to use English as a second language,
followed by working in another non-English-speaking country and using EIL
because the economic globalisation is providing an English learner with increasing
opportunities to become a global villager.

1.2 Technological innovation and EIL

The last century witnessed rapid technological innovation which adds another
force to push the change of status of EIL. The development of telecommunication
and broadcasting made English more widespread over the world. Morse-code was
invented on the basis of the English alphabet and used in aviation globally. The
British Broadcast Cooperation (BBC) reinforced the “standard English” or
“Queen’s English” with RP regardless of existing other varieties of English. Voice
of America (VOA) attracted thousands and thousands of international listeners to
access to American English and American culture. With the invention of television
and audio-visual equipment, the vivid pictures of ways of life in native English-
speaking countries were shared by families who were able to use the technology
whatever their location on any corners of the globe.
In the discussion about why English has won the status of an international
language Kenning (2007) points out that technological innovation is a key factor.
She cites a statement from Fennell (2001, p. 244): “It is because English has
repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time, that is to say at the
centre of major social, economic, political and technological developments.”
According to Kenning (2007, p. 95), “English initially spread as a result of
colonialism. But it went on to spread as the language of British leadership in the
Industrial Revolution, as the language of American economic superiority and
political leadership, and more recently as a consequence of American technological
domination.” She lists a number of examples to support her argument on how
progress of technology has a strong impact on the formation of EIL.
 Introduction 7
The first example which Kenning uses is the establishment of the first printing
press in 1476. In the competition against French, which was the official lan-
guage of government in London at that time, and Latin as the official language
in most parts of Europe, the printing press eventually enabled English to
become well-established as the language of the nation. In deciding what was the
better form of dialect used in London at that time, it was the printing press that
made it possible to resolve the problem of linguistic diversity hence to form and
establish a “standard English” widely accepted and used (Kenning, 2017, p. 96).
Another example which Kenning uses is the invention of telegraph system in
1837 when English was fortunately employed as the language for tele-
communication. Consequently, “it laid the foundations for the use of English as
the international language of the majority of telegraph operators and paved the
way for its role as a lingua franca in telecommunication and trade” (Kenning,
2007, p. 96). Britain became the hub of a global telegraphy network link with
the world until another powerful English-speaking country, namely the United
States of America, caught up and replaced the dominating position of Britain.
In the situation of the USA, English continues to maintain a favourable position
because of two important developments. The leading role of the American aircraft
manufacturing industry in the world resulted in the common acceptance of using
English for communications between airplanes and control towers. The successful
American entertainment industry of films, satellite television, and computer games
has brought more benefits to the spread of EIL. In more recent years, English
once again has become the beneficiary of information and communication
technology (ICT) such as computers, Internet, mobile phones, social media and
so on. Kenning agrees with Chapelle’s (2003, p. xi) view that “by making large
quantities of English, notably the Internet and other electronic resources, amplify
the importance of English internationally” (Kenning, 2007, pp. 97–98).
There is no doubt that English is widely used as an international language for
science and technology. Unfortunately there is a misconception that English
developed by advancement of science and technology created a special variety
known as scientific English, which might be “culturally neutral.” Obviously this
misconception has been mainly generated from mixing two different issues,
namely, language per se and language learning and use. On the one hand,
scientific English is seen simply as a matter of a specialised variety of English:
vocabulary, grammar and the discourse patterns of science and technology. Since
scientific English restricts its content to the field of science and technology, it
appears “culturally neutral” in comparison with general English, which is more
closely connected with a specific way of life, in particular, in English-speaking
countries. On the other hand, the misinterpretation of scientific English as a
“culturally neutral” linguistic form leads to further mixing of its learning and
use as the same as language per se. If the specialised variety of language is “cul-
turally neutral,” then learning or use of this language is probably also “culturally
neutral.”
To take the first point: scientific English is a specialised variety of English. It is
true that scientific English was initially founded on an identification of the nature
8 Introduction
of scientific English rather than from the study of various dialects, local variations,
and the idiosyncratic speech habits of an individual. In his book The Language of
Science, Savory (1967) made a spectacular study of the characteristics of words
used in scientific English, which reveals its close link with and difference from
ordinary English. Firstly, his analysis on “borrowed words” demonstrates that sci-
entific English has its roots in ordinary English (general English). The words of
ordinary English are a rich source of scientific English. Scientific activities are part
of human activities in general. Whatever people do is reflected in and preserved by
the language. Scientific English is not independent of the general system of
ordinary English. However, science, with its stress on rigorous methodology,
namely, restricted observation, experiment, measurement and logical interpreta-
tion, demands an unusually meticulous mode of expression. In theory, scientific
words are normally “rigorously defined and given the necessary precision of
meaning” (Flood, 1960, p. viii). But the precision and accuracy of scientific words
is relative rather than absolute, since some features of scientific words inherited
from the source determine that ambiguities cannot be entirely eliminated.
Secondly, Savory’s analysis (1967) of “Imported words” indicates the universality
of the language of science. The universal features of scientific words in various lan-
guages make it possible for scientific English to smoothly import many words from
other languages. Science is public knowledge as Ziman (1968) explains: “Its facts
and theories must survive a period of critical study and testing by other competent
and disinterested individuals, and must have been so persuasive that they are almost
universally accepted. The objective of science is not just to acquire information nor
to utter all non-contradictory notions; its goal is a consensus of rational opinion
over the widest possible field” (Ziman, 1968, p. 9).
Scientific methodology is shared by scientists regardless of nationality or
geographical location. Since scientific knowledge is generated by the application of
shared methods, laws, and principles, science is not national but international. Scien-
tists live in different political and cultural environments, but “in their working lives
scientists do share a genuine common bond of expression” (Large, 1983, p. 67). This
is perhaps one of the reasons why scientific English is seen as “culturally neutral.”
Finally, Savory’s analysis (1967) of “Invented words” confirms that scientific
English is in a state of change and, in return, it enriches the vocabulary of English
in general. Science and technology today are developing at an unimaginable speed
and the language of science is changing to match developments in science. New
and expanded research means that previously unknown fields are unearthed.
Meanwhile existing knowledge is sharpened in detail and precision in the
expression of results. Therefore it has become necessary to label new discoveries.
As new data are generated, differentiation between new and existing data requires
development of a vocabulary that furthers precision and specialisation. This
dynamic procedure determines that new scientific words will be frequently inven-
ted. In addition, the growth of scientific words is enlarging the vocabulary of
English in general.
Obviously, Savory’s study (1967) leads to a conclusion that even in the restric-
ted area of science and technology, English is still not “culturally neutral” or
 Introduction 9
“culture-free.” Learning and using scientific English is more complicated since the
cultural value conveyed by scientific English will interact with the home cultural
value of learners and users if they come from non-English-speaking countries. The
feature of universality of scientific English reconfirms and consolidates the status
of EIL but how to deal with the cultural value conveyed by English remains
unsolved in EFL teaching in non-English-speaking countries.
The issue of language learning and use is much more complex than language
per se which only identifies scientific English as a special variety of English used in
a specialist register. Regardless of the special features of scientific English per se,
we need to realise that the “cultural content,” namely science and technology
conveyed by it, is not value-free. In addition, learners of scientific English have
particular cultural backgrounds. They have their own value systems derived from
their home cultures. Besides, two value systems of home culture and scientific
practice come together to interact in the process of learning the language in using
it for scientific purposes.
As we have already seen, what scientific English conveys is basically the scientific
knowledge shared by scientists regardless of their cultural backgrounds. In general,
science seems to have a universal value rather than a specific value strictly bound
up by a particular culture (Merton, 1962, p. 16). Nevertheless, we must not forget
that science has developed in Western countries and English was fortunately
picked as the language to convey the progress of science and technology. Scientific
English embodies values which were initially generated in Western societies and
are related to the origins of science. Science and technology prevail in Western
countries, in particular, English-speaking countries like Britain and the USA,
because of favourable conditions for these values. According to Barber (1953),
some cultural values closely integrated with science and technology are (1)
rationality, (2) utilitarianism, (3) universalism, (4) individualism and (5) melior-
istic progress. Not all these values are shared internationally.
By rationality, Barber (1953, p. 64) refers to “the moral, the emotional and the
institutional approval of a practice of the society.” The outcome of rationality is a
critical approach to all the phenomena of human existence in the attempt to reduce
them to ever more consistent, orderly and generalised forms of understanding. As
we can see, the value of rationality is obviously contradictory to what has been the
predominant feature of previous conventions of society. It suggests that the rule of
reason is more important than the rules of custom or tradition. In scientific activ-
ities, this spirit of rationality becomes an institutionalised self-generation of endless
inquiry, producing novel and even more general hypotheses. Scientific achievements
have reinforced the value of rationality. In understanding scientific activities, it
seems that this value of rationality is universally held, but this does not mean that it
is universally shared or accepted in all cultures. The value of rationality may conflict
with sacred beliefs in religion or contradict a specific value of a particular society.
Utilitarianism, in Barber’s words, is the “predominant interest modern man has
in the affairs of this world, this natural world, rather than the other-worldly affairs
such as supernatural salvation” (Barber, 1953, p. 64). It seems that valuing
“other-worldly affairs” is more widely held by many cultures than the value of
10 Introduction
rationality. According to Barber, the value of utilitarianism is not necessarily and
invidiously materialistic. Although materialism is a possible consequence of utili-
tarianism, an idealistic concern for the affairs of this world is also widespread in
social reform and social voluntarism as well as in science itself. In this sense, the
idea of learning Western science and technology while keeping the political and
social system unchanged does not have the same meaning as the concept of
utilitarianism in Western science.
The value of universalism, at least in the form which supports the rationality of
science, may not be universally held either. According to Barber, the value of
universalism is “derived from and still expressed most fundamentally in the Chris-
tian idea of the brotherhood of man in God” and “has a secularised meaning in
modern industrial society” (Barber, 1953, p. 64). Universalism holds that all men
have morally equal claims to the scientific discovery and possession of rational
knowledge. Scientific truth does not rely on the social or personal qualities of
individual scientists. Whoever makes a contribution to science becomes a member
of a scientific community. The members of a scientific community extend beyond
national boundaries. Science is international. In addition, this value generates a
spirit of tolerance. Scientists must tolerate the possibility of new ideas from people
of any nation which may further the essential scientific task of constructing better
scientific theories. Another cultural value which Barber points to is individualism.
This means “the moral preference for the dictates of individual conscience rather
than for those of organised authority” (Barber, 1953, p. 65). This value, according
to him, is partly derived from Protestant theology. The value of individualism
expresses itself in science in anti-authoritarianism. Finally, melioristic progress is also
an important value. Progress is not necessarily of an evolutionary kind, but is
somehow cumulative in the way in which science and rational knowledge are
cumulative. Barber makes very clear that this value, too, has its source to an
important degree in Christian perfection and Protestant activism (Barber, 1953.
p. 66). The Christian moral preferences for progress and meliorism have a positive
congruence with the essential dynamism of science.
Since science implies so many values integrated with Western societies, the content
conveyed by scientific English can hardly be culturally neutral. This is particularly true
where two societies have contrasting political systems and ideology. Tsuda (1986) has
declared more overly that “English transmits its culture and creates changes in human
consciousness” (Tsuda, 1986, p. 57). As we can see from the above argument, even
though we assume that the linguistic form of scientific English is “culturally neutral,”
we cannot deny that the content of scientific English contains cultural values which
may contradict the home-values of the learners’ country. The learning of the English
of science and technology involves a process of interaction between cultural values.
Regarding the cultures to which a language learner may belong to, Widdowson
(1979, p. 51) makes a distinction between primary culture and secondary culture.
According to him, primary culture is related to the ethnological society in which
one is brought up and lives one’s everyday life. Secondary culture is associated
with one’s profession or occupational activities in which one shares conventional
patterns with other members of the professional community. So the cultural values
 Introduction 11
which a learner has already acquired may include two types. One is from primary
culture, the other is from secondary culture. To learn the cultural content of science
and technology conveyed by scientific English is a process of being socialised into
values in the secondary culture. The learning of scientific English will definitely
engage in the acquisition of “universal values,” but values are of Western origin may
not be congruent with the values from primary culture which the leaners have already
acquired and are able to express in their first language. The cognitive view of culture
does not see that culture is like a computer programme and the programme differs
from culture to culture (Robinson, 1985, p. 10). The foreign-language learners of
scientific English have been “programmed” according to their own cultures. They are
not “blank disks.”
As we can see, technological innovation has also played a significant role in the
spread of EIL. Like economic globalisation, the advancement of science and
technology mainly developed in Western industrialised countries has a powerful
influence on developing non-English-speaking countries globally through EIL.
The issue of teaching culture through English language education cannot be
ignored or overlooked by any country nowadays. It is a part of the general
education for social and economic development in the highly competitive world.
For non-English-speaking countries, how to handle the relations between the
home culture and foreign language becomes a crucial and urgent task for
educators of EIL.

