UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO ODDELEK ZA ROMANSKE JEZIKE IN KNJIŽEVNOSTI

(1)

UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO ODDELEK ZA ROMANSKE JEZIKE IN KNJIŽEVNOSTI

VANJA RAKUŠA

The Development of Attitudes in the Light of the Intercultural Approach to Languages and Cultures in English and Spanish Coursebooks

El desarrollo de las actitudes hacia el enfoque intercultural de las lenguas y de las culturas en los manuales de inglés y español

Razvoj stališč v luči medkulturnega pristopa k jezikom in kulturam v angleških in španskih učbenikih

Magistrsko delo

Mentorja: Študijski program:

red. prof. dr. Janez Skela Anglistika—D

izr. prof. dr. Marjana Šifrar Kalan Španščina—D

Ljubljana, 2021

(2)

II

ZAHVALA

Iskrena zahvala gre mojemu mentorju red. prof. dr. Janezu Skeli in mentorici izr. prof. dr.

Marjani Šifrar Kalan za njune usmeritve, strokovne nasvete in kritične pripombe, ki so sooblikovali pričujoče zaključno delo. Morda še srčnejša zahvala gre moji družini, ki mi je omogočila, da uresničim svoje drzne sanje in mi dala krila, na katerih sem lahko poletela v neslutene razsežnosti novih svetov, čigar opoj z navdušenostjo vsrkavam sleherni dan.

(3)

III

ABSTRACT

The Development of Attitudes in the Light of the Intercultural Approach to Languages and Cultures in English and Spanish Coursebooks

While communicative competence (CC) still remains the ultimate objective of modern foreign- language curricula, globalization and intercultural situations teachers and students now confront daily demand a new goal of foreign language (FL) teaching: the development of intercultural communicative competence. Its foundation are attitudes that are pivotal to learners’ perception and acceptance of real world; however, these underlying beliefs and values are precisely the most challenging element of interculturality to attain. It has recently been proven that FL teachers, and English as a foreign language (EFL) and Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) secondary school coursebooks, indeed, fail to depict values that learners can experience and observe in real life and, thus, endanger the development of critical thinking that should evolve precisely in secondary school. This Master's Thesis, then, investigates whether the inappropriate treatment of intercultural competence (IC) is as well the case in the contemporary coursebooks used in Slovenian secondary schools. In other words, the study examines the level of presence of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in EFL and SFL coursebooks used in the first year of secondary education in Slovenia. More precisely, the thesis revolves around a comparison of the development of the three main resources of interculturality (i.e. knowledge, skills and attitudes) in EFL and SFL coursebooks, while devoting special care to the resource of attitudes. The checklist of criteria used in the analysis emanate from the FREPA's (Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures) (2012) descriptors of resources. The findings acquired in the present study are surprising but logical and in line with some other investigations in the area of interculturality.

They attest to a disproportionate ratio between the three resources of IC in EFL and SFL coursebooks, that is in favour of the knowledge component. Attitudes are, however, unexpectedly, not the most neglected resource in SFL coursebooks, but remain as such in EFL coursebooks, which, might have to do with their date of publication that was prior to the launching of the FREPA (2012). Last, but most important, the share of attitudinal contents in EFL and SFL coursebooks is of almost the same minute size in both sets of coursebooks, as well as the depth of the attitudes that is in both cases on the same superficial level.

(4)

IV Key words: intercultural communicative competence (ICC), FREPA's descriptors of resources of ICC, resources of interculturality (knowledge, skills and attitudes), EFL (English as foreign language) and SFL (Spanish as foreign language) coursebooks

RESUMEN

El desarrollo de las actitudes hacia el enfoque intercultural de las lenguas y de las culturas en los manuales de inglés y español

En tanto que la competencia comunicativa (CC) sigue permaneciendo el objetivo final de los planes curriculares modernos de la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras (LE), la globalización y las situaciones interculturales que afrontan los profesores y aprendientes ya diariemente exigen un nueva meta de la enseñanza de las LE: el desarollo de la competencia comunicativa intercultural (CCI). Su base son las actitudes que son imprescindibles para que el alumno acepte el mundo real, sin embargo, estas creencias y valores subyacentes son precisamente los elementos más dificiles de obtener. Se ha demostrado que, efectivamente, los profesores de lenguas extranjeras junto con los manuales ILE (inglés como lengua extranjera) y ELE (español como lengua extranjera) no transmiten los valores que los aprendientes pueden observar en la vida real y que ponen en peligro el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico que tendría que desenvolverse precisamente el la escuela secundaria. Este trabajo fin de máster, por lo tanto, investiga si el caso del tratamiento inapropiado de la competencia intercultural (CI) también puede ser aplicado a los manuales contemporráneos usados en las escuelas secundarias eslovenas. En otras palabras, este estudio elabora la presencia de la CI en los manuales ILE y ELE, que se usan en las escuelas secundarias eslovenas. Para ser más precisos, la investigación gira en torno a la comparación del desarollo de la CI en los manuales ELE e ILE, prestando especial atención al recurso de las actitudes. Los criterios de la lista de verificación proceden de los descriptores de los recursos del MAREP (Marco de Referencia para los Enfoques Plurales de las Lenguas y de las Culturas) (2012). Los resultados del presente trabajo fin de máster son sorprendentes, pero lógicos y están en línea con otros estudios llevados a cabo en este campo de investigación, ya que atestiguan la relación desproporcionada entre los tres recursos de CI en los manuales ILE y ELE, que está a favor del componente de conocimientos. Por otro lado, las actitudes, lo que está en contra de nuestras expectativas, no son el recurso más desatendido en los manuales ELE, pero sí permanecen el recurso más ignorado en los manuales ILE, lo que podría deberse a su fecha de publicación más reciente

(5)

V que la del MAREP (2012). Y, por último, lo más importante: el porcentaje de los contenidos que desarrollan las actitudes es muy escaso en ambos conjuntos de manuales, y de la misma manera, el nivel de la profundidad de las actitudes no llega a superar el punto de superficialidad tanto en los manuales ELE como ILE.

