Abstract
Integrating intercultural competence in foreign language classrooms has been emphasized in China, yet scant explicit guidance currently exists on how to teach intercultural competence in college English courses. This study aimed at comparing and contrasting intercultural pedagogical approaches used by instructors in English courses for non-English majors, as well as teaching feedback provided by students enrolled in such courses. This study applied a sequential exploratory mixed research design. Methods such as face-to-face interviews and teaching and learning related document analyses were utilized to collect data, and generated qualitative and quantitative data. Three-dimensional meta themes emerged in mixed analysis, categorizing pedagogical approaches and teaching styles of individual instructors. Student feedback revealed learning experiences and difficulties of the teaching approaches.
I Introduction
Since the new century, foreign language teaching, and especially English language teaching (ELT), has gradually been reframed to integrate intercultural dimensions with language teaching, and the goals of ELT started to include development of student’s intercultural competence to interact successfully with people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Over the past decade, intercultural teaching and learning have gained more relevance on the policy level in western countries, such as in the USA, the UK and European countries (Chan, Bhatt & Nagami, 2015; Hill, 2012; Tolosa et al., 2018). In a non-western educational context, such as in China, the most recent educational reform in 2017 has also incorporated the development of intercultural competence into national foreign language curricula and other documents that inform teaching and learning (e.g. China’s new National guidelines for college English curriculum and China’s national criteria of teaching quality for undergraduate foreign language majors 1 ). In other words, instructors of a wide range of English curriculum and programs across the country are now expected to foster learners’ intercultural competence through language teaching.
However, in contrast to the high consensus on teaching intercultural competence in English as foreign language (EFL) classrooms, the current intercultural teaching in China lacks systematic planning and is often fragmented and biased (Zhang, 2012). Scant guidance is provided for English instructors regarding what to teach, and how to teach intercultural competence in college courses (Sun, 2016), and more importantly, the specific teaching mode of intercultural competence should be determined by the Chinese EFL context in terms of types of students, nature and perceptions of teaching and learning (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002). Therefore, answers to questions such as how to apply existing intercultural teaching theories and approaches, and how to design effective teaching procedures to integrate intercultural learning with teaching of language skills, requires exploration and practice in China’s specific foreign language education context.
The present study aims to (1) investigate the perception and practice of intercultural English teaching; (2) compare and contrast intercultural teaching approaches used by instructors in undergraduate English courses for non-English majors based on the feedback provided by both faculty and students enrolled in such courses. This mixed methods study contributes to the existing knowledge about intercultural English teaching and instructor development in two significant ways. First, it helps capture instructors’ voices on intercultural teaching approaches and practice, and also helps document empirical evidence to indicate prevalence of each teaching approach. Second, it systematically records intercultural English teaching plans, designs, and pedagogical approaches in a Chinese educational context for other instructors to refer to. Additionally, by paying specific attention to both design and practice of these teaching approaches, the study provides insights into the different intercultural teaching styles and English instructors’ understandings reflected in these approaches. Such information can provide useful directions in terms of prevalence and practicality of numerous teaching approaches, to further facilitate English instructors’ incorporation of an intercultural focus within their own classrooms.
II Literature review
1 Development of intercultural competence in English classrooms
Being emphasized as an important objective of English education, intercultural competence has become a critical concept in English teaching and learning in Chinese universities since 2017. Over the past twenty years, there has been a proliferation of different models in defining intercultural competence (Barrett, Byram, Ipgrave, & Seurrat, 2013). Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) divided contemporary models of intercultural competence into five different types: compositional, co-orientational, developmental, adaptational, and causal process. Among them, compositional models and developmental models are often applied in the context of foreign language teaching. The former identifies key components of intercultural competence, and the latter emphasizes progressions of intercultural competence. For example, Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence is one of the most influential compositional models in China. Byram’s (1997) five savoirs under the umbrella concept of intercultural competence, i.e. attitudes of curiosity and openness, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness, have become a cornerstone for intercultural English teaching in China (Wen, 1999; Zhang, 2007). For more dynamic developmental models, the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) created by Milton Bennett (Bennett, 1986, 2013) emphasized the progress of learner’s perception of cultural differences from relative ethnocentric understandings to a more ethno-relative comprehension. Deardorff’s (2006) process model identified the path of how intercultural competence was facilitated by shifting one’s internal frames. Both types of models gained relatively high popularity among Chinese scholars, and were considered a good fit for foreign language teaching for Chinese students, but unfortunately were rarely applied or validated in the Chinese context.
Based on the existing conceptual models, Chinese scholars also developed their own intercultural competence models for foreign language teaching and learning. The majority of proposed frameworks were etic models with some Western influences derived from outside a Chinese culture, which are often compositional models with some variations in specific elements of intercultural competence (Chen, 1989; Gao, 2014; Zhang, 2007). There were also emic models, which elucidated the Confucian perspectives on intercultural competence, and defined intercultural competence beyond a goal-achieving capability, but rather as an ethical and spiritual process (Gao, 2014; Xiao & Chen, 2009). For example, Gao (2014) developed a conceptual framework of Knowing-and-Doing model especially for Chinese college students, in which the awareness of both global and local culture, and self-identity was emphasized. Yet so far there is no consensus on the theoretical definitions or empirical validation of the models in Chinese ELT.
In this study, intercultural competence is defined as ‘the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations’ (Deardorff, 2006, p. 247), and the key components of intercultural competence, such as intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes to foster critical cultural awareness, which were included in theoretical models of both Deardorff (2006) and Byram (1997). In addition, a culturally specific emphasis in this Chinese educational context was placed on teaching not only the cultural norms and values of the cultures of students’ interlocutors, but also their native cultures: the Chinese cultures. Intercultural English teaching aims at facilitating students with deepened understanding of the target language culture and their own culture, and to engage them with multiple perspectives in perception and to avoid stereotyping (Byram et al., 2002).
