Intercultural Understanding in A Global Context

Wang Xuan

(1.Shanghai International Studies University,Shanghai 2000832.North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power,Zhengzhou Henan 450046)



Intercultural Understanding in A Global Context

Wang Xuan1,2

(1.Shanghai International Studies University,Shanghai 2000832.North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power,Zhengzhou Henan 450046)

Intercultural understanding has become more important in a globalized world with increasing intercultural contact and cultural diversity.By reviewing the main studies about intercultural understanding at home and abroad,a survey was conducted by the means of qualitative methods such as interview and focus group,together with questionnaires to help us have a closer look at the practice of intercultural understanding in Shanghai,some problems are discussed and suggestions for future research are proposed.

Intercultural understanding;global context;field research

Ⅰ.Literature review

According to Hill1,intercultural understanding includes but goes beyond utilitarian objectives and cognitive knowledge;the affective domain of empathy and respect is also contained,and open-mindedness to the ‘existence and necessity of a range of perspectives’.Doye2 put forward that the foreign language teaching is beyond the improvement of language skills,it promoted intercultural and international understanding.Planken,et al.3promoted intercultural learning through foreign languages courses.Hill1 focused on students’ exposure to intercultural understanding in a number of educational settings.Education for intercultural competence or understanding is usually embedded in some academic subject such as foreign languages or social studies.There is limited research examining the relationship between language learning and attitudes and insights towards culture,and whether there is a causal relationships between the two has not been explored4.Foreign language teaching can expose students to a variety of texts and representations of a culture so that students’ critical understanding of the cultural aspects of the language and cultural representations could be developed5,6,7,8.Gunesch9 aimed to enhance intercultural understanding by substantiating local and global educational citizenship through the examination of the author’s educational life against the framework of cosmopolitanism as a cultural identity that combines local and global citizenship.

For scholars at home,Guo feng10 put forward the establishment of strategies for education for international understanding from five aspects: to start with,the philosophy of intercultural understanding should be made clear,which is based on the practice of our main culture and a tolerant and respectful attitude.Next,intercultural understanding consists of three parts: knowledge,ability,and attitude.Third,the paths of intercultural understanding are explored,that is through the curriculum,academic education,intercultural experience,and campus diversity culture for the students.Further,improve the quality of intercultural understanding from the teachers.Last but not least,some adjustments are needed for modern university system.By accomplishing this,we can perfect mechanism,make scientific planning and policy,and evaluate in a diversified way.Xu hui and Wang jing11 examined the intercultural understanding by introducing the practices from America and Japan.These two countries approached intercultural understanding from two aspects: to strengthen the foreign language teaching and to offer courses in international studies.In terms of foreign language teaching,America has raised the entrance scores of foreign languages in about 100 four-year universities,and the credits of foreign languages are compulsory for the degree of Bachelor among about 200 American universities;Japan not only pays great attention to the foreign language teaching in higher education institutions,but also in primary and middle schools.Many English native speakers are recruited from English-speaking countries such as Britain,America,Australia and New Zealand into the primary and middle schools to teach English and courses concerned with intercultural understanding.Apart from the English teaching,Japan also emphasizes other foreign languages teaching,and it has introduced the second and third language learning in some schools,the other foreign languages are Chinese,French,German,Spanish,Korean,Russian,Italian,and Portuguese.With regard to the courses offered in international studies,American Global Education Consultant Group sets up “ Global education courses” from kindergartens to middle schools,its aim is to equip students with a prejudice-free attitudes in observing,accepting and evaluating other cultures in the intercultural encounters at any time;Japan offers international studies courses in primary and middle schools,also some practical activities related to intercultural understanding are launched.

Ⅱ.Implementation

To get a better understanding of the practice in intercultural understanding,a survey is conducted among primary and junior middle school students,special language teachers,and cultural secretary of the Consulate General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Shanghai.Classes of Bosnian,Arabic,and Swedish are visited in two primary and junior middle schools in Shanghai.For the students,the qualitative method focus group is used to avoid the understanding limitation of the questionnaire for the primary and junior middle school students,some questions and inquiries are easily clarified in a face-to-face way.Two focus groups are used,in which each group consists of 6 students,and our questions revolve around the motivation,the class content,teaching methods,and evaluation of the course.For the motivation,the students expressed in the following ways on a priority order: (1) interests-motivated (2) communication-driven (3) credit-added in the future further education.In terms of the class content,they mentioned some of their favorites : character writing,architecture,movies,music,food,books and magazines.Speaking of teaching methods,instead of teacher-centered,they preferred more student-involved activities,such as personal presentation and game play.In addition,multimedia teaching is also popular among them.When they are asked to evaluate the course,they maintain that they not only learn a special language,but also learn about the people and culture in that country,in this way,they can step further and communicate with people from that country in the future encounters.

Close-ended questionnaire is conducted among teachers,and the questionnaire consists of 14 single and multiple choice questions Most of the special languages teachers,ranging from 20 to 30 years old,have their master’s degree.Among them,about 69% express great concern over the offer the special languages courses at primary and junior middle schools.For the significance of the special language courses,about 84% believe that the special language studies help students understand multiculturalism and promote understandings and respect between cultures.With respect to the teaching methods,group contests and video-watching are the two main ways in the classes.Considering the evaluation and improvement of the courses,about 84% are satisfied with their teaching,and also indicate some areas for further improvement: the motives of students (62%),teaching methods (62%),and the development of the teaching materials (54%).

