Interculturality in the Language Class – Teachers’ Intercultural Practices in Ecuador

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify how Ecuadorian university teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) tackle intercultural teaching practice in their classrooms. To this end, we studied the reported intercultural practices of 68 EFL university teachers from Ecuadorian Region 4. Quantitative data drawn from a questionnaire were analysed through descriptive statistics. The results suggest that the activities put into practice emphasize the development of intercultural attitudes rather than knowledge or skills. Furthermore, the data indicate that these teachers often focus on the culture of certain English-speaking countries, but they do not pay sufficient attention to other foreign cultures and give little importance to the students’ local culture, and to the comparison between cultures. In conclusion, these teachers’ reported practices suggest they would benefit from using strategies to introduce and discuss interculturality in their lessons, to raise intercultural awareness and to help their students develop the appropriate skills to deal with intercultural encounters. Indications are provided in this respect.

Keywords

Interculturality intercultural competence foreign language learning foreign language teaching teaching practices

Introduction

In this research study, we intend to investigate how foreign language (FL) teachers handle intercultural teaching practice in the classroom. In particular, we looked into the intercultural competence (IC) of a group of 68 English as a foreign language (EFL) lecturers from different state universities in Region 4 of Ecuador¹ by administering a tailored survey on IC (adapted from Zhou, 2011). The purpose of this study is to ascertain how these teachers approach IC teaching. In general, we aim at participating in the on-going debate about how to tackle intercultural issues in the FL classroom successfully.

This study is part of larger research conducted in Ecuador with the main objectives being to diagnose the IC of Ecuadorian EFL teachers from the state universities of Region 4; to find out how these teachers conceptualize IC; to determine which methods and approaches they apply in the FL classroom in order to foster IC. With these objectives in mind we applied the following data collection instruments to a population of 200 teachers: survey, semi-structured interview and content data analysis. In this article, we present a preliminary analysis of part of the data by focussing on the occurrence of intercultural contents in the classroom as expressed by the subjects of the investigation in the questionnaires. We will also present part of the data from the interviews to complement the information drawn from the questionnaires. The analysis will help us approach the larger data in a reasoned way.

This article begins by providing an outline of the theoretical underpinnings of this study, namely the conceptualization of IC and how it is developed and gauged in FL teachers’ practices. It further presents our research and our most significant findings, related to how these EFL teachers deal with IC in the classroom and the implications that our findings have for FL teaching. Finally, the article specifies future lines of action both in research and in teaching practice.

Theoretical Background

What is Intercultural Competence?

In the last two decades, interest in IC has increased gradually, and research on interculturality has gained momentum, but scholars have not reached a consensus concerning the conceptualization and definition of IC (for a comprehensive overview, see Spitzberg and Changnon, 2009). Yet, it could be said that IC is related to the processes that take place when individuals meet people from other cultural backgrounds for expanding intercultural relationships where basic elements such as ethnicity, nationality, language, religion or beliefs come up in dialogues of mutual respect and empathy between intercultural speakers. Within this background, our working definition of IC is that it is the competence that arises in the process of interaction among one’s culture (known as C1) and others (C2, C3),² where communicative aspects are involved in carrying out a procedure of comparison of cultural aspects between the interlocutors (Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2016).

In the last two decades, a large number of experts have contributed to the research panorama on IC with theories that aim to measure and analyse the degree of interculturality of individuals in society (Bennett, 2004; Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2009; Hammer et al., 2003; Moran, 2001; to name a few). These theories pinpoint the fundamental elements needed to communicate and behave in intercultural situations, normally with an emphasis on a given aspect. For instance, the key to understanding Deardorff’s theory (Deardorff, 2009) is the perception of IC as an ongoing process, where individuals need to be given opportunities to reflect on and assess the development of their own IC over time. Bennett (2004), for his part, places the focus on intercultural sensitivity as the ability to recognize and accept differences between cultures, and distinguishes it from IC, which for him is the ability to think and act in interculturally appropriate ways. Also, Moran (2001) approaches IC from a cultural knowing standpoint and puts forward an experiential cycle for the acquisition of IC which integrates the processes of getting cultural information (knowing about), cultural practices (knowing how), cultural perspectives (knowing why) and self-awareness (knowing oneself). Finally, the capacity of shifting to a new cultural milieu can be seen as related to the adoption of the target culture’s behaviour, as in the model by Hammer et al., (2003).

