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Addressing the intercultural via task-

based language teaching: possibility or

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92601, Symonds Street, Auckland , 1150 , New Zealand

Published online: 31 Jan 2012.

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Addressing the intercultural via task-based language teaching: possibilityor problem?

Martin East*

Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street,Auckland 1150, New Zealand

A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teachingis a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated asan addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This

article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfullyaddress the intercultural dimension. Using findings that emerge from a series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practitioners’ current understandingsof cultural knowledge, and how these understandings influence their practices. Itidentifies strengths and weaknesses and considers the steps that may be necessaryif TBLT is to be a more successful mediator of the intercultural dimension.

Un probleme frequent avec les approches communicatives pour enseigner leslangues etrangeres est la negligence de la dimension interculturelle. La con-naissance culturelle est souvent traitee comme un supplement contenantl’enseignement de faits sur le pays en question. Dans cet article je presentel’approche actionelle et j’examine si cette methode peut adresser avec succes ladimension interculturelle. J’utilise quelques informations recoltees au coursd’entrevues pour analyser la facon dont les adeptes comprennent la connaissanceculturelle, et comment cette comprehension influence leur enseignement. J’etudieles opportunites et les problemes et j’identifie le fondamental pour l’imple-mentation de la dimension culturelle au sein de l’approche actionelle.

Keywords: foreign language education; proficiency; intercultural competence;teaching approaches

Introduction

In many foreign language (FL) teaching and learning programmes worldwide, a

primary goal is to develop learners’ proficiency in communicating successfully with

first language (L1) speakers of the target language. Implicit in the notion of

communicative proficiency is the ability to interact appropriately with L1 speakers,

that is, to understand and negotiate both linguistic and cultural differences.

However, a frequent weakness of so-called ‘communicative approaches’ has been

their neglect of the intercultural dimension of language learning. That is, although

Brown (1994), for example, argues that ‘[a] language is a part of a culture and a culture

is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate

the two without losing the significance of either language or culture’ (p. 165), in

practice language and culture are often separated in the FL classroom, and culture

*Email: [email protected]

Language and Intercultural Communication

Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2012, 56 73

ISSN 1470-8477 print/ISSN 1747-759X online

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becomes little more than an addendum which focuses on ‘learning facts about the

target country’.

Brown’s (1994) perspective suggests, however, that language is a primary medium

through which culture is expressed, such that navigating cultural differences requires

more than the accumulation of facts: it requires competence in negotiating

differences appropriately using language, or relating effectively to ‘otherness’

(Byram, 1997; Zarate, 1993). This necessitates, in addition to selecting contextually

appropriate language, a realisation that relating to otherness demands critical

reflection on what differences in understandings of what is ‘appropriate’ mean in

practice for all interlocutors in the interaction, both linguistically and behaviourally.

This article explores how task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a distinct

realisation of communicative language teaching (CLT) might address the inter-

cultural dimension. This issue is explored from the perspective of New Zealand,

where the introduction of a new curriculum for languages has placed equal emphasis

on language knowledge and cultural knowledge. Using evidence that emerges from a

series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practitioners’ current under-standings of cultural knowledge, and how these understandings influence their

classroom practices, with a view to considering whether TBLT can enhance FL

learners’ ability to relate to otherness.1

Communicative approaches to FL teaching

CLT ‘began life in the late 1960s as an alternative to ‘‘structural’’ and ‘‘grammar

translation’’ models of teaching’ and ‘rapidly became an axiom of language teaching

methodology’ (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 10). In parallel with this pedagogical

development, a range of theoretical frameworks of communicative competence

began to be articulated (such as Bachman, 1990; Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain,

1980). From both theoretical and practical perspectives, therefore, there has been a

distinct move in FL pedagogy towards a communicative orientation that has ‘focused

attention on learners who were learning languages because they needed to use them

in an ever-shrinking world’ (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 11, emphasis in original).

CLT itself may be regarded as a broad and overarching construct which is

realised in FL classrooms in a variety of ways (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). TBLT is

one such realisation which ‘is being promoted in many countries around the globe

as a potentially very powerful language pedagogy’ (Van den Branden, Bygate, &

Norris, 2009, p. 1).

The potential power of TBLT is that it has been seen as a means of overcoming

two contrasting shortcomings within CLT: so-called ‘strong’ CLT that emphasised

communication but negated any place for grammar teaching, thereby hindering

learners’ adequate development of grammatical competence; and so-called ‘weak’

CLT that drew on communicative activities as a kind of ‘add-on’ within a more

grammar-focused pedagogy, resulting in lessons that were often perceived as dry and

irrelevant (Long, 2000).

On the one hand, and in common with strong CLT, a primary emphasis of TBLT

is communicative interaction.2 That is, ‘learners learn to communicate by commu-

nicating’ (Nunan, 2004, p. 8) such that ‘the most effective way to teach a language isby engaging learners in real language use in the classroom’ via ‘tasks . . . which

require learners to use language for themselves’ (Willis & Willis, 2007, p. 1).