Palabras clave en español: la competencia comunicativa intercultural (CCI), los descriptores de los recursos de la CI en el MAREP, los recursos de la interculturalidad (conocimientos,

habilidades, actitudes), los manuales ILE y ELE

IZVLEČEK

Razvoj stališč v luči medkulturnega pristopa k jezikom in kulturam v angleških in španskih učbenikih

Medtem ko je sporazumevalna zmožnost še vedno končni cilj sodobnih tujejezikovnih učnih načrtov, pa globalizacija in medkulturne situacije, s katerimi se dandanes učitelji in učenci nenehno soočajo, zahtevata spremembo cilja poučevanja tujih jezikov, ki naj bo: razvoj medkulturne sporazumevalne zmožnosti. Temelj slednje so stališča, ključna pri učenčevem dojemanju in sprejemanju resničnega sveta, a vendar so ravno ta prikrita prepričanja in vrednote tiste, do katerih se učenec dokoplje najtežje. Nedavne študije dokazujejo, da tako učitelji TJ kot tudi učbeniki za angleščino kot tuji jezik (TJA) in učbeniki za španščino kot tuji jezik (TJŠ) ne vključujejo vrednot, ki jih učenci lahko opazujejo v resničnem življenju in, posledično, ogrožajo oblikovanje kritičnega mišljenja, čigar razvoj bi moral potekati prav v srednji šoli. Magistrska naloga torej obravnava v kolikšni meri je medkulturna sporazumevalna zmožnost prisotna v učbenikih TJA in TJŠ, ki so v rabi v 1. letniku slovenskega srednješolskega izobraževanja. Raziskava je osrediščena na primerjavo razvoja medkulturne sporazumevalne zmožnosti v angleških in španskih učbenikih, pri čemer se posebna pozornost posveča enemu izmed treh glavnih virov medkulturnosti—stališčem. Kriteriji analize temeljijo na referenčnih opisnikih ROPP-a (tj. Referenčnega okvira za pluralistične pristope k jezikom in kulturam) (2012). Rezultati pričujoče študije so presenetljivi, vendar pričakovani, saj smiselno potrjujejo izsledke ostalih študij na področju medkulturnosti, ki prikazujejo neenakovredno razmerje med tremi viri medkulturnosti, in sicer v prid znanja. Po drugi strani in v nasprotju z našimi pričakovanji, stališča niso najbolj zanemarjena sestavina v učbenikih TJŠ, vendar so še vedno najbolj prezrt gradnik medkulturne zmožnosti v obeh učbenikih TJA, ki sta izšla pred izidom

(6)

VI ROPP-a (2012), kar bi lahko pojasnilo táko zapostavljanje stališč. Nazadnje, rezultati raziskave kažejo, da je delež vsebin, ki razvijajo stališča, enako nizek v angleških in španskih učbenikih, prav tako pa nobena izmed skupin učbenikov ne presega nivoja površinskosti kar se tiče globine izraženih stališč.

Ključne besede: medkulturna sporazumevalna zmožnost, ROPP-ovi referenčni opisniki medkulturne sporazumevalne zmožnosti, viri medkulturnosti (znanje, stališča, spretnosti), učbeniki za angleščino (TJA) in španščino (TJŠ) kot tuja jezika

(7)

1

1. INTRODUCTION

The present Master’s Thesis is written with the aim to contribute to the progress made in the field of practical exploration of intercultural communicative competence (henceforth ICC), by studying the level of the inclusion of the three main resources of intercultural competence (henceforth IC) (i.e. knowledge, skills and attitudes) in English as a foreign language (EFL) and Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) coursebooks used in Slovenian secondary schools. The decision to subdue English Way Up Intermediate (Collie 2010) and Spanish Diverso 1 (Encina et al. 2015) to my analysis was principally influenced by a relatively high level of familiarity with them, whereas the factor of a high frequency of use in Slovenian schools prevailed in giving the casting vote to English New Headway Intermediate (Soars and Soars 2009) and Spanish Gente Hoy 1 (Martín Peris and Sans Baulenas 2013). The central questions addressed in this thesis are, therefore: (1) Are intercultural contents present in EFL and SFL coursebooks used in Slovenia?; (2) What is the ratio between each of the three main intercultural resources (knowledge, skills and attitudes) in EFL and SFL coursebooks used in the first year of teaching these two languages in Slovene secondary schools?; (3) Are attitudes the most neglected resource in the mentioned EFL and SFL coursebooks?; (4) Is the resource of attitudes present on a superficial or deep level in the mentioned EFL or SFL coursebooks?, and (5) Which of the two groups of coursebooks (EFL or SFL) includes more contents dedicated to attitudes?

At the beginning, we outline the imperatives for the intercultural awareness that the Council of Europe seeks to promote through its educational policy. Then we comment on the paradigm shift from communicative to intercultural communicative competence (ICC) on the basis of a discussion about the term culture and its derivatives, and in relation with the evolution of the prevalent intercultural approach to teaching. What follows is a structural portrayal of intercultural competence (IC), whose core are the attitudes. We expose various issues related to designating the starting point of and the place for intercultural teaching, the problematic assessment of IC and its exclusion from EFL and SFL coursebooks, the lack of instructions in FL textbooks as to the treatment and teaching of ICC and (the feeling of) incompetence but also responsibility of FL teachers to teach ICC. We bring the theoretical principles to an end by providing solutions for the mentioned issues, the reasons against excluding attitudes from the coursebooks and the current positive trends regarding ICC in coursebooks. The empirical part of the work, revolving around coursebook analysis—based

(10)

4 on the established aims, research questions, hypothesis and the chosen methodological approaches—interpretation of the obtained results in line with the theoretical approaches and antecedents of my work and a suggested conclusion including proposals for future extensions of knowledge, will, finally, allow us to attach scientific value to this thesis.

