THE IGNORANCE OF TEACHERS AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO PREDICATE INTERCULTURALITY

Even if the teaching materials can be characterized by cultural input, this does not automatically indicate their exploitation (Skopinskaja 2003: 52, as cited in Sándorová 2016:

189). The responsibility for how and if these contents will be put to use, primarily, falls back on the teachers. It is true that Byram’s primary objective of composing the model of ICC was to incentivize educators to incorporate the critical evaluation of intercultural situations in their planning of the learning process and to establish it as the ultimate aim of learning (Byram 2012, as cited in Schneider 2020: 195). However, an investigation from 1996, in which

34 participated 210 randomly selected FL teachers in New York (Moore 1996, as cited in Dema and Moeller 2012: 80), exposed a plethora of problems; first, only 26% of high school FL teachers taught culture in their lessons and, second, more than half of the interviewees admitted that reading notes in the coursebooks was their most common activity for dealing with cultural contents, which indicates that coursebooks are the teachers’ most important resource for teaching cultural facts and that students are only passively learning about the target culture. What is more, Jiménez Ramírez (2019: 248) has revealed that grammar persists in being the backbone of the FL classes, which means that the number of the teachers who simply keep cultural matters at arm's length remains large, primarily, due to the lack of knowledge that would allow teachers to acquaintance their learners with cultural topics.

Kramsch (2013: 59) has, as well, discovered that FL teachers still prefer teaching vocabulary and grammar over culture as they feel incompetent (ibid., Byram and Risager 1999, Young and Sachdev 2011, as cited in Schneider 2021: 195) of teaching foreign culture and they are frightened that they might promote stereotypes that the coursebooks contain as a consequence of the demands of the market. What is even more astonishing is that there exist FL learners who are against learning about the target culture as some believe that the language classroom is not appropriate for learning about values and culture while others feel that their L1 identity will extinguish if teachers put an excessive amount of emphasis on culture (ibid.). An additional source of the teachers’ anxiety is the coexistence of various stances on culture teaching that focus either on the study of texts, on the theoretical reflexion about the language or on the usefulness of language as a means of communication, which generates paradoxical theoretic principles and confusion among teachers regarding the teaching and learning of IC (Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 246).

The real challenge for the FL teachers, thus, lies in overcoming their fear of teaching intercultural contents. This anxiety can only be cured with a proper training (Äijälä 2009: 5) that would teach instructors how to explain and incorporate intercultural matters into their classes. Consequently, they would also obtain the means and the confidence to select the appropriate coursebooks¹⁰ and by teaching learners how to “critically question meanings” in textbooks and the media (Galante 2015: 34) they would also combat the second issue of

10 Slovene secondary school teachers have the latitude to decide on their own coursebooks, but from a public accessible list confirmed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.

35 successfully preparing learners for their intercultural encounters later in life even though students might be reluctant to ponder on complex topics such as underlying values, beliefs and attitudes (Kramsch 2013: 60). Äijälä (2009: 5) exposes, on the grounds of her own experience, that FL teachers acquire insufficient tools for the teaching of IC in the course of their teacher training. Precisely this urge to comprehend the depths of the concept of IC and to transmit my knowledge of successfully conducting intercultural interactions onto my learners is what motivated me to tackle this Master’s Thesis. The present study, will, hopefully, also be one of those tools that will assist EFL and SFL teachers in knowing how to choose, use and interpret coursebooks that appropriately deal with interculturality and how to combine them with other intercultural materials.

I truly believe that if any educator, then the teachers of English and Spanish as the transmitters of linguistic and cultural knowledge of two of the most widely used languages in the entire world, have the one-of-a-kind opportunity and responsibility to transform the world by

“raising the (inter-) cultural dimension in people”, whose worth has to be brought to the forefront of any language and cultural teaching (Burazer 2020: 28). Knowing how to choose an interculturally well-structured coursebook or how to complement it with other intercultural material is, thus, an essential part of a FL teacher's job and every one of them should be properly qualified to do so.

Perhaps one of the best strategies to instil the IC in learners without them immediately recognizing the acquired capacities of intercultural critical awareness is mobilizing students to travel to another country. In this regard, the frequency of student exchanges has drastically risen in the last years (Villalón de la Isla 2014: 131). A case study carried out among 15 university students has revealed some exciting findings. First, the interviews with the students who had undergone exchange programs have disclosed that the learners’ comprehension of cultural differences and their knowledge about the target country’s aspects has increased considerably (ibid. 139). Second, the students have shown a positive attitude towards the target culture and their effort in living and understanding the cultural differences was greatly visible (ibid.). Finally, Villalón de la Isla in her 2014 investigation discovered that the interviewees were capable of repairing their own attitudes and ways of understanding other people and learning how to appreciate the changes in their cultural knowhow and foreign traditions, as well as their own (ibid.). Student exchanges are not always possible, due to

36 various factors, however, provided that FL learners do have a chance of acquiring first-hand experience of a different world, (not-only-university) teachers should encourage them to embark on that voyage.