2 Theories of intercultural English teaching
On a review of the various theories developed for teaching of culture in foreign language education in the past 30 years, there are two momenta to be noted which have great influence on the present teaching of intercultural competence of English courses in China. First is the world Englishes momentum, which has a great impact on the issue of ‘what to teach’ about culture in English classrooms. World Englishes is used as a general term to represent all the local varieties of Englishes used by people of different nations to communicate with one another (Lee, 2012). Therefore, its connotations embrace all models of English labeled by different terminologies such as ‘English as lingua franca’, ‘English as an international auxiliary language’, and ‘English as a family of languages’ (Canagarajah, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2005). This trend of world Englishes has brought about the development of new forms or even new norms of English teaching in local contexts. As reflected in intercultural English teaching, Englishes of the inner-circle countries may no longer be the ultimate objective for the majority of learners, instead, variability in English, especially Englishes and cultures outside the inner-circles countries are highlighted. It also has been suggested by many scholars under this momentum, and well-accepted among Chinese scholars that cultural norms of native speakers of that language was not as important as before in teaching, but should include a variety of cultures: in other words, ‘the world’ itself (Guest, 2002; Kilickaya, 2004; Kramsch, 1998; Ware & Kramsch, 2005).
The second momentum concerns the relationship of language and culture in ELT from a discourse perspective (Kramsch & Zhu, 2016), which has an impact on ‘how to teach’ intercultural competence in China. According to Kramsch and Zhu (2016), English facilitates global citizenship and meanwhile prompts a return to local community membership. She proposed a discourse perspective to understand how and why culture was produced (Piller, 2012; Zhu, 2014). With regard to language teaching, Kramsch and Zhu (2016) advocated treating culture as a verb. That is, rather than thinking of cultures as uniform or homogeneously national, or thinking of participants as representative of a cultural group, the focus should be on the process of meaning-making, on what people do and how they do it, and contextualize culture and language across social, ethnic, gender and generational boundaries (Scollon, Scollon & Jones, 2012). Consequently, apart from teaching the meaning of a foreign language, instructors are also responsible for teaching the cognitive and affective values of language, and how they might potentially form speaker’s perceptions (Kramsch & Zhu, 2016). Kramsch’s new development of the theories in intercultural language teaching was embraced by many scholars in the twenty-first century, yet until today it remains theoretical, and there is a lack of empirical evidence to demonstrate its applications in ELT (Gu, 2016; Kramsch, 2015).
In China, theories of intercultural English teaching were first introduced from the West in the 1990s, and the goal of English education has witnessed a shift from becoming a native speaker to fostering humanistic qualities and communicative skills in English (Zheng & Gao, 2017). Intercultural competence and intercultural foreign language teaching were brought up in the most recent decade (Zhang, 2007), but it is still at a preliminary stage of translating intercultural language teaching theories into practice.
3 Intercultural English teaching in practice
The existing literature has recorded many approaches for integrating culture in language teaching (e.g. DeCapua & Wintergerst, 2004; Kramsch, 1993; Schulz, 2007; Snow, 2015), and Chinese scholars have also proposed numerous principles for practice in this area (Sun, 2016; Zhang, 2007). Yet, most discussions on pedagogy of intercultural teaching are conceptual in nature. What’s more, as many scholars have asserted, there is a lack of empirical works published about actual practice of teaching pedagogy, especially in a Chinese learner’s context. A comprehensive review of the core collection of Web of Science database representing social and behavioral science disciplines between the year 1985 to 2019 revealed a total of 304 articles on intercultural teaching and learning (search date: August 31, 2019), among which solely 10 articles devoted predominantly or exclusively to empirical studies of teaching approaches in English classrooms. There is little doubt that all these articles contain valuable findings that add to the knowledge base of intercultural English teaching approaches, however, the 10 articles represent an extremely small proportion of 3.04% of the total articles published in this area.
Furthermore, studies that focused on teaching approaches generally fall into three categories. First, the large majority of the studies describe either a single teaching approach, or approaches developed by a single instructor or institution, and most of them were conducted in a western context. Teaching approaches and classroom activities that have been suggested by these studies included peer feedback, spoken or written narratives, learner portfolios and role play (Gómez Rodríguez, 2014; Hidalgo Downing, 2012; Kramsch & Zhu, 2016; Lee, 2017); and a number of computer-mediated teaching approaches were also introduced, such as blogs, simultaneous on-line class and on-line forums (Meinecke, Smith, & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2013; Yang, 2015; YoonHee, 2011). Second, there are also a small proportion of evaluative studies that assessed the effectiveness of intercultural teaching approaches, and both quantitative and qualitative enquiries can be found (Chao, 2013; Eliyahu-Levi & Ganz-Meishar, 2020; Grimminger-Seidensticker & Möhwald, 2020). Lastly, recent years have seen studies that examined the relationship between teacher intentions and practice in intercultural teaching. Previous studies have suggested that instructors generally expressed support for teaching culture and selected rather sophisticated teaching strategies, but when they were asked to describe in some detail how they taught about culture, there was a gap between what they knew and what they did (Schulz, 2007). Recent research shows that the gap between instructor belief and practice remains after more than a decade, and called for more empirical studies on teaching practice (Agostinetto & Bugno, 2020).
As noted in the above review, with intercultural English courses becoming increasingly popularized in China’s higher education, the contextualized conceptualization and practice of ELT as encompassing both linguistic and intercultural objectives posed new challenges to all English instructors, and the Chinese EFL instructors still face the challenge of a lack of intercultural English teaching pedagogy due to the limited works published in this area. Therefore, what is needed is to understand how intercultural English teaching is perceived and practiced in China, and to use different data sources to compare and contrast intercultural teaching approaches from multiple institutions. In response to such needs, this study investigated and recorded information on new and practical pedagogical approaches used by instructors in intercultural English courses, and discussed the characteristics of such practice. The overarching research questions is: how do selected instructors perceive and practice intercultural teaching in English classrooms of Chinese universities? The more specific mixed research questions include:
How do the selected instructors define intercultural English teaching in practice? What is the prevalence of these perceptions?
