Although English education in Japan remains largely dominated by native speaker (NS) norms (Matsuda, 2008), the increasing number of non-native speakers (NNS) using English as a lingua Franca (ELF) indicates that, also in Japan, a shift from English as a foreign language (EFL) to English as an international language (EIL) is on its way. As a result, researchers and teachers alike have started to question whether the English NS norms, especially in expanding circle countries like Japan, should be continued to be adhered to (Sung, 2013). Globalization, increased mobility and developments in technology have all contributed to shaping a world in which students of English will not necessarily be speaking English with NS alone; the odds are, especially for Japanese EFL students, that increasingly they will be using ELF with people from e.g. Korea, China, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members. This means that, while linguistic and communicative competence in English remains important, there is a growing need for Japanese EFL students to develop intercultural communication competence (i.e. a willingness to engage with otherness; a dynamic understanding of culture; and an ability to use English as a tool for intercultural communication ) (de Goei, 2014).

Needless to say, if students are to develop such competence, appropriate role models are needed. Although at the forefront of promoting internationalization through language teaching, foreign language teachers are often insufficiently aware of and knowledgeable about what it means to be interculturally competent, and may even lack such competence themselves. As a result, although most teachers acknowledge that interculturality is highly relevant to their teaching practice, many of them struggle to incorporate it into their regular teaching (Young & Sachdev, 2011). Furthermore, Sercu (2006) argues that although “[i]t is has now become commonplace to state that foreign language learning should be viewed in an intercultural perspective” (p. 55), most of the participants in her research do not possess the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes attributed to an interculturally competent teacher. One of the main causes for practitioners’ inability to reconcile interculturality with language teaching may be due to the fact that, traditionally, scant attention has been paid to the role of culture and interculturality in teacher education (Sercu, 2006; Young & Sachdev, 2011).

This notion is supported by Garrido and Alvarez (2007) who argue that while current language teacher education programs generally perform well concerning teaching management and the application of subject knowledge, they perform substantially poor when it comes to connecting theory to practice and “addressing satisfactorily an ethical dimension that incorporates meaningful intercultural development” (p. 171). Although Shulman’s (1986) oft-cited list of teacher knowledge domains has greatly informed and contributed to the development of foreign language teacher education, it seems not to have taken notice of Baxter’s (1983) insightful and elaborate chapter - published three years prior to Shulman’s seminal paper - on the affordances of English for intercultural competence. While Shulman’s list makes some reference to culture, the concept of interculturality is disproportionally absent. When I reflect on the absence of (inter)cultural content in a Teaching-English-as-a-Foreign-Language (TEFL) course I attended in 2006 (about twenty years after Baxter’s and Shulman’s papers were published) and in 2011, it becomes clear just how little importance is being attributed to the role of culture and interculturality in current foreign language teacher education.

Similar to the TEFL course I attended in 2006, many of my NS teacher colleagues in Japan have obtained CELTA or CertTESOL certification which enables them to teach English in most places around the world. Although Hobbs (2013) argues that both teachers and teacher trainers need to develop their understanding of how language relates to culture, these one-month initial teacher training courses, while strongly privileging Freeman’s (1989) language teaching constituents of both knowledge and skill, are almost entirely bereft of the constituents of attitude and awareness – two commonly agreed upon vital elements of the development of interculturality (Baxter, 1983; Byram, 1997). This underrepresentation of intercultural dimensions may partly be explained by the fact that these initial teacher training courses are mainly geared towards native English teacher trainees (Hobbs, 2013) who may be implicitly expected to perceive of the act of teaching (or simply speaking) English to NNSs as a one way endeavour in which it is mainly the NN learner’s responsibility to understand the NS’s language, norms, values and culture as to ensure successful intercultural communication. As a result, when TEFL-certified Western teachers in Japan incorporate elements of culture into their teaching practice, they are prone to take on essentialist and generalised views of culture which often “translate into culture teaching as merely imparting information about the ‘culture’ usually associated with the foreign language” (Elsen & St. John, 2007, p. 24). To make matters worse, in Japan, Western teachers are often encouraged by the school’s management to confirm national stereotypes commonly held by Japanese students. Such an imposition of culture does not require any reflection on one’s own culture nor does it encourage Western English teachers to “work with the cultures that they encounter” in an equal and respectful manner (Snowden, 2007, p. 305).

On many occasions I have had informal talks with my teacher colleagues in Japan about the role of culture in language teaching; what it means to be interculturally competent; and how we can help our students develop such competence. While, in general, there seems to be a genuine interest among Western teachers in Japan to somehow give culture a more prominent role in their teaching practice, many of them still seem to hold traditional views of culture and may be insufficiently aware of the basic theoretical underpinnings of intercultural communication and its potential affordances for language learning and teaching, due to their apprenticeship of observation (Borg, 2004) and initial teacher training. This does not mean, however, that most of my teacher colleagues do not possess a wealth of experience teaching and working in a variety of intercultural settings; on the contrary, their beliefs are shaped by their prior experiences of contextualised and interpretative intercultural engagement and it is within these beliefs that the key to further personal and professional development lies (Johnson, 2006).

As such, to help Japanese EFL students develop intercultural competence, as teachers, we need to first explore and reflect on our own beliefs, experiences and understanding of intercultural communication. The initiative described below (Figure 1) attempts to support teachers in achieving this aim.

