2. Language is an integral part of culture. So language lessons foster the teaching/learning of intercultural skills, because learning a foreign language means coming into contact with the culture of the target country. As a result, a language teacher can and should play a huge role, provided he is himself open to interculturality and is not afraid to teach it to his pupils, because intercultural education is a process which continues throughout life and in which roles are often interchangeable: the learner takes on the role of the teacher, and vice versa.
How can intercultural skills be developed? Are plurilingual and pluricultural skills necessary steps along the road? How can a relationship be established between one’s original culture and “foreign” cultures?
2.1 Communication skills
Skill in communication is the primary aim of foreign language learning. Yet a great many people limit it to linguistic skill alone. Linguistic skill is sometimes enough to convey mere information, but not to communicate. Communicating is not just understanding and being able to use lexical and grammatical structures. In order to communicate, it is also essential to understand attitudes, value systems, behaviours, points of view, the entire cultural context of one’s interlocutor. One must be able to decipher his message correctly and know what stance to adopt in relation to him, referring to one’s own cultural context. In order to communicate, people have to understand each other, exchange and interact, not only on the linguistic level. The success of intercultural communication does not depend only on the level of linguistic skill acquired. Without intercultural skills, the simplest communication sometimes proves impossible.
2.2 Learning to communicate in one or more languages
The multilingual character of European society is making it more and more crucial to acquire proficiency in more than one European language.
In the chapter entitled “Linguistic diversification and the curriculum”, the Common European Framework of Reference defines plurilingual and pluricultural competence as “the ability to use languages for the purpose of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social agent, has proficiency of varying degrees in several languages and experience of several cultures” (Common European Framework of Reference, chapter 8, p. 168).
A sound knowledge of just one language and culture often leads to establishment of the ethnocentric relationship between the foreign language and culture and one’s own mother tongue and culture. One compares, one judges, one criticises, and so on. The acquisition of even limited skills in two, three or more foreign languages enables one to make contact with two, three or more cultures and so to move beyond this ethnocentric relationship more easily. It then becomes possible to create an intercultural space in which the learner will be capable of observing without prejudice, relativising his point of view in order to understand and engage in real dialogue.
Today’s pupils cannot foresee in what country they will live and work, or with which languages they will be faced. Teaching them just one language and one culture would cut them off from interculturality, distorting their view of the world around them because that world is multicultural and plurilingual.
Intercultural reality is therefore a space between several languages and cultures.
Through the acquisition of intercultural competence, the learner becomes more open to contacts with others and more inclined to learn other foreign languages and to develop a richer personality. He will therefore be better equipped to live and work in the plurilingual and multicultural reality of present-day European society.
2.3 Intercultural knowledge or skills and aptitudes
Many language teachers are wary of teaching intercultural competence because they do not feel sufficiently competent themselves. Others think that, in order to acquire it, learners need to have achieved a fairly high linguistic standard already. On both counts they are quite wrong.
Teaching interculturality does not mean giving learners a multitude of information and data on the culture of a foreign country.
Intercultural competence comprises a certain amount of “knowledge”, but it is primarily skills and aptitudes that determine one’s ability to enter into relationships with others, to communicate and interact with them. The learner does not need a very high linguistic standard to learn the most elementary skills and aptitudes. One does not learn interculturality, one experiences it through interaction with the representatives of other languages and cultures. So the teacher is not obliged to possess all kinds of knowledge and facts about the culture of the country whose language he teaches. Rather, he must himself possess the intercultural awareness that will enable him to encourage his pupils to be aware of the differences, making them responsive to them and teaching them to adopt a relative stance and to situate facts in their context, always with reference to their own culture.
Intercultural skills are learnt throughout life: no teacher ever ceases to be a learner himself. On the other hand, every learner can be a teacher to others at any point in his learning curve.
2.4 Change of perspective
So here we have a major change of perspective. It is not only the learning of a language that we are seeking in language lessons: above all, our aim must be the acquisition of awareness and intercultural skills. Teaching/learning a foreign language is just one way of achieving that aim. This perspective affords a better understanding of the need for correlations with other languages the pupil is learning and with other subjects and disciplines taught at school.
School must prepare pupils to be European citizens, but being a European citizen does not mean coming from nowhere. Intercultural citizenship does not exclude patriotism. Quite the contrary. One might go so far as to say that the euphoria of uniting and unifying everything has made us forget that people need to know their own roots and identify with a nation. Cut off from their roots, people lose their bearings, no longer feel secure, and begin to fear others. They cannot understand others because they no longer understand themselves; they cannot know who they are because they have ceased to know that they are themselves. They cannot accept others because they no longer accept themselves. So it is not a question of erasing all the differences, of forgetting national traditions and customs. On the contrary, it is a question of remaining firmly attached to one’s own cultural heritage, being conscious of one’s own cultural identity while opening up to others and accepting their richness. When we are told to think/do/be/(re)act like others, our immediate reaction is one of revolt: why cannot others think/do/be/(re)act like us?
It is in diversity that the richness of Europe and the world lies. If we do not accept diversity we are one step away from intolerance, racism and xenophobia.
2.5 The main principles of intercultural teaching
In order to make the learner aware of difference and develop his capacity to communicate effectively with those who are different, the methods and means employed must go beyond the stage of theory, for we know that knowledge does not guarantee skill when it comes to difference. We have to add a practical approach, interaction with genuine representatives of other cultures and languages.
So the teaching/learning of intercultural skills must be based on the common fulfilment of practical tasks carried out in real-life situations during which use of the language is real and justified.
The first two main principles of intercultural teaching are therefore:
• interactivity with real interlocutors
• learning by performing tasks.
More than ever, the learner must be involved in the learning process. He must be aware of the aims pursued and capable of managing a new intercultural situation.
The other two main principles of intercultural teaching are:
• centring teaching on the learner, his autonomy in the learning
process
• the resultant new role of the teacher.
From this standpoint, it is not surprising that the Internet should have become a very useful medium for teaching/learning intercultural skills.