What are the characteristics of the intercultural pedagogical approaches adopted by the selected instructors? What is the prevalence of these characteristics?
How are these pedagogical approaches received by the students enrolled in the selected English courses?
III Methods
1 Mixed research design
As this study intended to investigate both instructor’s perceptions and practice of teaching English language and intercultural competence, the level of complexity involved in the scope and data of this study appears to justify the use of mixed research techniques, in order to appropriately answer the research questions. The present study used Collins, Onwuegbuzie and Sutton’s (2006) methodological framework, and qualitative and quantitative approaches were mixed for two main purposes: (1) complementarity purpose, as an attempt to not only extract information from qualitative data, but also to indicate the prevalence of opinions and practice by using quantitative data; and (2) expansion purpose, to increase the breadth of the qualitative findings by descriptive statistics, and to perform numeric assessment on frequencies and percentages of qualitative statements.
As conceptualized by Creswell and Plano Clark (2018), a sequential exploratory mixed research design was used in this study. It involved:
the qualitative and quantitative approaches being mixed at data collection and analysis stages of the research process;
a qualitative-quantitative sequential design, in which qualitative data were first collected, then transformed to quantitative data, and both qualitative and quantitative data were combined in analyses; and
descriptive statistics used to describe the use of teaching approaches identified in qualitative analysis.
More details about the design are illustrated in Figure 1.
Exploratory sequential mixed methods design: The quantitative and qualitative designs, data, and analyses.
2 Participants and setting
Instructor participants in this study were 10 full-time English instructors from four universities in Beijing, China. The overall ranking of these four universities in the Chinese university ranking published by the Association of Chinese Alumni in 2019 were: 93, 176, 328 and 501. Among them, there was a foreign studies university, a normal university, and a private university.
All instructor participants were chosen based on representing the specific sampling criteria (Creswell, 2008), which included English teaching experiences (12 years in average), expertise in teaching (currently serving or served as program director or course coordinators 2 ), formal training in intercultural teaching and learning, educational background, especially with experiences of studying abroad. Intercultural English teaching was practiced in four courses: Comprehensive English, English Reading, English Writing, and Oral English. All the courses were offered to non-English majors in the four universities. More details are illustrated in Table 1.
Instructor participants: Demographics and backgrounds.
Student participants were 44 second-year undergraduate language majors (non-English) enrolled in the English classes taught by two of the instructor participants (Instructor 2 and Instructor 6). Rationale of the selection is to be explained in Section IV). Among the 44 students, three students were purposefully selected, with maximum variations in English language ability, class participation and intercultural experiences (experiences of traveling aboard and participation in cross-cultural events), to participate in semi-structured interviews. Eight students were selected following the same sampling strategy to join two focus groups (with four students in each group).
3 Mixed data collection
Three sources of qualitative data were collected: documents, interviews and focus groups, and class audios and observations (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2008). With regard to documents, al
Another important source of qualitative data was instructors’ reflective journals. Throughout a semester, the instructor participants were invited to voluntarily record regular journal entries on their experiences of intercultural English teaching. Journal has been considered as a useful instrument to collect reflections, criticism, and self-analysis of participants (Anderson, 2012), and in this study, reflective journals were used to hear the voice of instructors and their experiences. So specifically, the instructors were encouraged to document their opinions and practice toward planning, implementation and evaluation of their intercultural teaching, and to keep tracking their experiences both within and outside the classroom.
Based on preliminary analysis of instructors’ reflective journal, four follow-up interviews were conducted after an intercultural teaching session, and two instructor focus groups were held at the end of the semester. Each interview lasted 40 to 60 minutes, and both focus group were an hour long. Questions of interviews and focus groups included: (1) to what extend did the instructors understand intercultural competence, and what did intercultural teaching mean in their English classrooms? (2) regarding pedagogical approaches, what types of design/techniques/activities did the instructors believe that could facilitate student learning in both language and intercultural competence, and how they applied them? (3) based on class observation, the instructors were asked to explain the rationale, teaching experiences, or anticipated and observed effects of particular approaches used in their classrooms. Informal interviews were also conducted remotely (by phone or WeChat apps) throughout the course for probing of the instructor responses, in order to gain better accuracy and deeper understanding.
Supplementary student data were collected based on initial analysis of instructor data to answer the third research question about student feedback, including three semi-structured interviews and two student focus groups, in order to understand students’ experiences under various teaching approaches. All interview and focus group audios were transcribed in a verbatim manner and sent back to participants for member checking, in order to maximize descriptive validity (Maxwell, 1992). All teaching documents and reflective journals were written in English, while instructor and student interviews and focus groups were conducted in both Chinese and English, in which participants could shift freely between the two languages. As all the researchers involved in this study are competent speakers and writers of both languages, all data were analysed in original languages to ensure minimum loss of meaning (Van Nes et al., 2010).
4 Data analysis
Using Teddlie and Tashakkori’s (2009) typology, this mixed analysis involved multiple analysis strands to inform each other and merged qualitative and quantitative data. Specifically, this study used transformation of qualitative data (e.g. reflective journal and interview transcripts) into numerical codes (e.g. frequencies counts of binary coding) to be analysed statistically.
The data analysis started with two phases of qualitative analyses. In the first phase, content analysis (Patton, 2003) was used to analyse instructor interview/focus group data, reflective journals, teaching documents and observation field notes at the macro level. The analysis procedures included open coding to label general teaching categories and characteristics of teaching approaches (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), selective coding to identify core categories and prominent features, and in this iterative process, themes were conceptualized, compared and validated (Huberman & Miles, 1994). Subsequently, data of individual instructor participants were subjected to a cross-case analysis. In such case analysis, structures of intercultural teaching of each instructor participant were depicted, and a case ordered matrix, wherein characteristics of individual instructor participant was displayed, assembled, and compared with themes generated in the first phase to determine the final themes. Double coding was used to verify inter-coder agreement (Huberman & Miles, 1994). Two of the researchers independently conducted the coding and constantly discussed discrepancies in thematic categories. Cohen’s Kappa coefficient was .86, which indicated very good agreement (Altman, 1991). In the expanded quantitative phase of data analysis, qualitative data were quantified. Specifically, qualitative themes were dichotomized to form an inter-case matrix (instructor participant X themes/subthemes matrix). Manifest effect size was obtained by calculating the frequency of statements under each theme from the inter-case matrix, then converting these frequencies to percentages (Onwuegbuzie, 2003). Descriptive analysis was performed for manifest effect sizes.
