In writing my Teaching for Proficiency 101 post, I stated my goal is teaching for intercultural communicative competence, teaching so that students become proficient, thoughtful users of the language. That post ended up focusing mostly on aspects of instruction related to communicative competence and linguistic proficiency.
This post seeks to complement the last, and expand on what I find to be fundamental in language teaching with regards to guiding learners towards becoming thoughtful intercultural communicators.
What is Culture?
If we want to explore interculturality and meet our national Cultures standard, we should have a working definition of what “culture” is. ACTFL uses the “3 Ps” model: Products, Practices, and Perspectives.
Products are tangible and intangible creations that emanate from the beliefs of a culture. These can include food, music, books, laws, homes, and so much more. Practices are how people in the culture interact with each other: how does one show respect, and to whom? What rites of passage exist in a culture? How do people show that they are listening in a conversation, or during a presentation?
Products and practices reveal underlying perspectives, how cultures make sense and meaning out of the world. Understanding perspectives, and being able to explore them empathetically, helps people become more thoughtful and respectful towards others they deem “different.”
What is Intercultural Communication?
Again, I have turned to ACTFL for a definition of intercultural communication. Through exploring Products and Practices at a variety of skill levels, learners become increasingly able to interact in empathetic and culturally sophisticated ways, with the aim of being able to serve as a mediator between and among differences in cultural Perspectives. This ultimately helps the world interact more peacefully and productively.
In putting the skills of intercultural communicative competence into a similar framework as the linguistic skills, we have a helpful trajectory that show us how we might push students to grow. Students have to start by being able to just identify and list Products and Practices in the Target Cultures, while also reflecting on how they think these Products and Practices reflect underlying cultural Perspectives. Then, they can make comparisons between (and among) the Target Cultures and the Home Cultures. This builds towards understanding and explaining diversity in Products and Practices, and being able to suspend judgment in evaluating them and the underlying Perspectives. Note that I have put “objectively” in quotation marks on the graphic above, because I do not believe that objectivity exists in the strictest sense. Each person brings their own experiences and biases to every situation, and will have to be cognizant of those in mediating differences in cultural perspectives.
I think that this sequence is not a fixed, step-by-step sequence for learners that just aligns to their linguistic proficiency: students can list Products and Practices, and then make some comparisons. Through more in-depth exploration, they might be able to begin explaining some diversity, even if they were exploring the topics linguistically at the Novice level. They might even be able to help others avoid cultural misunderstandings by acting as a mediator with limited linguistic skill in the Target Language! But that is the key: culture is so many things, so students need practice in applying their skills of interculturality to a variety of cultural Products and Practices. With an increase in knowledge about and experiences with the Target Cultures, students will perform more consistently at the higher levels of skill.
So if these are the skills of intercultural communicative competence that we want to teach to, what principles can guide our planning? (Because these skills only grow via thoughtful planning from us as instructors – not by chance!) Here is where my thinking is right now:
Build an Understanding of the Home Cultures
I have found that many students, especially white, US-born students, think that only other places “have culture.” They can’t quite see that every thing we do is culture, and need practice in identifying the aspects of culture that are all around them. This is where activities like Card Talk and Special Person Interviews can help reveal the cultures of our school community by making discussions of students’ preferences, opinions, and experiences the topic of discussion. There is so much diversity even within our own classrooms, and building awareness of the cultures in the room helps prepare students for making more thoughtful, nuanced comparisons.
I try to think aloud with students about things that are familiar to them to point out that the way things are indicates a lot about culture. I use questions like the following to make our US-American culture a little weird to them:
- What do our hobbies say about us as a culture? Why do you think that?
- What do you think it says about our US-American cultural values that our schools schedules are the way they are, instead of like German schools?
- Why do you think these foods are very popular here and not as popular in Germany? Why are their foods popular to them and not here?
- Why do the downtowns of their cities look like that? Why does the downtown of OUR city look like that?
- At what points in history has the US censored artworks in a way similar to this art exhibit in 1930s Germany? What do you think was the aim at that time?
Students need to build the reflex not to just think “oh, they’re so different/weird,” but rather to think “they might also see some things we see as normal as different/weird…I wonder why they might think that way?”
Push Students to Be Descriptive Rather Than Evaluative
Learners sometimes get stuck when exploring culture because of a gut reaction they have to what they’re learning. We cannot accept “that’s weird” or “that’s gross” and also “they’re so much better than us [US-Americans]” without interrogating the “why” behind those statements.