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On the other hand, unlike strong CLT, TBLT does not neglect the importance of

developing learners’ grammatical competence. Unlike weak CLT, however, where

grammar is foregrounded in pedagogical practice, this may be done, for example, via

post-task focus on grammatical form (Long, 1991, 2000) or corrective feedback

during negotiation of meaning in conversational interaction (Long, 1996; Swain,

1995, 2007).

TBLT therefore offers a potential reconciliation of the perceived weaknesses of

strong and weak CLT. However, negotiation of meaning is often interpreted in

linguistic terms. Our understanding of meaning negotiation must arguably move

beyond the purely linguistic to include the intercultural (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002;

Scarino & Crichton, 2007). If, as Liddicoat and Crozet (2000) argue, communicative

competence is ‘now being redefined in terms of cross-cultural understanding,

intercultural and critical communicative competence’ (p. 3, my emphasis), the

challenge for communicative competence, in theory and in practice, is to include an

intercultural dimension (that is, navigation between the cultures represented in the

interaction). Scarino and Crichton (2007) assert nonetheless that ‘[c]urrentapproaches in languages education, such as communicative language teaching or

task-based language teaching , do not adequately address this challenge’ (p. 3, my

emphasis).

This apparent lack is perhaps a reflection of Adams and Newton’s (2009)

assertion that TBLT and intercultural education are ‘two quite distinct fields of

research and scholarship within the field of applied linguistics’ (p. 13). Although it

would appear that TBLT can address the linguistic limitations of strong and weak

CLT, its contribution to the intercultural dimension of communicative proficiency is

less obvious.

Interculturality: the missing dimension of TBLT?

There are perhaps two reasons why the challenge for FL teaching and learning to be

intercultural might not be perceived as relevant to TBLT. First, the development of

‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL classroom has traditionally often been interpreted as

the teaching of ‘a series of selected facts, customs and traditions learners need to

understand and appreciate in order to become ‘‘culturally competent’’’ (Flinders

Humanities Research Centre, 2005, p. 3). In practice, therefore, teachers’ attempts to

help their students to ‘be intercultural’ and ‘relate to otherness’ are often focused on

developing students’ extrinsic knowledge of facts about the target culture (Aleksan-

drowicz-Pedich, Draghicescu, Issaiss, & Sabec, 2003), an approach that may be

labelled ‘culture as artefact’ and ‘culture as nationality’ (Sehlaoui, 2001). Although

this may be a useful and enjoyable starting point for students, when cultural

knowledge is conceptualised as a separate component of the FL learning experience,

it becomes something that can be treated as distinct from, and an adjunct to,

developing learners’ communicative proficiency. However, such an approach does

not help FL learners to encounter the ‘other’ in interaction and thereby to experience

what it means to relate to otherness.

If a closer link is conceded between culture and language, this raises the second

reason why addressing the intercultural might not be seen as necessary in TBLT. The

negotiation of meaning in intercultural interactions may be interpreted as astraightforward matter of selecting situationally appropriate language. This profi-

ciency is a crucial dimension of sociolinguistic competence (Canale & Swain, 1980) or

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pragmatic competence (Bachman, 1990), and is therefore already a component of

both communicative competence (traditionally understood) and the meaning

negotiation that may take place in the process of task completion. In this case the

intercultural dimension does not require specific attention over and above language

learning.

Byram (1997) suggests, however, that truly intercultural communicative compe-

tence, or ICC, requires more than just factual knowledge and appropriate language

use. Byram asserts that knowledge of the language that is appropriate in different

contexts is arguably ‘the acquisition of particular formulae’. Using linguistic

formulae does not adequately take into account that language is a ‘visible symptom

of a more complex phenomenon: the differences in beliefs, behaviours and meanings

through which people interact with each other’ (p. 3).

Byram (1997) presents a framework for ICC in terms of the development of

several savoirs (knowledges). Within Byram’s framework, explicit knowledge of facts

about the target culture has an important place (savoir apprendre), as does realising

this knowledge in interaction (savoir faire). Beyond these, savoir etre requires thewillingness of learners to step outside themselves, to recognise that their own

‘culture’ (that is, their own beliefs, values, practices and ways of doing things) may be

very different to the target culture. Savoir etre creates the space to interpret culture

from the perspective of the learners (‘us’) and the target interlocutors (‘others’) in a

way that facilitates what East (2008) describes as ‘us others reciprocity’.

Furthermore, as Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman (2004) argue, who we are in

relation to others is socially constructed (that is, we identify ourselves as ‘us’ in

relation to the ‘other’ based on particular implicit ‘agreements’ about, for example,

what is appropriate or acceptable behaviour). An appreciation of what this means for

relating to L1 target language speakers requires ‘a critical stance towards our taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world (including ourselves)’ (Burr, 1996, cited

in Holliday et al., 2004, p. 138).

Such a critical positioning requires ‘critical cultural awareness’ (Guilherme, 2002),

or savoir s’engager, which encourages FL learners to ‘reflect critically on the values,

beliefs, and behaviors of their own society . . . through a comparative study of other

societies’ (Byram, 2009, p. 323). This will include comparison and contrast between

cultures, and the space to explore the feelings evoked by the encounter with the

‘other’.