1.3 The significance of teaching culture in EIL

The change of the status of EIL due to the economic globalisation and technological
innovation indicates that the ownership of English no long rests with the native Eng-
lish-speaking countries only but also with the non-native English-speaking countries.
English is not simply a language through which non-native English-speakers learn the
specific culture of an English-speaking country. It has already become a language
through which the non-English-speaking countries express their culture to each other
and to the English-speaking world (Kachru, 1987). According to this point of view,
English can be taught with any culture which may not necessarily be the culture of an
English-speaking country. We can teach the culture of the learner’s own country or
the culture of another non-English-speaking country (Prodromou, 1992). Then a
question is raised: Do the cultures of English-speaking countries need to be included
in EIL programmes in non-English-speaking countries?
EIL is essentially used as a means of international communication. However, in
many non-native English-speaking countries, particularly in some developing coun-
tries, only a very small percentage of English learners may realistically expect to
communicate with native speakers of English (Rogers, 1982). In these circum-
stances, the teaching of English may fail to realise the fundamental goal of enabling
the learners to use English as a communicative tool. Therefore, simply following the
EFL programme modelled on native speakers’ competence often tends to lack rea-
lism. It can only create the illusion that native speaker presence is required whenever
English is used (George, 1981).
12 Introduction
Moreover, English is widely acknowledged for its importance in offering a window
on the world of advanced technology and industrial development. However, the
cultural norms and values of the English-speaking world implied in the technical data
and equipment are sometimes regarded as unacceptable in non-English-speaking
developing countries (Alptekin & Alptekin, 1984). The reasons for rejecting the cul-
tural norms and values of the English-speaking world are not necessarily all
chauvinistic and ethnocentric (Olbert, 1981, Alptekin 1982).
In addition, from an individual point of view, “English is needed as an interna-
tional language by people who are not interested in British or American culture or
perhaps even dislike it” (Cook, 1983, p. 233). Brumfit makes his view more clearly
that among EFL learners in any country, we rarely find a person who “is going to
learn English in order to become an Englishman (or an American) to such an extent
that he never uses it to express the ideology, the assumption, the cultural basis of
himself rather than of an Englishman” (Brumfit, 1980, p. 94). It is impossible to
teach English without the involvement of the learner’s own culture.
This proposition seems to imply some benefits to the non-English-speaking
countries from the teaching of culture in programmes of EIL. Language educators
are given more flexibility to select teaching content of language and culture for their
language programmes. They no longer restrict themselves to insistence on teaching
of “Standard English.” They are free from making a rigid decision about “which
relative culture” should be taught, for instance, British culture, American culture,
Canadian culture or Australian culture. Besides, the conflicts between native culture
and foreign culture can be avoided or reduced because what the leaners want to
learn is their own culture but with a new language. It is safe to teach in this way
because “using English does not make one a different person” and “ one/s morals
and dedication to family relations need not change at all (Smith, 1986, p. 3). Since
the native culture is given priority in EIL, the language is used to express the reality
of the learners’ own environment and own experience. It is more likely that English
is taught as a communicative instrument rather than as an empty linguistic form.
Naturally, at the same time, this proposition has left several questions unanswered.
(1) Does the status of EIL entirely deny the original links between English and
Anglo-American culture? In other words, when English is used as lingua franca in
intercultural communication, is English culture automatically neutralised? (2) Does
the fact that one language is not always inextricably tied to one culture, that is, Eng-
lish is already representing many cultures, indicate that English could be taught
without referring to cultures associated with English-speaking countries? (3) If
English is taught with the content of the learners’ own culture rather than Anglo-
American culture, then how can these learners of English suddenly have a “clear sense
of self” in negotiating meaning when they face an intercultural communication?
Kachru (1989) divided the English-speaking world into three groups, which he
termed the “inner,” the “outer,” and the “expanding” circles. The “inner circle”
consists of native English, that is, where English is spoken as the first/indigenous
language (e.g. the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Aus-
tralia, and New Zealand), or what may be termed “norm-providing” countries.
The “outer” and “expanding” circles include countries where English is learned as
 Introduction 13
an ESL and EFL. The EIL paradigm also acknowledges the existence of the
various forms, varieties, and functions of English from the outer and expanding
circles. The spread of English as a means of intercultural communication has
challenged the assumption that the ability of non-native speakers of English to
understand native speakers will automatically help them to comprehend other
fluent non-native English-speakers. The issue becomes even more complicated
when we consider the various purposes for learning English in the expanding
circle. Behind the circles of users of English, there are also “cultural circles” in the
world. Perhaps at least seven major “cultural circles” might be identified among
the countries all over the world. They are:

 Western native English-speaking cultural circle

 European non-native English-speaking cultural circle
 Asian non-native English-speaking cultural circle
 Middle-East Islamic cultural circle
 Latin American non-native English-speaking cultural circle
 African Colonised territory cultural circle
 Globally scattered Indigenous cultural circle

Needless to say, such circles have a lot of overlap and they not based on a clear-
cut geographical location. Some nations may belong to more than one cultural
circle. Nevertheless, the division of cultural circles helps us to look more closely at
the individual cultural background of the learners and users of EIL. Due to the
cultural background of the authors and limited space of this book, the authors will
focus on the Asian non-native English cultural context to discuss how to teach
culture in EIL. But the significance of this research is far more than to one region
and one cultural circle.
In spite of that there are many well-established models of teaching culture which
are useful and valuable, to any non-native English-speaking countries; these models
may or may not be suitable for their own cultural context. There is no one-size-fits-all
model. Therefore, an integrated model should be established in accordance with the
cultural context of one specific country. At a national level, the current study
proposes ways to integrate culture into language teaching. So far, research to date has
not examined how to teach culture systematically in EIL, nor has it developed a
comprehensive context-based model for the teaching of culture in non-native Eng-
lish-speaking countries. The model proposed in this book should be a useful reference
for general practitioners of foreign-language teaching in non-native English-speaking
countries as well as in native English-speaking countries, particularly teaching the
EIL. At a regional level, foreign-language teachers in Southeast Asian countries may
consider the proposed model in the light of their experience and goals, adapting the
model to suit their needs. The model could become a useful reference for these tea-
chers, helping them to reflect on their classroom practice and inspire them to make
innovations in their teaching. At an international level, the present study is expected
to make a contribution to the research field of teaching culture in EIL. Many of the
contemporary concepts, which are of largely Western origin, will be revisited and
14 Introduction
critiqued for a comprehensive understanding of their application in a non-Western
context. Moreover, given that teachers are vital to language learning processes (e.g.
Field, 2000; Garrido & Álvarez, 2006; Townsend, 2011; Willems, 2002), there are
implications for foreign-language teacher education. It is anticipated that the current
study will provide new insights into foreign-language teaching in general, and EIL
teacher education in particular.
Focusing on the complex question of how to teach culture in EIL, this book aims
to answer a key question of “How is it possible to develop an appropriate model of
teaching culture in EIL in the sociocultural context of a non-English-speaking
country?” In the following chapters we are going to investigate the existing models.
Chapter 2 will provide a general picture about the development of cultural pedagogy
in foreign-language education before 1990. In Chapters 3 and 4, two models of
teaching culture developed and used after 1990 in native English-speaking countries,
namely, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) will be
reviewed. This review will help us to know the options of pedagogical treatment of
culture in English-speaking countries. In Chapters 5 and 6, two existing models of
teaching culture in non-English-speaking countries will be examined: one is from
economically developed Europe and the other is from economically growing Asia,
which provide us some idea of how to treat culture pedagogically in teaching EIL in
non-English context. Chapter 7 puts forward an “integrative model” of teaching
culture for non-native English-speaking countries followed by the implication and
conclusion in Chapter 8.

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2 Historical development of culture
pedagogy

In the first chapter, the historic change of status of English has been examined in
the light of economic globalisation and technological innovation. The expansion
of EIL has brought about a pedagogical problem of how to handle local home
cultures and the original cultures related to the native English-speaking countries
including new ideas conveyed by English in the areas of science and technology.
The purpose of this chapter is to survey how culture has been treated in language
teaching, especially in EFL. The teaching of culture has been “an unstated aim” of
foreign-language teaching (Kelly, 1969, p. 378). However, it was not until the
late 19th century that the importance of culture teaching was acknowledged
(Chen, 1998), and by the 1950s the role of culture in language teaching was
being amplified (Roby, 1992). From the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, history
witnessed three stages of development from “Explicit culture studies” to “Com-
municative language teaching” and “Intercultural communication.” The year
1990 may be considered a milestone that marks a divide between the two periods
in the development of teaching culture. From 1990 onwards, with the emergence
of robust theoretical frameworks and models in foreign culture teaching, culture
has been systematically addressed. Prior to 1990, although there was a lot of
interest and concern about how culture should be taught, culture was not handled
in a systematic way. Therefore, in this chapter a variety of approaches to teaching
foreign languages and cultures will be reviewed with a greater emphasis placed on
the overall picture about options of teaching foreign culture used before 1990,
followed by a scrutiny into four models of teaching culture developed after 1990
in the next four chapters.