If we hear statements like these, we just need to pause and ask, “Why?” “Why are you laughing?” “Why do you say that?” The thinking that follows reveals even more of the underlying cultural Perspectives of our students, which we can reflect back to them to help them see their own cultures as objects for study and comparison in our classes.
Provide Frequent, Repeated Exposure to Cultures
Students need A LOT of exposure to cultures, in the same way that they need A LOT of exposure to comprehensible language in context. We have to plan for culture to be everywhere in our curricula for them to have a fighting chance at being able to be intercultural mediators. My students have commented that as much as they love growing more proficient in their use of the language, they love exploring cultures, so building more exploration of Products AND Practices into our learning increases student motivation and investment into learning the language, too.
This can also mean seeing the same text more than once. One thing I learned from Alicia Dallman Shoemaker‘s TOY presentation is that in order for students to have “aha!” moments about their learning, they sometimes need to revisit texts/photos/media multiple times to give their brains time to digest all the new information they are taking in. Students might need to read a text more than once, or watch a video again on a different day, after having time to process and live some more, in order to get the most out of their cultural explorations. We can then ask how students’ thinking has changed over time to build the self-awareness and empathy necessary to become intercultural mediators.
Cultural “Texts” Can Be Many Different Things
To give students access to cultures, we can use a variety of media in our classes. Here are some ideas of things we can “read” as texts in our classes:
Photos, videos, infographics, songs, their lyrics, their music videos, children’s rhymes, games, books, posters, websites, TV shows, movies, blogs, maps, guest speakers, physical objects from the Target Cultures, postcards…
The possibilities are really endless, and all offer opportunities for learners to explore Products and Practices with our guidance to increase their understanding of the underlying Perspectives.
Provide Many Perspectives on Cultural Products and Practices, Including from Historically Marginalized Groups
To develop the ability to see the variety of ways Perspectives express themselves in Products and Practices, students need many different takes on the same topics. If we hear from one German speaker about What German Schools Are Like, we might believe that that is the authoritative One Answer To The Question, when really schools in any country are quite varied for a variety of reasons, for example. We have to be careful to paint a more nuanced picture of the Target Cultures by letting there be multiple (sometimes contradictory) takes on cultural phenomena.
My finding is that centering voices that have been historically marginalized can also helps us better see the cores of the cultures on whose margins those people live. I have personally learned a lot about how Germans conceptualize their national identities from Black and Muslim Germans, about how accessible German culture is from disabled Germans, about how Germans feel they “live diversity” from LGBTQ+ Germans. Consider adding voices from historically marginalized groups to every topic and unit to build a fuller picture of the Target Cultures, and increase empathy and understanding of those who are considered “different.”
Plan for Language to Explore Cultures through Own Voices
Any exploration of another culture is always filtered through the identities of the students doing the explorations, as well as that of the teacher selecting the materials and topics. To access the most authentic picture of another culture, we need to let members of those cultures speak in their Own Voices.
This necessitates building the linguistic capabilities to be able to explore authentic media from the Target Cultures. When we are planning for specific language functions in our curricula, as mentioned in the previous post, we can plan for one of those functions being the interpretation of authentic texts. Having pedagogical tasks that front load vocabulary and perhaps some cultural understandings build the scaffolding towards those functions.
The Fourth P: People!
Many who teach for proficiency acknowledge that language is too abstract and complex to teach explicitly, but we are also working in a model of culture that focuses on three abstract nouns: Products, Practices, and Perspectives. The way culture emerges is with people, their actions, and their use of language, rather than by stepping outside of it. This is much like the acquisition of a language, which happens with communication and use, rather than by observing a languages features from outside of it.
Behind all these Ps are People! Through the experiences of individuals, we can see culture and the 3 Ps in action, and also develop empathy for others who are different from us. A “different” culture is easy to write off as “strange” to the Novice eye, but it’s possible to find commonalities with any individual human, learn from their experiences, and see cultures through their lives. Individual lived experiences are more memorable anyways, versus just learning “cultural tidbits” as they are strewn randomly through textbooks and class “Culture Days.” If “adding more of the 3 Ps” to your curricula feels abstract and unattainable, try thinking of “adding more People” to your curricula instead.
Read this blog post for examples of how we might use People as the “Fourth P” to explore Products, Practices, and Perspectives further. A huge thanks to Cécile Lainé for putting this idea out into the universe!