scholarly journals Intercultural competence - an aim for the teaching of English in Norway?

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ragnhild Elisabeth Lund
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Foreign Language Learners

The 1997 Norwegian national curriculum (L-97) pointed out the need for foreign language learners to develop ‘the ability to communicate across cultural divides’. The present article investigates how this perspective is followed up in the most recent national curriculum, LK-06, and discusses how intercultural competence can be dealt with in the teaching of English in Norwegian compulsory education. The author also indicates possible future developments by referring to some Council of Europe projects. The main focus is on the questions of how (inter)cultural topics can be selected and how intercultural competence can be assessed.

scholarly journals Developing Students’ Intercultural Competence among Moroccan EFL students: Focus on raising their Cross-cultural Awareness

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
Driss Benattabou
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Deep Culture ◽  
Efl Students

         The goal of this paper is to consider alternative ways to incorporate an intercultural communication course as an integral part of the curriculum designed for Moroccan learners of EFL. Some aspects of what comes to be dubbed as ‘deep culture’ should find room in the contents of the EFL course so as to alert Moroccan learners about the potential intercultural barriers they are far more likely to face. It is proposed that for an effective intercultural communication to take place, the English course should help foreign language learners explicitly understand what target linguistic forms might be and how their meanings may differ across cultures. The analysis of some instances of intercultural misunderstandings may surely give more credence to the vital importance of implementing a multicultural approach to education. This paper offers some teaching strategies to assist Moroccan learners of EFL overcome these intercultural barriers.

scholarly journals The Cultural Content in EFL Textbooks and What Teachers Need to Do About It

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Fernando Gómez Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Surface Culture ◽  
Instructional Resources ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Deep Culture ◽  
Cultural Content ◽  
English Classroom

<p>This article analyzes the cultural content in three communicative English as a foreign language textbooks that are used as main instructional resources in the English classroom. The study examined whether the textbooks include elements of surface or deep culture, and the findings indicate that the textbooks contain only static and congratulatory topics of surface culture and omit complex and transformative forms of culture. Consequently, the second part of the article suggests how teachers can address deep-rooted aspects of culture that might help English as a foreign language learners build more substantive intercultural competence in the language classroom.</p><p>En este artículo se analiza el contenido cultural en tres textos de inglés comunicativo utilizados como el principal recurso de enseñanza en la clase de inglés. Se indagó si los textos incluyen elementos de la cultura superficial o de la cultura profunda. Se observó que los textos sólo presentan temas “admirables” y representativos de la cultura superficial y no ofrecen temas complejos y trasformativos de la cultura profunda. En consecuencia, en la segunda parte del artículo se sugiere a los profesores de inglés cómo abordar aspectos complejos de la cultura profunda que podrían ayudarle a los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera a construir una competencia intercultural más sólida.</p>

scholarly journals Developmental Stages and the CEFR Levels in Foreign Language Learners’ Speaking and Writing

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Yumiko Yamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Japanese Learners

<p class="AbstractTitle"><em>This paper aims to investigate foreign language learners’ speaking and writing based on a second language acquisition (SLA) theory and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). While the CEFR has been widely used as a reference instrument in foreign language </em><em>education</em><em>, there has been insufficient empirical research undertaken on the CEFR levels (e.g., Hulstijin, 2007; Wisniewski, 2017). Also, few studies have examined how the CEFR levels relate to the developmental stages predicted in SLA theories. In this study, spoken and written narratives performed by 60 Japanese learners of English are examined based on one of the major SLA theories, namely Processability Theory (PT; Pienemann, 1998, 2005; Bettoni &amp; Di Biase, 2015), as well as on the CEFR. Results show that the Japanese L1 learners acquire English syntax as predicted in PT in both speaking and writing. In addition, there seems to be a linear correlation between the CEFR levels and PT stages. However, it is also found that the learners at the highest PT stage are not necessarily at a higher CEFR level.</em><em></em></p>

Refusal Semantic Formulas Used by Foreign Language Learners

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euen Hyuk Sarah Jung ◽  
Kim, Young Jae
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Foreign Language Learners

Grammatical Competence within L2 Communication: Language Production, Monitor Hypothesis, and Focus on Forms Instruction

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moh. Rofid Fikroni
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Focus On Form ◽  
Grammatical Competence ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Speaking Skill ◽  
Focus On Forms ◽  
Learning Language

Bearing in mind that the learners’ speaking skill had become the main goal in learning language, grammatical competence is believed to have a big role within foreign language learners’ language production, especially in spoken form. Moreover, the learners’ grammatical competence is also closely related to the Monitor Hypothesis proposed by Krashen (1982) in which it says that the acquired system will function as monitor or editor to the language production. The students’ monitor performance will vary based on how they make use of their acquired system. They may use it optimally (monitor optimal user), overly (monitor over-user), or they may not use it at all (monitor under-user). Therefore, learners’ grammatical competence has its own role, which is very crucial, within learners’ language production, which is not only to produce the language, but also to monitor the language production itself. Because of this reason, focus on form instruction will give a great impact for students’ grammatical competence within their communicative competence. This paper aims to present ideas about the how crucial the role grammatical competence within learners’ L2 communication.

Conceptual metaphors as a tool for the efficient teaching of Dutch and German posture verbs

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine De Knop ◽  
Julien Perrez
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Awareness Raising ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Germanic Languages

The article deals with the typological differences between the Romance language French and the Germanic languages German and Dutch for the linguistic expressions of posture and location. It describes how these typological differences can be problematic for French-speaking learners of German and Dutch. The main difference between both types of languages is that posture and location tend to be encoded by posture verbs in Germanic languages and by very general verbs in Romance languages (Talmy 2000). After a detailed description of the semantic networks of the German and Dutch posture verbs, the paper takes a critical look at how these expressions are dealt with in teaching manuals. It further presents strategies for the efficient teaching of posture verbs to foreign language learners. These strategies are among others awareness-raising exercises about the compulsory use of posture verbs in Germanic languages and the description of conceptual metaphors in different languages. These pedagogical avenues for the efficient teaching of the Dutch and German posture verbs constitute a first step towards the elaboration of an experimental set-up aiming at verifying them.

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