By writing this work, we aspire to cast light on a burning and insufficiently researched issue of poor treatment of ICC in EFL and SFL coursebooks used in Slovenian secondary schools for the time of writing this thesis. We expose the concerns and the challenges of the FL teachers, who are severely un(der)qualified for the intercultural education, as they are systematically bereft of a proper intercultural training. This thesis can, therefore, also serve as a teacher manual guiding educators in their material selection, since they, first, receive the means that allow them to recognize a coursebook or some other teaching material that goes in line with the intercultural teaching and, second, in the case they weigh up using any of the analysed coursebooks in their classes, they can easily decide for or against exploiting the considered coursebook, as a proper intercultural evaluation of the textbook is already done instead of them. The last underlying but powerful agenda of these pages that will, hopefully, bring relevant long-term changes in the process of coursebook creation is posing a challenge to the textbook creators to dare include more chronically lacking contents that focus of the foundation if IC—attitudes—but also to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, which narrows down the selection of coursebooks that teachers can opt for in their classes, not to satisfy with less than interculturally thoroughly-developed coursebooks.

2. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW

In the theoretical part I refer to English and Spanish literature, as the topic of ICC is

exhaustively covered in both—in terms of theoretical concepts—while also touching upon few findings of Slovene researchers. On the frontline of information sources exploited we have Michael Byram’s Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence (1997), Candelier et al.’s FREPA (Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures) (2012), the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR) (2001), the Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Companion Volume with New Descriptors (2020) (henceforth Companion Volume), the Cervantes Institute

(11)

5 Curriculum Plan (2006) and a plethora of the CEFR' s complementary materials produced by the Council of Europe. As well as important are several additional works that display a guiding role in the mentioned theoretical principles: Alan Pulverness' article “Material for cultural awareness” (2007), “Cultura e interculturalidad” by Jiménez Ramírez (2019),

“Competencia comunicativa intercultural y enseñanza de español LE/L2: antecedents, estado actual y perspectivas futuras” by Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez (2021) and an abundance of other academic research (Grobelšek, Mikulec, Kač, Äijälä, Berna Böcüa and Razı, Çelik and Erbay, Dema and Moeller, Kramsch, Moldestad Knudsen, Níkleva, Sándorová, Sobkowiak, to name but a few).

2.1 IMPERATIVES FOR INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS

The world is currently in the midst of the largest wave of cultural mixing in written history (Lustig and Koester 2010: 3). Europe has magnetized migrants and asylum-seekers from far and near in the search for a better tomorrow (Burazer 2020: 13). Even a relatively unknown small-sized country like Slovenia has recorded a rise of 4.6 % of foreign citizens (which translates into 99.120 foreign citizens) in the period from 2008 to 2020 (Republic of Slovenia Statistical Office 2021). In addition to that, technology, mass media and modern transportation systems have created a global village—“a worldwide web of interconnections—have brought “events from the far reaches of the globe into people's homes”, point out Lustig and Koester (2010: 6) and have compressed space and time on a scale that is “unprecedented” (Burazer 2020: 13). With such a large quantity of cultural groups sharing the same habitat and intercultural encounters marking every facet of millenials' life—

work, diversion, educational institutions, family, community and even mass media—there are countless opportunities for intercultural dialogue (Burazer 2002: 13, Lustig and Koester 2010:

10). However, if we turn the same coin on the other side, we can see an increased frequency of hate crimes committed because of an individual's culture, social group membership, race or religion. If we focus on Slovenia, this country has also started facing the issue of intolerance and the prevailing feeling of endangerment on a larger scale and this occurred immediately after the independence when it was experiencing a massive influx of migrants (Grobelšek 2010: 155).

(12)

6

2.2 SCHOOL AS THE POTENTIAL BIRTHPLACE AND CEMETERY OF STEREOTYPES

School is supposedly and by all rules an institution spreading objective knowledge distanced from any type of doctrinaire perceptions. If you choose to believe this ideal, the following revelation might as well come as a shock to you: learners acquire knowledge that is anything else than objective, as it is, first, influenced by the predominant political views and educational guidelines (Byram 2003: 34) and then additionally filtered by the media’s presentation in the form of photographs and videos in coursebooks (ibid.: 35). What pupils, thus, learn about in school is not the real world, but an “interim world” that is only based on the actual world and is heavily influenced by the aforementioned subjective outlooks (ibid.: 34). To push this disturbing disclosure of the educational setting as the transmitter of subjective knowledge even further and to get an even slight insight into how mysterious are the ways of the human mind processing the received information, we should explain that albeit the carefully delineated outlines of the real world and the exact instructions for their interpretation delivered in coursebooks, (it is not uncommon that) learners still do not absorb knowledge in the same format prescribed in their coursebooks, but create their own unstable images about the foreign world, which may be subdued to surprising changes (ibid.: 17). In conclusion, students’ learning process is not in the best-case scenario based on objective theoretical truths, but is heavily influenced by the interim world and the learners’ unpredictable mind, besides, of course, the students’ visible socio-cultural living conditions.

All of the mentioned factors, unfortunately, create high predispositions for the development of stereotypes (Müller 1981, Kramsch 1993, Tomalin and Stempleski 1993, as cited in Byram 2003: 44). In order to avoid them, sometimes learners might make an attempt to interpret the foreign world differently so as to fit it into their own socio-cultural coordinates (Byram 2003:

45-46). Provided that they fail to do so, they might start experiencing the feelings of fear and endangerment, especially if “sensitive areas of “normality” […] are touched upon”, which then leads to rejection and prejudices (ibid.). It is, thus, highly fundamental and urgent to create an open-minded society that will comprehend, tolerate and accept the other. Be that as it may, the desired values cannot just come naturally; they have to be acquired via conscious learning or in other words education (Liu et al. 2001: 26, as cited in Sándorová 2016: 1). And this is how we come to the conclusion that, since school, like it or not, creates and/or passes on dogmatic views, it is the duty of teachers to prevent the potential emergence of stereotypes and to successfully combat them in case they do appear among students.

