Teaching intercultural competence - the

complementarity of training and education

Michael ByramUniversity of Durhamm.s.byram@dur.ac.uk

About purpose and means

• Concepts and language

• Whorfian/Humboldtian hypotheses – weak form

Education and training

• “Education = ‘values’” versus “training = ‘behaviour’”

• Becoming interculturally competent through education and training (Feng, Byram and Fleming eds. – Multilingual Matters)– Introduction – Fleming

Competence

• Competence in training– Repetition and reflection

• Competence in education– Reflection and criticality e.g. ‘critical cultural

awareness’/’savoir s’engager’

Fleming diagram

Surface ………………………………… Training

Depth …………………………………… Education

Intercultural competence

• Greeting and leave-taking – surface– Compare pronunciation and identity

• Symbolic competence (Kramsch) – depth• -- Not which words, but whose words are those? Whose

discourse? Whose interests are being served by this text?• -- What made these words possible, and others impossible?• -- How does the speaker position him/herself?• -- How does he/she frame the events talked about?• -- What prior discourses does he/she draw on?

Symbolic competence for post-modern society - California

Seen from California in 2010, culture today is associated with ideologies, attitudes and beliefs, created and manipulated by the discourse of the media, the Internet, the marketing industry, Hollywood and other mind-shaping interest groups. It is seen less as a world of institutions and historical traditions, or even as identifiable communities of practice, than as a mental toolkit of subjective metaphors, affectivities, historical memories, contextualisations and transcontextualisation of experience, with which we make meaning of the world around us and share that meaning with others.

Transcultural and intercultural (Bredella)

• Transcultural – ‘is’ and ‘ought’– No identification with national etc groups

• Intercultural– Reinforces boundaries – racist

• BUT – transcultural does not exist and is not feasible

• Intercultural includes ability to understand otherness in its variations within (national and other) groups

Internationalism and cosmopolitanism (Holbaard)

Internationalism may be described as the ideology of international bonding. However, the bonds that link states, nations and groups of individuals and make up the multidimensional international society of the modern world are of several kinds and join together broad variety of parties.

Internationalism, it follows, is distinct from cosmopolitanism, which does not in its essence pertain to international society. Proclaiming a worldwide society of individuals that overrides states, nations and groups of people, it tends to disregard all kinds of international relations and to consider the society of human beings en masse.

Internationalism/interculturality and

cosmopolitanism/transculturality

• Cosmopolitanism as ideal

• Internationalism as feasible

Characteristics of internationalism in education

• opportunities for students to create and cooperate in groups of several nationalities, forming ‘bonded’ international groups

• teaching and learning which include critical thinking as intended outcome

• teaching and learning which leads to learners becoming aware of the presuppositions they hold and the national basis of many of these

• a change of allegiance among students towards the idealism of a cosmopolitan society and a fair and democratic world.

Foreign language teaching and internationalism

• Intercultural competence as a basis for successful cooperation and ‘bonding’

• Project work e.g. internet

• Temporary ‘bonding’ and reflection on own identifications

Summary

• Complementarity of education and training – includes all kinds of competences

• Intercultural competence includes both surface and depth competences

• Interculturality and internationalism (feasible) AND transculturality and cosmopolitanism (ideal)

• FLT contributes intercultural competence to international bonding/cooperation