Another way of conceptualising this space of exploration is as a place of

‘thirdness’ (Kramsch, 1999), that is, a space between learners’ own culture (C1) and

the target culture (C2) in which learners can create their own understandings. Lo

Bianco, Liddicoat, and Crozet’s (1999) ‘third place’ concept has a similar aim to

savoir etre/savoir s’engager or ‘thirdness’. It is the standpoint required of inter-

locutors if successful intercultural communication is to take place. The third place is

a place of accommodation between C1 and C2 which leads to a new cultural

positioning, created and negotiated in response to cultures (Liddicoat, 2008).

Language teaching that is truly intercultural ‘prepares language learners to know

how to negotiate comfortable third places between the self and the other/the foreign’

(Lo Bianco et al., 1999, p. 1, emphasis in original) and recognises that similarities

and differences are ‘accomplished discursively within a context of use’ (Liddicoat,

2005, p. 204). Intercultural learning must become a critical engagement with culturalpractices as embedded within and integrated with language in use (Crozet &

Liddicoat, 2000).


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It may be suggested that tasks, as interpreted from a TBLT perspective, can

become viable vehicles for intercultural learning via language in actual use (see, e.g.,

Muller-Hartmann, 2000). Nevertheless, for the reasons I have already articulated,

TBLT is not necessarily perceived as having this potential. In particular, if the focus

of tasks within TBLT is understood to be the development of linguistic proficiency

(albeit proficiency that includes a sociolinguistic dimension), no provision is made

for the kind of critical reflection on similarities and differences between cultures

that is an important component of savoir e tre/savoir s’engager or operating

comfortably in a third space. There is arguably a need to make more transparent

how tasks might help FL learners to savoir e tre and savoir s’engager in intercultural

interactions.

The present study

Background Recent developments in FL teaching and learning in New Zealand provide a specific

opportunity to consider the intercultural dimension in the context of TBLT. A new

national curriculum for New Zealand’s schools, which incorporates a new learning

area (Learning Languages) has recently been introduced (Ministry of Education,

2007a) and took full effect in 2010. The publication of a revised curriculum provided

the opportunity to evaluate current practices, and to initiate reforms where necessary.

The encouragement for FL teachers to consider TBLT came in response to the

perceived shortcomings of strong and weak CLT. The new learning area proposed

three components, or ‘strands’:

(1) The core communication strand ‘puts students’ ability to communicate at the

centre’, with the requirement that ‘students learn to use the language to make

meaning ’.

(2) The supporting language knowledge strand ‘helps students to develop explicit

knowledge of the language, which will, over time, contribute to greater

accuracy of use’.

(3) The supporting cultural knowledge strand helps students (1) to ‘appreciate

that languages and cultures are systems that are organised and used in

particular ways to achieve meaning’ and thereby (2) to ‘interact appropriately

with other speakers’ (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 24, my emphases).

Thus, communication is seen as central, and language knowledge and cultural

knowledge are there to support effective communication.

In tandem with the introduction of Learning Languages, the Ministry of

Education commissioned two extensive literature reviews which focused on (1)

effective language teaching pedagogy (which informed Strands 1 and 2), and (2)

intercultural CLT (which informed Strand 3).

The first report was published well ahead of the introduction of the revised

curriculum (Ellis, 2005), and was disseminated widely to schools, thereby quickly

coming to shape thinking and practice in schools (Erlam, 2008; Ministry of

Education, 2007b). Ellis drew specific attention to TBLT as a viable reconciliationof the weaknesses of CLT because it ‘gives primacy to ‘‘fluency’’ over ‘‘accuracy’’’

but also helps learners to ‘achieve grammatical competence as a result of learning to

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communicate’ (p. 6). Online support guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2007c) drew

attention to tasks in the context of Ellis, with a view to focusing teachers’ thinking

towards TBLT as one means of fulfilling the requirements of Learning Languages:

Ellis describes classroom ‘tasks’ as language-learning activities that require learners tofocus on meaning, include a ‘gap’ that students can close by communicating, requirelearners to produce their own language structures, and have a clear outcome. Such tasksprovide students with opportunities for interaction, thinking, problem solving, andgenuine social interactions. (Ministry of Education, 2007c, ’ 13)

The second report (Newton, Yates, Shearn, & Nowitzki, 2010), due to be published

in the course of 2009, was considerably delayed, and was therefore made available to

teachers well after the revised curriculum had been launched.

Despite the delay in the release of the second report, the cultural knowledge

strand was seen as integral to the new learning area. This strand did not neglect the

place of factual knowledge about the target culture, but made it clear that studentsneeded to appreciate the ‘interrelationship between culture and language’ and to

‘compare and contrast different beliefs and cultural practices, including their own’ so

that ‘they understand more about themselves and become more understanding of

others’ (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 24). Essentially, the message was that

cultural knowledge should embrace three elements: (1) ‘culture as artefact’; (2)

appropriateness of language (i.e., sociolinguistic competence); and (3) savoir e tre/

savoir s’engager, incorporating critical cultural awareness through comparative

reflection.