(13)

7

2.3 CULTURAL EDUCATION AS A GOAL OF FL TEACHING

Schools have the responsibility to guide youngsters and provide them with the tools to understand and develop the attitudes and values that are crucial for the creation of a democratic society (Burazer 2020: 30). The type of education that displays a central role in in making human and intercultural interactions less confrontational and more constructive is, foremost, FL education (Manjarrés 2009: 146). The most important source for the FL teachers, who have to learn how to come into possession of the mentioned democratic tools and how to hand them on to their students, is, without doubt, the Council of Europe, a European institution concerned with “improv[ing] the quality of communication among Europeans of different language and backgrounds” (Council of Europe 2001: Notes for the User). It supports

“methods of learning and teaching which help young people and indeed older learners to build up the attitudes, knowledge and skills they need to become more independent in thought and action, and also more responsible and cooperative in relation to other people” (ibid.: 4-5). It perceives this rich European heritage of linguistic and cultural diversity as “a valuable resource to be protected” and recognizes that language education plays a crucial role in transforming the diversity from “a barrier to communication” into a spring of mutual understanding (ibid.:

2, Council of Europe 2008: 10). The second useful resource of ideas for the implementation of ICC through education comes from Huber and Reynolds (2014), who believe the implementation of the intercultural component in classes should be a planned action in all levels and types of education (not only formal education) (ibid.: 27). They expose that learners learn better when they are active participants of the learning process, which is why teachers should strive to include higher-order cognitive processes in their classes, such as: analysis, comparison, reflection and action (ibid.: 30). Among the suggested pedagogical approaches co-operative learning and learning by doing are the two approaches that most deeply engage learners in the learning process as they touch upon their intellectual, physical and emotional side (ibid.) and among the teaching techniques stick out: (1) activities that bring multiple perspectives to the forefront of teaching, (2) role plays by means of which students can put themselves in the shoes of the other, (3) poetry and creative writing, (4) ethnographic tasks demanding from learners to explore the outer real-life world, (5) films or texts and (6) social media offering online encounters with other people (ibid.: 39-45). Jiménez Ramírez explains that, accordingly, from the beginning of the 21st century, the institutional guidelines for linguistic education consider as fundamental the expansion of the teaching of this undefined

(14)

8 set of contents, skills and abilities, relevant for the learning of languages that is also labelled

“culture” (2019: 244).

2.4 CONCEPTUAL DISAMBIGUATION OF THE TERM CULTURE AND ITS DERIVATES 2.4.1 THE PARADIGM SHIFT FORM MULTILINGUALISM TO PLURILINGUALISM

We can group the educational benefits of FL teaching under three broad categories; the first one pertains to effects related to language use, the second one relates to language awareness and the last one concerns intercultural awareness (Skela 2017: 4), which diminishes learners' ethnocentrism and incentivizes understanding and respect towards other cultures. However, in spite of a plethora of research committed to defining the nature and importance of culture in FL teaching and learning, culture remains a passionately discussed question in FL study (Kramsch 2013: 58). In the last couple of decades, we can observe a gradual growth in the usage of terms such as multilingualism (multiculturalism), plurilingualism (pluriculturalism), interculturality and its correlates in the cultural domain (Clua and García Santa-Cecilia 2019:

42).

Currently the concept of plurilingualism is seen as fundamental in the Council of Europe’s approach to language teaching and learning (Council of Europe 2001: 4). Because of a widespread confusion about the differences between these seemingly equal terms (Clua and García Santa-Cecilia 2019: 42) it will be, also for the purpose of understanding the most relevant concepts in this work, of most help to delineate the meanings of each of them. The CEFR (Council of Europe 2001: 4) clarifies that multilingualism is “the knowledge of a number of languages, or the co-existence of different languages in a given society” in “strictly separated mental compartments. Plurilingualism, on the other hand, points to the idea that the knowledge of new languages and cultures forms a type of a competence that becomes enriched when it comes into contact with those languages and cultures that are already known to learners (Clua and García Santa-Cecilia 2019: 43). Consequently, it incentives learners to appreciate their knowledge of a FL, even if it is incomplete (ibid.: 46) and to abandon the traditional objective to master one or two languages in an isolated manner. The aim is to create a repertoire in which there would be enough space for all linguistic capacities that would allow learners to lay the foundation for a life-long development of a plurilingual

(15)

9 competence (ibid.: 48). Plurilingualism¹ can, thus, in a sentence, be defined as an interaction of various languages and cultures that results in building up a communicative competence (Council of Europe 2001: 4). The FREPA (Candelier et al. 2012: 6) mentions that there are now several “pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures”, which refer to “didactic approaches that use teaching/learning activities involving several […] varieties of languages or cultures”. The most influential among them in formulating the methodology of language teaching is the intercultural approach (ibid.) in which the linguistic and cultural competences of all languages complement each other and conduce to intercultural awareness, knowledge and skills and “greater openness to new cultural experiences” (Council of Europe 2001: 43).

The Council of Europe admitted both in the CEFR (2001: 5) and in its latest Companion Volume (2020: 22-29) that they did not thoroughly develop either the concept of plurilingualism or the notion of IC stating in the former document that “the full implications of such a paradigm shift [from multilingualism to plurilingualism] [had] yet to be worked out and translated into action” and explaining in the latter publication that “neither pluriculturalism nor the notion of intercultural competence—referred to briefly in [the] CEFR—[were] greatly developed in the CEFR book” (Council of Europe 2020: 29). In response to a number of requests for further development of certain CEFR’s (Council of Europe 2001) aspects, such as the illustrative descriptors of FL proficiency, the descriptors for plurilingualism or pluriculturalism and IC and the descriptors for mediation (ibid. 21-29) the Council, shortly after, published some works that promote plurilingualism, such as The European Language Portfolio: a guide for teachers and teacher trainers (2001). However, despite the abundance of “theoretical and practical work available on each of the different pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures”, the Council, once again, failed to provide a set of descriptors that would lead learners to “develop for themselves a set of” knowledge, skills and attitudes discloses the FREPA (Candelier et al.