Byram’s Model of Intercultural Competence

In this study, we follow Michael Byram’s (1997) intercultural framework or model of IC. Byram approaches IC – or Intercultural Communicative Competence, as he calls it – from a pedagogical point of view, in the context of EFL teaching and learning, and highlights the importance of working with IC in the classroom to help students interact with others while they learn a language. His approach is based on the idea that the main function of language is to facilitate communication among individuals with the aim of promoting mobility across countries and raising living standards of people by improving personal, social and professional prospects (Council of Europe, 2001). In this sense, the capacity to use (various) languages to communicate is part of a wider competence, called pluricultural competence, that allows the language user to participate adequately in intercultural relations with people from other cultures.

In this view of IC, the C1 has a very important role: learners of languages can better their pluricultural competence by taking their own culture as a starting point and reflecting on it. There is no need to aim at performing like a native speaker. Rather, the ultimate objective is to become an intercultural speaker (Kramsch, 1998: 23). To this end, individuals must develop their IC, which is constituted by five dimensions (Byram, 1997):

Intercultural attitude

Intercultural knowledge

Skills of interpreting and relating

Skills of discovering and interacting

Critical cultural awareness skills or political education.

Intercultural attitude is the basic capacity of curiosity, tolerance and flexibility when faced with intercultural ambiguity that provides interlocutors with a willingness to understand others. Individuals with an adequate intercultural attitude realize that there is no such thing as a single culture whose members share the same characteristics in their behaviour, beliefs and values. The knowledge dimension has to do with understanding the context and norms that are appropriate to interact with people. Knowledge of these rules include comprehending that our C1 may be similar to other speakers’ cultural settings, even if they have particular characteristics of their own (Liddicoat and Scarino, 2013). The skills of interpreting and relating represent the balance between how people perceive their culture and how they can link local events with others from a different culture, by interpreting and comparing. This connection engages individuals in exploring diverse cultural manifestations and makes them curious about strangers. The dimension skills of discovery and interaction refers to the ability to create a system to interpret unknown intercultural meaning, beliefs and practices. These skills allow the individual to function in real-time communication when speaking spontaneously about their culture and that of others. Finally, cultural awareness or political education skills consist of the capacity to evaluate critically the different perspectives, practices and products of various cultural milieus, both local and foreign (Byram, 2000). These dimensions are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

Dimensions of IC in Byram’s Model (1997).

Domain		Definition
Knowledge		The system of cultural references of the social groups and the products and practices of one’s group and the other’s. Also, the general knowledge of social and individual interactions.
Attitude		The affective capacity to overcome ethnocentrism and the cognitive capacity to establish and maintain a relationship between the C1 and the C2.
Skills	Of interpreting and relating	The ability to interpret a document or event in the other culture, explain it and relate it to one’s own culture.
	Of discovery and interaction	The capacity to create a system for interpreting cultural meanings, beliefs and practices which are unknown and may come from an unknown culture.
	Of cultural awareness	The ability to critically evaluate the perspectives, practices and products of one’s culture and the other’s on the basis of explicit criteria.

We endorse Michael Byram’s IC teaching theory mainly because of its clear pedagogic orientation: his proposal has straightforward applications for FL teaching (Alred et al., 2003; Byram and Fleming, 1998; Byram and Phillips, 2007) and for FL teacher training (Byram et al., 2002; Byram et al., 2003; Byram and Tost Planet, 2000). That is, it can be useful both for the purpose of analysing IC within the teaching environment and for applying remedial measures in the classroom.

