Ewa Jolanta Jabłonowska

A CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACH TO ELT AT LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL (MIĘDZYKULTUROWE PODEJŚCIE DO NAUCZANIA JĘZYKA ANGIELSKIEGO W GIMNAZJUM)
There is a widespread conviction that people can easily understand each other provided that they share the same code. All they have to do is to learn that code, and use it accurately and appropriately. It is believed that one language is essentially translatable into another.
The problem appears when we start to learn not only a foreign language, but also a foreign culture.
Culture in language learning is not a fifth skill besides speaking, listening, reading and writing. It exists always in the background, but fulfills an important role in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT). Culture is a part of a linguistic heritage. It is closely connected with a language, and it should be perceive as a whole.
According to Claire Kramsch (1994: 205) traditional thought in foreign language education has limited the teaching of culture to the transmission of information about the people of the target country, and about their general attitudes and world views. However, we should understand that a foreign culture (target culture) requires putting it in relation with a native culture. Comparing
and contrasting two or more cultures allows students to know and consolidate their knowledge about everyday life and activities of their peers from other countries.
Nowadays English language teachers try to make culture knowledge as a part of their language lessons. Some of them present the “big C” elements of British and American culture – some facts from the history of the United Kingdom and the United States of America, literature and fine arts. For others, the “little c” elements of British and American life are more important e.g. knowledge about political institutions, everyday life and sociological behaviour of people.
It ought to be emphasized that both kinds of cultures: “the big” and “the little” one are very important in a cross-cultural approach to English Language Teaching (ELT). According to this approach, teaching some elements of other cultures should also cross boundaries between generations, ethnic groups and social classes. Thanks to the cross-cultural approach to ELT students have a chance not only to improve their language skills, but also to realise that cultures are very different. They can have broaden their knowledge about customs, traditions, history, different types of socio-political institutions, other societies and their ways of living, including occupation, stage of life, religion, leisure interests, nationality etc. This approach to cultural learning allows students to become more tolerant to others, and to dispose of the language barrier in communication with native speakers of English.

Cultural methodology
Cultural learning is an integral part of communicative language learning. These two types of learning should be closely connected in order to raise the students’ awareness of the cultural implications of certain language use in intercultural communication (Delanoy, 1995: 39).
Cultural methodology is very important in teaching foreign languages and it should give valid and reliable cultural outcomes. It must produce materials and activities designed to give practice in cultural awareness and skills. Cultural methodology must ensure that culture should not just decorate a language classroom, be a pretext for language skills, but should be something which is assimilated by learners (Bolt, 2002.10.09: www).
Richard Bolt in the article The Foreign Language Classroom, Culture and British Studies – reflections and suggestions distinguishes two directions in teaching different culture:
- bringing culture into the class from “the world” in such a way as to develop understanding and expression of it,
- bringing culture out of the learners and teaching them how to express it for later use out of “the world” (Bolt, 2002.10.09: www).
According to Byram and Morgan (1994: 43), there are several methods how to teach a foreign language and culture. The authors give a number of principles which can guide teachers’ methods.

Comparison
Language teachers use comparison very often, especially when they talk about the foreign culture. At first teachers should aim to develop students understanding of themselves and their own culture. If they realise and understand it, they will be able to understand different cultures. But learners shouldn’t forget about their own culture and step to another. They are ‘committed’ to it and if they deny any part of it, they deny something within their own being. Comparing and contrasting two cultures will help students to realise similarities and differences between them and let the students know the world around them. Psychological theory points to the need for a comparative method: learners need to become aware of their own cultural schemata – and of the affective, attitudinal dimension of those schemata – in order to effect an acknowledgement of those of a different culture (Byram & Morgan, 1994: 44). The link between linguistic and cultural learning is a very important part of the comparative method. Teachers should connect grammatical structures and linguistic functions with cultural learning. When learners acquire an understanding of the connotations of lexical items in the foreign language and contrast them with connotations of an apparently equivalent item in their own, they begin to gain insight into the schemata and perspectives of the foreign language (Byram & Morgan, 1994).
Another methodologist, Lado, proposes the methods of contrasting analysis. He suggests three kinds of contrast:
- ‘same form, different meaning’ – when a foreign observer attributes
a different meaning to a phenomenon to that understood by native speakers and thereby misunderstands the phenomenon,
- ‘same meaning, different form’ – it is common for people from one culture
to assume that their way of doing something, from accepting an invitation
to writing an essay, is the same everywhere whereas the underlying meaning
or purpose might be the same but the realization of it different,
- ‘same form, same meaning, different distribution’ – a particular behaviour may have the same meaning but may be less general than in the foreign observers’ own society, for example in forms of greeting or leave-taking shaking hands is more frequent in some societies than others (Lado quoted in: Byram & Morgan, 1994: 45).