2012: 9). This lack of descriptors has, thus, been severely hindering the accomplishment of the Council of Europe’s objectives of linking (1) various areas of knowledge, skills and attitudes, (2) the various pluralistic approaches, (3) the pluralistic approaches and “the learning of communicative language competences within specific languages” and (4) the pluralistic approaches and “other non-linguistic subject areas” (ibid. 9). Finally, in 2010, the Council

1 As language is merely an aspect of culture, plurilingualism has to be seen only as a part of the framework of pluriculturalism, in which, again, various cultures do not “co-exist side by side”, but are “compared, contrasted and actively interact, to produce an enriched […] pluricultural competence (Council of Europe 2001: 6).

(16)

10 published the first reference work under the title A Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures (FREPA), which abandons the “compartmentalized”

perception of a learner’s linguistic and cultural competence and embodies the paradigmatic shift or the learning and teaching of all languages with the goal of obtaining profit from their

“synergy” (Candelier et al. 2012: 8). In 2012 followed its revised version, whose descriptors of pluricultural competence were also used as a checklist for the analysis of the EFL and SFL coursebooks in this thesis. In addition to that, the Companion Volume with New Descriptors was published in 2020². Its major contributions have been the descriptors for plurilingual and pluricultural competence, in which we can detect features of the IC that were presented in the FREPA (2012) and a series of descriptors for mediation³ (besides mediation activities, scales for mediating concepts and communication) (Council of Europe 2020: 22), which give the intercultural dimension a crucial role in the teaching and learning of FL. Perhaps the most notable difference between the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001) and the Companion Volume (Council of Europe 2020) is that the former perceived plurilingualism as a changing competence, in which a learner’s resources in one language may differ from those in another, while the latter sees plurilingualism as a static repertoire that a learner combines with other general competences and strategies (Council of Europe 2020: 28). Another novelty is the Companion Volume’s (Council of Europe 2020) distribution of the descriptors for the plurilingual and pluricultural competence in three groups: pluricultural repertoire, plurilingual comprehension and plurilingual repertoire, with which the Council states that we should not weigh between the source culture and the target culture, as it was implied in the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001), but to communicate in culturally rich and complex contexts (Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 9). In short, by producing a detailed illustration of the IC, the Companion Volume (2020) recognizes that its reaches go far beyond the linguistic effects, as language is merely one of the causes of communication problems (Council of Europe 2020:

114, as cited in Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 9) and promotes a broader vision of

2 Its preliminary version Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment.

Companion Volume with New Descriptors had been published two years before (Council of Europe 2018).

3 The Companion Volume (Council of Europe 2020: 30-33) explains that mediation is one of the four modes of communication, besides reception, interaction and production, which replaced the traditional representation of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). In this mode of communication, a learner “acts as a social agent”, who establishes connections between meanings and helps either to construct them or to convey them whether this be within the same language or between different languages (ibid. 103). The CEFR (Council of Europe 1001: 14) mentions a few examples of mediation, such as translation, interpretation, a paraphrase, a summary or a record.

(17)

11 the IC. It is important that we add that this CEFR’s theoretical perception of plurilingualism as a “holistic repertoire” has recently been scientifically supported by a series of research carried out in the fields of psychology and neurology in relation to FL learners, which, in addition, proved numerous benefits of plurilingualism, such as the development of a plethora of cognitive advantages, to provide an example (Council of Europe 2020: 28).

2.4.2 THE DEFINTION(S) OF CULTURE

Äijälä (2009: 6) explains that the first step to getting to understand the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is becoming familiar with its hypernym “culture”. Culture is an ambiguous content in terms of curriculum and not quite well defined with regard to terminology. This creates confusion among scholars working in the field of teaching foreign languages, who try to comprehend the true meaning of the mentioned expression. To support these claims, I can provide a fact that in 2014 the most searched term in the Spanish dictionary DRAE (Diccionario de la lengua española) was precisely the word culture (Morales 2015, as cited in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 244), which indicates that with such a large quantity of people who had the urge to consult a dictionary to investigate the real meaning of the mentioned term, there exists an obvious necessity to provide a more precise semantic description of this curricular content. One of the problems that we are faced with is, thus, a plethora of definitions of culture⁴. As there are so many of them, Jiménez Ramírez (2019: 244) has gathered together all the points that the majority of explanations have in common. He concluded that culture is »a series of skills and an ensemble of knowledge of a collective character (Hofstede 1994: 5, as quoted in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 244) that is shared (Bowers 1992: 7, as cited in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 244) and organised according to the rules of common perception” (Alptekin 1993: 136, Kramsch 1998: 10, as quoted in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 244). We have to stress that the number of the definitions of this term is almost immeasurable. Consequently, in the midst of this terminological inundation, we had to incline towards the one that will be of most help in the present discussion of the culture’s derivatives (interculturality, pluriculturalism, multiculturalism). Our preference for this particular definition, however, does not mean that all the other explanations are inappropriate or false, they are simply less adequate in the context of this work.

4 This terminological confusion is also touched upon by Illescas Garcia (2015: 67).

(18)

12 2.4.3 BIG “C” AND SMALL “c” CULTURE

With the development of the applied linguistics, the concept of big “C” culture, prevalent until the 40's, expanded and the concept of small “c” culture was consolidated (Illescas García 2015:

20). At that time in terms of the applied linguistics, culture was not merely Hinkel's combination of “speech acts, structure; textual rhetoric, social organisations, knowledge constructions [...], notions of personal space, gestures, time and similar topics” anymore (1999, as quoted in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 244). It was not delivering only “the “big-C”

elements of (British and American) culture” (Skela 2020: 9) or the tip of the Brembeck’s iceberg consisting of language, food and appearance (1997, as cited in Huber-Kriegler et al.