2.1 Stage one: Explicit culture studies

The recognition of the importance of teaching culture in foreign education can be
traced back to the late 19th century. According to Stern (1983), when Sweet pub-
lished his book entitled The Practical Study of Languages: A Guide for Teachers and
Learners in 1889, there was “no reference to anything that might be described as
the ‘cultural’ aspect of language teaching” (Stern, 1983, p. 263). But one year later,
the Report of the Committee of Twelve of the Modern Language Association of
America officially acknowledged the teaching of European civilisation and
18 Historical development of culture pedagogy
recommended it for school curricula (Modern Language Association of America,
1900, pp. 7–8). This might be seen as the starting point of teaching culture,
namely, focusing on civilisation, in foreign-language education in the largest Eng-
lish-speaking country. Risager (2007) considers that the earliest practice of teaching
culture with language actually started in some non-English-speaking countries in
Europe. The birth of culture pedagogy was marked by a reform movement in
language pedagogy, namely, the Kulturkunde movement of Germany in the l880s.
In France, the study of civilisation was a supplement to language programmes, as in
the USA. In earlier culture teaching traditions, the concept of “realia” was used in
Sweden to refer to the cultural and social conditions of foreign-language teaching.
This concept was linked to the reading of texts for factual knowledge or back-
ground information. As a result, there was a transition “… from pure orientation
about realia to a somewhat systematic teaching of culture” (Risager, 2007, p. 26).
World War I triggered and motivated many countries’ needs in international
understanding and foreign-language teaching. At that time, there was a strong
belief that content about foreign countries and people must be added to lan-
guage programmes. For example, according to Stern (1983, pp. 247–249), a
British report, prepared by a national committee in the midst of World War I,
deliberately replaced the term “Modern Languages” with “Modern Studies,”
indicating that the emphasis was to be given to the study of aspects of culture
rather than language alone. A similar idea was expressed by some language
educators like Atkins and Hutton (1920) who held the view that some
knowledge of the history of the people who speak a language is necessary in
language programmes. Besides an increase in knowledge of realia, a focus on
nationalism was seen in many European countries, especially Germany.
Generally speaking, the 1920s were considered to be a milestone marking the
beginning of culture teaching movements in European countries, an era where
foreign cultures were raised as an important issue in the teaching of foreign lan-
guages. The birth of the Weimar Republic, as a reaction against the revolutionary
uprisings in Germany in the last stages of World War I, raised national
understandings and heightened nationalist awareness. Foreign-language teaching
aimed to develop German students’ awareness of their identity and value as
Germans. After the 1920s, the concept of nationalism again changed, due to the
emergence of the European community as a significant and autonomous cultural
unit. However, the concept “… survived as a view of German culture as being the
most valuable, as a culture that had a historic mission in Europe” (Risager, 2007,
p. 32). When teaching culture, home and foreign cultures were compared with
each other so that students would be able to understand the foreign culture
(Lochtman & Kappel, 2008).
During World War II, “Area Studies” was introduced in some American
universities. A foreign language was taught as one component of interdisciplinary
study of a region, for instance, Far East, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa or Latin
America, etc. (Hall, 1947, p. 12). The study of a region focused on the politics,
history, geography, and other aspects of civilisation of the particular area. Lit-
erature, according to Bennett (1951), was also well presented. After World War
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 19
II, the emphasis on combining the teaching of language and culture was main-
tained and continued in the United States. The belief that understanding foreign
culture and making comparisons between cultures are a necessary component of
language education was frequently expressed by many language educators not
only in the USA but also in other countries.
Based on a consideration of what culture meant to foreign-language education,
several propositions of analysing and studying culture were put forward. Allen
(1985) reviewed the teaching of culture in a foreign language in the USA.
According to her (1985, p. 139), early in 1953, Hall and Trager proposed a “map
of culture” on the basis of an anthropological view. The map systematically
outlines the components of culture and is used as a guide to analyse and describe
foreign culture in comparison with native culture. In 1959, Hall put forward an
amplified modification known as the “Ten Primary Messages System” which iden-
tifies ten focal points of critical importance to the fabric of society including
Interaction, Association, Subsistence, Bisexuality, Temporality, Territoriality,
Learning, Play, Defence, and Exploitation.
This proposition has been used in the classroom by some language teachers and
is still regarded as effective. For example, in order to increase the language lear-
ners’ ability in reading comprehension of foreign-language materials, Pfister and
Poster (1987) designed a teaching model called “Cultural Inventory” to study
German poems. This model is fundamentally an application of Hall’s “cultural
map.” In Hall’s proposition, we can see that the scope of culture has been
widened. The early notion of culture as “intellectual refinement” and “artistic
endeavour” (Brooks, 1960, p. 83) was extended to encompass “the ways of life of
a society.” In other words, the notion of culture in language education compre-
hends both “culture with a big C” and “culture with a small c,” the former
referring to “the sum total of a people’s achievement and contributions to civili-
sation: art, music, literature, architecture, technology, scientific discoveries and
philosophy,” and the latter to:

the behaviour patterns of the life style of people: when and what they eat,
how they make a living, the way they organise their society, the attitudes they
express towards friends and members of their families, how they act in differ-
ent situations, which expression they use to show approval and disapproval,
the traditions they must observe and so on.
(Allen & Valette, 1977, p. 325)

There was consensus among many language educators like Rivers (1968) holding
the view that a distinction between “big C” culture and “small c” culture should
be made and the priority should be shifted from the former to the latter in
foreign-language education.
Allen (1985) believes that Brooks was the pioneer who was not only aware of
the distinction between “big C” culture and “small c” culture but also revealed
the inter-relationship between the two categories. Brooks (1968, p. 210)
proposed a “five-tier definition” of culture for foreign-language educators:
20 Historical development of culture pedagogy
Culture 1: biological growth
Culture 2: personal refinement
Culture 3: literature and the fine arts
Culture 4: patterns for living
Culture 5: the total of way of life

In his view, the daily patterns of living, namely Culture 4, should pervade the
earlier levels of teaching. Brooks pointed out that culture teaching was oriented
towards aspects of everyday culture and the role of individuals in real-life situations.
This recommendation raised a series of questions related to individual needs,
motives, desires, ideas, beliefs, and customs. Although there remained the issue of
how to apply his theoretical concepts to the classroom, and the concern that his
solution seemed “somewhat simplistic” (Allen, 1985, p. 140), Brooks’ ideas were
helpful in making the cultural content of language teaching visible in the 1960s.
Brooks was one of the first people to introduce American culture pedagogy, with its
focus on “culture with small c.” Brooks raises a good point that a notion of culture
for foreign-language educators must take account of the feasibility of teaching. We
cannot be too ambitious, expecting that we are able to cover everything about cul-
ture. Which domain of culture we should concentrate on also depends on the level
and ability of foreign-language learners.
Taylor and Sorenson (1961, p. 351) invented a different way to study culture.
They took the teaching of “culture capsules” as the first step in language teaching.
Through focusing one cultural element after another, the learners eventually put
the pieces together so that a total and unified picture of culture was worked out.
Like Hall, they also proposed an order of categories from concrete to more
abstract considerations. According to Hughes (1986, p. 165), their categories are
“technology, economy, social organisation, political organisation, world view
(religion and philosophy), aesthetics and education.” The sub-categories of culture
include “biological, geographical and historical elements.”
Like Brooks, Nostrand (1966) was also devoted to research on teaching culture
in French as a foreign language in the 1960s, but he was inspired by the American
sociologist Parsons’ theory of society. Interestingly, his view of the notion of culture
includes the objectives of teaching culture. Nostrand (1967) contended that rather
than this being considered a purely conceptual matter, culture teaching involves
objectives or goals, that is, what learners are expected to achieve when learning a
language. According to Nostrand (1977), the goals of language teaching are inter-
cultural communication and intercultural understanding. As a result, Nostrand
(1977) developed the “Emergent Model.” His goal-related model consists of a broad
classification of 30 themes divided into four main groups: the social, the cultural,
the individual, and the ecological. His model, which is developmental rather than
static, has been widely used in foreign-language classrooms in the USA.
While the emphasis in teaching culture shifted from “culture with a big C” to
“culture with a small c,” literature, although belonging to the former, was not
totally forgotten. Instead, the anthropological influence also seemed to consolidate
the foundation of using literature to understand other ways of life, or conversely,
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 21
using knowledge about foreign ways of life to gain a deeper insight into foreign litera-
ture. For example, Enguidanos (1966) strongly holds the view that through literature
one might reach an understanding of the mechanism of outward choice and of inner
thought and be able to appreciate better the value system of a foreign culture. He
claims (Enguidanos, 1966, p. 31) that “to study literature in this way as a deeply rooted
manifestation of life would lead to better understanding of the customs, the social
institutions, and individual historical events, as well as its general lines.”
In the USA in the 1970s, there was increased interest in including everyday
culture in foreign-language teaching. Culture was taught mainly for practical pur-
poses in working environments. Culture was considered as a “fifth skill” and equal
with linguistic skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). Of course, this is a
misconception in terms of the modern understanding of culture, but
conceptualising culture as a skill indicated the pragmatism of the culture approach
in the United States. Besides Brooks, who discussed the role of culture in lan-
guage teaching in 1975, another notable figure of American culture pedagogy was
Seelye (1974). His concept of culture was often associated with a national target
culture. He also shared the same view as Nostrand (1966, 1967), in that the scope
of culture teaching is not only a matter of how to define culture but also a matter
of the objectives or goals of teaching culture. Seelye (1974) thinks that the main
objectives of culture teaching are communication and understanding the effect of
culture on human beings. Seelye’s strategies for language educators in teaching
culture include not only objectives and topics but also techniques and methods for
teaching and testing knowledge about foreign cultures. Seelye (1974, pp. 39–45)
lists seven goals for cultural instruction:

1 The sense, or functionality, of culturally conditioned behaviour: An understanding

that people act as they are supposed to do because they are provided with
options by their society for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs.
2 Integration of language and social variables: An understanding that social
variables, such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence, influence
people’s speech and behaviours.
3 Conventional behaviour in everyday situations: The ability to show people’s
normal ways of behaving in the target culture.
4 Cultural connotations of words and phrases: The awareness that culturally
conditioned images are associated with even the most common target words
and phrases.
5 Evaluating statements about society: The ability to assess the relative strength
of a generality concerning the target culture, particularly with regard to the
amount of evidence substantiating this statement.
6 Researching another culture: The ability to situate and organise knowledge
and information about other cultures from different sources, such as the
library, the mass media, people, and personal observation.
7 Attitudes towards other cultures: Intellectual curiosity about the target culture
and empathy towards its people.
22 Historical development of culture pedagogy
The goals of teaching culture described above help to define the scope of
teaching culture at different stages of learning. A historical review of culture
pedagogy up to the 1970s shows the significant efforts made by Western language
educators to raise the question of how to teach culture in language programmes.
Despite this, teaching culture remained a marginal matter during this period.
There were a variety of ways of approaching cultural studies in language pro-
grammes. Teaching culture usually focused on the content dimension, namely, the
relationship between linguistic practices and their cultural content. Teaching
approaches often involved content-oriented culture pedagogy. The explicit
knowledge of foreign culture seems to have been added to, rather than integrated
into, language programmes. These approaches seemed to separate language and
culture. Because the content about foreign culture may not necessarily be taught
by the targeted foreign language, it could be taught in learners’ first language.
On the basis of the main features of this trend of teaching culture from its start
point up to 1970s, we may label this first developmental stage as “Explicit Culture
Studies.” There are two main features which can be identified.
Firstly, no matter what content or models are used – for example, studies of
foreign countries, foreign people and their contributions to human civilisation or
their ways of life including their beliefs, norms of behaviour and value systems – the
content about foreign cultures is explicitly provided and presented. The classification
of aspects of culture and their content concerning various elements are based on
descriptive and analytical schemes which are a result of findings from anthropology,
sociology and other behavioural sciences. The teaching of culture is given an explicit
place. In other words, culture is taught as an objective or a goal with a clear pur-
pose. There is a particular concern for the teaching of culture rather than the
teaching of language alone.
Secondly, the explicit knowledge about a foreign culture, no matter whether it
is “culture with a big C” or “culture with a small c,” seems to be added to a for-
eign-language programme. In other words, language and culture are combined in
teaching rather than integrated. In designing and implementing the teaching,
language and culture belong to two separable parts. This point can be seen from
Seelye’s succinct statement:

