Intercultural competence in foreign language teaching

1. Methods

For the purpose of the study 78 (seventy-eight) foreign language teachers from four regions (Lviv region (20), Ternopil region (25), Ivano-Frankivsk region (19) and Chernivtsi region (14) were asked to fill in questionnaires. Some of them were also met in person. Background information on the participants comes from the first questionnaire, which included a demographic section. According to the results of the demographic part 94 % of teachers have complete higher education (BA degree, Specialist, 5 of them MA degree), 6 % of teachers worked in rural areas with incomplete higher education (junior specialists). According to the results 2 % of the teachers were between 25 and 30, 28 % were between 31 and 40, 55 % between 41 and 50, and 15 % between 51 and 65 years of age. Foreign language teachers were from public schools, all women. The foreign language taught in secondary schools was English.

Data for the present study were collected in 2018 years by means of a questionnaire developed by Sercu (2005). The questionnaire, consisting of nine sections, aimed to investigate teachers' views on the role of culture in foreign language teaching and the extent to which their teaching practice can be characterized as directed towards the attainment of intercultural competence and a cultural approach. In the study the respondents were given statements and asked to assess the level of importance of each on Likert scale. The format of a level Likert scale was: 5-point, 4-point and 3-point scales, depending upon the purpose of the question.

Cronbach's alpha is the most common measure of internal reliability when you have multiple Likert scale questions in a questionnaire. So the questionnaire was piloted with 18 randomly selected teachers for reliability purposes and the Cronbach coefficient was found to be 0.8. Data were analyzed based on the frequencies for each section. Calculations were done using a standard deviation (SD) to make it possible to compare averages.

The t-test (Student's t-test) was used to compare means of A and B groups to find if they are different from each other and how significant the differences are. The t-test also showed if those differences could have happened by chance.

2. Results

Our results are presented on the basis of Lies Sercu et al. (2005) concept of the «unfavorably disposed» as opposed to the «favourably disposed» foreign language teachers. Sercu revealed that some of the teachers are in fact «favourably disposed» while others are «unfavourably disposed» towards including intercultural competence in their classroom practice and that their dispositions depend on their beliefs, training, research interests and so on.

Each profile can be identified by means of a number of characteristics. The profile of the «favourably disposed teacher» can be characterized as genuinely intercultural, and is based on the conceptual definition of intercultural competence that includes knowledge, skills and attitudes that a foreign language teacher should possess to be able to teach intercultural competence. Foreign language teachers should be sufficiently familiar with the foreign cultures associated with the foreign language they teach as well as have the diverse and frequent contacts with those cultures. In addition, a «favourably disposed teacher» should know his/her own culture well to explain both similarities and differences between cultures to students. Moreover, he/ she should be aware of stereotypes that students may have towards another culture(s) and of methods to address them in the classroom. A «favourably disposed teacher» should be well trained in selecting appropriate content and materials that can foster students' intercultural competence acquisition. With respect to attitudes, the «favorably disposed teachers» should look forward to the integration of intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. They should clearly see the objectives of foreign language education in terms of both language learning and intercultural competence acquisition and be willing to work towards achieving these objectives. Moreover, they should take into account their students' perceptions and attitudes regarding foreign cultures as the departure point while designing the learning process. «Unfavourably disposed foreign language teachers» believe that it is impossible to integrate language and culture teaching.

The authors express the hypothesis that in the present study two groups of teachers will also be presented «Favourably disposed teacher» (group A) and «Unfavourably disposed teacher» (group B), moreover, group A will be more numerous than group B.

The first section of the questionnaire asks foreign language teachers to provide some personal data, presented earlier.

From second to ninth sections contain branched questions with many sub-questions in 17 pages, which makes it impossible to submit replies in the tables within the same section of the questionnaire. Therefore, the authors are inclined to cover the most important issues and results within each section of the questionnaire.

The questions in the second section concern their perceptions of what they try to achieve with students. Teachers were given eight possible objectives of foreign language teaching and asked to rank them in order of importance through assigning each objective a number between 1 and 8. Teachers assign the number «1» to the objective which they consider most important, «2» to the objective which they consider second in importance, and so on. As their first priority, 51 teachers out of 78 selected «Enthuse my students for learning foreign languages», second most important priority was «Promoting the acquisition of a level of proficiency in the foreign language that will allow the students to use the foreign language for practical purposes», as their third priority, teachers indicated «Assisting my students to acquire a level of proficiency in the foreign language that will allow them to read literary works in the foreign language». Finally, the last priority was «Assisting my students in developing a better understanding of their own identity and culture». One of the questions in second section asked to indicate their opinions about the average distribution of teaching time over «language teaching» and «culture teaching». As can be seen from the results presented in Table 1, the number of teachers who do not include the cultural component almost coincides with the number of teachers, which accounts for 20 % of studies in the study of cultural dimensions. As can be seen from the results presented in Table 1, the number of teachers who do not teach the cultural component almost coincides with the number of teachers who focus on the cultural component 40 % of the teaching time. Most foreign language teachers (46) distributed teaching time 80 % over «language teaching» and 20 % over «culture teaching» in secondary schools. The results are presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Distribution of teaching time over «language teaching» and «culture teaching» in language teaching classroom

3. Discussion

After analyzing the results in the current study we feel that participants lack the appropriate knowledge and skills to successfully teach culture. Some of them also express criticism towards language teacher education and teaching materials, which, in their opinion, does not pay enough attention to this dimension of teaching culture. This mismatch of the results obtained with the envisaged profile of the foreign language competent teacher, is not surprising in modern Ukrainian educational system regarding teachers' working conditions. However, in view of the fact that the objective of language learning is no longer defined in terms of the acquisition of communicative competence in a foreign language, rather, it is defined in terms of the intercultural competence (Council of Europe, 2001), the recommendation to teach intercultural competence has been around the world since at least the 1980s, it is somewhat surprising why teachers primarily display a «foreign language teacher' profile» or a «foreign language-and-culture teacher» profile instead of the expected «foreign language and intercultural competence teacher» profile.