2007: 7). From the 19th century onwards until recently, to be familiar with a culture has implied possessing knowledge of all types of behaviours, symbols, beliefs and values of a particular society (Geertz 1973, as quoted in Pulverness 2007: 427). It has meant knowing also the invisible body of the iceberg that includes “communication style, beliefs, values, attitudes, perceptions, [and] an endless list of notions from definitions of beauty” to values relating to health, love, death, leadership and prestige, to name but a few (Huber-Kriegler et al. 2007: 7).

2.4.4 THE PARADIGM SHIFT FROM THE BIG “C” AND LITTLE “c” FRAMEWORK TO THE 3Ps APPROACH

Skela (2020: 8) explains that, not long ago, the “little-c” and “big-C” cultural framework has broadened and a new approach for teaching culture has been born: the 3Ps—Products, Practices, Perspectives—which include “the philosophical perspectives, the behavioural practices and the products—both tangible and intangible—of a society” (Dema and Moeller 2012, as cited in ibid.). The products and practices originate in the philosophical perspectives that make up “the world view of a cultural group” and cultural perspectives describe “popular beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions held by the members of a target culture” (ibid.).

This approach has, thus, brought a change for the better, as it has shifted attention away from merely teaching cultural products and practices to “teaching culture [as] a study of underlying values, attitudes and beliefs”, summarizes Skela (2020: 8). A very similar tripartite categorization approach to teaching culture was produced by the Council of Europe’s FREPA (Candelier et al. 2012), the only difference between the two being “the terminology used for the three components”: products or knowledge/savoir, philosophical perspectives or attitudes/savoir-être and behavioural practices or skills/savoir-faire, concludes Skela (2020:

8).

(19)

13

2.5 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

The majority of modern curricula for FL teaching, among which we can also count the Slovenian curriculum, promote the communicative approach as the only acceptable norm of FL teaching (Skela 2017: 5). The final objective of such teaching is communicative competence, which refers to a learner’s ability to use language appropriately in order to achieve communicative goals (ibid.). To provide a more detailed definition, the Council of Europe describes communicative competence in terms of three dimensions: the ability a person has to act in FL in a linguistically, sociolinguistically and pragmatically appropriate manner (Council of Europe 2001: 13), which resembles Hymes’ definition composed of grammatical, psycholinguistic, sociocultural and probabilistic perspectives (Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 3). Interestingly, in the Cervantes Institute Curriculum Plan (2006), the most prominent Spanish organization responsible for the promotion of the study and the teaching of Spanish language and culture, whose guidelines are based on the CEFR’s (2001), the term communicative competence comes near to the CEFR’s pluricultural competence (Cervantes Institute Curriculum Plan: 2006) or Byram’s intercultural competence (IC) (1997: 70) and is defined as:

[…] an expansion of a student's social personality that can develop the capacity to adapt and to successfully function in disparate situations, in which it interacts with people from different communities or in which it interprets facts and cultural products that pertain to these cultures.

This requires the development and the capacity to use […] knowledge, skills and attitudes […]

(Cervantes Institute Curriculum Plan: 2006). ⁵

Be that as it may, the construct of this term has, in the last five decades, due to the impacts of globalization, evolved and changed considerably (Skela 2017: 5). FL teachers and students are being continuously confronted with intercultural situations, described in the previous chapter (see chapter 2.1 Imperatives for intercultural awareness), which demand intercultural communication. Consequently, the construct of communicative competence developed into IC (ibid.), which Byram (1997: 71), Corbett (2003: 30) and Lustig and Koester (2010: 68) describe as a complex amalgam of skills, valuable knowledge and attitudes that a FL learner

55 The translation of the quoted passage was done by the author of this thesis. V.O. “una ampliación de la personalidad social del alumno, que puede desarrollar una capacidad de adaptarse y desenvolverse con éxito en distintas situaciones en las que se relaciona con personas de comunidades diferentes a la suya o interpreta hechos y productos culturales propios de estas comunidades. Ello requiere el desarrollo y la capacidad de uso de una serie de conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes” (Instituto Cervantes: 2006).

(20)

14 needs to acquire. For Byram (1997) correcting your language and adapting it to the context is not enough to effectively communicate—what is lacking is positive attitude that surpasses Hymes’ constraints of CC (Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 4). Byram’s model treats IC as one of the elements of ICC besides linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence (Byram 1997: 73). Intercultural competence is, then, “the ability to interact in [your] own language with the people from another country and culture” relying on your own knowledge of that country or culture, your attitudes of curiosity about otherness and your skills (Byram 1997: 70). It allows pupils to build multiple identities, criss-cross them (Huber-Kriegler et al.

2007: 28) and form understanding of other cultures, which enables them to avoid stereotyping and to perceive interaction with those coming from other cultures as an enriching experience (Byram et al. 2002: 10, as cited in Moldestad Knudsen 2016: 5-14). Parmenter, as cited in Byram (2003: 8) stresses that IC does not merely bring positive effects in terms of language teaching, but also contributes to personal development of a learner and to their obtaining of positive attitudes towards others, which the new Companion Volume (2021, as cited in Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 196) also recognizes. The desire to learn how to recognize my own potential underlying subjective convictions about the other and the urge to help other learners to avoid even formulating them is, among other reasons, precisely, what motivated me to tackle this topic in my master’s thesis. ICC, as a hypernym of IC, on the other hand, denotes “the ability to interact with people from another country and culture” using foreign language, as the knowledge of the target culture is closely related with a learner's linguistic competence by means of the capacity to use language appropriately (sociolinguistic and discourse competence) and their “awareness of the meanings, values and specific connotations in a language” (intercultural competence) (Byram 1997: 71). The central idea of the definitions above can, thus, be summarized by Byram's model of ICC (1997: 73), which consists of four dimensions: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and intercultural competence. The last one is made up from three factors:

attitudes, knowledge and skills (which are, further on, subdivided into the skills of interpreting and relating, the skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness) (ibid.).⁶