Different approaches to cultural learning
Learning of a second language is often learning of a second culture, so the important goal is teaching students proper ways of reacting and behaving in the target culture. The first step to achieve it, is teaching students how to be tolerant towards the target culture. Knowledge of it is essential for real communication and proper understanding of the speaker of the language and the language itself.
Methodologists have created some new approaches to cultural learning:
- an awareness and skills-based approach,
- a task-oriented approach,
- an etnographic approach.

The awareness and skills-based approach
Richard Bolt (2002.10.09: www) compares two approaches: an awareness and skills-based approach and a content-based approach. According to Bolt awareness can be defined as knowledge about questions which should be discussed, and skills as knowledge how to successfully answer them. Such awareness and skills should be developed and available for use in any cross-cultural situation. Skills without awareness have a little value, as awareness guides how
and when to apply the skills. Bolt says that there is a great difference between the traditional, content-based approach centered on the teacher’s ready-prepared ‘answers’ and giving a narrow view of a foreign culture, and the awareness and skills-based approach which is centered on the learner’s questions.
Awareness and skills-based approach
1. Aim – culture awareness and skills
2. Culture inside learner to be brought out
3. Individualised ‘learner-based’ knowledge
4. Independent, empowered learners
5. Applicable to any society (and transferable between)
6. Multiple-level approach to culture approach
7. Content valued and selected through communicative language needs
8. Centred on original sources
9. Learners and teachers working alongside each other
10. Variety of cultural outcomes dominant

Content-based approach
1. Aim –an accumulation of ‘point’ knowledge
2. Culture outside learner to be put in
3. Fixed ‘teacher-based’ knowledge
4. Dependent learners
5. Society-dependent
6. Single national-centred
7. Content selected regardless of language value or learner needs
8. Centred on textbooks
9. Teacher centered
10. Target society outcome


Bolt (2002.10.09: www) specifies four cultural awarenesses and skills:
- culture reception – how to comprehend the cultural aspects of the home society, target society, the cultural theme and individual cultural positions,
- culture production – how to express any of these four areas,
- intercultural – how to take a principled and detached view across the societies and/or cultures represented,
- investigatory – how to find cultural information, and how to organise the other cultural skills to achieve cultural outcomes (a standard skill in many disciplines).
In this approach to culture, all cultural awarenesses and skills are important, but in addition to them some cultural outcomes must be present. These cultural outcomes give an increased understanding and knowledge of:
- the target society – (or societies) including awareness of the extend of cross-societal similarities and within differences,
- the home society – set against the target society, and equally evaluated following intercultural principles,
- the cultural theme – including issues at levels other than the national e.g. globalisation and fragmentation,
- the individual cultural positions of the learner – giving opportunity for expression and comprehension of individual (and social) differences and similarities (Bolt, 2002.10.09: www).

The task-oriented approach
Cultural awareness is a very important factor in teaching and learning a foreign language and culture. This term is used to describe sensitivity to the impact of culturally-induced behaviour on language use and communication. According to Barry Tomalin and Susan Stempleski (1996: 5), cross-cultural awareness covers life and institutions, beliefs and values, as well as everyday attitudes and feelings conveyed not only by language, but by paralinguistic features such as dress, gesture, facial expression, stance, and movement.
The authors give five practical teaching principles which teachers should know and use in the classroom:
1. Access the culture through the language being taught.
2. Make the study of cultural behaviours an integral part of each lesson.
3. Aim for students to achieve the socio-economic competence which they feel they need.
4. Aim for all levels to achieve cross-cultural understanding – awareness of their own culture, as well as that of the target language.
5. Recognize that not all teaching about culture implies behaviour change, but merely an awareness and tolerance of the cultural influences affecting one’s own and others’ behaviour (Tomalin & Stempleski, 1996: 8).
They also suggest that the most effective way of teaching language and culture is a task-oriented approach. This approach is characterized by co-operative learning tasks:
- working together in pairs or small groups to gather precise segments of information,
- sharing and discussing what students have discovered, in order to form a more complete picture,
- interpreting the information within the context of the target culture and in comparison with students’ own culture.
As Tomalin and Stempleski say (1996: 9), studying culture with the task-oriented and co-operative learning approach adds a new dimension of achievement and understanding for the students and for teachers.
The ethnographic approach
Another approach to cultural learning is an ethnographic approach. Brian Street (quoted by Roberts, 1995: 49) says that any attempt to integrate cultural studies and language learning needs to draw the language learner into the lived experiences of a particular social group. According to Celia Roberts ethnography is an obvious solution to the problem of how to integrate conceptual work about Britain with experiential work in intercultural communication (Roberts, 1995: 50). The author also says that an ethnographic approach helps students see everyday life as cultural practice and also contributes to an understanding of cultural difference and a questioning of their own views and behaviour. In addition, it provides the motivation and makes the opportunities for students
to communicate interculturally (1995: 51).
Although ways of gaining cultural knowledge in approaches to ELT mentioned above are slightly different, all of these approaches have the same purpose. The main aim is to make foreign language teachers become aware of the fact that no language can exist without culture, but both of them must be taught during foreign language lessons.

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