In terms of putting an integrated three-strand model into practice, three problems

are apparent:

(1) Ellis (2005) is a distinct document to Newton et al. (2010). This potentially

perpetuates the perception that TBLT and intercultural education are distinct

(Adams & Newton, 2009). In this connection, Ellis makes only passing

reference to ‘culture learning’ as ‘the teaching of cultural/ceremonial topics’

(p. 5). There is no dialogue about the place of cultural knowledge in

instructed FL contexts, no mention of cultural knowledge in reference to

tasks, and no discussion of critical reflection on ‘otherness’.

(2) The publication and widespread dissemination of Ellis (2005) has meant that

in practice its recommendations have become quite embedded into many

teachers’ thinking (arguably beneficial for Strands 1 and 2).

(3) By contrast, the delay in the publication of Newton et al. would have meant

that, despite a small one-paragraph summary available in the online support

materials (Ministry of Education, 2007c), teachers would not have had any

extensive opportunities to engage with what ICC might look like in practice

(arguably detrimental for Strand 3).

These contextual factors raise questions about how teachers were beginning to

integrate Strand 3 into their practices, and the extent to which tasks might help them

to do this. The study reported here (part of a broader study into language teachers ’

understandings of effective pedagogy at the time of the introduction of the newlearning area) focuses on practitioners’ understandings of the cultural knowledge

strand. The following research questions are addressed:


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(1) How do practitioners understand ‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL classroom?

(2) How might practitioners use tasks as vehicles to enhance learners’ cultural

knowledge?

Design

Participants were currently practising teachers of one or more of the five most

common international languages taught in New Zealand’s secondary schools

Chinese (n4), French (n3), German (n5), Japanese (n3) and Spanish

(n4). Additionally, former teachers who now work at some level in the school

advisory service, which exists to support teachers with their work in schools, were

included (n8). These two practitioner groups were chosen for two reasons. First, in

common with Carless (2007), a measure of intra-method triangulation was achieved

through interviewing teachers (who were able to ‘provide perspectives from the

practical viewpoint of the classroom in the micro-climate of a specific schoolcontext’) and advisors (who were able to ‘view the terrain from a wider angle to

complement the more narrowly (single-school) focused perspectives of the teachers’

(p. 598)).

Second, interviews with two groups helped to establish the extent to which

understandings and practices differed between current practitioners and what

Littlewood (2004) calls ‘curriculum leaders’ (those who potentially exert an influence

on practice).

The sample of practising teachers can be regarded as largely representative of

experienced and ‘communicatively oriented’ teachers of FL operating in a

representative range of schools in New Zealand (Education Counts, 2010a,2010b). The majority had had at least three, and in most cases six years’

classroom experience at the time of their interviews. The overwhelming majority

(95%) were female, compared to 75% of all teachers nationally. The predominant

school type was state (government-funded) schools, including co-educational (60%

compared to 78%), boys only (12% compared to 9%), or girls only (27% compared

to 12%).

Participants were invited to take part in a one-to-one semi-structured interview.

Interviews with teachers lasted about an hour. They were wide-ranging, and explored

teachers’ current practices, together with their knowledge and understanding of the

new learning area and its implications for developing practice. Advisory interviewswere more focused on TBLT and therefore shorter. All interviews were digitally

recorded and transcribed. For later reporting, and to protect anonymity, each

participant was given a pseudonym where the first letter of the given name

represented the principal language taught or the person’s role (for example,

Frances was a teacher of French, and Andrew was an advisor).

Thematic analysis was selected as the most appropriate method for ‘identifying,

analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79),

and for providing a ‘detailed and nuanced account’ (p. 83) of the identified themes.

The thematic analysis was theoretically driven in that the principal aim was to

interpret what the data might mean from the perspective of the potential and actualcontributions of TBLT.

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Findings

The teachers’ perspective: culture as artefact

Interviews revealed that several teachers’ practices focused on ‘culture as artefact’ as a

discrete component of their work, even though there was recognition that the new

learning area anticipated something more than this. Frances, for example, noted that‘[c]ulture is not meant to be taught overtly now, as far as I understand the New Zealand

curriculum’ and that ‘you probably just need to tie it all into the language a lot more . . .

rather than this kind of discrete thing on ‘‘French people eat snails’’’. Nevertheless, she

saw a discrete focus on ‘culture as artefact’ as having an important place:

I think sometimes [students] really want to learn about things, and sometimes you justneed to be a bit more overt and say ‘hey everyone, look at this weird French dance’, youknow, and that’s okay, and that’s culture so it doesn’t necessarily need to be interwoven.

Frances’ understanding of ‘culture knowledge’ was therefore essentially information-

driven and ethnocentric, whereby the C2 was evaluated on a factual basis alongside

students’ C1 and, in comparison, interpreted as ‘other’ in a way that made it

‘strange’.

Sandra similarly recognised that learning about cultural practices theoretically

provided opportunities to build links with language, but that culture could be a

discrete element, even though potentially this made it much less of a priority:

I mean it’s always the thing that you run out of time to do. It’s a shame, it really is.. . .Talking about things like festivals is something that they really love, and it gives thevocabulary a context, so I try to do that as much as I can. But . . . if you run out of time

it’s kind of like that section you were going to do on art and culture, that just gets cut.