Intercultural Competence in FL and EFL Teaching

IC does not grow spontaneously in most people, and its development is a lifelong learning process which requires permanent feedback (McCloskey, 2012), so it has to be addressed as a specific objective in the classroom (Deardorff, 2009). In particular, the FL classroom is especially suitable for addressing IC, as language and culture are inextricably linked. However, for years, the presence of culture in FL/EFL classrooms was limited to delivering content from the target culture following a traditional informational approach related to providing facts and information (Areizaga, 2001). This approach has been an obstacle to the integration of culture into language education and in many ways still prevails. Nonetheless, nowadays intercultural skills are put forward as essential learner competences to measure language learners’ ability to interact with others (Council of Europe, 2001) and the literature consistently suggests that bringing intercultural issues into the FL class generates a positive impact on students’ learning; for instance, on their linguistic capacity (Toyoda, 2016) and on classroom negotiation skills (Manuel, 2016).

For these reasons, FL activities that promote the development of IC ought to be embedded in daily language work. How can this be done? It is believed that effective intercultural teaching implies ‘focus[ing] on cultural contents and invit[ing] learners to relate the foreign culture to their own’ (Sercu, 2007: 67). This knowledge of one’s own culture is required to understand similarities and distinctive differences between cultures. In addition, activities that address IC in the EFL class should be based on experiential learning of other lifestyles, beliefs and customs through an array of daily activities (Gregersen-Hermans and Push, 2012). Examples of these sorts of experiential activities are plentiful in the literature. A case in point is drama performance, which fosters intercultural awareness, and a sensitivity to emotions, moods, attitudes, and values (Byram and Fleming, 1998). Other useful activities to deal with IC experientially are cultural problem-solving tasks (Alonso-Belmonte and Fernández-Agüero, 2015), which expose students to critical incidents that may take place between two cultures – i.e. cultural misunderstandings in the use of the local lexicon – for students to propose possible solutions. Also, it has been suggested that project work and task-based learning are appropriate for experiential IC learning (Denis and Matas Pla, 2002).

The approach of FL teachers towards interculturality in the classroom belongs to a research tradition on teacher beliefs, perceptions and context-specific conceptions (Sercu, 2005; Byram and Risager, 1999). In this framework, it is thought that beliefs on teaching and learning are difficult to change, and have a direct influence on instructional behaviour (Sercu, 2005: 164). Thus, it seems that teachers’ IC can be effectively gauged by examining their teaching practices. In other words, it is possible to measure the teachers’ IC by analysing whether they carry out any of the tasks and activities presented above.

Research Context and Instruments

In this research we intend to address the treatment of IC in EFL teaching in Ecuadorian universities, to identify good practices and weaknesses as expressed by the teachers in this context and to propose measures for improvement. More specifically, we attempt to answer the following research question: How do Ecuadorian Region 4 EFL lecturers deal with IC in the classroom? To reach these goals, we have applied a questionnaire on reported teaching practices.

The study was carried out in four state universities: Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Universidad Estatal del Sur de Manabí and Escuela Superior Politécnica Agropecuaria de Manabí. These are the state universities of Ecuadorian Region 4, an area with more than one million inhabitants and a student population of 40,000 (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Estadística y Censo, 2011).

The participants were a random sample of 68 university EFL lecturers who taught compulsory general English subjects in several degrees: medicine, engineering, education, social work, ecotourism, nursing, and among others. The characteristics of these teachers can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2.

Main Personal Data of Participants.

1. Gender	Female			Male
	36 (52.9%)			33 (47.1%)
2. Age	20-25 yr	26-30 yr	31-35 yr	36-40 yr	41-45 yr	<46 yr
	3 (4.4%)	16 (23.5%)	21 (30.9%)	9 (13.2%)	14 (20.6%)	5 (7.4%)
3. Teaching Experience	1-3 yr	4-6 yr	7-9 yr	10-12 yr	13-15 yr	<16 yr
	2 (2.9%)	18 (26.5%)	16 (23.5%)	10 (14.7%)	10 (14.7%)	12 (17.6%)
4. Travelled Abroad	Yes			No
	37 (54.4%)			31 (45.6%)
5. Language Level Taught	Elementary	Pre-interm		Intermediate	Advanced
	16 (23.5%)	25 (36.8%)		23 (33.8%)	5 (5.9%)