IV Results
Research question 1: Operational definition of intercultural English teaching
As indicated in the literature review, given the highly contextual nature and various connotations of intercultural competence, it is necessary to first find out how intercultural English teaching was perceived by instructor participants in practice. Based on the collected data of instructor interviews, focus groups and instructor reflective journals, the most prominent part of instructor conception was what to teach about intercultural competence, which was further defined as intercultural teaching objectives and content. Four themes framing this part of the result are intercultural skills, awareness, knowledge, emotions and experience. Data emerging from the interviews, focus groups and reflective journals related to culture and intercultural competence were transformed to frequencies and percentages using the quantification method described by Onwuegbuzie (2003). In other words, each theme and sub-theme relating to instructor perceptions was quantified. For example, if an instructor participant made a significant statement falling under a theme, a score of ‘1’ was given, otherwise a score of ‘0’ was given. Thus, frequencies of statements could form manifest effect size of each theme (quantified qualitative data to indicate prevalence rates of the codes; see Onwuegbuzie, 2003). Altogether 234 statements were coded under the theme of intercultural competence. Table 2 illustrates the themes, percentages and effect sizes of instructor perceptions.
Skills: In this study, 105 statements (44.87% of overall manifest effect size) from instructor participants related to the theme ‘skills’, indicating that intercultural skills were mostly emphasized. Instructors delineated, in various details, six different skills to be trained in English classrooms: the skills to understand, compare, analyse, make decisions, reflect, and to solve problems. An example is illustrated in Table 2.
Awareness: The instructor participants defined intercultural awareness from four perspectives: be able to challenge stereotypes, to adopt multiple perspectives, to conceptually understand intercultural awareness, and to be sensitive to cultural differences in values, beliefs and social norms. The total of statements coded under ‘awareness’ was 90 and it accounts for 38.46% of the overall coded statements.
Knowledge: There were significantly fewer instructor remarks on intercultural knowledge, and based on the explanations provided by the instructors, there might be two reasons: first, cultural knowledge, especially knowledge of the inner circle of English-speaking countries was considered as an integral part of their language instructions, and therefore not regarded as intercultural teaching (Instructor 5, 8). Second, basic factual knowledge of major English-speaking societies was supposed to be acquired by students outside the classroom (Instructor 1, 2), and therefore was given with much less attention. As Table 2 shows, only 28 (11.97%) statements were associated with the theme of ‘knowledge’.
Operative definition of intercultural teaching: Themes, manifest effect sizes, percentage and examples.
Moreover, among instructors with statements on ‘knowledge’, Instructor 3 and Instructor 9 have provided interesting comments on the connotation of intercultural knowledge. It was believed that intercultural knowledge should also include knowledge of cultural bias, stereotype, and ethnocentric perceptions; some other instructor participants (e.g. Instructor 2, 4, and 7) believed that theoretical knowledge about intercultural competence and intercultural models were also a required part of knowledge.
Student experience and emotions were mentioned by only two instructors including 11 statements, accounting for 4.7% of the overall effect size, yet it is agreed by the two coders as an important finding given the relatively scarce literature on emotional factors of intercultural teaching in practice. Even though it has been generally agreed that intercultural competence has affective, cognitive and behavior components, there was very little research in literature on teaching the affective component of intercultural competence. As explorers of intercultural English teaching in Chinese classrooms, some of the instructors have already paid attention to emotional experience of student in classrooms and started their exploration in this regard.
Research question 2: Characteristics and prevalence of intercultural pedagogical approaches
Characteristics of pedagogical approaches were examined from two levels: at the macro level of the qualitative analysis phase, the data were subjected to cross-case analyses (Huberman & Miles, 1994). Emergent themes were identified from teaching documents (teaching plan, syllabus, teaching PowerPoints), instructor interviews, focus groups and reflective journals. All of these data were divided and reduced to statements, openly coded to develop categories, and searched for themes and patterns to show a holistic conceptual structure of the data. Three meta themes emerged from the perspective of intercultural integration, teaching orientation and teaching structure, representing three different dimensions of pedagogical approaches adopted by the instructor participants. The dimension of intercultural integration examined the role of intercultural teaching in EFL language teaching, and how instructors combined the two goals of intercultural and language teaching. The dimensions of teaching orientation and teaching structure focused on the content and organization of intercultural teaching (for details of the meta themes, see Table 3).
Three meta themes of pedagogical approaches from mixed cross-case analysis.
At the micro level, the same array of data was analysed and displayed case by case (Huberman & Miles, 1994). That is, a profile matrix was constructed in which themes and subthemes were cross-tabulated with each instructor. With numeric description of instructors’ coded statements on different themes, their teaching style may be determined. More specific case descriptions are illustrated in the micro-level analysis of teaching styles below.
In addition to qualitative themes and quotations, two more analyses were conducted to further expand the qualitative data with a mixed analysis: the numeric occurrences of each theme and the level of consensus among the instructor participants on themes. It has been suggested by qualitative methodologists that when combined with qualitative quotations, the occurrence of a particular viewpoint should be counted to provide richer information, thereby providing a mixed data analysis (Kidd & Parshall, 2000; Onwuegbuzie & Teddlie, 2003). The use of simple descriptive counts of categories can not only expand the qualitative data, but also help emergent themes be placed in a more appropriate context. Regarding the level of consensus, it is a technique of mixed analysis recommended by Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2006) that, when describing and interpreting emergent themes, researchers should provide information about the extent to which participants appeared to reach a consensus underlying each category or theme to help validate any inferences made about the finding. Details are discussed and displayed in the following sections.
