Cultural Awareness [6]
论文作者:Anne-Brit Fenner论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2007-01-12编辑:点击率:21460
论文字数:4294论文编号:org200701122229251685语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:Cultural Awareness
classroom is usually a simulation of encounters and communication with the foreign language and culture. There is no reason why we should not make this simulated situation as close to real interaction with the foreign culture as possible. A first step in this process is to define the encounter as interaction and to choose approaches which enhance the interactional aspect. Interaction can be with texts spoken by real people or it can be with written texts. Through dialogue and interaction with the text, the learners have a chance to reinterpret their understanding of the world, also the world outside the classroom in which the authentic text has been produced.
Developing cultural awareness in foreign language learning is dependent on communication with oral and written texts, and, as I have argued previously, preferably authentic texts. This is where the learner encounters language as culture. Dialogue with authentic spoken or written texts is necessary if we understand communication as both interpretation and negotiation. It is, therefore, not sufficient for the learner to encode or decode language. Genuine communication is a more complex process. Learners need to become aware of the fact that communication, and inter-cultural communication in particular, entails misunderstanding and conflict. Although learners obtain procedural knowledge and skills of how to behave in a foreign language community and what to say in specific situations, misunderstanding will always be part of communication, even in an intra-cultural context.
Part of cultural and intercultural competence and awareness is to be able to cope with the complexity of communication and to be aware of the fact that misunderstanding is part of the communication process. Each learner brings his or her own knowledge and capacity for understanding into the encounter with the foreign language and culture. This makes each encounter unique and different from one learner to the other. By making this uniqueness a topic for common classroom communication, the foreign language classroom can become a platform from which an understanding of both intracultural and intercultural differences of perception can develop into awareness.
It must be one of the aims of textbook writers to create tasks that enable the learners to interact on as many levels as possible with the foreign culture, represented through oral and written texts. This is only possible if at least some of the tasks are open-ended without correct or incorrect answers. The learners' suggestions will then form the basis for discussion. Thus their understanding of the world becomes the stance from which they can gain a better knowledge of and insight into the foreign culture.
Attitude (savoir être)
Being in a proper dialogue can be a painful process. Interaction with 'the other' is having to readjust one's own points of view. One enters into the process with a conscious or subconscious attitude of wanting to influence or persuade 'the other'. This is even more the case when 'the other' is a foreign culture expressed in a foreign language. Foucault employs the term 'agonism' for the interplay between forces in a dialogical process, a 'relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle' (Foucault 1983: 221-22). It is painful because one tends to defend one's own position and resist a change of attitude and opinion. Interpreting and understanding a foreign culture entails changing some of on
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