Knowledge of linguistic structure alone does not carry with it any special insight
into the political, social, religious, or economic system. While a convenient
place to begin learning about the target cultures is in our foreign language
classes, culture must taught systematically in addition to purely linguistic con-
cerns. And it must taught now.
(Seelye, 1974, p. 5)

Obviously, this kind of additive approach of teaching culture implies a significant

step in culture pedagogy in both theory and practice. The theoretical assertion is
that a language is inseparable from its relative culture and both are equally
important in teaching. The practical treatment of culture is that it should be
openly addressed and given a legitimate place in a language programme, but
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 23
language and culture could be taught separately because teaching one of them
does not naturally lead to knowledge of the other.
There are several advantages in explicit culture studies. Many recommendations
are feasible and valuable from pedagogical perspectives.
As we know, all foreign-language programmes are limited in time duration. It is
unrealistic for foreign-language learners to learn a new culture in the same way as they
have learned their own culture simultaneously with learning their mother tongue.
The foreign cultural environment is normally not available to foreign-language lear-
ners so they rarely have “sufficient exposure to the new culture to be able to go
through the hypothesis formation and testing procedure” (McLeod, 1980, p. 540).
Adding explicit content about foreign culture to a language programme may be less
time-consuming and more efficient than leaving this knowledge to be gained through
the long process of language learning.
Explicit culture studies can lesson learners’ confusion arising from unfamiliarity
with a new culture. It is difficult for foreign-language learners to have a deep
understanding of a foreign culture without living in the linguistic and cultural
environment. When the content about a foreign culture is explicit, it is easy for
learners to have self-study or study under the supervision of teachers. Perhaps this
is why, up to the present, supplementary learning materials about the cultural
knowledge regarding Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA have not lost their
validity and popularity in the EFL classrooms all over the world.
In addition, explicit culture studies offer a foundation for developing knowledge
of foreign culture. The explicit content about foreign culture, together with various
propositions, creates a framework for the process of teaching in which different
methods and strategies may be used, so that teachers can help the learners to gain
more knowledge about foreign culture. Without explicit knowledge about foreign
culture as a foundation laid at the very beginning, such exploration is impossible.
In spite of its advantages, teaching culture explicitly seems to have some pro-
blems in both theory and practice. The vital weakness and controversies are also
related to the pedagogical treatment of culture in a language programme.
Content about foreign culture can only be relatively explicit. Among the various
components or aspects of culture, some are less explicit than others. For example,
the history and geography of a foreign country used for “Area Studies” can be
more or less explicitly described so that it is relatively easy to be organised as
teaching content. Literature, as a commonly taught component of foreign culture,
seems less explicit in that the text of some literary works contains knowledge
about a foreign culture which may not be equally explicit or understandable to
every learner. The message or meaning embedded in the literature may be inter-
preted differently according to each learner’s language proficiency, sociocultural
background and personal experience. For this reason, the value of using literature
to teach foreign culture has been questioned by some language educators like
Seelye (1974) and McLeod (1980). As to the ways of a foreign people, although
explicit description may be made by means of various analytical frameworks,
learners are easily led to stereotyping a foreign people and their nation. Such a
stereotype only denotes “simplified pictures in our head” (Lippman, 1965, p. 63).
24 Historical development of culture pedagogy
This can become harmful because insufficient cultural studies or prejudice may cause
misunderstanding rather than understanding of culture. A contrastive study or
comparison between a foreign culture and the learners’ native culture is sometimes
suggested in language programmes (Lado, 1957). However, language teachers
must be very careful in comparing cultures because “we cannot hope to compare
two cultures unless we have a more accurate understanding of each of the cultures
being compared” (Lado, 1957, p. 111).
The feature of “addictiveness” represents another problem, namely, the separa-
tion of language and culture. It is common practice for culture to be treated as an
addition to language, occupying a subordinate role to language. This approach
reinforces an assumption that “there is a fairly clear distinction between linguistic
knowledge and culture knowledge, and that one can indeed acquire one of these
without the other” (Davies, 1989, p. 99). Concerning the teaching of cultural
knowledge, it is arguable that knowledge includes both explicit and implicit
knowledge. The former refers to the knowledge that can be learned and con-
trolled in a language programme, namely, universal knowledge, whereas the latter
implies personal and experience-oriented knowledge. It is possible to teach explicit
knowledge, but teaching implicit knowledge is another matter because this
depends on incidental experiences and involves awareness and exploration. These
factors suggest that explicit culture study provides an option for teaching culture
but not a final solution for how to teach it.
As we can see, in this early stage, the additive approach treated culture as a
component that was added to the teaching of language. In these fact-based culture
proposals, culture tended to be viewed as a uniform and static entity which could be
classified and observed; therefore, this limited the teaching of culture to the trans-
mission and provision of factual information about the foreign culture. The pattern
of language plus culture in foreign-language teaching was somewhat attractive.
However, this approach has also received criticism for its inadequate treatment of
culture and culture teaching with the language. By treating culture only at a surface
level, it fails to acknowledge the role of the individual learners in creating culture.

