Intercultural Communicative Competence Theory and Pedagogical Application: Multilingual Learners as Researchers

Cem Alptekin’s article on intercultural communicative competence challenges English as a privileged language. English as a language has remained monolithic as it has also become an international language. Those who are not native speakers as English are considered “privileged insiders” while those nonnative speakers (including those of dialects of English) are considered subaltern. Alptekin’s paper “questions the validity of the pedagogic model whose focus is on native speaker competence in the target language setting” (59). Alptekin asserts that there is no “privileged” or “correct” dialect of English, and that ELT programs that are based on non-inclusive and monocultural views of English as a “privileged language” need to be reformed to reflect the diversity of the speakers of World Englishes, resisting the tradition of using native speaker norms as the preferred outcome of ELT.

While Alptekin makes a strong case for ELT methods to reflect the diversity of speakers of various World Englishes, he doesn’t really give any concrete ways in which ELT methods should be reformed. But he does mention that these methods should not illegitimize learners’ own cultural practices/experiences, even going so far as to say that methods should consider the NL of the learners. And teaching a culturally-stripped version of English is not acceptable to Alptekin. Only methods that recognize the vast diversity of World English as an international language with many variants will suffice.

In Chapter 7 of Hinkel’s text, Joan Kelly Hall posits that, “It is through our everyday engagement in face-to-face interactions that we develop, articulate, and manage our memberships in our communities as well as our interpersonal relationships with one another” (“A Prosaics of interaction: The development of interactional competence in another language,” 138). In other words, the meaningful dialogues we have with others (Hall insists these occurrences/learning practices must be “attended,” meaning the learner is consciously, reflectively engaged in the activity, p. 141) help build our common knowledge about the identities and possible culture(s) associated with the acquisition of a second or other language.

We know that successful participation in a language community is much more than simply learning the mechanics of the language itself; cultural components exist as well through which learners must be able to negotiate their way. We become “experienced participants,” Hall says, when we develop our “interactional competence.” As I was reading, I immediately decided that these cultural components are much like genres, and, indeed, Hall defines them (according to Bakhtinian theory) as  “speech genres” (143). Therefore, as we instruct second-language learners to analyze the written genres of a discourse in a second or other language, we also teach second-language learners to analyze the spoken genres. In order to do this, Hall says that we need to engage in a process of “transgredience,” in which we attempt to reflect and evaluate our participation in various interactive practices as objectively as possible, cognitively reaching outside ourselves to evaluate our own level of success, weakness, and methods of improvement (or better understanding, as how do we measure “improvement”?).

This concept of transgredience reminds me of life-writing theory, in which a writer needs to create a persona or narrator who will reflect upon his/her life in a more objective way than the writer him/herself is able. It is through this created persona that the person’s life is most objectively (and reflectively) viewed. I assert that a study of immigrant narratives (and the implications of culture and language on identity) would yield a similar occurrence to the transgredience in spoken interactive practices.

Classroom approaches based on SLA follows a similar process as written genre analysis, with texts being collected and analyzed (as written texts are in written genre analysis). These texts, Hall explains, are “recurring interactions” that are important to the cultures of the language being learned (leading to learner investment, to borrow Norton’s terminology) and provide “scaffolds” for further learning (144-145). Analysis of these texts includes the setting(s), the participants, the goals/outcomes of the speech acts, the topic(s), the speech acts that make up the overarching act, how participation is conducted, and formulas for how openings, closings, and transitions occur. The students then become researchers, analyzing these speech texts themselves and reflecting on their own participation in them in order to discern how each genre behaves and how to best participate in them. Hall asserts that these activities need to be viewed as just as important as learning the grammar and lexicon of the TL. 

How does this analysis of interactive practices differ from conversational implicatures?

One interactive practice in particular includes requests, which is the focus of Rose’s article (Hinkel’s Chapter 9). And, instead of teaching English as a second language (with the multilingual speakers residing in a country in which English is the primary language), the teachers and students are in Hong Kong, a country in which English is not necessarily English-speaking, but English is a prominent language due to colonization (Rose explains the difficulty of the ESL/EFL dichotomy in a time in which so many World Englishes are in operation and fluctuation).

Whereas Hall’s chapter posits how multilingual learners can serve as researchers, analyzing speech acts, Rose’s chapter asserts that the knowledge gained in pragmatic competence cannot equate to intuition. Furthermore, instructional materials on pragmatics are not available as are ones addressing the English grammatical system. Thus teachers (especially NNSs serving as EFL teachers) have to draw upon their own knowledge and intuition base.