Checked for validation by five experts in the field of EFL teaching, the questionnaire is an adaptation to the Ecuadorian context of the tool by Zhou (2011), designed to ascertain to what extent EFL teachers were academically prepared to help their students to acquire IC skills. The questionnaire deals with Byram’s (1997) dimensions (above) and is organized into 16 macro questions divided into three sections:

Teachers’ background

Teachers’ beliefs and practices

Answers were provided in a four-point Likert scale with the following possibilities: never, sometimes, frequently and always. For the purposes of this study, we have focussed on question number 15 entitled ‘How often do you apply the following cultural teaching practices in your teaching?’. This question belongs to section 2, is made up of 11 statements and investigates the teachers’ reported practices in relation to Byram’s intercultural dimensions. Figure 1 below shows the statements – or items – in question 15 and how they are connected with Byram’s dimensions.

Figure 1.

Items in Question 15 and their Relationship with Byram’s Dimensions of IC.

The outcome of the Cronbach’s alpha test to measure reliability was 0.95, indicating that the questionnaire is reliable. Then, we applied descriptive statistics with frequency to obtain the percentage of occurrence of each item. As a result, the findings reflect the number of times that a given answer was chosen in relation to the total number of answers. For example, when we say that 31% of respondents answered that they sometimes asked students to share fascinating or strange things about English cultures it is because ‘sometimes’ was the answer chosen for item 1 by 21 teachers out of 68, that is, 31% of the teachers.

Results

As we can see in Table 3 on intercultural attitude, nearly half the teachers acknowledged that they did not frequently make their students reflect on the interest or peculiarity of the C2 from their point of view, neither did they encourage frequent reflection on the values, beliefs and perspectives of the students’ C1 in their classes. Besides, those who did report that they frequently worked on intercultural attitude, referred more often to the C2 than to the C1 (39.4% in item 1 vs. 29.6% in item 2). At any rate, it appears that this dimension was reported as the most frequently brought up in the classes (compare Table 3 with Tables 4 to 7).

Table 3.

Results in Relation to Intercultural Attitude.

	Not Frequently %		Frequently %
	Never	Sometimes	Frequently	Always
1. I ask students to share what they find fascinating or strange about English cultures	42.3		53.5
	11.3	31.0	39.4	14.1
2. I encourage students to question their own values, beliefs, and perspectives which are perceived differently by people from other cultures	49.3		45.1
	19.7	29.6	29.6	15.5

Table 4.

Results in Relation to Intercultural Knowledge.

	Not Frequently %		Frequently %
	Never	Sometimes	Frequently	Always
3. I ask students to discuss the way in which Ecuadorian people and Ecuadorian culture is perceived by English speaking people	66.2		29.7
	8.5	57.7	22.5	7.0
4. I ask students to explore different perspectives Ecuadorian and English speaking people may have on a particular event/phenomenon	60.5		35.3
	19.7	40.8	26.8	8.5
5. Besides cultures of English speaking countries, I also touch upon cultures of other countries	56.3		39.5
	23.9	32.4	29.6	9.9

Table 5.

Results in Relation to Skills of Discovering and Interaction.

	Not Frequently %		Frequently %
	Never	Sometimes	Frequently	Always
6. I ask students to explore connotations and implications implied in documents/events from English cultures	71.3		23.9
	19	52.1	18.3	5.6
7. I ask students to use their cultural knowledge and skills to explain documents/events from English cultures	57.7		36.7
	19.7	38.0	26.8	9.9

Table 6.

Results in Relation to Skills of Interpreting and Relating.

	Not Frequently %		Frequently %
	Never	Sometimes	Frequently	Always
8. I ask students to explore areas of misunderstandings in communications between Ecuadorian and English speaking people and explain the causes	61.8		33.8
	21.1	40.8	26.8	7.0
9. I ask students to discuss the origins of stereotypes that Ecuadorian people have for English cultures	66.2		27.6
	23.9	42.3	16.3	11.3

Table 7.