2.2 Stage two: Communicative language teaching

It is not surprising that a trend towards integrating language and its social context
suddenly shed a new light on the issue of teaching culture in foreign education
programmes in the 1970s. The “communicative movement” initially started in
Europe for political and economic reasons: English is growing as an international
language hence there is a need for people, especially adults, to learn it in trading
and political contexts. Specifically, this movement was triggered by the mobile
labour force created by the Common Market. Communicative language teaching
(CLT) was a European–British phenomenon, though it quickly spread to North
America and then all over the world.
The development of sociolinguistics has provided the basis for a trend towards
integrating language with its sociocultural context in language programmes. The
study of language in its social context has convinced language educators that the
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 25
social significance of linguistic forms or the linguistic implications of social facts
must be taken into account. This has given rise to some important changes in
foreign-language education. Firstly, language pedagogy has become more flexible
in using varieties of language, for instance, American English rather than only
British English, in foreign-language classrooms. Secondly, variations in language
use have also been noticed and efforts have been made to discover how role
relations, situations, topics or models of communication (speech or writing)
determine this variation. Thirdly, exploration also includes how different social
meanings of varieties of language and variations in language use are represented by
different linguistic manifestations. And finally, pedagogical treatment places lan-
guage in a social context. It may start from linguistic features in order to differ-
entiate between various social meanings. It may also start from social institutions,
social structure, a role relation, or culturally significant events so as to examine its
manifestations in language use (Stern, 1983, pp. 256–258).
The 1970s and 1980s can be regarded as the era of communicative teaching.
Starting from Europe and developing in many Western counties, the movement in
language for communication has spread all over the world. Various proposals label-
led the “communicative approach” have been put forward. A great variety of books
have been published with both theoretical and practical implications. In terms of the
teaching of foreign culture in language programmes, the communicative movement
triggered a burst of theoretical inquiries and practical experimentation. CLT quickly
came into use to teach foreign languages in English-speaking countries and to teach
English as a foreign language in non-English-speaking countries.
According to Stern (1981), in general, the propositions for the communicative
approach can be divided into two strands. One is labelled the “L” (a linguistic
approach) which is often identified with British applied linguistics derived from
meaning-based theories of language (Austin, 1962, 1963; Firth, 1957; Halliday,
1973, 1975, 1978; Searle, 1969) as well as from the works of anthropologists like
Hymes (1972, 1974). This approach leads to an exploration of syllabus design,
focusing on specifying communicative needs, defining notions and functions which
language learners have to know in order to use a new language, as well on some
parameters affecting language use. The other is described as the “P” (psychological
and pedagogical) approach and is concerned more with learners and their roles in
the learning process. It focuses on the affective factors in learning and the learning
environment. Both approaches have promoted the teaching and learning of culture
in language programmes.
The place of culture in language teaching was theoretically questioned when the
notion of communicative competence was put forward. The initial argument about
the notion of communicative competence can be tracked back to the work of
Campbell and Wales (1970) and Hymes (1972/1979, 1974). Chomsky (1965)
made a clear-cut distinction between competence which refers exclusively to the
linguistic system and what an “ideal speaker-hearer” should know, and performance,
which refers mainly to psychological factors involved in the perception and pro-
duction of speech. This narrow definition was first criticised by Campbell and Wales
(1970) followed by Hymes (1972/1979). Campbell and Wales (1970, p. 278)
26 Historical development of culture pedagogy
argued that the most important linguistic ability is to produce or understand utter-
ances which are not so much grammatical but, more importantly, appropriate to the
context in which they are made. Hymes shared a similar point of view and succinctly
pointed out that “there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would
be useless” (Hymes, 1979, p. 15). He further uses his notion of communicative
competence to replace Chomsky’s linguistic competence. As a result, they not only
treat language as a system of abstract rules but also take account of its role in
communication. Language should not be regarded as an independent system on its
own but rather it is inseparable from culture. The notion of communicative compe-
tence thus became the theoretical foundation for CLT. It has been reinterpreted or
analysed by many authors on language teaching such as Munby (1978), Canale and
Swain (1980), Alderson and Hughes (1981), Canale (1983), Romaine (1984),
Taylor (1988), Davies (1989), Widdowson (1983, 1989) and so on.
In re-interpreting the notion of communicative competence, Canale and Swain
(1980) proposed a more systematic framework consisting of three main compo-
nents. The first is the “linguistic component,” referring to the knowledge of
grammar. The second is the “sociocultural component” which covers knowledge
about a society and a culture. The “strategic component” is listed as the third. It
includes of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called
into action to compensate for breakdowns. Later, Canale (1983) revised these
three components and proposed four elements of competence, namely, gramma-
tical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence. The elaborated notion of
communicative competence ensured that language educators would cover the
teaching of foreign culture since the sociocultural component is included in
communicative competence. According to Corson (1989, p. 327), Van Ek (1986)
even goes further to add two more components to communicative competence,
namely, social competence and sociocultural competence thus making it more clear
that communicative competence is directly linked to the society and culture of the
language which is learned and used.
Following the theoretical premise of communicative competence, the practice of
teaching language for communication needs to cope with the function of a message
as well as the form of the language, aiming at meaningful interaction between
participants and accuracy, fluency and appropriateness in natural discourse. One of
the earliest endeavours during the communicative movement was the proposal of a
Functional-Notional syllabus (Wilkins, 1976). The striking contrast between Func-
tional-Notional syllabus and the conventional grammatical or situational syllabus is
that the desired communicative needs of learners are considered as the starting point
instead of language structure. The Functional-Notional syllabus is grounded on an
assumption that language teaching can be organised in terms of the content rather
than the form of language.
This naturally brings culture into the teaching of language since the content of
language must be associated with a particular culture as long as it is meaningful. For
example, semantic notions such as volition, concepts of space and time, futurity,
locality, etc., and speech acts such as questioning, apologising, persuading, dis-
agreeing and so on are all culturally based, regardless of the universal features
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 27
existing in different cultures. The shift of attention from language form to content
changes the primary goal of teaching language from usage to use (Widdowson,
1978). A learner-centred approach is said to be adopted since the process of deter-
mining what should be taught is based on a concern for what learners most usefully
need to able to communicate. Compared with the trend of providing explicit
content about foreign culture in language programmes, we can see the present
content aims at both language and culture, killing two birds with one stone. Culture
is not added but integrated with the content of teaching language.
A concern for learners’ communicative needs has prompted language educators
to reconsider the treatment of teaching foreign culture and to search for new
approaches to teach language and culture. With regard to learners’ communicative
needs and syllabus design, a proposition of language for special purposes (LSP), in
particular, English for special purposes (ESP) suggests an important option in
teaching target culture in language programmes. According to Mackey (1976),
the term LSP began to appear more and more frequently in language teaching
literature in the late 1960s. In the communicative movement, ESP became a
prominent stream of teaching language for communication. As labelled, “special
purposes” is the distinctive feature which identifies it from other English courses
for “general purposes.” Basically, the “special purposes” may refer to three cate-
gories of teaching and learning English: (1) to meet occupational requirements,
for example, English for international telephone operators; (2) to serve vocational
training programmes, for example, English for hotel staff; (3) to underpin aca-
demic or professional study, for example, for students of science and technology
(Mackey & Mountford, 1978).
From this definition and description, it is not difficult to see that the foreign
language, namely English, is taught and learned for a clearly defined utilitarian
purpose, which contrasts with the “general purpose” seen in general educational,
culture- and literature-oriented language courses in which “language itself is the
subject matter and the purpose of the courses” (Robinson, 1980, p. 6). In terms
of teaching foreign culture, the proposition of ESP seems to restrict our con-
centration to some specific aspects of foreign culture, namely, science, technology,
business and so on. There is no place for a total picture of culture as a whole.
Moreover ESP aims at not only “knowing” but also “doing” in regard to some
aspect of foreign culture. Within a time-limited language course, in order to
enable ESP learners, who are usually adults or nearly adults, to reach a certain
level, there seems no choice but to sacrifice other aspects of culture by restricting
the teaching on the basis of their needs.
It was discovered that many problems associated with the communicative syllabus
content are attributable to a tension between syllabus design and methodology;
therefore, language syllabuses should be more “learner-orientated” and language
content should be more specified in some teaching methods. This endeavour has
resulted in the direction of “task-based” or “procedural syllabuses” and also an
upsurge of communicative methodology. The task-based or procedural syllabus has
significantly changed the focus of the previous Functional-Notional syllabus from
what contents are to be learned to what is to be done in the classroom. It suggests a
28 Historical development of culture pedagogy
reorganisation of syllabus and methodology by allowing the task to determine
content. According to Long (1983), task refers to a specific goal or activity that is
accomplished through the use of language. It is argued that tasks involving inter-
action and negotiation provide more comprehensible input and hence better input
for second language acquisition and foreign-language learning. The task-based or
procedural syllabus actually proposes an alternative way of teaching language by
aiming at capacities rather than merely knowledge (Breen, 1984, p. 52).
This proposition is relevant to teaching foreign language, EFL in particular, from
two perspectives. In the first place, the task allows us to integrate the goals for both
language and culture learning, and consequently to integrate teaching activities for
learning language as well as culture. Since the principles of organising the content of
a syllabus are no longer constrained by grammatical considerations or the “narrow-
band” communicative needs of learners, there seems considerable room for culture
in a task-based syllabus. This is because culture, together with language, will be
converted not only into teaching content but also into the process of teaching
activities. Secondly, teaching culture will no longer be regarded as merely providing
explicit knowledge about culture. Instead, there is an alternative way of focusing on
learners’ capacities, that is, capacities to apply, to reinterpret and to adopt knowl-
edge about culture. The theory of communicative competence has already included
knowledge about culture as an indispensable element in communication. It leaves
the question of what should be done with the knowledge about culture and how it
can be included in the classroom activities. Byrnes (1991, p. 205) concludes that the
major contribution of the concept of communicative competence is to combine
language and culture in teaching by emphasising on communication.
Compared with explicit culture studies which we have examined in 2.1, we might
say that the communicative movement represents a turning point in teaching
language and culture. CLT has strengthened the previous assertion that language and
culture are inseparable and hence that the teaching of culture is an indispensable part
of language teaching. At the theoretical level, the debate about communicative
competence has reinforced the importance of cultural elements in language teaching.
At the practical level, language and culture are taught together by focusing on the
purposes for communication.
Substantially, there are two notable features in terms of teaching foreign cul-
ture. The first is the “implicitness” in teaching of culture. No matter whether we
look at the issue in regard to teaching content or teaching method, we find that
the culture component is implicitly handled rather than explicitly described as an
independent part of the language programmes. Foreign culture is taught through
teaching language learners to behave – in other words, to use the target language
for communication. In order to get meaning across, language learners need both
explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge about foreign culture. However,
knowledge about culture is not provided through explicit study of culture as an
external stimulation. Rather it must be constructed as an internal process by
the language learners themselves. This approach is obviously behaviour-focused.
The use of language is the central idea. Howatt (1984, p. 279) believes that there
are two versions of the communicative approach. The “weak version” could be
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 29
described as “learning to use” the language; the “strong” version, on the other
hand, entails “using the language to learn it.” No matter what version is sug-
gested, it is clear that there is a philosophy of “learning by doing” behind CLT.
Moreover, through adoption of the communicative approach in foreign-language
classrooms, language teachers teach the new culture implicitly to learners in the
process of enabling them to learn to use the language communicatively.
The second feature related to the first, is an “integration” of culture and language
in teaching. Extra effort to teach culture does not require organising an additional
part of culture in the language programmes. Consequently, there is no particular or
obvious place purposefully given to the teaching of foreign culture. The whole
process of language teaching is left to take care of culture. The teaching of culture
and the teaching of language are naturally integrated by focusing on language use in
communication. So it is an integrative approach to the teaching of culture.
The advantages of teaching culture implicitly in an integrative way prompted by
communicative movement can be seen from various aspects.
The shift from additional knowledge about culture to the attention to the social
function of language in communicative teaching naturally brings the teaching of
culture and language together. As a result, the teaching of culture is not artificially
attached to the teaching language as we have seen in explicit studies of culture.
Language and culture are inter-related in the sense of how language form conveys
the content of a culture as well as how the cultural context impacts on the use of
language. Culture is not added but integrated within the language teaching content
because it is believed that learners can perceive implicit knowledge about a foreign
culture by being exposed to the real use of language in second language situations.
The CLT offers the language learners a chance to perceive implicit knowledge
about a foreign culture by experiencing use of the language for themselves.
CLT has drawn teachers’ attention to learners’ autonomy and their communicative
needs (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Willing, 1987, 1988). As far as foreign culture is
concerned, the aspect of culture which the language learner must know depends on
the learner’s individual needs. The identification of individual communicative needs
provides a useful reference in defining the domain of teaching culture so that the
arduous task of teaching foreign culture can be managed in a time-limited language
programme. The teaching of foreign culture needs to include the identification and
analysis of learners’ communicative requirements so that classroom activities can be
organised to promote their learning of communicative language. Therefore it is
important for language teachers to “… make a whole series of decisions about
teaching based on their educational experiences, their personalities, their particular
institutional, social, cultural, and political circumstances, their understanding of their
particular students’ collective and individual needs, and so on” (Pennycook, 1989, p.
611). Just as all contexts are different, so are the classrooms within these contexts.
To provide learners with a chance to take part in meaningful communication
interactions with highly competent speakers of the language, that is, “… to
respond to genuine communicative needs in realistic second language situations”
(Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 27), there is a need to create an authentic commu-
nication and interaction environment. However, in foreign-language settings, it
30 Historical development of culture pedagogy
seems unrealistic to bring such a language-in-use environment to learners. Not
every learner of EFL, for instance, will get an opportunity to go to English-
speaking counties and to communicate directly with native speakers. CLT has left
a number of controversial and debatable issues at theoretical and practical levels.
First, the notion of culture seems to be narrowly defined in CLT. As we can see
from the interpretation of communicative “socio-cultural factors,” which were
considered to be associated with the realm of behaviour according to Chomsky,
these are of prime importance in studies of communicative competence (Brumfit
& Johnson, 1979, p. 4). The notion of communicative competence contains a
“socio-cultural component” which legitimates the importance of teaching about a
society and culture in communication. However, the concern for sociocultural
factors can be easily misinterpreted in language teaching. For example, culture
could be limited to cover the social structure, norms of behaviour, language use in
particular, and the value system of a particular way of life. In other words, culture
is restricted in the scope of “culture with a small c” only. There is a danger of
narrowing the definition of culture to be a limited concern about appropriateness
in using the language, especially as taken up in actual pedagogy.
The teaching of such a narrowly defined notion of “culture” is integrated with
the teaching of language, but this is at the expense of a rich and inclusive view of
culture. This is the reason why the promotion of CLT has stirred up arguments
about the place of teaching literature which has fallen out of favour because it does
not seem to meet the language learners’ “needs” (Cook, 1983, p. 232). Many
language programmes exclude and reject the teaching of literature on the grounds
that it provides little insight into real communication or current ways of life. The
place of other subjects like history and geography in foreign-language programmes
also seems in doubt. With the rise of ESP, the notion of culture has been further
narrowed. One of the obvious examples is English for science and technology
(EST) in which teaching of culture is limited to a specific aspect of culture.
Apart from the scope of teaching culture, the means of pedagogically treating the
culture, although narrowly defined, also remains a problem. According to Chomsky
(1965, p. 4) “competence is the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language, per-
formance is the actual use of language in a concrete situation.” If Chomsky’s view is
accepted, then since competence is knowledge only, then behaviour is excluded
from competence. This clear-cut distinction has been questioned and criticised by
Halliday (1970). Halliday thinks that there is no need “to draw a distinction
between an idealised knowledge of a language and its actual use” because “such a
dichotomy runs a risk of being either unnecessary or misleading: unnecessary if it is
just another name for the distinction between what we have been able to describe in
the grammar and what we have not, and misleading in any other interpretation”
(Halliday, 1970, p. 145).
Unlike Halliday, Hymes accepts the term of “competence” but uses it in a
much wider sense. He takes competence as the most general term for the cap-
abilities of a person. Competence is dependent upon both (tacit) knowledge and
(ability for) use (Hymes, 1979, p. 19). This widened notion of competence leads
to further argument about what a theory of competence should be. Kempson
 Historical development of culture pedagogy 31
(1977) strongly supports Chomsky’s distinction and insists that “a theory which
characterises the regularities of language is a competence theory … a theory
characterising a speaker’s ability to use his language appropriately in context, a
theory of communicative competence, is simply a performance theory” (Kempson,
1977, pp. 54–55). People like Canale and Swain (1980), although sharing many
points of view with Hymes, argue strongly that ability for use should not be
included in communicative competence. The debate about the notion of com-
municative competence does not answer the question of how culture should be
taught and learned. Instead, it confuses language teachers: Is culture knowledge or
behaviour? The proposition of communicative competence seems to attract
teachers’ attention to rules of knowledge in theory, while in practice teachers are
actually concentrating on performance, namely, behaviours.
Although the feature of “integrativeness” in CLT is congruent with an under-
standing of the inseparability of language and culture, the question of how to
purposefully integrate the teaching of language and culture still remains unsolved.
As a matter of fact, if we over-emphasise the natural integration of language and
culture, then the teaching of culture may be left to take care of itself. This is liable
to result in a lack of specific effort to teach cultures on the assumption that
language learners will automatically gain knowledge, both explicit and implicit,
about culture by themselves through learning language for communication.
The communicative movement was triggered by mobile workers in the Common
Market who had to live and work in a foreign country where they had to learn the
language of that country. Communicative language teaching became popular first in
Britain and Europe, then spread to North America and finally all over the world. But
essentially it is a teaching approach initiated by native speakers. In other words, it
provides a “native model” for non-native learners who have no choice but to follow
it. The notion of communicative competence was established on the linguistic and
sociocultural norms of native speakers. A learner of a foreign language, English in
particular, must “When in Rome, do as Roman do.” This situation could persist until
the rapid changes of economic globalisation and technological innovation discussed
in Chapter 1.

