33.2870, Review: Applied Linguistics: Corbett (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2870. Fri Sep 23 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2870, Review: Applied Linguistics: Corbett (2022)

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Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2022 17:18:53
From: Yufei Ren [ryffei at 163.com]
Subject: An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36825637


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-882.html

AUTHOR: John  Corbett
TITLE: An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching
SUBTITLE: 2nd Edition
SERIES TITLE: Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Yufei Ren, Tsinghua University

SUMMARY

The foreword gives a brief introduction to the two versions of this book. The
fundamental premise of the first edition is that culture is implicated in
every instance of language in use among various contexts, while the most
important change in this second version is extending the concept of culture
with rapid social change. Thus, culture is taken as a foregrounded site of
affiliation, rejection, explicit argument and contest. 

The first two chapters offer a brief summary of how culture is understood
within different academic disciplines (such as linguistics, ethnography,
communication and cultural studies) and its influence on intercultural
language education. Chapter 1 (“Linguistic and Ethnographic Perspectives on
Culture”) puts forward an ‘intercultural’ approach to English Language
Teaching (ELT) with its emphasis on the role of culture. The status and role
of ‘culture’ is analyzed in linguistics, showing how it is addressed in formal
linguistics, anthropological linguistics, functional linguistics, critical
linguistics, and applied linguistics. Sub-disciplines within linguistics are
discussed for a deeper understanding of their relations to culture and ELT.
Chapter 2 (“From Intercultural Communication to Literary, Media and Cultural
studies”) captures the distinctive discipline of communication studies that
interprets cultural ‘products’. The conceptualization of culture in
communication, the impact of interpretive disciplines of literary, media and
cultural studies on ELT, and a working definition of ‘culture’ in
intercultural ELT are discussed. Culture and cultural products should be
treated as outcomes of sets of dynamic, negotiated community values. With the
broad view on the role of culture across disciplines that informs
intercultural language education from the first two chapters, Chapter 3
(“Defining Intercultural Communicative Competence”) sets out to define
intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in two influential transnational
curriculum guidelines, namely Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of
Reference (CEFR) and National Council of State Supervisors for Languages and
the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL-ACTFL).  It
also considers alternative models of ICC for adults and high school pupils,
and how models of ICC might inform the design and implementation of an
intercultural curriculum. 

  Chapter 4 (“Implementing an Intercultural Approach to ELT”) focuses more
directly on the implementation of intercultural approaches to ELT. It first
gives a rationale for implementing an intercultural approach, namely the
enculturation and acculturation of learners, and the development of their
competences as cultural explorers and mediators. Then, it summarizes how the
elements of the communicative task (Nunan, 1989: 10-11) can be integrated with
task-based language activities addressed in communicative language learning to
improve intercultural competences. 

  After a general picture of an intercultural approach to ELT, the following
chapters move on to specific aspects of ICC that might be learned and taught.
Chapter 5 (“Culture and Conversation”) looks into the topic of teaching and
learning conversational English and argues that the performance of casual
conversation is cultural. The chapter discusses the role of conversation in
intercultural communicative competence, the types of conversational stories,
the design of activities to teach conversational interaction, and the
extension of conversations by such procedures as second-storying and gossip.

>From Chapter 6 to Chapter 8, the focus is the ethnographic approach to
intercultural language education. These three chapters show that intercultural
language teaching draws on ethnographic strategies of systematic observation
and the elicitation of data via direct and indirect interviews, in both
physical and virtual environments. Chapter 6 (“Developing an Ethnographic
Frame of Mind”) gives a more detailed account of ethnography and its role in
different research disciplines (e.g. cultural studies and media studies) as
well as curriculum innovation, which attempts to develop an ethnographic
perspective through classroom activities (e.g. concept training, cultural
associations, inverted etiquette, and critical incidents). Chapter 7
(“Interviewing Skills for the Intercultural Learner”) looks at ethnographic
interview skills and larger-scale ‘practical’ ethnographic projects. It gives
advice on preparation for interviews and analysis of interviews from a
cultural perspective with specific examples. Chapter 8 (“Virtual
Ethnographies: Intercultural Telecollaboration”) focuses on ‘virtual
ethnography’ or computer-mediated intercultural collaborations through online
intercultural exchanges. After a brief introduction to the nature of virtual
ethnography, it moves toward setting up a collaborative partnership from these
aspects: sampling ethnographic activities, developing rapport, exploring
learner identities, and discovering the teacher’s role in facilitating
telecollaborative exchanges for better intercultural communicative competence
and the ethnographic mindset.