An in-depth interview is used with the cultural secretary of the Consulate General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Shanghai.Two interview questions are involved: 1.How do you look at the study of Bosnian in some primary and junior middle schools in Shanghai?2.What do you think the relationship between Bosnian study and intercultural understanding?For the first one,the cultural secretary maintain that the offer the Bosnian in primary and junior middles school students promote the relationships between China and Iran,because the study of a new language means understanding a new culture and a new people,the deep understanding of the other new culture will be expected.Some of his Iran friends are Chinese learners and they have deeper understandings toward Chinese cultures compared with others.As far as the second one is concerned,the cultural secretary introduced an example with some Iran study scholars in the history.These scholars knew Iran culture by learning Bosnian,and then they introduced Iran culture to the world from their perspectives.He maintained that language is a key to the communication between nations,the study of the language deepens the understanding between cultures,lays solid foundations for the world civilizations and decreases the wars and conflicts.

Ⅲ.Discussion

From the survey we could see that most of the time the intercultural understanding stays on a simple knowledge level,awareness of the food,festivals,national flags and geography,fashion and famous people of the other countries informs students about cultural-general and cultural-specific;moreover,the occasional invited guest speakers to the school can also increase such intercultural awareness.However,it is more important to go beyond the superficial level and recognize the deep-rooted values underlying the cultural representations.Apart from the knowledge level,intercultural understanding also involves cognitive and affective learning which encourages a positive disposition towards other cultures.Further,the teaching textbooks for the special language teaching should be developed instead of staying on the PPT printed materials.In the special language textbooks,the teaching objectives for the intercultural understanding should be clearly stated instead of a general term,and also the learning objectives should be made according to the ages and grades of the students on a level of gradation of the understanding,rather than one packet for all.For the primary school level,the intercultural understanding could focus more on the knowledge level,while for the junior middle school level the deeper roots such as values and beliefs should be emphasized.In addition,we might as well invite the international experts opinions when developing the textbooks,in this way an international,open and critical perspective could be ready to be examined.What’s more,the class activities should be more diversified to cater for the characteristics of the primary and junior middle school students,group contests,individual presentations,and game play are good enough to arouse their learning interests.Video teaching should not be one way,that is,teachers show the video to the students and no feedbacks or responses are expected,interactive video teaching are expected when some questions are raised by the teachers first and some follow-up questions put forward by the students later.

The intercultural understanding via special language study program only covers relatively small number of students in Shanghai on experimental stage,and it has received great popularity among students,parents,teachers and school administrations even though it has limitations in the students number,teaching resources and institutional support.The students are chosen on a competitive base,the top five English competent students in the third or fourth grade at these schools are eligible for enrolling in the special language course,and the special language teachers are the postgraduates and undergraduates from University,which are mobile and changeable,the teaching coherence can’t be guaranteed.The school authorities offer this course more on an short-term interest-driven base rather than have some long-term strategic perspective,thus the institutional support is comparatively weak.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

The intercultural understanding via special language studies has already been going on for two semesters.As one of the teachers in charge of a primary school class pointed out,the special language course not only develops the cognitive and affective aspects of intercultural understanding,but it is beyond this by encouraging their parents to explore the other cultures,in this way,we can develop our intercultural competence as a whole.By way of the pilot study of the three primary schools and junior middle schools,we can see that there is still room for improvements in the area of teaching resources and institutional support,the textbooks catering for different ages and levels are expected to be developed with clear intercultural understanding education objectives,more student-oriented activities are encouraged with the interaction in mind,and detailed studies concerning the special language learning and attitudes and insights towards that culture also wait for future research.

Notes:

〔1〕Hill,I.,Student types,school types and their combined influence on the development of intercultural understanding,Journal of Research in International Education,2006,5(1),pp.5-33.

〔2〕Doye,P.,Foreign Language Teaching and Education for Intercultural and International Understanding,Evaluation & Research in Education,1996,10(2),pp.104-112.

〔3〕Planken,B.,Hooft,A.V.,Korzilius,H.,Promoting intercultural communicative competence through foreign language courses,Business Communication Quarterly,2004,67(3),pp.308-315.

〔4〕Perry,L.B.,Southwell,L.,Developing intercultural understanding and skills: models and approaches,Intercultural Education,2011,22(6),pp.453-466.

〔5〕Byram,M.,A.Feng.,Culture and language learning: Teaching research and scholarship.Language Teaching,2004,37(3),pp.149-168.

〔6〕Kinginger,C.,Alison,G.H.,& Simpson,V.,A tele-collaborative course on French-American intercultural communication,The French Review,1999,72(5),pp.853-866.

〔7〕Shanahan,D.,Articulating the relationship between language,literature,and culture:Toward a new agenda for foreign language teaching and research,The Modern Language,1997,81(2),pp.164-174.

About the author：Wang Xuan,the doctorate candidate of Shanghai International Studies University,lecturer of North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power,research interests: Intercultural Communication.