Is intercultural communicative competence alredy in our EFL Teaching practice? The role of post-secondary teachers and textbooks

Abstract

Since intercultural communicative competence (henceforth ICC) is the current approach required in our growing multilingual and multicultural world, the new target of foreign language education is training students to become intercultural speakers or mediators (Byram, 1997; Byram, Gribkova and Starkey, 2002; Byram, Nichols and Stevens, 2001; Kramsch, 1998: 16-31). The present investigation aims at analysing whether the two main sources of input in an English as a Foreign Language context (teachers and textbooks) deal with intercultural communicative competence and to what extent. Besides, we were also interested in the notion(s) that both experienced and novice teachers hold regarding such competence. We focused our research on a bilingual and increasingly multicultural area, that is, the province of Castelló. On the one hand, a questionnaire was addressed to current and future teachers working and living in this Valencian province. On the other hand, a corpus of textbooks was analysed made up of the materials used for the second year of Bachillerato in all the public highschools located in that area. With respect to teachers, the findings showed that although they include ICC in their teaching practice, this component is not fully developed according to Byram’s (1997), Byram, Gribkova and Starkey (2002) and Sercu et al.’s (2005) criteria. Nevertheless, we found that these professionals’ notion of the concept is sufficiently broad and their willingness to adopt such approach is total in spite of not having been trained on intercultural matters. Turning to textbooks, similar results were found. In fact, the majority incorporate activities for the development of ICC but this was not dealt with in a comprehensive way. The main conclusion from this research is that although teachers and textbooks are moving towards the teaching of ICC, this is not entirely promoted yet in terms of the development of skills and attitudes. As a result, foreign language learners cannot be fully prepared to face intercultural situations.