For both Frances and Sandra, therefore, treating culture as ‘artefact’ meant that it

could, to a large extent, be separated from language learning. In these cases, it could

become (or continue to be) an addendum to the process of language acquisition.

Several other teachers were turning to more experiential ways of introducing

cultural knowledge, particularly in the junior years, with a view to enhancing

learners’ motivation and enjoyment. Even here, the emphasis was on factual

knowledge. Two common foci were food and festivals. Cuifen, for example,

explained, ‘[a]lmost every month we have important [Chinese] dates or festivals,

and then I will introduce special food, special clothes and history background of thefestival . . . and then we do make things, like . . . rice dumplings’. Sophie noted:

I always do some work on Dia de los Muertos [The Day of the Dead], and we do groupwork and they make calaveras [skulls] out of Play-Doh and then we set up the ofrendas[alters].. . . at the same time they’re picking up the names of the things . . . Then theywatch a video of how it is in Mexico and we look at other little things like PowerPointsabout how it’s celebrated in Mexico.

Gail gave examples that drew on a range of languages:

Today we had a French teacher bringing in pancakes and doing that sort of thing. We ’rehaving a German Kaffee und Kuchen [coffee and cakes] next term.. . . The Japanese


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teacher had a karate demonstration going on last week with one of the kid’s fathers whocame in and took them for a formal lesson.

Although more experiential in nature, and thereby arguably providing enhanced

opportunity for intercultural reflection, there was still no evidence in these examples

of integration with language, and still no need to consider tasks as media for morecritical intercultural examination.

Language as a mediator of culture

Engagement with a more integrated role for cultural knowledge was leading some

teachers to practices that enabled greater interweaving of language and culture.

Gretta, for example, outlined the benefit of an integrated approach right from the

beginning: ‘When we do German or when we do French, we start with greetings in

the first lessons. I think that is rich and culturally loaded . . . and the students really

enjoy that. So [it] is fully integrated.’Grace’s initial description of her approach appeared to suggest an emphasis on

culture as factual knowledge:

We use a lot of YouTube because that is quite real stuff, [or] anything that I’ve recordedmyself. Whenever I go overseas, I really focus on doing little bits and pieces . . . [and] I’lluse bits of that, for instance, filming at the Christmas markets and saying to [thestudents] ‘okay, so what do you see there? What’s interesting about this?’ That kind of stuff just talking about things.

However, acknowledging her understanding that ‘[t]he thing with culture is that it

really needs to be interwoven. I don’t believe in having a cultural lesson’, she noted,‘[i]f we get, for instance, to an expression where it’s really important that you get it

right because otherwise you’re going to be laughed at, we’ll bring it in at that point’.

Grace therefore ensured that the presentation of facts also became an opportunity to

explore contextually appropriate language use.

Two teachers of Asian languages, Jennifer and Chao-xing, had also come to see

the importance of an integrated approach. Jennifer argued that ‘the old way of ‘‘now

we’re going to talk about Japanese festivals’’’ was problematic because ‘I mean, how

can a child remember ‘‘oh there’s this festival, and that festival, and there’s another

festival’’ unless they actually experience it.’ She went on to state her own belief that

culture was naturally embedded within language and therefore needed to be

integrated with teaching the language. Chao-xing similarly suggested that ‘language

cannot be separated from culture because they link together. If you know the

language you have to learn the culture, because in certain culture, certain language

cannot be used, you know’. For Chao-xing, therefore, sociolinguistic competence, or

appropriate choices of language, was important, and students needed to learn how

cultural beliefs might be communicated through language.

The advisors’ perspective: moving towards interculturality

Despite evidence from teacher interviews that an integration of language and culture

was beginning to happen in some contexts, several advisors were concerned withwhat they saw during observations as a continuing disjunction between culture and

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language. Anita argued that culture could no longer be treated as an addendum, such

that ‘on a Friday afternoon the teacher just needs to show a video about the Eiffel

Tower or something similar’. Andrew noted:

I have to say that in my experience I haven’t seen that many good examples of [anintegrated approach]. We’re still a bit focused on ‘today . . .

we’re going to look at Paris’. . . and so it’s not being taught in a combined way.

Angela asserted that ‘culture has been treated in a fossilised way, you know, ‘‘how

often is the Eiffel Tower painted? How many pots of paint?’’ and it’s sort of facts,

not affective stuff, it’s sort of neutral’. This reality led her to regard the cultural

knowledge strand as ‘the area of biggest change and biggest challenge, I would

say.’

