Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Revisited

Michael Byram

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781800410268
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Enseignement des arts du langage

This revised edition of Michael Byram's classic 1997 book updates the text in light of both recent research and critiques and commentaries on the 1st edition. Beginning from the premise that foreign and second language teaching should prepare learners to use a language with fluency and accuracy, and also to speak with people who have different cultural identities, social values and behaviours, the book is an invaluable guide for teachers and curriculum developers, taking them from a definition of Intercultural Communicative Competence through planning for teaching to assessment. This edition refines the definitions of the five 'savoirs' of intercultural competence, and includes new sections on issues such as moral relativism and human rights, mediation, intercultural citizenship and teachers' ethical responsibilities.

1Defining and Describing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Introduction

The assessment of an individual’s ability to communicate and interact across cultural boundaries with people of other social groups is facilitated by a detailed description of the process involved and definition of what is expected of the individual. It is an advantage to the assessor but also to both teacher and learner. All three can benefit from clarity and transparency (Council of Europe, 1993: 5) and agree upon the aims and purposes of the teaching, learning and assessment processes in which they are involved. It is important to remember, too, that their aims and purposes are determined in part by the societal contexts in which they find ­themselves – national, international and intranational – and in part by the preoccupations of institutions, which in turn reflect those of the societies in which they function.

In this first chapter I shall begin to describe and define intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as it relates to foreign language teaching (FLT). This will involve building up a view of ICC from a base in existing FLT theory, and adding to it insights from other disciplines, in order to offer a model of ICC capable of informing discussion of teaching and assessment by FLT professionals. I shall, however, also consider how that model relates to some specific contexts, to illustrate the general need always to define models of ICC according to the requirements of the situations in which learners find themselves.1

Communicating Across Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries and Frontiers 2

Communicative competence

For linguists and language teachers the term ‘competence’ is dominated by its use by Chomsky and Hymes, for both of whom competence is the idealised language ability of a speaker on the basis of which they perform language in a real world in real time, with all the constraints that this implies. This account of competence focuses on linguistic capabilities but the term has been more widely used in education to refer to other capabilities taught and learnt in other disciplines (Fleming, 2009). In the model of ICC developed here, language competence is one aspect complemented by others and a more encompassing definition is required. The following is useful for my purposes here3:

[competence is] the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and/or understanding in order to respond appropriately and effectively to the demands, challenges and opportunities that are presented by a given type of context. (Council of Europe, 2018b: 32)

The concept ‘communicative competence’ was developed in the Anglophone world by Hymes’ critique of Chomsky and in the Germanophone literature by Habermas.4 Hymes argued that linguists wishing to understand first language acquisition need to pay attention to the way in which not only grammatical competence but also the ability to use language appropriately is acquired. He thus put emphasis on sociolinguistic competence and this concept was fundamental to the development of communicative language teaching. Then Hymes’ description of first language acquisition and communication among native speakers was transferred into the description of the aims and objectives of foreign language teaching and learning. I shall argue later that this transfer is misleading because it implicitly suggests that foreign language learners should model themselves on first language speakers, ignoring the significance of the social identities and cultural competence of the learner in any intercultural interaction. In fact, Hymes’ argument ought to lead to a greater awareness of the relationship between linguistic and sociocultural competence, since he described linguistic competence as just one kind of cultural competence:

From a finite experience of speech acts and their interdependence with sociocultural features, (children) develop a general theory of speaking appropriate in their community which they employ, like other forms of tacit cultural knowledge (competence), in conducting and interpreting social life. (…).

From a communicative standpoint, judgements of appropriateness may not be assigned to different spheres, as between the linguistic and the cultural; certainly the spheres of the two will interact. (Hymes, 1972: 279 and 286, emphasis added)

However, in the following decade, in his major review of language teaching, Stern argued that the sociolinguistic might have developed but that the sociocultural had not:

As a generalisation, one can say that language teaching theory is fast acquiring a sociolinguistic component but still lacks a well-defined socio-cultural emphasis. (Stern, 1983: 246)

This was the case in the 1980s and into the 1990s. For example, even in the work of the Council of Europe, the sociocultural component was not dealt with as thoroughly as the sociolinguistic (van Ek, 1986) until a new version of the Threshold Level was produced (van Ek & Trim, 1991) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment then introduced a more nuanced vision (Council of Europe, 2001).