  Chapter 9 (“Developing Visual Literacy”) turns to ways of decoding, in which
visual images function as a rich resource for developing the intercultural
skills of interpreting and relating. It gives a clear explanation of visual
literacy through discussion of the messages expressed by images, their visual
composition, and their comparison to textual information; thus it offers
suggestions about ways of exploring the analysis of images. Chapter 10 (“Using
Literary, Media and Cultural Studies”) continues the theme of visual materials
with supplementation of literary, media, and cultural texts in the
intercultural language curriculum for developing critical cultural awareness.
The  two main topics are (1) the mediated nature of texts and (2) discourse
conventions, in which an adaptation of Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding-decoding’ model
of discourse production and consumption is discussed.

  Chapter 11 (“Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence”) considers
issues raised by assessment in an intercultural approach to ELT, including the
role and complexity of assessment, and practical advice about assessment. The
assessment could range from interpreting and relating skills to critical
cultural awareness, making it difficult for teachers to assess students’
intercultural communicative competence. The concluding Chapter 12 (“Further
Prospects for Intercultural Language Education”) reviews the key points in
this book, putting the intercultural approach to ELT in context, and
speculates about future development of intercultural language development.
  
EVALUATION

The book successfully describes the intellectual context and practical means
of implementing an intercultural approach to ELT, demonstrating both
theoretical and practical significance. For its theoretical significance, it
broadens our knowledge of different disciplines. For example, in the first
chapter, the traditional division between Bloomfield’s and Chomsky’s approach
to the understanding of language deepens our understanding of various learning
strategies such as the audiolingual and communicative approaches. As
intercultural language teaching program is a complicated system that combines
research from disciplines such as linguistics, ethnography, communication, and
media; the book provides hints for understanding these disciplines from an
intercultural perspective. Discussions of intercultural language education
from various aspects offers a rather comprehensive overview of current studies
on intercultural language education, in which theoretical interests may be
included.

As for the book’s practical significance, specific teaching activities are
illustrated and exemplified for teachers, so that they may modify their
teaching activities and learners their acquisition of the linguistic
resources. For example, detailed conversational tasks are given.
Conversational tasks, such as using anecdotes, exempla, and narratives, and
their implementation in teaching settings are depicted in Chapter 5, along
with their theoretical bases. In Chapter 8, specific procedures and activities
in telecollaboration are given, offering guidance for projects concerning
telecollaboration. Discussion of ice-breaking activities may be helpful for
both learners and teachers. In the Appendix at the end of the book, there is
an extensive checklist of questions that could be asked of images; it offers
inspiration for the designing of class activities and projects relating to
visual literacy. It is offered as a practical guide that teachers and learners
can draw from and use to ‘interrogate’ an image (Corbett, 2022: 201). Readers
such as teachers, students, academics may benefit from the theoretical
knowledge as well as the practical suggestions.

The book is well organized and unified both within chapters and among
chapters. At the beginning of each chapter, a general introduction is given,
in which the topic of this chapter and its linkage to previous chapters are
briefly stated. The key questions addressed within each chapter thus guide our
attention to the main topics involved. At the end of each chapter, a brief
summary is given to reinforce the key messages, making the book
reader-friendly. The chapters are also clearly connected. For example, the
general context of an intercultural approach to ELT established by the first
four chapters paves the way for more detailed aspects of ICC in the following
chapters. Chapter 11 discusses the assessment of competences proposed in
Chapter 3, and these might be ideally acquired through the tasks and
activities suggested in Chapters 4-10. 

One of the most prominent features of this book is its open-mindedness. After
each section, there are some reflective questions to  guide the understanding
of the following section. They prompt readers to reflect on their own
educational practices and to interject creativity into the understanding of
culture in ELT. As Corbett states, the book does not seek to prescribe a
single, all-purpose approach that will meet all situations and requirements
(Corbett, 2022: 6). Its emphasis on ‘intercultural dynamics’ specifies the
essence of intercultural language research. Although several typical
activities are advised for intercultural language teachers, the teaching
activities implemented in classes and their assessment should depend on the
contexts and learners.     

MacDonald and O’Regan (2012) addresses topics related to intercultural
language education, including the concept of culture, the relationship between
language and identity, the principles underlying intercultural communication,
and the research paradigm. These durable issues appear in ongoing debates
around intercultural language education, and the openness of these topics
yields further fascinating questions to be answered in the domain. The belief
is that the process of intercultural language education should be allied to a
broader inquiry into our understanding of ourselves and others, and of the
world.

REFERENCES

Corbett, J. (2022). An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching
(2nd edition). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters

MacDonald, M. and O’Regan, J. (2012). A global agenda for intercultural
communication research and practice. In J. Jackson (ed.) The Routledge
Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication (1st edn, pp.555-572).
London/New York: Routledge.

Nunan, D. (1989). Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Yufei Ren: PhD student in Linguistics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
She would like to find out the potential effects of emotion on the mind,
especially in language processing, and its underlying neural mechanisms. Her
main research interests include psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and
neurolinguistics. 
<br />Gang Cui: Doctor, Professor of Tsinghua University. Research interests:
cognitive neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, foreign language teaching.





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