Rose explains that the goal in teaching pragmatics “is not to teach explicitly the various means of, say, performing a given speech act… but, rather, to expose learners to the pragmatic aspects of language…and provide them with the analytical tools they need to arrive at their own generalizations concerning contextually appropriate language use” (171). This indirect instruction is what Rose calls “pragmatic consciousness-raising” (PCR) (171).

I’m wondering if PCR is what Hall was essentially talking about, with the idea that multilingual learners should learn how to analyze genres of speech acts and then use those analyses as scaffolds in subsequent analyses/experiences. This, of course, can be done in the ESL context, where these speech acts associated with the TL are readily available.

In and EFL context, however, this is a more difficult task, as speech acts vary by language and by culture.  Rose explains that PCR involves four basic steps (introduction, familiarization, analysis of data in light of the students’ L1, and transfer of that analysis to the TL, which in EFL cases is English). In this PCR process, though, one common technique (shared by Hall in the article on interactional competence) is that students need to become the researchers. They need to be the ones to study the language. And, in studying the language and speech acts on their own (with guidance from a teacher as necessary or wanted), they become participant-observers, and ethnographers, who are invested in the acquisition of not only the TL but also the accompanying cultural capital.

A few thoughts come to mind as I finish up this chapter and mentally tie it with others we’ve read:

1) Again, how do we bring implicatures into this discussion?

2) Interesting to note is how many times in these chapters the word “motivation” and its derivatives are used to discuss SLA. I’m mentally and literally with my pen inserting the word “investment,” thanks to Bonny Norton.

3) I love how Rose asserts that use of a student’s L1 in the classroom is not necessarily a bad thing. Allowing students to discuss their SLA with their L1 not only gives them more tools for exploration, but it also helps avoid any sort of delegitimizing of the L1 in learning the TL. This is a way in which we can see the connection between the three chapters this week in Hinkel’s text and the Alptekin article, which laid the theoretical call-for-reform groundwork.

The Controversy of Contrastive Rhetoric and Pedagogical Implications

Ryuko Kubota takes us through a fictitious narrative of the “unfinished knowledge” of Barbara (“unfinished,” as she was still in the process of determining how best to serve her second-language students in her classroom), which nicely mirrors our readings for the week. This narrative, which originated as a presentation at the TESOL Convention in Vancouver in March 2000, follows a writing teacher through her discovery and awareness (and lingering questions) regarding how to best teach writing to the second-language students in her classroom. R. Kubota (2003) moves Barbara from an innocently ignorant beginning – with three second language students in her classroom – through an awareness (thanks to the experts in her life) of how she should walk what R. Kubota calls “a fine line…between recognizing and essentializing cultural differences” (18).

At first, Barbara assumes her second-language learners are cognitively impaired, as they just cannot seem to grasp the lexicon, syntax, and organization of the writing she’s expecting them to produce.

After a conversation with Carol, however, Barbara is enlightened. Carol has explained to her the “importance of recognizing and respective cultural differences” (13). However, instead of being enlightened, it appears that Barbara has simply moved into Kaplan’s (1966) essentializing way of thinking, that all writers of a particular language or culture thinks and organizes writing in the same way. Kaplan (1966) depicted illustrations that – in his theory – depicted ways in which writers would write according to culture. Barbara, in her exuberance to “understand” her second language writers, succeeds in essentializing them based on what she sees as their “differences” from Western modes of thinking and writing.

Kaplan’s theory of understanding second-language writers’ writing is the basis of contrastive rhetoric. Kachru explains that “the major theoretical claims of the CRH is that different speech communities have different ways of organizing ideas in writing” (76).

However, David comes along and attempts to enlighten Barbara further than Carol did, as he recognizes that she is in need of further help in understanding that culture is not static, that it is “produced, implicated in politics and ideology, and as employed in various convenient ways to exercise power” (15). This echoes the quote from Foucault (1980, pp. 131-132) that Kachru includes in her chapter:  “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ truth” (82). Foucault goes on to explain that the “political economy” of truth has five traits. It is
1. “centered on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it”
2. “subject to constant economic and political incitement”
3. “the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and comsumption”
4. “produced and transmitted under control”
5. “the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation.”
This fluidity of culture counters Kaplan’s (1966) view that non-Western rhetorical styles are lacking in truth, are the result of “flawed logic” (Kachru 83).

