evaluating learners ’intercultural experiences in teaching

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Liang Wang

SOAS, University of London

Evaluating learnersEvaluating learners’’ intercultural experiences intercultural experiences in teaching and assessing in teaching and assessing

Chinese as a foreign language Chinese as a foreign language –– A proposal from the EBCL ProjectA proposal from the EBCL Project

10-14/09/2012 Fachhochschule Dortmund, Germany

Research Workshop – How to evaluate intercultural ex periences

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Languages in Europe

� A day for European languages or for languages used in Europe(e.g. Japanese, Chinese)?

Day of European Languages?

� European context –pluralingual in a multicultural Europe (European citizens)


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CEFR impact

� From CEFR to EBCL

� European context –pluralingual in a multicultural Europe (European citizens)

International

European Benchmarking Chinese Language Project (Nov 2010)http://ebcl.eu.com/


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EBCL project partners

GE FR IT UK

Project partners

GE FR IT UK

Associated schools

Rennes IIFreie University Berlin

La Sapienza SOAS

Advisory Board


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EBCL project principles

�Based on CEFR, user oriented (learners, teachers, assessors, institutions, etc.) and reference only

�Rooted in the European context, but with due attention to the international society (esp. advanced levels)

�Taken into consideration the linguistic features of the Chinese language as well as intercultural knowledge and skills

�Taken into consideration the reality and development of Chinese language learning and teaching in Europe


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EBCL project objectives

To raise awareness of socio-cultural and linguistic differences between Chinese and European languages

To propose a framework of competence descriptors for Chinese in European context

To create a network in Europe and beyond for teachers and institutions concerned

To start a dynamic database of universities (and other institutions) in Europe that offer Chinese language courses

EBCL Project

A modified framework of competence descriptors


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Chinese as a foreign language – 1

�Different backgrounds and varieties of Chinese language

�Use of Chinese in Europe vs. use of Chinese in Greater China

�Internationalising Chinese

�Localising Chinese

e.g. 1 What do you expect your students to address you and

what do your students address you?

e.g. 2 ‘A Germany learner would not likely to associate with the word 认真 (studious) when describing someone who spends a lot of time studying and enjoys it.’


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Chinese as a foreign language – 2

�Lack of interactional perspectives and pedagogical practices

�Culture as products

�Culture as practice

�Culture as perspectives

�Individual and interpersonal experience?

�Made implicit in most language courses

‘My students are all mature students so I assume that they are already culturally competent to some degree and actually there is no particular way of teaching intercultural competence.’

ZZ (personal communication, 28/04/12)


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IC dimension in FLE

�Theoretical perspectives on culture and communication�Essentialist view

� Background studies: a range of knowledge to be transmitted (monocultural)

� Cross-cultural comparison: over-generalization, stereotyping (bi-cultural)

� Intercultural communication: interaction, but binary tradition of ‘Us’ & ‘Them’

�Negotiated/non-essentialist view (Scollon and Scollon 2001; Piller 2007)

� Interdiscourse communication: a process of assertion, negotiation, construction, reflection, and the dynamics of interaction between individuals (interpersonal and social)

�The changing goal of FLE� ‘Native-speaker’ ‘Intercultural-speaker’

�Communicative competence (CC) Intercultural CC (ICC)(Byram 1997; Byram, Gribkova and Starkey, 2001; Corbett 2003; Kramsch 1998, 2001)


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‘a central objective of language education [is] to promote the favourable development of the learner’s whole personality and sense of identity in response to the enriching experience of otherness in language and culture.’

CEFR (2001:1)

‘to achieve a wider and deeper understanding of the way of life and forms of thought of other peoples and of their cultural heritage.’

CEFR (2001:3)

�Educational objective

�Social objective

IC dimension in CEFR - 1


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‘To promote mutual understanding and tolerance, respect for identities and cultural diversity through more effective international communication. To maintain and further develop the richness and diversity of European cultural lifethrough greater mutual knowledge of national and regional languages, including those less widely taught. To meet the needs of a multilingual and multicultural Europe by appreciably developing the ability of Europeans to communicate with each other across linguistic and cultural boundaries, which requires a sustained, lifelong effort to be encouraged, put on an organised footing and financed at all levels of education by the competent bodies.’

CEFR (2001:3)

�Political objective



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�Emerging but under-developed

‘intercultural awareness’, ‘intercultural skills’, ‘existential competence’

CEFR (2001)

‘although the CEF included a discussion of intercultural competence and intercultural awareness, the question of assessment and the defining of levels of intercultural competence, had to be left aside as the CEF went to press.’

Neuner, Parmenter, Starkey and Zarate (2003)


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�Lack of clarity

‘the influence of the CEFR in Europe and other countries does not include the question of intercultural competence and pluriculturalism. Neither does it include the notion of “mediation”.’

Byram (2011:68)

�Competence of mediationfinding a solution to the conflict or problem rather than merely translation/interpretation

Byram et al. (1994, in Byram 2011)


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IC dimension in ICCLE

� International Curriculum for Chinese Language Education (2008)

�Cultural awareness model

�Cultural knowledge

�Cultural understanding

�Cross-cultural awareness

�Global awareness

�Lack of progressive description

�Abstract vs concrete


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ICC/IC assessment models

�Byram (1997) – most comprehensive and well worked-out with objectives for teaching and assessment; prescriptive more than descriptive

�Deardorff (2006) – synthesis of existing expert views, which justifies Byram’s model

�LOLIPOP portfolio (2004) – online interactive version of ELP with an enhanced intercultural dimension

� INCA (2004) – a framework, a suite of tools for intercultural competence assessment in work contexts linked to language and subject knowledge competence

�CEFcult (2010) – a framework for enhancing language proficiency for intercultural professional communication


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�ICC model �Communicative competence

� Linguistic

�Sociolinguistic

�Discourse

�Intercultural competence (IC)�Knowledge

�Attitude

�Skills

�Critical cultural awareness

knowledge

Skills (interpret, relate) Attitudes

Critical awareness

Skills (discover, interact)

Byram’s model


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Deardorff’s models


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The IC dimension within EBCLGeneric and illustrative descriptors:

Reception Spoken/Written Production Spoken/Written Interaction Spoken/WrittenCommunication Strategies

Pragmatic components (List of language functions)

Sociolinguistic components (List of themes and topics)

Linguistic components(vocabulary/character,

grammar, grapheme, etc.)

Intercultural components(intercultural profile: cognitive, affective,

behavioural)


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Proposals

�A portfolio approach to building up can-do statements

�open list on the basis of Byram (1997)

�knowledge-related (themes/notions)

�action-oriented (behaviours/language functions)

�Collection of learners’ intercultural experiences for data

�Experiential learning in real-life contexts

� intercultural ‘communicative’ experience

�with linguistic evidence, supplemented by� EBCL List of Themes/Topics

� EBCL List of Language Functions


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Challenges

�The integration of the intercultural dimension

� Being (doing + knowing)

� Language and paralanguage

� Gradeability (knowledge, skills, affection, awareness)?

�Use of Chinese in Europe vs. use of Chinese in Greater China

� Overlapping

� Complementary

�Data-driven approach

� Scale of corpora

�Generalisability vs representativeness


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Qs & As …

Updated information about the project, please visit http://ebcl.eu.com/

Contact: Liang Wang, [email protected]


evaluating learners ’intercultural experiences in teaching

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