A Cultural Awarness Project

The goal of this project is to develop learners’ overall communicative competence

in the target language by focusing specifically on the four skills, as

well as to make them aware of cultural differences or similarities in different

language communities. The project should be conducted in small

groups so that learners can work collaboratively. It consists of four different

stages: 1) a preparation stage, in which learners are provided with

some cultural topics to deal with; 2) a collection stage, in which learners

are asked to collect materials for these topics; 3) an implementation stage,

in which learners work in the classroom with all the materials they have

brought along; and 4) a reflection stage, in which the teacher guides feedback

and encourages cross-cultural class discussion. Each stage is described

in detail in what follows:

•   Preparation stage

As a preliminary step, teachers should provide learners with a brief introduction

about the nature of intercultural competence in order to make them

aware of the importance of paying attention to different cultural frameworks.

This explanation could be carried out by following Byram (1997).

Once the concept of intercultural competence has been introduced in class,

the teacher explains to the learners that they are going to explore the English

target culture in the language classroom. They are then presented with

a list of cultural topics which may offer entry points to the English culture

in order to focus on learners’ intercultural competence. The topics could be:

Family, Education, the World of Work, Regional Identity, Power and Politics

or Law and Order. The selection of topics follows the ideas suggested

in other projects dealing with how best to explore another culture (Duffy

and Mayes 2001; Morgan 2001). In order to help learners with the topic

20 Esther Usó-Juan and Alicia Martínez-Flor

orientation, the five-word technique (Cain 1990) can be used. This technique

consists in asking students to note down the first five words they

think of in relation to each topic presented by the teacher. In fact, making

learners provide such words may be a useful technique to activate their

background knowledge on the cultural topics to be covered. Once learners

have selected the topic they are going to focus on, the next stage of the

project is explained to them.

•   Collection stage

In this stage, it would be tempting for the teacher to make the collection of

materials him/herself about a particular cultural topic and bring them to the

classroom along with prepared activities for the learners. However, we

agree with Morgan (2001) that doing this would block one of the major

aims of the project, which consists in raising learners’ cultural awareness

through having to question themselves what is culturally important and

representative of the target language.

Taking this assumption into account, learners are given the task to collect

materials in the English target culture in relation to the particular topic

they have agreed to work with. Here, they are recommended to look for a

variety of sources, including photocopied information from different

printed materials; photo-documentaries, video or DVD scenes; recorded

material, like conversations with Erasmus learners or English native speakers;

excerpts from the Internet or the hard copy of conversations after having

contacted English-speaking partners through e-mail exchanges or CMC

telecollaborative tasks. During the process of collecting such material,

learners are required to meet the teacher at appointed office hours so that

the teacher can provide any help they might need. Once learners have collected

all the material they are asked to hand it in to the teacher in order to

prepare the next stage of the project.

• Implementation stage

This stage involves several class sessions devoted to developing learners’

communicative competence through the four skills while working on the

cultural topics it was agreed they would deal with in the first stage. Here,

learners are presented with structured activities on the four skills in order to

increase their cultural awareness, intercultural imagination and context

Towards acquiring communicative competence through the four skills 21

sensitivity on that particular topic (Meier 2003). A detailed explanation of

these activities would be provided in the four introductory chapters of each

section dealing with each skill, that is, Section II (listening skill), Section

III (speaking skill), Section IV (reading skill) and Section V (writing skill).

• Reflection stage

After learners have worked on all the activities prepared by the teacher in

each of the four skills, a cross-cultural class discussion follows in order to

elicit learners’ opinions about the topics being dealt with. This discussion

will allow them to take a critical and evaluative position in relation to the

cultural awareness activities already carried out.

In short, by engaging learners in a project such as the one described above,

they become active participants in their own process of language learning.

They are provided with opportunities to develop their overall communicative

competence in the target language by increasing their ability to communicate

in each of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading

and writing. Additionally, they become aware of the importance of understanding

how cultural issues influence our perception of the world (Cortazzi

and Jin 1999). This development of learners’ intercultural competence,

thus, turns out to be an essential part of foreign language teaching.