Comparing and contrasting teachers’ and teacher trainees’ attitudes towards learning and teaching intercultural competence

Abstract

For many decades research, approaches and methods of foreign language teaching have focused on the importance of teacher language awareness, the role of a teacher in a classroom as well as the use of appropriate teaching techniques. In other words, a great value has been placed on those aspects of teaching that allow teachers to develop in their students linguistic skills in the target language. However, one of the roles of a foreign language teacher is to build learners’ intercultural competence, that is, to prepare them to communicate in a multicultural and multilingual world, where they are encouraged to think more deeply and critically about their own and the target language culture in order to be able to mediate between not only two languages, but above all, cultures. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore teachers’ and teacher trainees’ attitudes towards learning and teaching intercultural competence with reference to a study carried out at the Department of English of Nicolaus Copernicus University among 138 students of English philology, 78 and 60 of whom were teachers and teacher trainees respectively. The study was based on a questionnaire which investigated the subjects’ attitudes to learning and teaching intercultural competence. The data obtained from the questionnaire are discussed with reference to four areas of intercultural competence, that is, exploring cultures, comparing cultures, exploring self (developing cultural awareness), and finding one’s third place between one’s own and the target language culture (Kramsch 1993). The results of the study have revealed that both the teachers and the teacher trainees understand fostering cultural awareness as primarily teaching cultural facts about the target language culture. The two groups of the respondents do not recognize the importance of developing in learners the ability to bridge their own and the target language culture.