Nevertheless, the advisors saw huge potential in the integration of language and

culture as a means of moving students beyond the neutral into a more affective

dimension of interrelationship. For Annette, for example, ‘learning another languagehas a really important role to play in fostering understanding of other people, respect

of other people and tolerance of other people’ (my emphasis). She acknowledged

that, to an extent, these values could be enhanced via ‘culture as artefact’, and argued

‘I’m not saying there’s no place for talking about static cultural images, static cultural

knowledge. There is, because it’s interesting, because it’s motivating and it’s exciting

for kids to learn about.’ It was, however, important to help students to recognise that

‘culture is part of other people, and culture is an inherent part of language. ’ This

meant, therefore, that the cultural knowledge strand ‘should primarily be connected

with language.’ An integrated approach and a clear appreciation of ‘difference’

needed to be apparent ‘right from the start’:

I mean, when you learn to greet people you’re looking at the way people using the targetculture [and] target language greet people compared with the way we do, or the wayvarious people in the classroom do. In most Auckland classrooms, for instance, there’llbe lots of different cultures within the room, so it’s making connections betweencultures, looking at similarities and differences.

Annette’s understanding therefore included attempts to move learners, at a very basic

level, from a second to a third place (Lo Bianco et al., 1999), and to encourage

critical comparison between C1 and C2 for purposes of savoir s’engager (Byram,1997; Guilherme, 2002; Liddicoat, 2008).

Anita expressed a similar perspective. At one level, her understanding appeared

to suggest sociolinguistic competence as the essential goal. That is, asserting her

belief that ‘you can’t really communicate effectively without both language and

cultural knowledge’, in her view FL students needed to become familiar with ‘choice

of language and the words that people deliberately select and choose to use for

different purposes’:

So if you’re just having a polite conversation with your boss, you will choose particularkinds of language. If you’re talking to your mates, you’ll choose other kinds of language.If you’re talking to your parents or your teenager, having an argument, you mightdeliberately choose other kinds of language to get a point across.


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Anita went on to argue that the ultimate goal was:

. . . young people who are able to communicate with a certain degree of proficiency in alanguage. And it’s bringing both fluency and accuracy up alongside each other. And Iguess there’s the linguistic interpretation of what fluency and accuracy are, but there’s

also the cultural interpretation of what that will be in different areas.

Anita therefore interpreted effective communication (fluency and accuracy) in both

linguistic and intercultural terms, commensurate with the curriculum model that

signalled that both language knowledge and cultural knowledge were equally

supportive elements of communication. In her understanding, what learners required

was more than sociolinguistic competence: Anita was ‘thinking here about

metacognition and what makes you make those choices, and understanding why

you’re doing that, and being able to articulate that as well so that you can manage it.’

Being intercultural and relating to otherness required a deeper and more critical

engagement with what was going on in the interaction.

Being intercultural and relating to ‘ otherness’

It was evident that an appreciation of interculturality at a deeper level than ‘culture

as artefact’ and sociolinguistic competence was particularly influencing the thinking

of advisors.3 In this connection, Andrea acknowledged that although teaching facts

about the target culture was ‘really, really important and very rich’, nonetheless in

the cultural knowledge strand ‘we want more than just cultural knowledge, we want

intercultural knowledge’. She went on to suggest a series of questions teachers might

use to help their students with this:

To make it intercultural you bring it back to the individual: it ’s all about identity ‘Whoam I? What am I in this equation? What does this mean to me? How do I grow fromhaving thought and learnt about this?’

Andrew held a similar perspective. On the one hand, ‘cultural knowledge is

knowledge of the target culture’. On the other hand:

[It is] also, I think, knowledge of what culture is and what it means. So what ’s my ownculture? What’s someone else’s culture? How does that change over time according to

my experience of the different culture? And where do I fit into that?

Alison also presented some questions that might be posed to students to help to

bring them to the ‘third place’. She suggested ‘that first place is ‘‘do I have a

culture? What is it?’’ You know, New Zealanders need to realise ‘‘yes, we do have a

culture.’’’ Once students had identified how they understood their own culture, and

what that meant to them, they were ready to go on to appreciating who they were

in interaction with the ‘other’. She provided an example of how this might work in

a junior French class. She might begin with getting the students to think about

‘what other cultures have we got in the class?’ and then ‘how do French people do

that?’:

And I think it comes through the language, you know. So in French, let ’s take tu andvous, you know, ‘French people have two forms of ‘‘you’’. Do we in English?’ Some

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people might come up with ‘yous’. You might say ‘that’s a very good point, you know.We need that at times, don’t we?’

This linguistic exploration might lead to other questions which might draw on the

other languages represented in the class, and making connections between cultures

at the beginning stages: ‘how do we show respect in English? How do you show it inyour language?’ Students at the junior levels could therefore be primed to consider

the third place recognition of difference and a comfortableness in negotiating that

difference. Alison concluded, ‘so I see the cultural knowledge strand as being very

much that way, rather than as thinking ‘‘what do people eat?’’ or ‘‘what do people

do?’’’

In other words, for Alison, as for several advisors, savoir e tre and savoir s’engager

represented the primary goals of intercultural exploration, of critical comparison and

contrast in order to develop both empathy with apparent ‘sameness’ and comfortable

engagement with ‘otherness’. This was, however, an exploration embedded in

discourse. Bearing in mind that the tasks that constitute a central component of TBLT also have language in actual use as their primary focus (Willis & Willis, 2007),

there is scope to consider tasks as vehicles for intercultural communication in ways

that would enable greater seamlessness between the three proposed strands of

Learning Languages. To what extent, then, were practitioners seeing the potential of

tasks, so defined, as means of enhancing learners’ ICC?

