Towards Higher Education (THE) Boğaziçi University School of Foreign Languages 2nd ELT Conference, İstanbul, Türkiye, 27 - 28 Eylül 2019
Although
foreign language teachers try to integrate the cultural dimension into their
classes, this attempt is usually in the knowledge level and based on the
coursebook that gives superficial information about different cultures.
However, understanding the customs and practices of other cultures, having a
critical look at one's own culture, and identifying the relation and
discovering ways of managing interaction between/ among different cultures are
the skills we expect an intercultural citizen to have. These are also the skills
we, English language teachers in an EFL country, are responsible for developing
in our learners as English is the global medium of any type of intercultural
communication.
This workshop aims to present a session that integrates interculturality into
foreign language classroom taking Byram’s (1997) framework of teaching and
assessing intercultural communicative competence (ICC).The short lesson sample
in the workshop is designed for young adult learners studying in the tertiary
level and used as a demo lesson with pre-service student teachers. During the
workshop, authentic student-teacher responses will be shared to illustrate how
teacher education and teacher training may have a snowball impact on the
critical cultural awareness of both teachers and students by developing the
skills to discover the unknown and to manage interaction for negotiation.