6Nevertheless, there is an abundance of discrepancies between scholars researching interculturality, which have to do with the use of the term ICC. Some (Van Ek 1986, Bachman 1984 and Palmer 1989, as cited in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 245) consider it important to distinguish between communicative competence, cultural

(21)

15 Despite Byram’s seemingly clear relationship between IC and ICC, the nature of correlation among the two terms has, in later studies, become increasingly blurred. Some researchers, indeed, perceive IC as the component of ICC (Byram 1997), others consider ICC as an integral part of IC (Balboni 2006) and the last group of scholars views both IC and ICC as independent competences (Deardoff 2006) (Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 5). What all these varying approaches have in common are three basic dimensions: cognitive, procedural and affective (Chen y Sarosta 1996, Byram 1997, Fantini 2000, Deafrdoff 2006, Borghetti 2011, Sanhueza, Paukner, San Martin and Friz 2012, Leung, Ang and Tang 2014, as cited in Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 6). The cognitive dimension refers to general knowledge necessary to achieve efficiency in communication, the affective sphere alludes to the capacity to project and receive positive emotional answers before, in and after the intercultural interactions and the procedural dimension is linked to the capacity to adapt a speaker’s behaviour and interaction in order to achieve efficiency in communication (Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez 2021: 7). For the purposes of the present study, we will regard the term ICC as a hyponym of IC, for we are more inclined towards Byram’s perception of the relationship between the two concepts and, because our analysis in the empirical part is structured around three resources that are immediate constituents of the FREPA’s (2012) IC.

As for the most influential work in the teaching and learning of FL, the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001: 103-104, 118) mentions ICC only in terms of sociocultural or sociolinguistic competence⁷ and perceives it as a subcategory of CC. Other than that, we cannot find either any specific definition or any debate on the importance of the term in this document. Iglesias Casal and Ramos Méndez (2021: 8) clarify that the Council includes Byram’s savoirs and distributes them among five general competencies that are further on subdivided into four sub competences:

declarative knowledge, skills and abilities, existential competence and the ability to learn. The Companion Volume (Council of Europe 2020) does use concepts, such as IC, intercultural awareness, intercultural skills and knowhow, intercultural mediators and intercultural

competence, intercultural competence and ICC. On the other hand, there are experts who equalize the terms communicative competence and ICC (Fantini 1999, as cited in Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 245).

7 The Council of Europe (2001: 118) explains that the elements of the sociocultural competence are at the same time also ingredients of the sociolinguistic competence, as “language is a sociocultural phenomenon”.

(22)

16 dialogue, but it does not refer to IC as a concept at all and even ignores it with regard to its learning aims (Schneider 2021: 196).

As I have already mentioned in one of the previous chapters (see chapter 2.4.1 The Paradigm Shift from Multilingualism to Plurilingualism), the CEFR’s lack of a systematic treatment of ICC has later been catered for in a series of complementary materials produced by the Council of Europe, the most important and comprehensive one (also pivotal to the correct interpretation of the terms in this master’s thesis) being the FREPA (2012). This document presents a thorough taxonomy of ICC in the shape of an extensive and a complex system of descriptors that delineate the significant cultural traits and provide “a solid base and ample possibilities for outlining curricular intercultural goals, which can serve as a reference for teaching materials design and teacher training” (Burazer 2020: 22). The tripartite division of resources is modelled upon Byram’s construct of ICC (1997: 73) while the lists of the specific descriptors originate in “a systematic analysis” of: (1) about a hundred publications reflecting upon pluralistic approaches from which the FREPA’s authors chose those that were of most interest to them, (2) some curricula that contained features of pluralistic approaches and (3) a collection of theoretical works published within the “psycholinguistics or language acquisition” domain (Candelier et al. 2012: 13).

2.6 THE NOTION OF COMPETENCES

In order to fully understand the CEFR’s model of communicative competence (or Byram’s model of ICC) and to explain the general nature of the FREPA’s three resources of ICC, we must first describe the notion of “competence”. The concept of “competence” displays a central role in the CEFR and, as such, points to different objects at different levels, which can bring us to “a multiplication of competences (with a risk of “drowning” the concept”) and making the whole idea confused”, exposes the Council of Europe (2001: 11). The main function of a competence, which has been acquired in a learner’s previous experience, is that of providing support for learners to be able to perform activities and tasks in communicative situations, as only they can fully satisfy the needs and objectives of language learning and teaching (Council of Europe 2001: 131). Competences are, therefore, “the sum of knowledge, skills and characteristics that allow a person to perform actions” (ibid.: 9). We differentiate between general competences that are not “specific to language” and communicative language competences that “empower a person to act using linguistic means” (ibid.). The first group

(23)

17 mobilizes “internal” (Candelier et al. 2012: 11) resources, i.e. knowledge, skills, existential competence and ability to learn and the second one embraces “external” (ibid.) resources coming under linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic dimension (Council of Europe 2001: 13- 29). The FREPA (Candelier et al. 2012: 12), thus, differentiates between competences that are the ultimate goal of learning and teaching but cannot be taught directly and the internal resources, which a teacher activates in concrete situations in order to achieve the development of a competence.

2.6.1 THE STRUCTURE OF IC

We are now defining the ingredients of the CEFR’s general competences that are (the basis for) the FREPA’s resources of IC. But before we do so, we have to make two remarks. First, the components of IC will be discussed only briefly, as a more detailed list of descriptors will be provided in the appendix. Second, there are certain terminological differences between the CEFR’s and the FREPA’s constituents of competences, one of them being the CEFR’s existential competence, which translates into the FREPA’s (Byram’s) attitudes, then there is the CEFR’s ability to learn, which does not have an equivalent in the FREPA as its authors do not perceive it as an integral part of IC and neither will we and finally, the mentioning of Byram’s critical cultural awareness that neither the CEFR nor the FREPA consider as an immediate subcategory of IC and neither will we. These leaves us with three immediate constituents of IC: knowledge, attitudes and skills, which as such also appear in the Council’s document Developing intercultural competence through education (Huber and Reynolds 2014: 19-22).