Culture and tasks

As stated earlier, the definition of ‘task’ that has come to influence the New Zealand

context is that tasks (1) require learners to focus on meaning, (2) include a ‘gap’ that

students close by communicating, (3) have a clear outcome, (4) provide opportunities

for interaction, thinking, problem-solving, and genuine social interactions (Ministry

of Education, 2007c, ’ 13). This definition provides scope for both linguistic and

intercultural learning. Several advisors provided examples of interactive activities

that fulfilled this definition.

Anna-Frances4 described an email exchange she had set up between her

students and students in the target country. In the context of work in which

‘[w]e’re learning about schools and we’re learning the vocabulary about school and

we’re dealing with material about schools’ she noted that, through the ongoing

interchange, her students were ‘actually learning to understand [difference] throughthat language use’ (my emphasis). She conceded, however, that occasionally

students’ lack of language would hinder negotiation of meaning, and that ‘[t]here

are still times where it turns into a social studies lesson because the students do not

have the language to be able to get the information that they want culturally.’

Anna-Frances did not, however, see this movement into ‘culture as artefact’ as

problematic. Rather, it was ‘a balance’, although ‘I still think that probably happens

more at juniors where children will ask you questions because they’ve got quite

excited and interested in something but they don’t have the language necessarily to

carry it.’

Angela and Andrea saw the potential of utilising tasks, within the context of abroader e-learning ‘virtual exchange’, as opportunities not only to negotiate gaps in

information around a range of areas, but also to work within comfortable third places.


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In common with Anna-Frances, both advisors drew on school as an example of a

topic that might facilitate intercultural communication. Andrea suggested that it may

be that a student in the target country has got some information about their school

day that the students in New Zealand need to find out. In this case, students might

have to negotiate meaning to close the information gap and establish different

understandings of, for example, what ‘after school’ means: ‘In New Zealand it means

after 3.00, after 3.30, in Germany it means after 2.00, in France it means after, what,

6.00 or something or other, in Japan it means after I’ve taken the train home.’ The

interchange was ‘basically . . . in the target language as much as possible, allowing the

kids to grow and ask their own questions and go in their own direction, where they

have to find out information.’

Angela described how she believed a task about school could be set up:

Maybe they would have questions about their own schooling and some questions aboutthe schooling over in France, and then you would let them loose to discuss it. It would

be an important thing to train them to ask really good questions, really searchingquestions, otherwise the dialogue could get quite superficial and peter out.

These questions, in the words of Liddicoat (2008), would be ‘designed to encourage

students to move beyond comprehension and to begin to notice cultural similarities

and differences and to make comparisons between their own cultural assumptions

and the new information they are being presented with’ (p. 287). Mirroring the

concept of post-task focus on form (Long, 1991; 2000), but this time with a focus on

culture, Angela suggested that ‘afterwards you would go through with them and see

how their attitudes possibly had shifted . . . maybe they’ve gone on thinking, for

instance, how awful it is that students in France have to work until five o’clock.’

Formulating ‘good and searching questions’ would no doubt be challenging forsome students, and Angela conceded that this may require allowing students to

operate in their L1, at least occasionally, when knowledge of the FL was inadequate.

Like Anna-Frances, she proposed a balanced approach. On the one hand:

I think for the intercultural communication to be deep and meaningful they have to beallowed to use their own language because they don’t have the language skills to beprofound enough, to be nuanced enough in the target language.. . . if we get too rigidand say ‘okay, the function of this is that everybody’s going to improve their targetlanguage’ it completely ruins it.

On the other hand, and in keeping with her own understanding of tasks as

facilitating negotiation of meaning in the target language, Angela went on to suggest

that through the interaction:

. . . they do have the tools to say ‘how do you say?’ so they can be building up theirlanguage skills all the time . . . I think at a junior level it could work really well if thestudents . . . felt free to ask for the language that they wanted ‘How do you say this?’‘How do you say that?’ ‘How do you text in French?’ ‘How do you say LOL?’ forinstance, which is MDR in French, you know, mort de rire . . . those sorts of things.

Discussion and implications for future researchDespite Brown’s (1994) argument that language and culture are tightly interwoven

such that separation of the two diminishes the significance of either, Scarino and

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Crichton (2007) suggest that current approaches to language teaching and learning,

such as CLT or TBLT, neither adequately acknowledge the intercultural nor help FL

learners to be intercultural. For TBLT, for example, this is because TBLT and

intercultural education are often viewed as two distinct fields of research and

scholarship (Adams & Newton, 2009). However, a developed understanding of

communicative competence that includes an intercultural dimension, or proficiency

in navigating between the cultures represented in the interaction, has implications for

both CLT in general and TBLT in particular.

