values should be up for negotiation is an awkward one. Barrow (1990: 9)
argues that English teachers should not be embarrassed about presenting
their cultural values to non-native speakers:
I am not suggesting that teachers of English as a Second Language
should see themselves as missionaries for the cultural heritage that is
enshrined in the English Language or that they should disparage the
cultural backgrounds of their students. But I am suggesting that they
should have no qualms about the fact that they are directly introducing
certain patterns of thought and values to students, and, indirectly,
introducing various other beliefs, values and ways of thinking. It is
true that at a sophisticated level of language use students will
encounter much that is foreign to their thinking, but we can reasonably
argue that much of what they are introduced to is desirable, in some
instances we may even say superior to alternatives. Besides which,
provided we avoid indoctrination, we are not forcing anybody to
accept anything: we are merely presenting them with the possibility of
thinking in certain ways.
The final point made here is disingenuous: educators seldom, if ever,
‘merely present the possibility of thinking in certain ways’. Learners invest
time, energy and money in educational programmes, usually in the expec-
tation that their career prospects and social standing will be improved. To
gain a qualification they need to demonstrate mastery of (and implicit
alignment with) L2 cultural norms as presented, implicitly or explicitly, by
the faculty staff. Students can always choose to leave programmes, as ‘Vir-
ginia’ did, but otherwise they are in a relatively powerless position with
respect to academic cultures which are powerful and usually conservative.
An issue facing intercultural language education is the negotiation of
forums, acceptable to colleagues as well as learners, whereby students can
explore the political nature and consequences of their education in an
informed and unthreatening way.
At least university students are at a level of maturity when they are
capable of reflecting on educational issues critically and articulating their
own concerns. Byram
et al
. (1994: 16–24) consider the relatively unexplored
issue of developmental psychology in intercultural education: at what age
can learners be expected to benefit from an intercultural curriculum? Their
review of available research suggests that, although individuals differ in
their capacity for ‘decentring’ and ‘empathy’, by the time they reach young
secondary school age (12 years and upwards), we should be able to expect
learners to engage in tasks that involve intercultural exploration. From the
early teenage years on, then, a focus on culture may have two desirable
outcomes: (1) the ability to interpret the cultural norms governing the
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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community to which the learner desires access, and (2) the ability to
negotiate alternative ways of obtaining desired goals within the target
culture. Johns’ (1992) study of a successful learner from Lao suggests that
her ability to interpret the sometimes alien demands of the faculty and her
enjoyment in meeting those demands were a key factor in her success:
Her rational approach to cultural acquisition enabled her to stand back
and examine the rules – rules that enabled her to make analogies about
tasks, to understand the nature of higher order thinking skills (e.g.
analyzing), to exploit models and to structure new discourse. She
found pleasure in coming to terms with this foreign culture and its
distant faculty. (Johns, 1992: 195)
Clearly, not every learner gains pleasure from identifying and conforming
to the demands of educators – some, like ‘Virginia’, will actively or
passively resist conforming, and challenge the norms of their instructors.
However, an intercultural approach – the recognition that communities
cluster around a set of common goals, values and beliefs which are articu-
lated in and through different types of language and behaviour – should
help learners identify more clearly those communities with which they
wish to align themselves, to observe the way they work, and to negotiate
more effectively their own place in these communities.
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