2.3 Stage three: Intercultural communication – new development

Following the communicative movement, a new horizon appeared when changes in
the global context profoundly influenced language education in general, and EIL in
particular. The rapid economic development and scientific and technological progress
of Western English-speaking countries have attracted more and more people to learn
English. There are large numbers of international students who study in English-
speaking countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the USA.
Among them the USA has admitted the largest numbers of international students
from all the parts of the world. As a superpower, the USA has been active in world
politics and is internally a composite of many cultural traditions of immigrants from
all over the world. These factors explain why a new discipline known as “Intercultural
communication” appeared and was promoted and developed, mainly in the USA. On
32 Historical development of culture pedagogy
the other hand, the rise in the economic importance of the Asian and Pacific Rim has
attracted more and more attention from Western countries to the trading market in
this region. The teaching of foreign culture in language programmes has been influ-
enced by this discipline. Research on World Englishes, in particular the regional
varieties of localised Englishhas increased substantially since English has been used as
a lingua franca in international communication.
According to Damen (1987), although the phenomenon of intercultural commu-
nication is as old as human society, the study of intercultural communication is of
recent origin. By putting ideas about communication, culture, society, education, and
human psychology together, a different way of looking at and learning about
interaction among cultures has emerged (Hoopes & Pusch, 1979, p. 2). A multi-
disciplinary approach to the study of intercultural contact and interaction has widened
and deepened the research in this field. In 1975, Condon and Youself published the
first textbook in the field: An Introduction to Intercultural Communication, which
covers topics such as values, language and culture, culture and thought, non-verbal
communication etc. In the later 1970s and 1980s, large numbers of publications
appeared, for example, Stewart (1978), Asante, Newmark and Blake (1979), Hoopes
(1979), Samover, Porter and Jain (1981), Samover and Porter (1982), Gudykunst
(1983), Gudykunst and Kim (1984), and Damen (1987), etc.
The study of intercultural communication has drawn theoretically from many
social sciences. It further supports the teaching of language and culture. The
theory and practice is still evolving. Taking theory as an example, one of the major
theoretical questions is how to elaborate an effective model to examine and
analyse events in intercultural communication. According to Damen (1987, p. 37)
several paradigms were put forward, but none has proved completely satisfactory.
It is believed that Rohrlich’s (1983) trifocal approach enables us to examine the
process of intercultural communication in a comprehensive manner. Rohrlich
considers that study of intercultural communication must involve three levels.
Firstly, on the “intrapersonal level,” each person stands alone. The process of
communication is monitored by each participant. From the angle of the individual’s
perspective, each participant’s personal perception is formed by the individual
experience in the context of a particular culture. Each participant will behave
according to the way in which he or she perceives the external world. Hence “the
values and beliefs instructed by culture meet in coming human and environmental
data and the reconciliation that takes place yields perception” (Rohrlich, 1983,
p. 199). Secondly, at “the interpersonal level,” communicative interaction brings
together two or more participants who have different beliefs, value systems and
norms of behaviour. The act of communication involves a mechanism for inter-
preting or translating meaning. Whether or not participants can understand each
other depends on the extent to which they share personal, social, and cultural
experience and are aware of variation of communicative style or strategy derived
from culture. Finally, at the third level, namely “the synthetic level,” results of
interpersonal contact are gathered and analysed. Hence the dynamics of interaction
are eventually worked out on the basis of an analysis made at both intrapersonal and
interpersonal levels.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life in the
forests of the Far East (vol. 2 of 2)
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Title: Life in the forests of the Far East (vol. 2 of 2)

Author: Sir Spenser St. John

Release date: September 27, 2023 [eBook #71739]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1862

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN THE

FORESTS OF THE FAR EAST (VOL. 2 OF 2) ***
LIFE IN THE FORESTS
OF

THE FAR EAST.

F. Jones, lith.
Published by Smith, Elder & Co. Day & Son, Lithrs to the Queen
65 Cornhill, London
SHOOTING THE CATARACT—LIMBANG RIVER.
 LIFE IN THE FORESTS
OF

THE FAR EAST.

BY

SPENSER ST. JOHN, F.R.G.S., F.E.S.,

FORMERLY H.M.’S CONSUL-GENERAL IN THE GREAT ISLAND OF BORNEO,
AND NOW
H.M.’s CHARGÉ D’AFFAIRES TO THE REPUBLIC OF HAYTI.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.
M.DCCC.LXII.

[The right of Translation is reserved.]

 CONTENTS.

Chapter I.
EXPEDITIONS TO EXPLORE THE INTERIOR TO THE SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST OF
THE CAPITAL.
PAGE
Preliminary Expeditions—The Limbang River—Stories
connected with it—The Madalam—River flowing under a Pile
of Rocks—Caverns—Batu Rikan—The River issuing from
under the Mountain of Molu—Ascend the Precipices—No
Water—Long Roots—No Soil—Second Expedition—A Flood—
Dangerous Position—Wakeful Night—Beautiful Flowers—
Palms and Rhododendrons—Old Kayan Encampment—
Detached Rocks—Ascent of Molu—Two new Species of
Nepenthes—Difficult Climbing—New Rhododendrons—
Stopped by a Precipice—Sharp-edged Rocks—Descent—
Limestone Rock—Cave—Heavy Rain—Swollen River—Quick
Return—Prepare for a distant Expedition—Alarm of the
Brunean Government—Warnings—Preparations—Boats—My
Headman, Musa—A Travelled Dayak—Stories of Molu—
Weapons—Merchandise 1

Chapter II.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL.
Start—Discovery of Bones and ancient Ornaments—At the Site 16
of the Old City—At the Stone Fort—At Sarawak—The Trusan,
or connecting Passage—Apathy of the Government and
People—Sago—Method of preparing it for the Market—The
Limbang River—The Inhabitants—Winding Stream—The
Orang Kaya Upit of Kruei—Sampirs—Gadong Hill—Scenery—
Molu—The Raman Palm—Delays—Cholera—Orang Kaya
Napur—Panglima Prang—The Weather—State of the River—
Origin of the Ponds—Native Geographical Information—The
Upper Country—Cataract—Enchanted Mountain—Native
Travelling—Dreams and Omen Birds—Religion of Pakatans—
Cause of Head-hunting—The Wild Boar—Trouble in procuring
Guides—Pengkalan Tarap—Desolation of the Country—
Causes of it—Selling Children—Kayan Barbarity—Chinese at
Batang Parak—Site of Burnt Villages—Posts of Houses—Two
 kinds of Sago Palm—Their Growth—Kayan Encampment—
Cultivation—The River—Rocks—Salt Springs—Native
Explanation—Anecdote—Time to halt—Birds—Rare, except in
certain Districts—Monkeys—Alligators—The Man-eater—A
Challenge accepted—Disappearance of the Siol Alligator—
Combat with two in a Cave—Method of Capturing them in
Siam—Laying Eggs in the Jungle—Ducks and Drakes—Malay
Cookery—Very tasty—Blachang—How to make a Curry—
Anecdotes of Bornean Rule—Attack on the Limpasong Village
—Insurrection of the Aborigines—Forced Trade—Qualities
necessary in a Malay Ruler—The great Mountain of Tilong—
Discomfort of possessing a large Diamond—Diamonds found
in Borneo

Chapter III.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL—Continued.
Wet Morning—Wild Cattle—A Night Adventure—View of Molu 49
Mountain—A Pebbly Flat—Moose Deer—Our Tents—Kayan—
Their Attack—Desolation—Course they pursue to invade these
Districts—Difficulties—Attack the Lepuasing Muruts—Fearful
Retaliation—Attacks on the Villages of the Lower Limbang—
Makota’s Treachery—His Cupidity—Surprise of Balat Ikan—
Alarm Signal—Advance—Fresh Kayan Marks—Inundations—
Unskilful Sportsmen—Difficult Rapids—The Sertab Hills—
Enter the Limestone District—A New Kayan Hut—High Pork
—Effect of Pebbles on the Rock—Agreeable Evening—Omen
Birds—Japer’s Method of easing a sore Heart—The Punan
Tribe—The Spy—The Alligator Omen—The Bird Omen—
Attack the Village—Poisoned Arrows—Destruction of a Tribe—
Effect of such Forays on the Country—The Ghosts on the
Tapang Tree—Numerous Bees’ Nests—Sand Flies—Seribas
Omen Bird—The Salindong—Kayan Resting-place—Traces of
Captives taken—Precautions—Difficulties increase—
Limestone Country—Severe Toil—Accidents avoided—
Hauling the Boats—River narrows—A Fresh—Towing-ropes—
Story of the Death of Orang Kaya Apo—Enter the Sandstone
District again—Broader River—Snakes on Trees—The same
Colour as the Boughs and Foliage—Biawaks or Guanas—A
large One—Their Ways—The Fowls and the Cobra—Heavy
Day’s Work—Future Plans—Two Ways of reaching Adang—
The flying Foxes—Huge Frog—The Madihit—Leave our Boats
—Handsome Trees—Appearance of the Country—Sand Flies
 —Preparations for the Overland Journey—Division of Food—
Our famous Hunters—A Cache—The Chinese on the Madihit

Chapter IV.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL—Continued.
Start on the Land Journey—Our Course—Ascend the Rawan
Torrent—Attacked by Hornets—Native Remedy—Severe
Effect of Sting—Disturbed by Ants—Japer left behind—Fresh
Traces of Strangers in the Forest—Appearance of the Country
—Water Snake killed—Our Adventure with One—The
Swimming Cobra—Romantic but timely Meeting—Story of
Pangeran Mumein and the Murut Concubine—Malay Revenge
—Punishment of an Offender—Cause of the Borneans being
converted to Mahomedanism—Capturing the Daughter of
Johore—Independent Position of the Pablat Borneans—Reach
the Wax-seekers’ Hut—Flesh of the Wild Boar—The Adang
Muruts—Their Sumpitans—The Poison on the Arrows—
Melted in hot Water—Weapons purchased, not made by them
—Dress of the Muruts—Japer rejoins us—Continue our
Journey with new Guide—Method of catching Fish—Effect of
Loss of Blood by Leeches—Extraordinary Insect—The
Freshwater Turtle—Its Description—Curious Fly—Poisoning
the River—Getting short of Provisions—Galton’s Method of
dividing Food—Adopt it—Improvidence of the Malays—Cry of
the Wahwah—Rejoin the Limbang—Omen Bird—Prepare for
Enemies—Quarrel among the Guides—Divide the Party—
Hard Walking—The Otter—A Fight with my Dogs—Still beyond
the Mountain—Find good Huts—The Stragglers—The last of
the Food—Ascend the Mountains—Exhaustion of the Guides
—The Remains of the Ham—Its Effects—Reach the Summit—
Descend to the Farms—Meet the Adang Muruts—Hearty
“Welcome—Names—Recent History of these Villagers—
Kayan Attacks—Driven from the Limbang—The Geography of
the Country—The Houses—Cold, and Fire-places—Arrival of
my Followers—Sir James Brooke—The Friend of the
Aborigines—His Fame had preceded me—How Reports
spread—The Tigers’ Cave—Curious Story 80