The reasons for this diversion from cultural knowledge/competence are not clear but Roberts et al. (2001: 25–26) argued that the link with the cultural sphere was lost because, despite the origins in Hymes and ethnography, language teaching has been influenced above all by speech act theory and discourse analysis, where the linguistic predominates.

Hymes was not writing for the FLT profession and did not pay specific attention to cross-cultural communication; he was concerned to analyse social interaction and communication within a social group using one language. The interpretation of the concept for FLT was undertaken by others, in North America by Canale and Swain (1980) and in Europe by van Ek (1986), working independently of each other. The former developed their work from Hymes and others. van Ek makes no explicit reference to either Hymes or Habermas, but presented his work as part of a developing project under the auspices of the Council of Europe; in fact, van Ek refers to ‘communicative ability’. The work of Canale and Swain and van Ek and the Council of Europe team had much in common and could be analysed comparatively.5 Here I take van Ek’s work as a starting point, partly because it is more detailed and partly because it was the origin of the model I shall present later.6

van Ek (1986: 33) presents what he calls ‘a framework for comprehensive foreign language learning objectives’, which is explicitly produced in the context of his view of how FLT must be justified through its contribution to learners’ general education. He emphasises that FLT is not just concerned with training in communication skills but also with the personal and social development of the learner as an individual. It is worth quoting him as he explains the purposes of the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Projects, for it is as powerful in the 21st century as it was in 1986:

Our educational aim is to give our pupils the fullest possible scope for fulfilling their potential as unique individuals in a society which is, ultimately, of their own making.7 (van Ek, 1986: 12)

He argues that, in the contemporary world, the presence of subjects in a curriculum can only be justified by their contribution to these general educational aims, and that in a period of increasing internationalisation:

Next to the community of those we regularly associate with in our daily lives, and next to the recognition of our ‘national’ community, we are developing a sense of belonging to, and functioning in, even larger communities. (van Ek, 1986: 12)

It is worth noting, too, that he puts quotation marks around ‘national’ as a means of problematising the concept of national community without digressing to analyse it in depth.

His framework includes reference to ‘social competence’, ‘the promotion of autonomy’ and the ‘development of social responsibility’ which are perhaps inherent in the original discussions of communicative competence but certainly not central and explicit. Nor are they part of the interpretation of communicative competence undertaken by Canale and Swain. Yet, as I suggested earlier, the societal and institutional context in which ICC is taught cannot be ignored, nor can the demands made on FL teachers by the society in which they work. I shall follow van Ek in framing the discussion within a general educational context as this has always been for me a crucial matter.

There is no doubt, however, that the definition of communicative competence and ICC is made more complex by this contextualisation, as are the issues of assessment. For example, the assessment of autonomy or social responsibility might not only be technically complex but also involve significant ethical issues, concerning the right of an institution and its members to make judgements about an individual’s degree of social responsibility. van Ek was not concerned with assessment – or ­methodology – but only with objectives and content. It may ultimately be appropriate to assess only part of what we define as ICC.

van Ek’s (1986: 35) model of ‘communicative ability’ comprises six ‘competences’, together with autonomy and social responsibility. He emphasises that these are not discrete elements, but that they are different aspects of one concept (van Ek, 1986: 36). At any point in analysis, one aspect will be in focus but others, and their relationship to that aspect, will also be in view. This is an important and positive dimension of his approach. On the other hand, there are still omissions and also a tendency to posit the native speaker communicating with other native speakers as the underlying phenomenon which the model has to describe, a tendency to retain the native speaker as a model for the learner, which I shall argue against later. The problem would be rendered even more complex if the native-speaker model were retained for purposes of assessment too.

Despite these reservations, the model of six competences is a useful starting point and can be summarised as follows:

•linguistic competence: the ability to produce and interpret meaningful utterances which are formed in accordance with the rules of the language concerned and bear their conventional meaning (…) that meaning which native speakers would normally attach to an utterance when used in isolation (van Ek, 1986: 39);

•sociolinguistic competence: the awareness of ways in which the choice of language forms (…) is determined by such conditions as setting, relationship between communication partners, communicative intention, etc., etc. (…...