Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective

by Byram, Michael; Fleming, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780521625593
• ISBN10: 0521625599
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-01
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective addresses the ways in which language learning is related to learning about other cultures and to acquiring an ability to communicate across cultural frontiers. It argues that language learners need to develop sensitivity to cultural difference and its impact on communication, and to acquire the skills of discovering and interpreting other cultures, other values, beliefs and behaviours which lie beneath the surface of cross-cultural communication. Contributors show how drama can be used to develop cultural awareness and how learners can acquire ethnographic skills to help them investigate and understand socio-cultural aspects of language which play an important role in second language acquisition. The contributors are all respected educationalists from a range of countries and different cultural contexts.

Table of Contents

1 The privilege of the intercultural speaker

2 Civilisation/Cultural studies: an experiment in French and English schools

3 Evolving intercultural perceptions among university language learners in Europe

4 Cultural practice in everyday life: the language learner as ethnographer

5 The culture the learner brings: a bridge or a barrier?

6 Mind the gap! An ethnographic approach to cross-cultural workplace communication research

7 Teaching culture through drama

8 Cultural awareness and dramatic art forms

9 Learning by playing: learning foreign languages through the senses

10 Intercultural theatre through a foreign language

11 Culture through literature through drama

12 Cross-cultural encounters

13 Language teaching and the process of European integration

14 In-service teacher training and the acquisition of intercultural competence