Chapter V.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL—Continued.
Women’s Ornaments—Adorning in Public—Confidence shown 109
 by a young Girl—Geography—Leech Bites—Tapioca—The
Manipa Stream—The False and True Brayong—Nothing but
Rice to be purchased—Wild Raspberries—Good Shots—The
Rifle Carbine—Death of a Kite—Picking a Cocoa-nut—Curious
Statement—A Village of Runaways—Proposed Slave Hunt—
Disappointment—Appearance of the Women—Old Look of the
Children—Devoid of Drapery—Preparing the Plantations—No
Goods for Sale—Edible Bird’s-nest Cave—Difficulties in
penetrating farther—Determine to return—Climate—New
Route—Custom in Drinking similar to the Chinese—Anecdote
of Irish Labourers—Change of Plans—Fashion of wearing
Brass Wire—Start on a Tour among the Villages—The Burning
Path—Village of Purté—Refreshing Drink—The Upper Trusan
—Distant Ranges—Inviting and receiving Invitations—Fatal
Midnight Revel—Tabari’s Village—Alarm of Orang Kaya Upit—
Suspension Bridge—Inhabitants—Scheme of the Adangs to
return to their old Districts—Deers’ Horns—Mourning—Difficult
Walking—The Tiger’s Leap—Meet Si Puntara—No Real
Enemies—Murud—The Gura Peak—The Main Muruts—Salt
as well as Slave Dealers—Bearskin Jacket—White Marble—
Uncertainty whence procured—Leaden Earrings—
Unbecoming Custom—Lofty Mountains—Lawi Cloud-hidden—
Muruts busy Farming—Two Harvests a Year—Agricultural
Produce plentiful—Obtain a Goat—Dress of the Men—Bead
Petticoats—Custom of burying on the Tops of the Lofty Hills—
Desecration of Graves—Jars—Discovery of one in Brunei—
Similar Millanau Customs

Chapter VI.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL—Continued.
Commence the return Journey—Kayan Embassy—Indian Corn 131
—Confidence of the People—Ophthalmia—Old Jar—Gratitude
rarely shown—Anecdote—Warning to Amateur Doctors—
Bezoar Stones—Arrangements at Si Lopong’s—A Nightcap—
Desertion of our Guides—Murut Music—Start for the Adang—
Warned of Difficulties—Abundance of Rice—Cross the Adang
Mountains—Active Girls—The Anœctochilus—Attack of Fever
—Arrangements in case of its continuance—Loss of Chamber
to Revolver—Reach the Adang—Legend—Construct four
Rafts—Pleasant Movement—Trying Position of one of the Men
—The first Rapid passed—Difficulties at the second—Bold
Swimmer—A Whirlpool—Danger of Drowning—Our Raft
 tested—Abandoned—The rest wrecked—Pass the Umur—
Reach the Limbang—Construct fresh Rafts—Uneasy
Anticipations—Heavy Fresh—Fine Specimen of a Raft—Push
off—Dangers and Troubles—The Rafts ungovernable—The
Roaring of Waters—Overhanging Cliffs—The Cataract—Awe
of the Men—Shoot the Cataract—Narrow Escape—Its Height
—The Men recover their Voice—Ineffectual Attempts to stop
the Raft—Caught in a Whirlpool—Safety—Arrival of the other
Rafts—Dangers ahead—Walk—Abandon the Rafts—State of
Provisions—Nearly all consumed—Ahtan’s Secret Store—
Rocks—Advance over the Kalio Hills—Sparing the Food—
Exhausting climbing—“Jog on”—Feed on the Cabbages of the
Bengkala Palm—Almost a Mutiny—Facing the Difficulty—
Reach the Summit of the Paya Paya, or “very difficult” Hills—
Night on the Summit—Our Tent—The last Fowl—Molu—The
greatest Difficulties passed—Country more open—Follow the
Banks of the River—Distress of the Men—Improvidence—
Curious Sounds in the old Forests—Cry of the Argus Pheasant
—Of the Jelatuk—Rending of a Mighty Tree—Danger from
Decaying Trees—Cock-fights among the Argus Pheasants

Chapter VII.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL—Concluded.
Stopped for a Day—Five Start for Provisions—The Sick Men left 154
behind join us—No Shoes—Weakness from want of Food—
Leeches—Stop again—Collect Food—Anecdote of Female
Orang Utan and Murut—Again construct Rafts—Present of a
Cup full of Rice—Start on the Rafts—Abandon them—A Bear
—The River—Immense Pebbly Flats—Long Walks—Traces of
the Advance Party—Wild Fruit—Sour Oranges—Recognize a
Hill—Fruit of the Jintawan, or India-rubber Plant—Find
Remains of Bees’-nest—The British Flag—Reach the Madihit
—Bad Conduct of the Advance Party—Food nearly all
consumed—An unfeeling Father—Proposed Punishment—
Ravages of the Bears—Anecdote of Ahtan—Return in the
Boats—The Herd of Wild Cattle—Wound a Bull, but do not get
it—A slight Supper—Start in a Sampir—Ahtan ill—The last of
the Food—News from Brunei—Reach the Town—Arrival of the
rest of the Party—Bornean travelling—Measure Distance by
Fatigue—Slow Progress necessary—Active Murut—Average
Rate of Advance—Great Mistakes made in the Estimates of
Distance—Instances—Mr. Motley’s Account of his advance up
 the Limbang—Mr. De Crespigny’s Mistake in the Latitude of
the River Damit and Position of the Mountain of Molu—
Remarks on the Map—Causes of the continued Health of my
Followers—The Tents—Mistake in trusting to Native Huts—
Native Geographical Information tested—Found correct—
Arrival of the Orang Kaya Upit—Tragical Death of Pangeran
Mokata, the Shabandar—Two Years after—Sad Fate of a
Party of Adang Muruts—Murder by Orang Kaya Gomba—
Head-hunting—Heads valued, but none seen—Incident of
meeting Head-hunters—No treacherous Designs—Inefficient
Government—Desecration of the Graveyards—Chinese
Secret Societies, or Hués—Ahtan joins one—Robbery of the
Iron Chest from the Consulate—The Sultan’s Method of
extorting a Confession—Obstinacy of Ahtan—Officers of the
Secret Society—Chest restored—Prisoners released—The
Hué broken up—Treatment of Prisoners—Musa and the Priest
—Threats—Personal Regard for some of my Followers

Chapter VIII.
THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO.
FIRST VISIT.
Picturesque Islands—Balambañgan—An old English Settlement 178
—Large Monkeys—Optical Illusions—Flights of Birds—The
Curlew—The way we shot them in Sarawak—Game—
Banguey—Mali Wali—Cleared Hills—Fine Water—Sweet-
smelling Jasmine—Cagayan Sulu—Intercourse with the
Inhabitants—Appearance of the Country—Lovely Scenery—
Market—Inhabitants—Insolent Traders—The Crater Harbour—
Wall of Evergreen—Inner Lake—Climb the Cliff—Scenery—
Alligators numerous—Sulu—Appearance from the Ship—
Sugh, the Capital—Mr. Wyndham—The Watering-place—
Suspicious Natives—Fugitives from Balignini—Reports—A
Market—The Mountaineers civil—Walk to the Palace—The
Stockades—Armed Crowd—Audience Hall—Absurd Reports
—The Sultan and his Nobles—Dress—Politeness of the
Sultan—Return to the Ship—Datu Daniel—The Racecourse—
Effect of Dutch Shot—Tulyan Bay—Alarm of Villagers—Sulu
Government—Laws—Feuds—The Mahomedan and the Pork
—Population—Fighting-men—Slave Market—Dignified
carriage of the Nobles—Dress—The Balignini—Dutch Attack—
Appearance of the Country—Good position of Island—Tulyan
—Basilan—Numerous Islets—Samboañgan —Spanish
 Convict Settlement—Description of Country—Fort—Town—
Shops—The Church—The Men—The Women—The Corner
Shop—A Ball—Dancing difficult—Waltzes—Supplies at
Saraboañgan—A lonely Grave

Chapter IX.
THE SULU ISLANDS.
SECOND VISIT.
Reach Sugh—Mr. Wyndham comes on board—His News— 200
Commercial Rivalry—The Stockades—Visit the Audience Hall
—Appearance of the Sultan—Visit Datu Daniel’s Stockaded
House—Guns—Datu Daniel—Appearance of the principal
Chamber—The Bed—Boxes—Property—General look of
Discomfort—Spittoons—Dismounted Iron Guns—Taken from
the English—Excitement in the Town—Hereditary Hatred of
the Sulus to the Spaniards—Their Treaty with Spain—
Sandakan Bay—Supplies—Variegated Wood—Salute—
English popular—An Exception—Death of a Sulu Lady from
Grief—The Rumah Bechara—A Ship taken—Interview with the
Sultan—Rope—Character of Datus—The Balignini—Capture
an English Ship—Captives brought to Sulu—Result of the
Action of the Nemesis—The Lanuns—At Magindanau and
Cape Unsang—A narrow Escape—Mate to Lord Cochrane—
Capture of the Maria Frederica—Cold-blooded Murder of the
Captain—Jilolo Prahus—Their Rencontre with Sir Edward
Belcher—Pirates off the Arru Group—Sulu Justice—
Appearance of the People—Attack on the Spanish Gunboats
—Public Audience with the Sultan—Private Visit to the House
of his Bride—The Women—Opium-smoking—Invitation to
revisit Sulu—The Spanish Gunboats—Samboañgan—The
Corner Shop—Sunday’s Amusements—Appearance of the
Neighbourhood—A Breakfast in the Country—Long Walks—
People comfortable—Story of the Loss and Re-capture of the
Dolphin—The Dolphin sails for Maludu Bay—Quarrels—
Surprised—Death of Mr. Burns and the Captain—Murder of a
Woman—Injury to Trade—Datu Badrudin’s Monopolies—The
Tungku Pirates—Visit the chief Town of Maludu—Sherif
Hasin’s Account of the Surprise of the Dolphin—The Re-
capture of the Vessel by Sherif Yasin—Arrival at Benggaya—
Dolphin delivered up—Visit the Village of Sherif Yasin—His
Appearance—His Account of the Re-capture—His Position—
Smoking over Powder—Delivery of the Cargo—Return to the
 Ship—Argus Pheasants—Meet with Baju Boats—Pearl
Fishers—Retaliation—Fishing for Pearls—Mr. Edwardes’ Pearl
—Story of the Datu, and his great good Fortune—The
Mermaid Pearl—Present State of Piracy on the North-West
Coast—Cruise of the Balignini in 1861—Ransom of Inchi Ngah
—Names of present Haunts of the Balignini—A Mangrove
Swamp—Present System of Balignini—Escape of a Native—
The Lanuns—A Dayak’s Experience—A Slave Mart—Spanish
Attack on Sugh—Severe Fight—Bravery of the Sulus—
Capture of the Town—The Sulu Government retire to the Hills,
and refuse to submit—A Teak Forest burnt—No Teak in
Borneo—Elephants extinct in Sulu

