Алдабердикызы Айдын
Международный
казахско-турецкий Университет имени Х.А.Ясауи, Казахстан, г.Шымкент
The role
Intercultural Communicative Competence in teachin
It
is important to remind ourselves that even under the best of circumstances
foreign language learning lacks the social reality that defines the target
culture. Due to lack of shared reality, communication breakdowns are likely to
occur. "In order to transmit and decode meaning, we must do much more than
arrange our sounds and words in a special order" (Loveday 1982:61). One
has to be aware of the diverse and implicit ways of constructing a message
which are culture specific. In attempting to remedy this deficiency, it has
been recognized that communicative competence falls short of our needs and
therefore we need a wider concept. Today the goal in language teaching and
learning should be intercultural communicative competence (also referred to as
cross-cultural competence or cultural competence). During communication,
meaning construction depends on the speaker's and listener's presuppositions.
What complicates matters at the intercultural level is that when interlocutors
are from different cultures, they share fewer and fewer common things while
other variables increase especially those in language, culture and worldview.
Language learners carry a dual burden on their shoulders- unfamiliar language
plus unfamiliar culture. This heavy load can only be lessened by expanding and
developing intercultural communicative competence.
Without
an alternative form of communication and worldview we are bound to think and
perceive in our preset patterns of perception, conceptualization, formulation
and expression of our thoughts from a single point. Mono-vision leads to
ethnocentricism, contempt and hostility on the part of the language learner as
he will employ his own cultural frame as a reference to understand the target
culture. At this point lies the power of a different cultural experience. In
addition to a chance to learn more about another culture, it helps language
learners to see their own culture and ways of life in a conscious way and helps
them realize that what they take for granted is not objective reality.
Therefore, we need intercultural communicative competence, which will take us
beyond our mono-vision. Our intercultural communicative competence consists of
an extremely complicated set of beliefs, knowledge, feelings, attitudes and
behaviour. Irving (1986:31) defines the term as
"… the ability to understand
cultures... one's own and others... by means of objective, non-judgmental
comparisons. It is an appreciation for, an understanding of, cultural
pluralism...the ability to get rid of our ethnocentric tendencies and accept
another culture on its own terms. Many cross-cultural interactions go sour due
to a lack of such competence".
Unless
there is sufficient competence, there may be misunderstanding. In absence of
relevant background knowledge, any meaning may fail to be constructed. The
learners should be made tolerant of and should develop an understanding of
other cultures. Otherwise, language learners will be unaware of certain kinds
of culture specific behaviour and develop hostility and ethnocentricism. For
example, in Vietnam people avoid contradicting or ridiculing a superior;
therefore, you are likely to hear "That must be so" as an answer to
your question "Is this the way to the station?" although you are
pointing at the wrong direction. Then you may find yourself wondering why the
person from the native culture deliberately misguided you and develop hostile
feelings to him.
Intercultural
competence is needed to recognize such things as the place of silence,
appropriate topics of conversation, taboos, forms of address, and expressions
of speech acts because they are usually not the same across cultures. All above
enumerated can be grouped under a notion of context.
That is, the problem in misunderstanding a representative of another culture
lies not in the linguistic code
Figure 6: Hall’s scale about High-context
and Low-context cultures and their inclusive parts.
Intercultural
communicative competence might be identified as twofold: first, a competence
that derives from a wide range of knowledge about the target culture including
its ways of organizing public life, time and space, its history, its artistic
and scientific achievements, its institutions, its modes of social
stratification, its myths about its past and its dreams for the future. Second
a competence that manifests itself in an awareness of the rules of language
use. As all these are indicators of a given culture, both competencies are
intricately and inseparably tied to each other within the frame work of
culture.
"Language
is a double-edged sword: Language communicates,
List of references:
LOVELYDAY, L., 1982. The Sociolinguistics of Learning and Using a
Non-native Language.UK:
Pergamon Press.
IRVING, 1986. Communicating with Asia. Understanding
people and Customs. Australia:
Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd.
HALL, E. T., 1991. The Silent Language. New York: Doubleday.