Figure 1: Teacher development initiative cycle

Narrative Session With “Self” at the Center

Participants share with their partners a memorable story which involves an instance of intercultural communication. To elicit narratives of interculturality situated in their professional lives, I demonstrate telling a story that is set in an EFL classroom with Japanese students. After participants have exchanged stories in pairs, Labov’s (1972) narrative frame (Figure 2) is introduced. Using the frame, participants analyse and retell each other’s stories, ask follow-up questions and clarify misunderstandings.

Figure 2: Labov’s narrative frame (Labov, 1972, p. 370)

In preparation of session 2, Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) and Byram’s intercultural competence objectives (Figure 3) are introduced. Participants are encouraged to put their stories into writing and share them on the school’s Learning Management System (LMS).

Figure 3: Intercultural communication competence objectives (Byram, 1997: pp. 50-53)

Simulation Game

After reviewing and discussing their understanding of Bennett’s DMIS and Byram’s intercultural competence objectives, participants are challenged to tentatively discuss where on the DMIS they would position themselves. After this, Thiagarajan’s Barnga simulation game (Steinwachs, 1995) is played. This card game is designed to mimic the experience of culture shock as well as the process of enculturation, i.e. acquiring one’s native culture. During the course of the game, it is expected that participants will feel uncomfortable, frustrated, annoyed, or passive as it becomes almost impossible to keep on playing the game in an orderly fashion. Referring to the DMIS as well as the intercultural competence objectives, the participants are asked to reflect on and write about the feelings they experienced during the simulation game and how these (may have) influenced their behaviour.

Reflection

After discussing their experiences so far, participants are asked to think back of the narratives of intercultural encounters they exchanged during the first session and analyse their stories in light of their experiences playing the simulation game in the second session. Participants are encouraged to critically reflect on instances of ethnocentrism and/or ethnorelativism identified in their stories. Then, participants share another memorable story involving an instance of intercultural communication in which they - in retrospect and with a deeper understanding of theoretical underpinnings of intercultural communication - consider themselves to have behaved in either an ethnocentric or ethnorelative manner. Referring to Bennett’s DMIS and Byram’s intercultural competence objectives, participants are prompted to “identify areas of misunderstanding and dysfunction in an interaction and explain them in terms of each of the cultural systems present” (Byram, 1997, p. 52). Further discussion on how interculturality relates to participants’ professional lives and how they may go about moving (their students) towards higher levels of ethnorelativism is encouraged.

References

Baxter, J. (1983). English for intercultural competence: An approach to intercultural communication training. In D. Landis & R. Brislin (Eds.), Handbook of Intercultural Training– volume 2: Issues in training methodology (pp. 290-324). New York, NY: Pergamon Press.

Bennett, M. J. (1998). Intercultural Communication: A Current Perspective. In M. J. Bennett (Ed.), Basic concepts of intercultural communication: Selected readings (pp. 1-34).Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Bristol, PA: Multilingual Matters.

Borg, M. (2004). The apprenticeship of observation. ELT Journal, 58(3), 274-276.

de Goei, W. (2014). An exploration of intercultural competence among Japanese: Towards a more balanced understanding of emic and etic perspectives (Master thesis). Retrieved from https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/11004/thesis/an-exploration-of-intercultural-competence-among-japanese-towards-a-more-balanced-understanding-of-emic-and-etic-perspectives/#squelch-taas-tab-content-0-3

Elsen, A., & St.-John, O. (2007). Learner autonomy and intercultural competence. In M. J. Raya & L. Sercu (Eds.), Challenges in teacher development: Learner autonomy and intercultural competence (pp. 15-38). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang.

Freeman, D. (1989). Teacher training, development, and decision making: A model of teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 23(1), 27-45.

Garrido, C. & Alvarez, I. (2006). Language teacher education for intercultural understanding. European Journal of Teacher Education, 29(2), 163-179.

Hobbs, V. (2013). ‘A basic starter pack’: The TESOL Certificate as a course in survival. ELT Journal, 67(2), 163-174.

Johnson, K. J. (2006). The sociocultural turn and its challenges for second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 235-257.

Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the black vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Matsuda, A. (2008). Incorporating world Englishes in teaching English as an international language. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 719-729.

Sercu, L. (2006). The foreign language and intercultural competence teacher: the acquisition of a new personal identity. Intercultural Education, 17(1), 55-72.

Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14.

Snowden, C. (2007). Culture and the ‘good teacher’ in the English language classroom. ELT Journal, 61(4), 304-310.

Steinwachs, B. (1995). Barnga: a game for all seasons. In S. M. Fowler & M. G. Mumford (Eds.), Intercultural sourcebook: Cross-cultural training methods (pp. 101-108). Boston, MA: Intercultural Press.

Sung, C. C. M. (2013). English as a lingua franca and its implications for English language teaching. Japan Association for Language Teaching Journal, 35, 173-190.

Young, T., & Sachdev, I. (2011). Intercultural communicative competence: Exploring English language teachers’ beliefs and practices. Language Awareness, 20(2), 81-98.

Willem de Goei, MA, is Learning Developer at Lancaster University, Ghana. His main research interests include teacher education, intercultural communication, and the integration of intercultural competence training in language instruction. For the past 10 years, he has taught English at various higher education institutions in Thailand, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Ghana.