Chapter X.
THE KINGDOM OF BORNEO PROPER.
Its Nominal Extent—Its Government—The Sultan—The Viziers— 244
The Shabandar—The inferior Officers—Their Influence—“The
Abode of Peace”—Poverty-stricken Gentlemen—Possessions
of the Nobles—The Country parcelled out among them—
Distant Dependencies becoming independent—Oppression of
the surrounding Districts—Divisions among the Nobles—
Poverty of the Nobles—Population of Brunei—System of
Plunder—Sale of Children—Handsome Brass Guns—Their
Fate—No Justice—Crime nominally punished—No Possibility
of Improvement—Anecdotes—System of Local Self-
government—The Parishes—Their Names, and the
Occupation of their Inhabitants—Fishing—Shell Heaps—
Asylum—Treatment of a Slave Girl—Political Parties—
Religious Schism—An attempted Explanation—Followers of
each Party—Difference of Length of Fast Month—Visiting the
Graves of Ancestors—A pretty Custom—Search after
Excitement—Story Tellers—Conjurors—Their Arts—Practice of
Abortion—The Egg-cooking Trick—The Sultan’s Palace—Its
Inhabitants—His Wife and his Concubines—Their Treatment—
Bold Lovers—Anecdote—Tragical Termination—The Women
deceive their Lords—The Inverted Language—Education
neglected—Sight of a Harim—Mutual Disappointment—
Rajah’s pleasant Companions—Their Customs—Tenacious of
Rank—Decay of Brunei—Exactions suffered by the Aborigines
—The Kadayans—Tradition—Hill Men united—Commotion—
Kadayans have great Influence—Lovely Country—Kadayans
removed to Labuan—Short Description of that Colony—
 Excellent Position—Coal—Telegraphic Communication—Good
Effect of our Colony—Trade Increasing—Pepper—Exports—
Cotton—Fine Jungle—Method of Collecting the Camphor and
the Gamboge in Siam—The Coal-fields—Revenue of the
Sultan—Brunei Government no Power—Crime unpunished—A
Bold Thief—Makota and the Fire—Nominal Punishments—
Cutting off the Hand—The Fall of Ashes—Singing Fish—
Curious Method of Catching Prawns—Tuba Fishing—
Superstition—Money—Coinage of the Capital—Cloth—Iron—
Gun-metal—Good Manufactures of Brass Ordnance—A 12-
pounder—Similarity of Customs—The Sultan—The Heir to his
Subjects—Makota and his Gold

Chapter XI.
SARAWAK AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.
First Visit—Appearance of the Country—Scenery—Lovely Isles 280
—Turtle—Method of securing their Eggs—Their Enemies—
Fish—The Dugong—Method of capturing them—Graves of
Englishmen at Po Point—First Evening in Borneo—A
Welcome to the Rajah—Boats—Salute and Manning Yards—
The Muaratabas Entrance—The River—The Town of Kuching
—Sunset—Arrival—A noisy Procession—Extent of Sarawak—
A well-watered Country—The Rejang—Extent of fertile Soil
adapted to Sugar—Its Inhabitants—Different Races and Tribes
—Population—Kuching, the Capital—Increase—Trade—Sago
Districts—Cotton—Seed sent by the Cotton Supply
Association—Imported Labour required—Increased
Production—Inferior Cultivation—Soil adapted to most Tropical
Productions— Water Communication—Minerals—Coal,
Antimony, and Gold—Indications of other Minerals—Former
Condition of the Country—Difficulties of Management—Forced
Trade—Comfortable Position of the Dayaks—Influence of New
System on the Malays—Distant Voyages—Remarkable
Honesty—Anecdote—System of Government—An
unteachable Chief—Sons of Patinggi Ali—Their good Conduct
—Effect of associating the Natives in the Government—The
System introduced into all the Dependencies—Effect of Sir
James Brooke’s Government—Anecdote of an old Chief—
Gradual Developments—Necessity for Support—The Chinese
an Industrious and Saving Nation—Soundness in the System
of Government—England with a Chinese Colony—Future of
Borneo—Chinese amalgamate with Native Population—
 Female Emigration from China—Administration of Justice—
The Sarawak Courts—Character of the Malays

Chapter XII.
THE CHINESE IN BORNEO.
Intercourse between China and the Northern Part of Borneo— 308
References to the Chinese—Names of Places and Rivers—
Sites of Gardens and Houses—One of the original Settlers—
The Sultan’s Recollections—Chinese numerous in his Youth—
Reasons for their Disappearing—Anecdote of a Murut Chief—
Aborigines speaking Chinese—Mixed Breed—Good Husbands
—Chinese at Batang Parak—At Madihit—Pepper Planters—
Origin of the Borneans—Chinese Features observed also
among the Aborigines—Careful Agriculture—A remnant of
Chinese Teaching—Traditions of a Chinese Kingdom—Effect
of Treaty with Brunei—Unsuccessful attempt to revive Pepper
Planting—Chinese scattering on the North-west coast—A
Spark of Enlightenment—Attempt to prevent Intercourse
between the Chinese and Aborigines—Decay of Junk Trade—
Cochin Chinese—Conduct of the Chinese—Papar—Anecdote
—Fatal result of Insulting a Woman—Skirmish—
Misrepresented in Labuan—Question of British Protection to
the Chinese—Their Insolence—Anecdote—Unpleasant
Position—A Check—Difficulty of obtaining Information—Cause
of former Disputes—Insurrection of the Chinese of Brunei—
Sarawak—Early efforts of the Chinese to establish themselves
there—Lawless Malays—A Murder—Retaliation—Defeat of
the Chinese—Arrival of Sir James Brooke—Mixed Breed in
Sambas—Form Self-governing Communities—Defeat of the
Dutch Forces—Subjugation of the Chinese—The Pamangkat
Agriculturists—Flight into Sarawak—Change in the
appearance of the Country—Mission School—Visit the Interior
—Kunsis, or Gold Companies—Appearance of the Country—
Method of Gold-working—The Reservoir—The Ditch—The
Sluice—Wasteful method of working—Abundance of Gold—
Impetus—Failure of first Agricultural Schemes—A great Flood
—Troublesome Gold-workers—Successful Scheme—
Disturbance in Sambas—Flight of Chinese—Illiberal
Regulation—Tour through the Chinese Settlements—
Agriculture—Siniawan—Chinese Workings—Hot Spring—Gold
at Piat in Quartz—Antimony Works—Extensive Reservoirs—
Arrival of Chinese from Sambas—Denial by the Kunsi—Hard
 Work at the Gold Diggings—Scenery—Path to Sambas—
Chinese Station—Numbers of the Chinese before the
Insurrection

Chapter XIII.
THE CHINESE INSURRECTION.
Secret Societies—Extensive Intercourse—Smuggling—The Gold 336
Company Fined—Punishment of Three of its Members—
Arrogance of the Kunsi—A Police Case—Real Causes of the
insurrection—An Emissary from the Tien Ti Secret Society—
Reported Encouragement given by the Sultan of Sambas—
Sambas Nobles speak Chinese—Their Nurses—The Nobles
Conspiring—An Emissary arrives in Brunei—Proposal—
Knowledge of the Intended Insurrection—Proposed Attack on
the Consulate—The Tumanggong’s Threat—The Emissary
before the Court—Letter from the Tien Ti Hué—Rumours of
Intended Insurrection—Preparations and Inquiries—
Commencement of the Revolt—Useless Warnings—Surprise
of the Government House— Danger of the Rajah—Cowardice
of the Chinese—Escape—Swims the River—Death of Mr.
Nicholets—Attacks on the other Houses—On the Stockade—
Gallant Conduct of Mr. Crymble and the Malay Fortmen—
Warm Reception of the Rebels—Death of a Madman—A
Bravo Corporal—Escape of Mr. Crymble—His last Blow—
Fortmen again behave well—Confusion in the Town—Peaceful
Assurances—Attempt to organize a Defence—Panic-striken—
Departure—Conduct of the People—Next Morning—Killed and
Wounded—The Chinese in Power—The Court-house—A
Check to Joy—Oath of Fidelity—Courage Shown by Abang
Patah—A Blow struck—Second Descent of the Chinese—A
Boat Action—Gallant Attack—Deaths—Anecdote—The
Second Retreat—The Town in Flames—The Steamer—The
Capital recovered—Pursuit of the Chinese—They retire to the
Interior—Attacks of the Land Dayaks—Foray of the Chinese—
Their Fort taken by the Datu Bandhar—Pursuit—Disorderly
Retreat—Critical Position—Brave Girls—Pass the Frontier—
The Men of the Kunsi—A Quarrel—Stripped of Plunder—
Results of the Insurrection—Forces at the Disposal of the
Sarawak Government—Conduct of the People—Disastrous to
the Chinese—New System—Arrival of Armed Chinese from
Sambas—Dutch and English Assistance—Revisit Sarawak—
Change—Conduct of the Rajah—Its Effect on the People—
 Secret Society at Labuan—Dangers from the Secret Societies
and their Defenders—Curious Incident—Thoughtful Care of
the Rajah

Chapter XIV.
THE MISSIONS: ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT.
Arrival of the Roman Catholic Mission in Labuan—Signor
Cuarteron its Head—Curious Reports—His real History—
Finding the Treasure—Turns Priest—Ostensible Object of the
Mission—Not attempted—Ease with which Captives could
escape—No Inclination to do so—Turned Mahomedans—
Return of Signor Cuarteron—Courtesy of the Brunei
Government—Intentions of the Italian Priest—Model Village—
The Italian Priests—The Churches—Old Battery—Regret at
the Withdrawal of the Roman Catholic Mission—Protestant
Mission at Sarawak—Present Condition—Comparative Failure
—Partial Success at Lingga and Lundu—Mr. Chalmers and
the Land Dayaks—Causes of his Influence—Mistake in
establishing the Mission at Kuching—The Reasons—
Objectionable Position for Schools—Proper Position for the
Mission—Suitable Spots—Waste of Funds in Boats and
Plantations—Deplorable Secession of Missionaries—Reasons
to account for it—Present Management faulty—Mr. Gomez in
Lundu—Christian Dayaks warn the Government—Missionaries
always welcome in Sarawak—Important political effect—The
Church should be among the Dayaks—Suitable Men for
Missionaries—What the Head of a Mission should be—What
he too often is, and should not be—Five Recommendations to
increase Efficiency—Unoccupied Room for a great Increase of
the Number of Missionaries—Method of distributing them—
Personal Character—Dayaks an interesting Race—A Tribe
half Mahomedans half Pagans—Use of eating Pork—Districts
unoccupied—Position of the Missionary in Sarawak—The
Bornean Mission an important one 365

APPENDICES.
Appendix A.—Dayak Languages. Sambas to Batang Lupar 383
„ B.—Ditto. Batang Lupar to Rejang 392
„ C.—Languages of Tribes between the Rejang and the Baram 399
„ D.—Languages of Northern Borneo 407
„ E.—Lanun Language 417