Meta theme 1: Intercultural integration
The first dimension of intercultural integration describes the way intercultural teaching was integrated into English language instruction. The different ways of integration were conceptualized as falling on a language material driven/intercultural topic driven continuum, and it indicates different strategies that the instructors adopted to deal with the relationship of English language and intercultural competence in the classroom. The two integration methods represent extremes on the continuum, but often in practice the instructors would blend these different approaches to different degrees. Themes of this dimension of intercultural integration are presented in Table 4, and sub-themes, descriptions and examples are shown in Table 5.
Themes, sub themes, frequencies and percentage of pedagogical approaches.
Meta theme of intercultural integration: Sub-themes, descriptions, and examples.
Three sub-themes emerged under the theme of language material driven:
Language teaching as intercultural teaching: The Instructors adopted the strategy of making full use of the materials they prepared for language teaching, and used the same material to teach intercultural competence by selecting the part that were relevant to cultures.
‘Kill two birds with one stone’: This sub-theme used a quotation from one of the instructor participants (Instructor 1) to describe class activities designed to simultaneously serve the purposes of language and intercultural teaching. The majority of the instructor participants were convinced that an ideal way of teaching intercultural competence in English courses was to use rich and authentic materials where language and intercultural teaching could be achieved at the same time.
Critical role of the instructor: Some instructor participants believed that intercultural teaching was dependent on the instructor’s intercultural competence and experience. The instructors need to play a critical role in detecting intercultural elements when preparing for the class; during class discussions, the instructors need to provide guidance, direct class discussions on intercultural topics, and quickly provide feedback as a method of formative assessment of student’s intercultural competence. Three instructor participants stated that it placed rather high requirements on instructors.
The theme of intercultural topic driven referred to a strategy of organizing the class. Almost opposite to the language material driven approach, the instructors adopted intercultural topic driven approaches organized teaching materials and activities around a selected intercultural topic. Sub-themes included:
Topic centered teaching design: Teaching plans under this sub-theme were mostly materials or class activities not included in textbooks, of which the instructors took the initiative to prepare particularly for intercultural teaching purposes. There were mainly three types of topics: up-to-date news topics that arouse heated discussion in media, most often controversial topics; cultural topics that were most relevant to students, such as application for graduate studies abroad, gap years, etc.; and topics that the instructors considered as profound or interesting, such as marriage, China’s second-child policy or female identities.
Multiple intercultural objectives: Topic driven approaches were often found to pair with multiple intercultural objectives in practice. The instructors who used topic oriented approaches usually designed their intercultural teaching as an independent component of the class, such as a 20-minute class activity or an after class project. In contrast to the language material driven approach which mostly fulfill one single intercultural objective (e.g. the skill of comparison or the cultural background knowledge of a new word), objectives of topic oriented would usually include more than one element of intercultural competence. For example, cultural research projects were designed to train multiple intercultural communicative skills, or to combined skills with knowledge on cultural differences and intercultural theories.
Intensive engagement of research: In addition to what was included in the textbook, the instructors also encouraged students to conduct research and to provide data-based opinions in class discussions. Two instructor participants stated that research projects were effective in helping students with intercultural skills and critical thinking (Instructor 2 and 10). Thus, the first meta-theme was associated with two dimensions that comprised altogether six sub-themes.
Meta theme 2: Teaching orientation
The second meta-theme that emerged from analysis was the orientation of intercultural teaching. As most instructor participants provided clear plans for their intercultural teaching objectives and content, the degree to which they elaborated different components of intercultural competence varied. The two emergent themes were intercultural skill oriented teaching and intercultural awareness oriented teaching. Some instructors tended to focus on training of explicit intercultural skills, such as relate, compare, analyse, interact, evaluate, or mediate (Byram, 1997), while other instructors concentrated on the affective aspect of intercultural competence, to enhance students’ attitude towards cultural differences and intercultural sensitivity. Themes of these two dimensions of teaching orientation are presented in Table 6. For the skill oriented dimension, it is worth noting that not only the instructors adopting this approach tended to give regular assessment in class, and applied more practical activities in training students’ intercultural communicative skills and language skills, they were also inclined to emphasize the importance of students’ home culture in class, and in this case, the Chinese culture. Three different rationales were solicited from instructor focus groups and interviews. First, some instructors tended to choose more examples in Chinese culture for comparison and contrast exercises, to use ‘student’s own cultural background as a resource for teaching’ (TF2); second, some instructors placed the emphasis on deepening students’ understanding of both foreign and local cultures, to use ‘other cultures as mirrors to better understand ourselves’ (TZ2). Finally, there were instructors who were more conscious of the ideological guidance in the teaching of host culture, promoting an accurate and appropriate way of representing Chinese culture to English speaking audience, or ‘telling good Chinese stories to the world’ (TI8).
Meta theme of teaching orientation: Sub-themes, descriptions, and examples.
Comparatively, as the name of the ‘awareness oriented’ theme suggests, the instructors adopting awareness oriented approaches specified various teaching procedures to develop students’ intercultural awareness, particularly emphasizing the significance of being tolerant to different worldviews, and open-mindedness to challenge one’s cultural assumptions. In addition, most instructor participants pointed out the importance of dealing with problems in real communication. Such approaches also often involved homework that required real contact with people from a different culture, or engagement with foreign cultures in campus activities. Please see more detailed descriptions and examples of sub-themes under this dimension in Table 6.
Meta theme 3: Teaching structure
The third meta-theme was the level of teaching structure. It indicated whether an instructor tended to be more structured in class organizations, or to be rather exploratory. Themes of these two dimensions are presented in Table 7. Emerged sub-themes focused in the areas of:
Development of instructive tools and deliberate practice: These sub-themes refer to the instructors developing certain instructive tools (e.g. class activities, procedures, or assessment tools) based on one or two intercultural objectives, and implementing them repeatedly in class throughout the course.