Results in relation to critical cultural awareness.

	Not Frequently %		Frequently %
	Never	Sometimes	Frequently	Always
10. I ask students to discuss how their own values and beliefs influence the way they perceive other cultures	54.9		40.9
	18.3	36.6	28.2	12.7
11. I ask students to explore values, beliefs, and ideological perspectives implied in documents/events from English cultures	62		33.8
	25.4	36.6	22.5	11.3

Concerning intercultural knowledge, the answers in Table 4 also support the argument that the students’ C1 is somewhat neglected. Particularly, 66.2% of the teachers stated that they did not frequently discuss how the C1 could be perceived by speakers of the target language (item 3); besides, 60.5% did not frequently ask their students to contrast the C1 with the C2 (item 4). Nevertheless, the most striking piece of data here is that 23.9% of teachers ensured that they never touched upon cultures other than the C2 (item 5), which in practice implies that the cultural contexts where English is spoken as a FL and thus, used as an international language, receive little attention.

With regards to the skills of discovering and interaction (Table 5), nearly two-thirds of the teachers stated that they did not frequently explore the connotations and implications of events and documents of the C2 with their students (item 6). The task of explaining those events and documents by making reference to the students’ background knowledge and their C1 was said to be more often applied; still there were more teachers who said that they did not do it frequently than teachers who answered that they frequently or always did (57.7% vs. 36.7% in item 7).

Considering the skills of interpreting and relating, as can be seen in Table 6, many of these teachers declared that they never/only sometimes explored areas of misunderstanding between the C1 and the C2 or discussed the origin of stereotypes from the C2 (61.8% and 66.2% in items 8 and 9 respectively). In particular, stereotypes seemed rather overlooked in the classroom, as the number of respondents who affirmed that they never mentioned them was nearly one quarter (23.9%).

Finally, as regards critical cultural awareness (Table 7), once again, placing the emphasis on the C1 as a starting point to analyse one’s perception of other cultures was said to be relatively unusual: 54.9% of the teachers stated that they did not frequently deal with practices that involve discussing the influence of students’ values and beliefs on the way they perceive other cultures, versus 40.9% of the teachers who frequently did so (item 10). Similarly, no fewer than 25.4% of the survey respondents said that they never exposed their students to activities related to exploring values, beliefs and ideological perspectives of documents and events of the C2 (item 11).

Discussion

The results indicate that the professionals surveyed may acknowledge the importance of IC in the classroom but the approach they take to interculturality needs to improve considerably. This finding is in line with other analyses made in the context of the broader research where this study is framed (Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2016; Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2017), and with other large-scale investigations (Sercu, 2005). Concretely, work on IC does come up in these teachers’ practices, with certain nuances: most notably, intercultural attitude was said to be worked on slightly more regularly than other dimensions; apart from that, the C1 and other cultures appeared secondary to the C2 of English-speaking countries, and the comparison C1–C2 – particularly with respect to the analysis of stereotypes – did not seem to be a common task.

Concretely, the data reveal that the reflection over cultures different from the C2 does not have enough presence in these classrooms. Indeed, the data from our larger study highlight an emphasis on certain Inner-Circle English-speaking countries: our preliminary analysis of these teachers’ discourse in the interviews reveals an overwhelming influence of the US and some misconceptions that point to the standards of a monolithic Western stance on interculturality (Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2017). For example, some of the teachers stated the following:

Nos enfocamos en temas referentes a los EEUU, y en algunos países de habla inglesa We focus on topics referring to the US, and on some English speaking countries [Interview 15:12].

No les hago practicar sobre otras culturas, más bien que me hablen de qué hicieran si fueran a Estados Unidos.

I don’t make them practise about other cultures, I rather make them speak about what they would do if they went to the States [Interview 4:7].

