Language Teachers as Agents of Social change in the Global Classroom

  by Mousumi Mukherjee
 

Both in Europe and the United States, albeit for different reasons, there is a great deal of political pressure now put on foreign language educators to solve the social and economic problems. This is evident from the governmental initiatives taken by the European Union and the elaborate programs organized during European Year of Languages in 2001 and similar initiative taken by the US government in 2005. Educators fear that the mere acquisition of linguistic systems to meet personal, professional and institutional goals is no guarantee of international peace and understanding in this modern world caught with fear, distrust and hatred of the “other”. Linguist Claire Kramsch points out in her 1995 article “The cultural component of language teaching”, the reasons for the growing “culturalization” of language teaching are many and motives are often contradictory. But this trend has no doubt enhanced the role of language teachers.

 In the language teaching profession it has been widely recognized for quite some time now that learners need not just acquire knowledge and skill in the grammar of a language but they also need to build the ability to use the language in socially and culturally appropriate ways. This was the major innovation of “communicative language teaching”. At the same time, the “communicative approach” introduced changes in methods of teaching, the materials used, the description of what is to be learnt and assessment of learning. It emphasized the need of building “intercultural competence”. Interculturally competent people successfully and effectively adapt their verbal and non-verbal messages to the appropriate cultural context. Thus it is expected that language learners who become “interculturally competent” will be successful not only in communicating information but also in developing human relationship with people of other languages and cultures. In this context developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching involves recognizing that the aims are: to give learners intercultural competence as well as linguistic competence; to prepare them for interaction with people of other cultures; to enable them to understand and accept people from other cultures as individuals with other distinctive perspectives, values and behaviors; and to help them to see that such interaction is an enriching experience. This leads us to a very important aspect in communicative language teaching, that of the need to understand the “cultural context”.

In language teaching, the concept of ‘communicative competence’ emphasizes the fact that language learners need to acquire not just grammatical competence but also the knowledge of what is ‘appropriate’ language. The intercultural dimension in language teaching aims to develop learners as intercultural speakers or mediators who are able to engage with complexity and multiple identities and to avoid the stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through a single identity. Intercultural communication is communication on the basis of respect for individuals and equality of human rights as the democratic basis of social interaction. But the most important question here is: what is “culture”?

 It is hard to formulate a particular and most appropriate definition of culture. Just about everyone has a definition of culture. To be sure, over forty years ago two well-known anthropologists, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn,  found and examined three hundred definitions of culture, none of which were the same. If they would attempt to launch a similar venture today no doubt the numbers of definition would be ten-folds larger and the result more varied. By and large we can define culture as an accumulated pattern of values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by an identifiable group of people with a common history and a verbal and nonverbal symbol system.   Like communication, culture is ubiquitous and has a profound effect on humans. Culture is simultaneously invisible and pervasive. As we go about our daily lives, we are not overtly conscious of our culture’s influence on us. Yet most of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are culturally driven. One needs to only step into a culture different from one’s own to feel the immense impact of culture.

In the wake of globalization, with the increase in the movement of human capital and all other forms of capital movements across the world, the need for teaching language and culture has become all the more important due to a number of factors: political, educational, and ideological. Moreover many recent ethnographic and socio-linguistic researches have shown culture as an integral part of various language systems across the language. Claire Kramsch writes in her 1993 book Context and Culture in Language Teaching that, “one often reads in teachers’ guide-lines that language teaching consists of teaching the four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and comprehending) ‘plus culture’.  Kramsch points out that culture is often seen as mere information conveyed by the language, not as a feature of language itself. Here cultural awareness becomes an educational objective in itself, separate from language. If, however, language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the very core of language teaching. Cultural awareness must then be viewed both as enabling language proficiency and as being the outcome of reflection on language proficiency.

In the light of the above discussion we may conclude that, the role of language teachers has surely enhanced in recent years. As Kramsch writes in her 1995 article, “If the ability to understand other cultures is itself mediated through language, then language teachers and learners may want to reflect on the social process of their own pedagogic enunciation… It is a process which makes language teachers into agents of social change.”

Mousumi Mukherjee
Center for Comparative Education
Loyola University Chicago