Structured pedagogy: This sub-theme refers to teaching approaches generated from pedagogical theories, with a preset teaching sequence. When applying such designs in class, the instructors paid more attention to the logic of the teaching sequence, that is, whether these class activities were organized in the format as designed, and the instructors often provided detailed guidelines or sample answers for students.
Conceptional discussion: A prominent characteristic of structured teaching approaches is that the instructors discussed intercultural concepts, theories, or strategies of intercultural competence in class, even though it was not the content of an English class. It was believed by most instructors adopting a structured approach that definitions of intercultural concepts or explanations of intercultural theories could greatly help student better understand the purposes of intercultural class activities or instructor expectations.
Meta theme of teaching structure: Sub-themes, descriptions and examples.
As for the theme of exploratory teaching, the following sub-themes emerged in analysis:
Student centered teaching: In this sub-theme, student experiences and student choices were valued in class discussions, and teaching was designed to explore different possibilities of problem solving, or to develop independent thinking of students. Thus, the instructors seldom provided their own opinions or sample answers.
Case analysis and problem solving: The instructors would introduce cases of intercultural conflicts or select relatively complex social issues in class, and invite student to solve communication problems in such cases.
Micro-level analysis of teaching styles
Apart from the analysis on the macro level, using correspondence analysis recommended by Onwuegbuzie et al. (2010), on the micro level of analysis, the instructor participants can also be mapped out on a continuum of teaching styles. Figures 2, 3 and 4 illustrate preferences of teaching styles of the three meta-themes respectively.
Teaching styles: Intercultural integration and manifest effect sizes.
Teaching styles: Teaching orientation and manifest effect sizes.
Teaching styles: Teaching structure and manifest effect sizes.
As it is shown in Figure 2 on the meta theme of intercultural integration styles, six instructors (i.e. Instructor 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8) were more oriented toward language material driven approaches, especially for Instructor 1 and 6, who showed a ratio of 16:4 and 18:5 on a scale of language material driven vs. intercultural topic driven approaches. The remaining four instructors (i.e. Instructor 2, 5, 9, and 10) were more oriented toward intercultural topic driven approaches, especially for Instructor 9 and 10, who showed 15:0 and 9:1 on intercultural topic driven vs. language material driven approaches. It is also worth noting that Instructor 4 and 8 were recorded using language material driven approaches only, whereas Instructor 9 was recorded applying solely intercultural topic driven approaches.
Furthermore, Figure 3 depicted the visual plot of the instructors and their teaching orientations respectively. As indicated in Figure 3, four instructors (i.e. Instructor 2, 5, 8, and 10) adopted more skill oriented approaches, especially for Instructor 2 and Instructor 5, who have demonstrated a ratio of 42:12 and 9:1 on skill oriented vs. awareness orientated teaching approaches. The remaining five instructors (i.e. Instructor 1, 3, 6, 7, and 9) employed more awareness orientated approaches, especially for Instructor 3 and Instructor 6 who showed 32:11 and 20:4 on awareness orientated vs. skill oriented teaching approaches. Instructor 4 kept a balanced ratio on awareness orientated and skill oriented approaches.
Finally, Figure 4 illustrates the correspondence analysis plot situating the ten instructor participants on the dimension of teaching structure. Five instructors (i.e. Instructor 1, 3, 5, 6, and 8) adopted more structured approaches, especially for Instructor1, Instructor 3 and Instructor 6 showing a ratio of 24:3, 31:4 and 18:0 on structured vs. exploratory approaches. The remaining five instructors (i.e. Instructor 2, 4, 7, 9, and 10) employed more exploratory approaches, especially for Instructor 2 and Instructor 4 showing 19:10 and 15:3 on exploratory vs. structured approaches. Instructor 6 and Instructor 8 were recorded using only structured approaches. Additionally, instructor plots of all meta-theme dimensions are summarized in Table 8.
Teaching styles in three meta-themes.
Notes. * comparatively high ratio in difference of orientations (the high ratio is only marked for descriptive purposes and does not have statistical significance). – equal frequencies on both styles (skill oriented and awareness oriented).
To provide a more detailed case study of instructor participants’ teaching characteristics, instructor 2 and 6 were selected as examples to illustrate the differences in teaching styles. Instructor 2 and 6 taught different classes of the same course, and they happened to be the two instructor participants who had the longest and shortest years of experiences in teaching. A close analysis on the reflective journals, teaching plans and class observation notes of these two instructors also suggest distinctive differences in all three teaching dimensions (as shown in meta-themes and in Table 8).
Instructor 6 was the youngest of all participants who had recently graduated from an American university with her PhD degree in education. She has studied and researched intercultural teaching for two years, and was familiar with relevant theories. She particularly mentioned Byram’s intercultural competence model as the theoretical framework for her instructional design. In her second round of teaching the reading and oral English classes, she aimed at reforming traditional language teaching content and activities and make them more intercultural. For example, instructor 6 favored the activity of retelling and practiced it in both of her oral and reading classes:
Retelling was classic in language teaching. It helps to develop student’s vocabulary, to use words and expressions we learned in the text; I also use retelling as a way to formatively assess their comprehension of the text. This semester combined role plays in retelling practice. Like in this unit, I asked students to retell part of the text from the roles of American parents, Chinese hotel employees and American children. It was a design to foster their intercultural awareness by implicitly require them make cultural comparisons.
Instructor 6 preferred to provide more opportunities in class to nurture qualities such as cultural sensitivity and tolerance. ‘The effect is not as apparent as drills of skills, but it’s more important and have larger impact on the growth of students.’ Furthermore, in terms of implementation of her intercultural teaching framework, which consists of background reading, in class discussions, role plays and reflective writing, Instructor 6 insisted repeating the structure of in every unit following the same structure for ‘the training of a culturally sensitive pattern in thinking’ (TI6).
