Teaching English as a ―lingua franca‖ to achieve intercultural communicative competence

Teaching English as a ―lingua franca‖ to achieve intercultural communicative competence

Čebron, Neva

Raising intercultural communicative competence has gained a central place in many considerations and discussions in the globalized world. The present paper therefore examines and analyses approaches to achieving intercultural competence proposed by a number of prominent authors from the American and European cultural environment, such as E.T. Hall, Gert Hofstede, R.D. Lewis, Anna Wierzbicka, Elsa Oksaar, Michael Byram, Manuela Guilhelme. They base their theoretical and applied methods of teaching, as well as their approaches to raising intercultural awareness in the intercultural dialogue, while highlighting slightly different levels of communication, thus also suggesting somewhat different conclusions. As a consequence two approaches have been developed: cross-cultural and intercultural communicative approach. We could say that even considerations about the intercultural dialogue show signs of cultural conditioning. Furthermore, the paper deals with the application of such theoretical premises in the English classroom at the tertiary level. Building on language teaching methods, the paper suggest ways of extending the theme to cross-curricular units, since actualization of theoretical insights in the classroom lends itself nicely to intertwining both a critical cultural awareness of multilingualism in ones own environment and the intercultural communicative competence, leading thus to an "intercultural citizenship".

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

567