Me gustaría que mis Estudiantes tengan un profesor de otro país, por ejemplo de EEUU, Canadá, Europa…

I would like my students to have a teacher from another country, for example from the US, Canada, Europe… [Interview 2:6].

In these excerpts it can be seen that the US is predominant in their discourse and that they tend to prioritize certain (Western) countries and regions over others. This strong influence of the US is understandable for geographical and economic reasons and may even be desirable and strategic. This is because the US is the most likely English-speaking destination for Ecuadorian undergraduates. Nevertheless, in this scenario, the significant role of English as a lingua franca runs the risk of being overlooked. Likewise, the conception of IC as a process of interaction encompassing two cultures or more is put to the test.

As we established in our revision of the literature, FL teachers should help their students develop their IC by changing their perception from monoculturality to an intercultural mindset, acknowledging the existence of cultures other than their own. In order to do so, students should be exposed to conceptual and experiential content from a variety of C2 contexts and from other cultures as well. For example, after reading a text on, say, dining habits in the C2, the following questions could be posed:

Do you eat like the people in the text? Would you like to? Why/why not?

How do you eat? Who do you eat with? How did you eat yesterday at lunch/dinner time? Tell your partner.

Imagine what your favourite lunch would be like. Who are you with? What do you eat? How do you feel? Write a paragraph about it.

Choose one of these questions and look for the answer on the Internet: Who eats with chopsticks? What is inhera? How do you make tacos? Share your answer with the class.

Using these questions, learners are given the opportunity to grasp other ways of doing by using the language meaningfully and connecting cultural content with their own personal experience. This is the kind of approach that our teachers should implement in order to work on IC instead of placing the main focus on the context of certain English-speaking countries, namely the US.

A possible explanation for this important presence of the US could be these teachers’ strong reliance on textbooks, which do not reflect the status of English as an international language and tend to underrepresent certain cultures (Alonso-Belmonte and Fernández-Agüero, 2015). In our broad study, the interviews reflect a tendency to treat cultural issues incidentally, as they come up in the textbook, rather than applying a systematic or reasoned approach (Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2017), especially due to time constraints. This can be seen in the following extracts:

Hablo de los EEUU porque los libros hablan sobre la cultura de los EEUU y la nuestra

I talk about the US because the textbooks talk about the culture of the US and ours [Interview 4:2].

No, no suelo incluir temas de cultura en mis clases, debo seguir el syllabus para poder terminar todos los contenidos.

No, I don’t usually include topics on culture in my classes, I must follow the syllabus to cover all the contents [Interview 8:19].

Needless to say, textbooks can be an invaluable resource but it would be beneficial for these teachers to boost their critical skills for testing the intercultural potential of textbooks. These teachers need to be able to analyse their textbooks, discard traditional knowledge-oriented approaches and select culturally grounded activities with a clear linguistic outcome that engages students in negotiation and intercultural reflection. In addition, they should explore the possibilities of complementary materials and ICT, to make up for the shortages of textbooks.

Furthermore, the results illustrate that the C1 is not often taken as the starting point for making comparisons between cultures. Actually, in other parts of our data, the C1 is presented as a limitation, as shown in this quote:

No he tenido la oportunidad de [compartir contenidos culturales] porque no tengo estudiantes de otros países.

I have not had the opportunity to [share cultural content] because I do not have students from other countries [Interview 3:13].

The absence of intercultural comparison – between the C1 and an array of other cultures – may hinder the development of IC (Byram and Fleming, 1998). That is why it is important to furnish these teachers with tools to devise and enact activities that give relevance to the C1 – and the mother tongue – with a special focus on stereotypes and previous misconceptions. For comparing, we find situational activities – role plays, simulations, dramatizations – particularly useful. In these types of activities, participants place themselves in the situation of others and behave accordingly. By pretending that they belong to a given community, students are given the chance to experience and assimilate certain behavioural patterns; and when the activity involves the target community and the students’ community, they can interiorize the possible contrasts and similarities effortlessly – i.e. this can be done with a role play at a restaurant of the home community, where one participant acts as if she does not speak the L1 and needs assistance with the menu. We believe that our teachers would benefit from explicit instruction on the design and implementation of these and other similar tasks, which require reflection and expertise.