Comparatively, instructor 2 was the most senior participant who received all her degrees in mainland China and had been teaching English for over two decades. In her classes, a variety of social topics were introduced, ranging from surface or deep culture phenomenon, personal development, to social and educational topics, such as western fast food chains’ impact on traditional Chinese cuisine, gaining and losing face in Chinese classrooms, advantages and disadvantages of procrastination, Edward Snowden and whistle blowers, etc. Her intercultural teaching was often organized around the topic or selected cases, with no structured design for each unit. Intercultural skills such as critical analysis was explicitly explained in instructions, practiced frequently and demonstrated by the instructor. ‘You need to guide them (students) to see through the phenomena to perceive the essence . . . deep down, what kind of values or world views are at play’ (TT2). She used an example of her class discussion of western fast food chains’ impact on traditional Chinese cuisine:
It’s already satisfying for students to think of western fast food enriching or endangering the traditional Chinese cuisine, but that’s far from enough. Some talked about cultural invasion . . . still on the surface. I asked them to start by thinking about the term ‘western’, what are considered western or have they used American culture to represent western cultures? I also introduced the concept of a quick fixed society. Food largely reflects a lifestyle . . . (TI2)
In summary, Instructor 2 and 6 showed distinctively different styles in the integration of intercultural competence and language instructions, teaching orientations and structure, but both have managed to develop teaching approaches compatible to their own styles that allow explorations of meaning in a specific social or cultural context.
Research question 3: Student feedback
The student sample was selected from the classes taught by Instructor 2 and Instructor 6. Therefore, it is believed that a comparison of student feedback for the instructors with different teaching styles could better inform the implementation of their intercultural English teaching approaches.
Using a qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) of student reflective journals and focus groups, the result reveals that the students appreciated certain approaches of intercultural teaching more than others, but struggled with some components of the teaching and activities.
In student feedback analysis, meta-themes generated from instructor data analysis were used as a framework for coding. Coders paid special attention to students’ responses to the six sub-themes of teaching approaches (i.e. language material driven, intercultural topic driven, skill oriented, awareness oriented, structured and exploratory teaching), and identified and analysed relevant texts in student data.
a Student experiences on integration of language and intercultural objectives
All student participants of focus groups expressed that it was a big change to take this intercultural English class compared with conventional English classes they took in previous freshmen year. Participants mentioned increased work load in learning, such as longer studying time and more tasks to accomplish in and after class, especially the time they spent on ‘thinking about the topics (for peer discussions or research projects’ (SL2). One of the students explained the change: ‘I wondered why this English class was so, so different from before . . . I would start doing a project two weeks before the deadline, because I need to do some research, prepare materials for presentations . . . it takes a lot longer than before’ (SW1).
Student focus groups and reflective journals data showed that students from an intercultural topic driven class welcomed the in-depth topics in class discussion, and compared it to traditional English skill drilling topics they had last year:
It is a great leap . . . because last semester we talked about real ordinary topics (laughing) like your favorite idol or your most impressive experience, but now we had so profound topics, such as legalization of policies, gender equality, etc. We can have a decent debate in class, because these are social issues that worth a discussion. But of course, like Angela (another student participant) said, we are not familiar with these topics at all. So it was really intense . . . I was so nervous, not only about the language, but also about my own thinking. (SZ2)
b Teaching orientations and student progress
Even though among the instructors, there are clear preferences in teaching orientation towards either intercultural skills or awareness, there is little evidence found in student feedback about the impact of such difference. Student data from both classes taught by the instructors with different teaching orientations (skill oriented and awareness oriented) provided evidence for students’ self-reported improvement of both intercultural skills and awareness. Nearly one fourth of student participants indicated in their reflective journals that the intercultural part of the class had enhanced their competence comprehensively, including language abilities, intercultural skills and awareness. For example, student learned not only how to consciously compare cultural differences, but also how to view languages in a different perspective:
What impressed me most is the different accents showed in class from different countries. It increased my understanding in comparing these languages in different systems. Besides, the discussion on language and accent made me reflect on my views of learning and using a language, and how to improve my language skills. It meant a lot.
Students also reported learning to summarize the pattern of assigned readings, as well as to challenge some of their cultural assumptions:
I also learned that stories in the readings follow a certain pattern. In some sense it’s very true because the pattern applies to many famous creations. But in my opinion, in this story although almost all heroes face the temporary success and the ordeal part, a mentor doesn’t necessary exist or they might not return to their previous life. So the pattern does not generalize.
In addition, structured teaching approaches, especially regular use of reflective journals (biweekly journal on average) were praised by 20 students, mainly for its summarizing function: ‘first of all, it’s not difficult, I can finish quickly, second, it can help me truly find out what I have learned, or whether I really understand it or not’ (SS1). Other students viewed regular activities as a way to train them to gain confidence, or as a channel to express themselves:
It may be a little embarrassing to speak in front of others, but when you know what the teacher is going to do in class (referring to the assignment of writing reflective journal regularly), and when you prepare for it, I am more confident. It is giving me a chance to say what I think, and I do see my improvement. I actually feel proud. (SZ2)
c Difficulties
Analysis of student feedback also identified elements in intercultural teaching where students most struggled. All interviewed students agreed that the learning of intercultural competence placed a high requirement on their oral English, insights and thinking. ‘The common problem is that I’ve never thought about these things (cultural topics) before. So when you ask my opinion, it will be superficial, and when I do have an opinion, I don’t know how to say it in English’ (SL1).
Students were also concerned about their lack of competence in cultural research. It was shared in the focus group that:
When we go online, we use similar search engines, and find very similar materials. So it depends on how you interpret these materials. But our teachers and some students like Susan (one of the students) can find a lot of more useful materials. I don’t know if they use different search engines or channels, but most of us find very similar things.