Barbara is still confused and moves on to speak to Eiko, who explains how reductive an approach it is to unquestioningly accept popular images and ideas of cultures, because they are often “produced by discourses that reflect, legitimate, or contest unequal relations of power between the West and non-West” (R. Kubota 2003).  This idea is echoed in Kachru: “While it is perfectly legitimate to raise the consciousness of all writes regarding the rhetorical patterns preferred in the varieties of Inner Circle, it is equally legitimate and desireable to raise the consciousness of English educators regarding the different rhetorical conventions of learners of English” (84). This leads Barbara to realize that she’s reinforcing a binary between herself (as a Midwestern “mainstream” (a complicated term in itself) teacher) and her students when she asks them to compare and contrast the TL and culture with their NL and culture. We read about these types of assingments in Harklau’s chapter in Hinkel’s text. When asking bilingual students to write about “their country” or “their culture”, SLW teachers are actually reinforcing the idea that their students are different or do not fit in or belong. The students in Harklau’s study demonstrated resistance to these types of assignments (actually creating skits over their school breaks that satirized the assignments); in the end, many of these assignments did not result in the learning outcomes the teachers had for them, as they were inappropriate assignments for students who had been living in the U.S. for many years.

Harklau – as many of the author’s of this week’s readings – does not have a firm solution to how to teach SLW to a wide-range of students learning the TL. However, she does state that,
Instructional practices that problematize culture and engage students in tis definition do not preclude explicit training and modeling of American academic cultural norms for written prose, nor do they preclude the representation of mainstream types of culture and cultural values in the classroom. These norms and types are part of the sociocultural and political context in which instructional practices are embedded, and their pervasive influence must be acknowledged and dealt with. (130)
Pairing these ideas of instructional practices with Barbara’s practice of asking critical questions to her students (“she tried raising their critical consciousness of how social injustice is concealed behind the commonly accepted glorious images of culture” (R. Kubota 2003)).

In order to arrive at these instructional practices and methods, Tony Silva’s (1997) article calls for not only more research but better research comparing NES and ESL writing. This article is a bit dated, and it seems to me that much research into SLW has been done in the decade after he conducted his survey of the literature and arrived at his conclusion. But, he also contends that the literature that was available was not readily available (thus the birth of the publication Journal of Second Language Writing). Silva also asserts that the methods of teaching writing to NES should not necessarily and without question be applied to teaching writing in the TL to NNESs: “ESL students, basic or skilled writers, have special needs different from those of NES students and thus are best served by having the option of taking credit-bearing, requirement-fulfilling writing classes designed especially for them”. In addition, and returning to our discussion of contrastive rhetoric and Barbara, “ESL students’ teachers…should be cognizant of, sensitive to, and able to deal positively and effectively with their students’ sociocultural, rhetorical, and linguistic differences” (217).

What I found particularly applicable to my interests in this week’s reading:

• Silva’s statement, “ESL teachers with substantial backgrounds in writing or NES writing teachers with ESL experience would seem to fit the bill nicely” [as effective ESL writing teachers] (1997, p. 217).
• Kaplan’s (1966) idea of the relationship between logic an rhetoric, especially his statement that “A fallacy of some repute and some duration is the one which assumes that because a student can write an adequate essay in his native language, he can necessarily write an adequate essay in a second language. That this assumption is fallacious has become more and more apparent as English-as-a second-language courses have proliferated at American colleges and universities in recent years” (44).
• R. Kubota’s assertion that “recognizing cultural difference is often well intended, as with the original pedagogical impetus of contrastive rhetoric. However, focusing on cultural difference has a hidden risk of Othering and patronizes L2 students, while viewing their language and culture as a deficit or an obstacle to learning to write in a second language” (optional reading, Ch. 10, p. 282). Kubota’s fictitious teacher Barbara learned this after a while, but as Kubota (2003) states, “In teaching, a thin line always exists between recognizing and essentializing cultural difference” (18).
• Part of my difficulty in composing this blog this week was the numerous connections the readings held for my project in 495 last semester, including Kachru’s statement, “It would be a pity to deny large numbers of people of the Western and non-Western worlds the opportunity to participate in and contribute to the development of knowledge in all fields, including science and technology” (84). Also consider, “Any view of rhetoric that keeps a majority of people from contributing to the world’s knowledge base, and legitimizes such exclusion on the basis of writing conventions, shortchanges not only those who are excluded, but also those who would benefit from such contributions” (84).

