ATTITUDES AS THE FOUNDATION OF IC

Among the three components of IC, Byram (1997: 10) argues that attitudes are “the foundation of intercultural competence” and a “pre-condition for successful intercultural interaction” (ibid.: 34). In continuation, Deardoff (2006, as cited in Moldestad Knudsen 2016:

20 7) asserts that the metamorphosis of attitudes is a vital first step to becoming “interculturally competent” (Moeller 2014: 3, as cited in Moldestad Knudsen 2016: 7). Finally, also Page and Benander (2016: 1) acknowledge attitudes are “the gateway” to learners developing IC. If we departure from the above statements, we can safely state that attitudes are the essence of IC. Rosenbusch (1997: 34), however, warns that this third component of interculturality (he calls it “perspectives”) at the same time presents the most difficult element to comprehend and attain. The first cause is that the attitudes comprise extremely “hard-to pinpoint aspects”, such as “the popular beliefs, the commonly held values, the folk ideas, the shared attitudes, and the widely held assumptions of members of the culture” that most intercultural speakers find exceedingly challenging to explain to their interlocutors (ibid.). Lustig and Koester (2010:

106) give these shared “invisible differences” (values, beliefs, norms and social practices) that cause similar behaviour patterns in the same circumstances among members of a culture the label “cultural patterns”. Another obstacle is that intercultural encounters can be highly unpleasant, since they might demand revising certain concepts, beliefs and attitudes that a speaker had, until then, perceived as self-evident (Berry et al. 1992, as cited in Ahnagari and Zamanian 2017: 11). Finally, the authors of the lists of resources for attitudes in the FREPA (Candelier et al. 2012: 68) themselves expose the dilemma of designating the extent to which

“the development of personality [can] be an explicit educational objective” and the problem of selecting out of those personality factors that influence FL learning. Besides the Council’s suggestions recommending the teaching of those attitudes that can be defined as “public aspects” (i.e. not belonging to a learner’s intimate sphere), Byram’s proposals regarding intercultural attitudes were “the first to be made in the intercultural area of study” (Beacco 2013: 4). According to them it is of primary importance that intercultural speakers be open and curious about the other and be ready to “suspend disbelief and judgement with respect to other’s [and belief in one’s own] meanings, beliefs and behaviours” (ibid.). The latter psychological stage was labelled by Kohlberg et al. (1983, as cited in Çetin Köroğlu 2016: 34) as “an ability to “decentre””. Decentring can, in extreme instances, even lead to an

“alternation” (Berger and Luckman 1966: 176, as cited in Byram 1997: 34), or “resocialisation”, which brings individuals to take apart their own subjective image of reality and “re-construct it according to new norms” (Byram 1997: 34). Apart from decentring, intercultural learners must show “cultural sensitivity, tolerance, respect of otherness and empathy” as Moldestad Knudsen (2016: 17) summarizes.

21 We can safely state that FL teaching is, thus, far more complex than solely developing knowledge and skills (Çetin Köroğlu 2016: 46). This does, nonetheless, not imply that an intercultural speaker can miraculously obtain positive attitudes or reach interculturality without any knowledge or skills. An increased knowledge of the other is the prerequisite for the learner relativizing their own beliefs and behaviours with more ease, since the students are able to compare their own beliefs and behaviours with those belonging to the other (Çetin Köroğlu 2016: 35). On the other hand, the attitudes of curiosity and openness considerably facilitate operating the skills of discovery and interaction (ibid.). In other words, the two standards of the culture goal are that, first, learners exhibit “an awareness of the relationship between the products [(knowledge)] and perspectives [(attitudes)]” of the target culture and, second, to evidence “an awareness of the relationship between the practices [(skills)] and perspectives [(attitudes)] of the culture (Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Executive Summary n. d. 3, as cited in Çelik and Erbay 2013: 338). The three resources of IC are, therefore, interrelated and we can straightforwardly declare that intercultural instruction in general is a welcome practice in educational environment, triggering positive attitudes towards both the source and the target language culture (Ahnagari and Zamanian 2017: 9).

“Building bridges” between the foreign world and our own allows a FL learner to expand their experiences, become aware of similarities and to come to terms with potential differences and, consequently, tensions between their own ideas about the foreign world and the image of the interim world (Byram 2003: 47). However, in an attempt to cope successfully with both worlds, learners need to develop some “qualifications”, among which stand out: empathy, role distance, tolerance of ambiguity and awareness of one’s own identity (Krappmann 1969, as cited in Byram 2003: 47). In the ICC model proposed by Byram, learners should achieve those qualifications with the help of teachers (Byram 1997, as cited in Ahnagari and Zamanian 2017: 11). The instructors should, hence, begin by providing learners with activities whose aim is to put under question the learners’ own pre-established ideas and only then they should invite learners on a voyage of discovery of the other (ibid.). In this sequence of tasks, learners will become more eager to interact with otherness and the ultimate aim of experiencing

“relationships of reciprocity” will be fulfilled (ibid.). We will discuss further the importance of teachers in the process of teaching interculturality in one of the following chapters.

22 2.6.2.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF ACQUIRING POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH SPEAKING AND SPANISH SPEAKING CULTURES

A systematic and early development of positive attitudes among FL learners towards the target culture is of crucial importance, especially when the object of learning is a widely known culture, such as, for example the American culture or the Latin-American culture. Burazer (2020: 15) exposes the issue of teachers having more difficulties with shaping learners’

attitudes towards those target cultures that are globally recognized than those that are considered exotic. As both of the mentioned cultures are widely known and as such seem to be familiar to everyone, learners of English and Spanish are highly likely to establish a plethora of “pre-fabricated opinions”, judgements and “emotional responses and attitudes” (ibid.: 15-28) about both of them. To make matters even worse, Burazer (2020: 88-89) mentions a research, which proves that the negative presumptions and the not-so-uncommon opinion of European citizens of American culture and the English language killing cultural and language diversity⁸, causes a quite well established general negative attitude towards American culture.

For learners of English (and Spanish) it is, thus, essential that they start acquiring positive attitudes towards the target cultures from the outset, before they get infected with the reported prevailing (negative) attitude.