There are also components in teaching of intercultural skills that could be misleading to students. For example, some students simplified the skill of comparison as the bigger difference, the better:
I find the intercultural skill part most interesting . . . (when asked to provide example of intercultural skills) . . . Like in our comprehensive reading, our teacher introduced the symbolic meaning of animals in different countries, it becomes impressive because the intercultural part always has very sharp contrast. (SX1)
In other cases, instructor’s highlight of Chinese cultures was misinterpreted by some students:
It is like a characteristic of our class, the instructor encouraged us to use examples of China. I used an example of Korea, but teacher said it was not suitable to the local circumstances, and asked me to find something about China. Maybe it is because we know things in our own country better? (SS2)
Instructor’s suggestions for students to use something more familiar to them to render better quality of learning product was misunderstood as using supporting materials of a single culture. Meanwhile, such mismatch also reflected instructor’s relatively fixed perspective on cultural concepts and lack of flexibility in implementation.
Other sub-themes outside of the current analysis framework also emerged from the student interviews and reflective journals, but overall, 90.2% of the transcribed statements of student feedback were positive, which is consistent with the instructors’ own anticipation.
V Discussion
1 Legitimation of findings
Onwuegbuzie and Johnson (2006) stressed the importance of legitimation in mixed methods research and identified nine legitimation types, and legitimation types help the mixed researcher both to assess and optimize ‘criteria of quality for both methodology and inference’ (Greene, 2006, p. 93). This study also considered the nine threats to legitimacy in design, method and inferences, and the nine types of legitimation were used in the present study to support the trustworthiness of the method and design as well as the inferences made from the results. Table 9 illustrated the nine legitimation and an explanation of how they were used in the current study to enhance research rigor.
Mixed methods legitimation and approaches of enhancement.
2 Operational definition
This study presented the instructor participants’ understandings on intercultural English teaching, including their operational definition and instructional design of intercultural teaching, and compared and contrasted their teaching approaches. The results on operational definitions of intercultural English teaching revealed an understanding of intercultural competence that emphasized intercultural awareness, skills, and knowledge, which mostly followed the theoretical model of Byram (1997). Instructors found compositional models ‘easier to understand’ (TF6), and it is ‘more convenient to design teaching activities based on one of the components’ (TI8 and TI9). Nevertheless, defining intercultural teaching adopting a single model or understanding intercultural competence merely from a compositional perspective may have the potential risk of neglecting the dynamic interaction of teaching interculturality (Byram, 1997). Instead of engaging students in continued exploration of the meaning in cultural details, there were instances where instructors tried to assess students’ understanding of culture against their own. Student feedback have also revealed some instructor’s modernist concepts of culture(Kramsch, 2013), where culture was viewed as membership of a national community, the focus was on the typical, or sometimes even stereotypical, behaviors of foreign cultures, or some instructors held the notions of the ‘good’ or ‘correct’ way of describing the Chinese national cultures, rather than being open to negotiations of different understanding.
3 Characteristics of teaching approaches
Additionally, the current study documented six different intercultural English pedagogical styles from three dimensions, namely intercultural integration (with language teaching), teaching orientation (intercultural skill or awareness oriented teaching), and teaching structure (structured or exploratory teaching).
The meta theme of intercultural integration revealed the methods adopted to incorporate intercultural teaching into language teaching. Both approaches showed guided learning of deep culture in specific social or cultural contexts. The results indicated that most instructors were conscious of the risk of oversimplification of national cultures or sub-cultures. Sufficient evidence was found from teaching plans and student feedback to show that teaching of cultures had gone beyond the 4 Fs (food, fashion, festivals, and folklore) (Banks, 2002), and social values and cultural practices were frequently discussed in class activities.
Moreover, the second meta theme of teaching orientation summarized the focus of intercultural teaching. Compared to skill oriented teaching designs, instructors who adopted awareness oriented approaches seemed to pay more attention to cognitive and affective dimensions of learning. For example, awareness oriented instructors tended to stress relationality of students’ own experiences and otherness in the target language cultures across multiple and decentered perspectives (Kramsch, 2013). They also tended to emphasize less on assessment of language use against a standardized or native speaker’s norms. Under such teaching approaches, the use of English language displayed more features of lingua franca communication.
Lastly, the meta-theme of teaching structure served as an indicator for organization of class activities. Either with pre-designed instructional procedures (structured approach) or practical case analysis (exploratory approach), the purpose was to build a context for cultural learning, and to create rich opportunities for perspective-taking from multiple point of views. Instructors made use of a variety of existing methods of intercultural teaching in literature in their classroom, such as role play, critical literary analysis, portfolio, and developed instructional and assessment tools by themselves. Some instructors even went beyond the classroom to use summer school courses in other cities or arrangement of activities with international students to increase intercultural encounters for their students. What needs to be noted is that the teaching approaches documented in this study not only applied the existing methods of intercultural teaching, but also combined them in an organized way with explicit teaching objectives, strategies and procedures, and therefore demonstrated a continuum of intercultural teaching practices emerged in the EFL classrooms.
VI Conclusions
The present study was unique in at least three ways. First, intercultural teaching is still at a preliminary stage in Chinese higher education, and this research appears to be one of the few studies that documented instructors’ perceptions of intercultural teaching and teaching approaches in practice. Second, this study appears to be one of the in which intercultural English teaching approaches were compared, summarized in multiple dimensions and crossed checked with student feedback. Third, this is one of very few studies in the area of intercultural English teaching, to use mixed research techniques extensively in an integrative way.
This study explored the conception and practice of intercultural English teaching and would allow educators and researchers to better understand how instructors perceive and practice intercultural teaching in English classrooms. Quite a number of innovations were found in teaching material and instructional design, and instructor participants also demonstrated various teaching styles. It may provide deeper insights into the questions of what to teach and how to teach intercultural competence in English classrooms, and presented practical examples of intercultural teaching designs and approaches for not only EFL language education, but also teacher training and development. Of course, given the limited scope of the cases and the study’s focus on teaching approaches, future studies are needed to further explore the relationships between intercultural teaching styles and instructor backgrounds, and to evaluate the effectiveness of these documented teaching approaches.