Knowledge or declarative knowledge (savoir) is “knowledge resulting from experience (empirical knowledge) and from more formal learning (academic knowledge)” (Council of Europe 2001: 11). “Knowledge of the shared values and beliefs held by social groups in other countries [is] essential to intercultural communication” (ibid.). There are three subtypes of knowledge; knowledge of the world, which embraces “factual knowledge concerning the country or countries in which the language is spoken, such as its major geographical, environmental, demographic, economic and political features” and classes of entities and

“their properties and relations” (ibid.: 120), sociocultural knowledge, which denotes

“knowledge of the society and culture of the community or communities in which a language is spoken”, such as, for example “everyday living, living conditions, interpersonal relations, values, beliefs and attitudes, body language, social conventions, ritual behaviour” (ibid: 102-

(24)

18 103) and intercultural awareness, which comprises “knowledge, awareness and understanding of the relation (similarities and distinctive differences) between the ‘world of origin’ and the ‘world of the target community’” often by means of “national stereotypes”

(ibid: 103). In one of the later documents produced by the Council of Europe (Huber-Kriegler et al. 2007: 28) knowledge is described in terms of IC as “collective memory, diversity in the ways of living and the sociocultural context of the societies and cultures of the communities in which a language is spoken”. It refers to “intercultural awareness which involves the understanding of the relation (similarities and distinctive differences) between the world of origin and the world of the target communities” (ibid.).

Skills and know-how (savoir-faire) denote “the ability to carry out procedures, […] which through repetition, […] experience [and the acquisition of certain facts] becomes a series of almost automatic processes” (Council of Europe 2001: 30). They entail practical skills and know-how, i.e. social, living, vocational, professional and leisure skills and intercultural skills and know-how, which denote “the ability to bring the culture of origin and the foreign culture into relation with each other” (ibid.: 104). In terms of IC the Council later described them as (Huber-Kriegler et al. 2007: 28) the ability to “interpret and negotiate interaction in terms of skills: social, […], living, […], vocational and professional […] and leisure”. They imply the possession of “the ability to use a variety of language strategies in order to communicate with those from other cultures, as well as the capacity to overcome stereotyped relationships”

(ibid.). Byram et al. (2009: 13) stress that intercultural learners need the skills of comparing two or more cultures and perspectives in order to observe how conflicts can arise and how they can solve them. And the two preconditions to do that are the possession of skills of interpreting and relating an event from another culture and the skills of discovery and interaction by means of which a learner acquires and operates the newly-acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes “under the constraints of real-time communication” (ibid.).

Existential competence or attitudes (savoir- être) are considered as “the sum of the individual characteristics, personality traits and attitudes, which concern, for example, self-image and one’s view of others and willingness to engage with other people in social interaction” (Council of Europe 2001: 11-12). These personality traits are culture-related and cannot be easily defined, which is why we need to treat them with sensitivity (ibid.: 12). A later explanation of

(25)

19 the Council that exposes the role of the existential competence in terms of IC, defines it as a collection of cultural competence, related to cultural awareness and understanding, critical competence, requiring an awareness of self-identity and an acceptance of other culture, and transcultural competence, implying the appropriation of the values of the target culture and other communities (Huber-Kriegler et al. 2007: 28). In other words, (Byram et al. 2002: 12), a learner should not assume that their values, beliefs and behaviours are the only possible ones and should make an attempt to look at them from the perspective of the other.

The ability to learn puts into action all the previously mentioned competences and is “the ability to observe and to participate in new experiences and to incorporate new knowledge into existing knowledge, modifying the latter where necessary” (Council of Europe 2001: 106).

It is composed of the development of language learning abilities, language and communication awareness, general phonetic awareness and skills, study skills and heuristic skills (ibid.: 108).

Finally, Byram et al. (2002: 13) warn us of our “deeply embedded” values that can provoke a rejection of the other, despite our possession of curiosity about, openness and tolerance towards other people’s values. Such a negative response is, thus, inevitable and calls for a critical awareness of our own products, practices and perspectives and those belonging to other people (ibid.).

It goes without saying that there exist more interpretations (Huber and Reynolds 2014: 19-21, Byram, et al. 2009: 5) of the three main resources of IC—knowledge, skills and attitudes—we have commented only on the ones that originate in the most famous and the most established tripartite model of IC, composed of knowledge, skills and attitudes, provided by Byram and, consequently, the Council of Europe, which adopted Byram’s classification (Council of Europe 2001 and Candelier et al. 2012).

2.6.2 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:

(26)

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.

(27)

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.

(28)

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.

2.6.3 WHEN SHOULD IC BE TAUGHT

One of the research studies carried out by Níkleva (2012: 182), has, unsurprisingly, revealed that among all ICC competences, IC is obtained with the most difficulties. Surprisingly, according to the designers of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001: 22-23), the mastery of IC goes even beyond the “language achievements delineated by the common reference levels” and is considered as an ability only linguistic professionals can achieve. Another pair of researchers hold the view that it is impossible to determine a point in life, at which a learner would achieve

“full IC”, since we are referring to a “lifelong developmental process” (Huber and Reynolds 2014: 25). While I agree with the second research, I believe the allegation that average FL learners cannot achieve IC is far-fetched and lacking scientific explanation. If IC cannot be acquired by learners whose level of knowledge goes below C2, why is it that IC competence has a place in the CEFR? Isn’t the Framework intended for all learners of FL?

8 Burazer (2020: 90) believes that the general public should perceive the “contemporary global cultural and linguistic processes as being enriching and mutually beneficial” rather than destructive, since all known things are “in a state of constant flux” and attempting to avoid change is a labour of Sisyphus.

UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO ODDELEK ZA ROMANSKE JEZIKE IN KNJIŽEVNOSTI