Finally, we have seen that intercultural skills – for interpreting, relating, discovering and interacting – and knowledge – our understanding the appropriate context and norms – are paid slightly less attention than intercultural attitude. However, it seems that good learning environments for IC among undergraduates are related to components of IC such as knowledge awareness and high-order thinking skills (Toyoda, 2016). Intercultural skills and knowledge ought to be emphasized as learning objectives, then. In our opinion, this can be more easily done by fostering intercultural experiences outside the class, ranging from individual face-to-face relationships to virtual contact. The use of social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, has obvious straightforward uses for students to set up meaningful conversations about intercultural concerns. Thus, ICT assists in consolidating intercultural attitudes, but also the dimensions of critical cultural awareness and interacting skills (Chancay-Cedeño and Fernández-Agüero, 2016).

In sum, our results suggest that in this setting, a thorough preparation on interculturality is needed. Tailored in-service training could help to reinforce these teachers’ own intercultural attitudes, knowledge and skills and make them skilful in teaching effective comprehensive intercultural lessons through experiential learning and task-based work. In particular, their training may be based on:

Applying an experiential approach to IC development

Exploring cultural comparisons and acknowledging the role of the C1 and other cultures in the FL class

Analysing textbooks critically

Creating and implementing IC activities

Finding a balance between the different dimensions of IC.

All in all, FL teachers are required to have a profound grasp of the target language and the culture and this too has to be addressed in teacher training.

Conclusion

This research study aimed to provide answers about how the EFL teachers surveyed dealt with IC in the classroom. We also looked to identify deficiencies and good practices, and presented remedial actions to contribute to effective IC development in FL/EFL teaching. We have defended the theses that, in order to improve language learners’ pluricultural competence, it is mandatory for FL teachers to promote intercultural interaction and that IC development needs to be considered a lifelong learning process, embedded in daily language work and addressed as a specific learning objective (Deardorff, 2009). We believe that this conviction should be shared by language researchers, FL teaching professionals and education stakeholders alike, so that regulations and materials to support IC development can be easily devised, and explicit intervention can be made possible.

Concerning tertiary education, research indicates that universities need to design internal policies to encourage students from different areas to learn new forms of cultural exchange to become graduate professionals with high levels of IC (Lantz-Deaton, 2017). We are of the opinion that Ecuadorian teaching institutions should not lag behind. In Ecuador, the literature on IC development in FL teaching is scarce. Ecuadorian studies about interculturality have traditionally focussed on analysing the cultural differences among local indigenous groups and other subjects in relation to prioritizing cultural consolidation in the area or ‘cultural rescue’ (Walsh, 1998). Those issues notwithstanding, the growing participation of Ecuadorians in social networks, and the increase in foreign exchanges towards/from Ecuador for studying, work or leisure have raised the question of how future professionals are being prepared to face intercultural encounters with people from cultural backgrounds outside the country. This line of research is related to defining effective IC development, and eventually aims to raise Ecuadorian professionals’ competitiveness in a global market.

This being a pioneer study on interculturality in EFL sociolinguistics in Ecuador, it is our belief that it could contribute to setting up the foundations for future research and innovation projects on IC in the region. Both longitudinal and large-scale qualitative investigations are still deemed necessary. For our part, further research will involve completing our analysis of the survey, the interviews and the official documents, syllabi and textbooks to diagnose the IC of our teachers. However, we acknowledge a limitation of the investigation, namely that results are based on participants’ self-reports – as expressed both in the survey and the interviews – rather than on direct performance-based data. To counteract the possible influence of social desirability on self-assessment and compensate for respondents’ possible inaccuracies, we plan to contrast our results with observations and collaborative data-collection techniques. We expect that this multi-faceted analysis will help us determine the best way to approach IC development in our context.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition under Grant FFI2016-77540P and by the Ecuadorian institution SENESCYT.

Notes

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