This article has explored practitioners’ understandings about cultural knowledge,

and how these understandings influenced their practices. In answer to the first

research question (how do practitioners understand ‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL

classroom?), several teachers mirrored the findings of Aleksandrowicz-Pedich et al.’s

(2003) study in that they regarded exploring factual knowledge about the target

culture as an important, as well as interesting and motivating, component of

language learning. A number were beginning to provide opportunities for students to

engage with different cultural practices through language. For the teachers, however,

cultural knowledge focused primarily on facts (Flinders Humanities Research

Centre, 2005; Sehlaoui, 2001) and secondarily on linguistic appropriateness, and

only incidentally on developing savoir e tre (Byram, 1997) or negotiating ‘comfortable

third places’ (Lo Bianco et al., 1999). The advisors were further on in their thinking

than the teachers, and had come to recognise the importance of helping students to

understand both who they were and who their interlocutors were in the interaction,

thereby developing more critical cultural awareness (Byram, 2009; Guilherme, 2002)

and a sense of ‘us others’ reciprocity (East, 2008).

In answer to the second research question (how might practitioners use tasks as

vehicles to enhance learners’ cultural knowledge?), there was minimal evidence that

the teachers had yet seen the full potential of tasks. However, several advisors held

well thought-out rationales for using especially technologically-mediated tasks as

vehicles for intercultural exploration. These tasks would enable students to engage

more critically with similarity and difference as presented to them in the task, and to

consider what that might mean for them in relating to the ‘other’, or savoir s’engager

(Byram, 1997).

These findings suggest that, in terms of classroom practice in New Zealand, the

cultural knowledge strand of the new curriculum area requires more explicit attention

if teachers are to help their students to get to the heart of its intentions. In this

connection, it is noteworthy and reassuring that the advisors, whose role is to supportthe work of teachers in classes, do have a more strongly developed understanding of

ICC and its place within tasks, together with a clear understanding of its value.

One limitation to this study was that it relied on teachers’ self-reports and did not

explore, via observation, either the extent to which these reports were corroborated

by actual practices or the extent to which cultural knowledge played a real part in

students’ language learning experiences. It is also worth reiterating that the literature

review that had been commissioned by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education to

provide information to teachers about intercultural communicative language

teaching (Newton et al., 2010) was released subsequent to the study reported here,

and that teachers in this study would not have had the report for guidance with theirplanning in the same way as Ellis (2005). It may be hypothesised that, as teachers in

New Zealand get more used to the new curriculum, and as they engage with the


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Newton et al. report and work with advisors, the cultural knowledge strand will

become increasingly interwoven into language teaching and learning practices.

To test this hypothesis, future research might focus on observation alongside

post-observation reflection to deconstruct what has been observed. This may serve to

challenge teachers about their own practices and thereby enhance practices. In this

connection, there is scope for classroom-based action research in which teachers

themselves can become involved. This ‘process for enhancing reflective practice and

professional growth and development’ (Burns, 1999, p. 24) would ‘strengthen the

opportunities for the results of research on practice to be fed back into educational

systems in a more substantial and critical way’ (p. 13).

Conclusion

Bearing in mind that TBLT is being promoted internationally as a potentially very

powerful approach to FL teaching (Van den Branden et al., 2009), the findings of this study suggest that there is room for advocates of TBLT in various contexts to

consider seriously the potential of tasks as vehicles through which FL learners might

develop their intercultural communicative proficiency. For example, and building on

Muller-Hartmann (2000), ‘virtual exchanges’ could potentially be a broad and rich

source for both linguistic and intercultural exploration. As Angela concluded, ‘so

from fossilised culture we’re moving very much to dynamic culture . . . I think the

experimental approach applies extremely well to that [and] can be best explored very

effectively through ICT [information and communication technologies] tools.’

Furthermore, TBLT, and the tasks that are central to it, do not need to focus on

language acquisition in a way that ignores the intercultural dimension. As Anja putit, ‘if the task design is firm you can make it interculturally reflective, linguistically

reflective, whatever, you know.’ The data I have presented suggest that it is possible

to address the intercultural via TBLT, although this will require developing teachers’

thinking to help them to understand that communicative language proficiency

includes an intercultural dimension.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Tony Liddicoat (University of South Australia) and John Norris(University of Hawai‘i at Ma

¯noa) for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the work that

has contributed to this article, and also the anonymous peer reviewers for challenging mythinking in several areas.

Notes

1. A more comprehensive presentation of the research discussed in this article, including abroader discussion of the issues raised with regard to cultural knowledge, is available inEast (2012).

2. There is often a misperception that TBLT essentially involves speaking tasks, whereas‘communicative interaction’ can also involve listening, reading and writing. Having saidthat, tasks requiring spoken interaction are often prominent in task-based classrooms.

3. It should be noted that significant influences on advisors’ thinking were, first, a draftreport of Newton et al. (2010) which had been released prior to the main report and,second, the model of intercultural language teaching proposed in Australia (ILTLP, 2009).

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4. Anna-Frances was interviewed as an advisor, but had only recently stepped down fromteaching French. In her interview, her principal focus was on her recent classroomexperience.

Notes on contributorMartin East is a senior lecturer and co-ordinator for language teacher education (languagesother than English and Maori) in the Faculty of Education of The University of Auckland. Heprincipally works with pre-service teachers of languages. His research focuses on means of enhancing teaching and assessment practices with a view to improving students’ learningoutcomes in foreign languages.

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