Family Language Practices and Identity: Focusing on Korean Heritage Language Learners

Family Language Practices and Identity: Focusing on Korean Heritage Language Learners

This week’s reading juxtaposed a fictional piece by An Na about a young Korean immigrant’s reconciliation of the conflicts of her family life and her public life. An Na, herself a daughter of Korean immigrants, creates a story for Young Ju based largely on her own. While the narrative is not autobiographical, An Na draws upon her own experiences, negotiations, and frustrations as a young girl of Korean heritage growing up in the United States.

Several themes course through the narrative. One, of course, is cultural assimilation. We see throughout the book that the characters are continuously having to make judgments regarding what facets of American life they will subscribe to and which ones they will eschew. They must also decide which Korean and family traditions they will maintain as part of their cultural heritage in their new home. For example, we witness the father asserting that “someday” the family will move from the rudimentary home they rent from Mr. Owner; home-ownership is often considered part of American culture (“the American dream”). Ironically, the family becomes able to purchase a home only after many years when the father determines he’s much more comfortable in Korea and returns there. It is then that the mother borrows money in order to purchase a home for herself and the two children.

Another theme throughout the text is maintenance of the Korean culture, especially in such areas as gender and economics. The father and mother both detest borrowing money or anything else they will have to pay back or be beholden for. This idea runs counter to a common understanding in America that everyone borrows (from friends, from family, from the bank, from credit card companies). A larger theme than economics, however, is the reiteration of traditional gender roles in Korea versus those in the United States. Young Ju is constantly reminded by the Korean males in her life of her place as a female, while her younger brother (evident in the scene at the home right after his birth) is expected to have a life full of opportunity and responsibility. Interestingly, the Korean females in the text seem to be resisting these roles (even the grandmother in Korea seems to be resisting traditional gender roles in favor of more progressive ones).

Language did not play as central a role in the text as what I expected; perhaps this is because this is a work of fiction (?). On the other hand, even if the text were autobiographical, we may not have read much about language. I’m not sure why this wasn’t a central theme of the text. The narrator mentions learning English when she first moved, and she mentions her mother speaking in different dialects/languages in the kitchen of the restaurant she works in. But in terms of a culture-language-identity relationship, An Na does not deal with the theme centrally.

Dr. Kang’s study fits with our reading of this text in that the participants are Korean-American parents attempting to maintain the Korean language as a heritage language for their American-born children. The reasons behind this (or the motivation) include maintaining a sense of Korean heritage (traditions), but Dr. Kang mentions also that economics definitely play a part. If the family determines that it is economically advantageous to return to Korea (or if there is an extended family need for them to return), then it is important that the children are fluent in the heritage language. Thus, Dr. Kang examines the “family language policy” of these families (she defines family language policy as “explicit and implicit planning in relation to acquisition of language skills in home settings, in contrast to those espoused by the state or other organizations,” Kang, 2012). Dr. Kang’s study examined how Korean-American families “employ language intervention strategies” to facilitate their children’s bilingual skills. While previous studies (Dr. Kang mentions Kasuya 1998 and Pan 1995) assert that families should exclusively utilize the heritage language among family members in home settings, Dr. Kang’s study exemplifies how families can use a variety of techniques (utilizing both the heritage and L2) to facilitate bilingualness (Kang 2012). Indeed, I found the quoted conversations in which the parent would code-switch between English and Korean (often using English to help define Korean vocabulary) interesting, as often L2 teaching techniques involve exclusive use of the target language.

Two questions I have for Dr. Kang include…

1) Does she have any plans to follow these same Korean-American families, creating a longer longitudinal study? I ask this question, because I’m interested in how these children will progress with learning/maintaining their Korean language. I am also interested in how these children will build upon/maintain their Korean language literacy as these children get older and are more immersed in American schools.

2) How common is “Saturday school” among Korean-American families. Dr. Kang’s paper noted that these sessions are far less effective than immersion (say, for several months over a summer). An Na does not include this in her fictitious piece, perhaps because the narrator’s family is not in an economic position to pursue such an activity. Is Saturday school a more recent development?

*One side-note of the novella from An Na. An Na included so many universal feelings and emotions. I felt myself relating to Young Ju as a little girl, as a teenager, and as a young adult preparing to leave for college. I love that An Na created a narrator who was relatable, even though we’re all of various backgrounds. This shows her reader that, despite any geographical variations or differences in upbringing/background, some things about people remain universal.