Do Tasks And Exercises In English Foreign Language Textbooks Promote Intercultural Competence An Empirical Study

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,5, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Since the textbook is a central teaching and learning aid, this work will examine a part of the tasks and exercises of two books. Referring to this, textbook research is a relevant field of study, because a critical look at current teaching material is always needed to ensure that it is appropriate for pupils as well as it is of good quality considering the achievement of educational goals. To give exemplary research findings, the analysis will focus on textbooks of class eight at Hauptschule (Blue Line 4) and Realschule (Red Line 4) in Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany published by Klett, whereupon in each case the recent version of the year 2017 was chosen. To narrow down the research project furthermore, the work will zoom in on the first unit of the books, which is “Gateway NYC”. The main topic of this bachelor ́s thesis will therefore be: “Do tasks and exercises in English Foreign Language textbooks promote Intercultural Competence? - An exemplary analysis based on the topic New York”. The intention of the work on hand is to evaluate the quality of tasks and exercises for the promotion of Intercultural Competence. To answer the main question of this thesis, the work has been divided into two parts. The first one summarises the most important information and theses on the topic. The second one examines the available textbook material in detail by means of an empirical method. In the theoretical chapter, Intercultural Competence with respect to its definition, importance and establishment in didactics will be explained. Thereupon, the relevance of tasks and exercises in class will be discussed and four quality features of assignments promoting Intercultural Competence will be chosen, which will allow an evaluation of these. In the following, the tasks from the Blue Line 4 and Red Line 4 schoolbooks will be analysed. After investigating the tasks ́ quality individually, the findings will be comprehended and discussed. In the conclusion, the fundamental research findings will finally be recapped and the question of the bachelor ́s thesis will be answered.

Given the interest in recent years in developing Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) as a key aim in teaching a foreign language, textbooks are often studied and evaluated in terms of their roles and impacts on the promotion of intercultural awareness among language learners. While some textbook designers prefer to focus on the target language culture, others mainly consider the local culture. However, as most of the research has been conducted on a textbook or a series of coursebooks in a single country, there are few studies which analyze the textbooks comparatively in an international setting concerning cultural matters. Thus, the present work attempts to enrich this discussion by analyzing four English textbooks at the first grade of upper-secondary school level from intercultural perspectives in Germany, Iran, the Netherlands and Sweden. In this case, this study aims to investigate the extent to which the texts and activities in the textbooks develop intercultural competence.

This book examines the concept of interculturality in English Language Teaching (ELT), using examples from diverse international and educational settings to demonstrate different approaches. Increased contact between multilingual speakers from different cultural backgrounds means that linguistic and intercultural competence must be taught hand in hand, and the approaches featured here will: encourage learners to develop intercultural sensitivity and a critical intercultural attitude; mitigate the limitations of textbooks and extend the learning to global issues, intercultural citizenship, and media literacy; show the potential of telecollaboration and popular culture as pedagogical resources; and demonstrate the value of interculturality in English as lingua franca situations and English for Academic Purposes. The chapters feature empirical studies from around the world, and include questions for reflection and recommended reading so that readers can engage more closely with key concepts, compare and adapt the practices most relevant to them. This book contributes to the literature on (inter)cultural pedagogy, English as a lingua franca, language pedagogy, and teacher professional development, and will be an invaluable tool for English language teachers, teacher trainers and educators seeking to enrich their practice. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of Applied Linguistics, especially language education.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Institut für fremdsprachliche Philologien), course: Intercultural Learning, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Intercultural Learning and Intercultural Competence are ubiquitous buzzwords that have been used in the sphere of English teaching and learning for more than two decades now. It has been recognized that modern language teaching goes far beyond the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary alone. As students progress in their study of the foreign language, it is expected that they extend their knowledge and broaden their awareness about the target culture's characteristics and peculiarities. Theoretically, the creative implementation of Intercultural Learning could, if intelligently put into practice, have also led to an 'overthrow' of outdated teaching methods that, as a rule, emphasise pure cognition rather than communication or interaction. Unfortunately, the initial euphoria has gone and only little has changed in German classrooms. Still, interculturality is often taught in a way that appears uninteresting and ineffective, that is mainly based on facts and figures, and therefore rendering English sometimes not particularly popular as a subject among students. The reasons for this situation are manifold. Teachers (and students) know too little about Intercultural Learning because it is a concept too fuzzy, vague, abstract and indefinite so as to be grasped immediately. It may also be due to the apparent lack or shortage of suitable learning and teaching materials that can be used in day-to-day school life. Luckily, current textbooks increasingly include creative aspects of interculturality. But how useful and fruitful are these modest 'intercultural elements' in practice? In this paper, I will analyse two German textbooks used in institutional English teaching and learning nationwid

Foreign Language Teachers and Intercultural Communication: An International Investigation reports on a study that focused on teachers' beliefs regarding intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. Its conclusions are based on data collected in a quantitative comparative study that comprises questionnaire answers received from teachers in seven countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Mexico, Greece, Spain and Sweden. It not only creates new knowledge on the variability, and relative consistency, of today's foreign language teachers' views regarding intercultural competence teaching in a number of countries, but also gives us a picture that is both more concrete and more comprehensive than previously known.

Exploring sociocultural competence and the promotion of intercultural communication, this study aims to clearly define the concepts behind teaching foreign language and the connections between culture and language. As foreign language teaching continues to increasingly focus on the relationship between culture and language, understanding the link and what it means becomes more important. Objective and informative, this examination particularly looks at English as a lingua franca between speakers of different languages and cultural backgrounds from the perspectives of nonnative English speakers and explores how that affects pedagogical approaches to teaching foreign language.

This foundational coursebook offers an accessible and up-to-date introduction to all relevant areas of Teaching English. Definitions and practical examples guide the understanding and reflection of basic and advanced concepts of foreign language learning. The fully revised second edition responds to new developments in language education: (1) Recent policies from the Kultusministerkonferenz and updates of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages with its Companion Volume (2020) pay more attention to language awareness, mediation, and media literacy. (2) New empirical research explores the aims, methods, and impact of professional teacher education, Task-Based Language Teaching, and Content-and-Language-Integrated Learning. (3) The dramatic need for online teaching has met with refined concepts of multimodal media competence and cutting-edge tools for the digital classroom. This essential introduction and the PowerPoint presentations online facilitate multimodal teaching and learning.

Eva Alcón Soler Maria Pilar Safont Jordà Universitat Jaume I, Spain The main purpose of the present book is to broaden the scope of research on the development of intercultural communicative competence. Bearing this purpose in mind, English learners are considered as intercultural speakers who share their interest for engaging in real life communication. According to Byram and Fleming (1998), the intercultural speaker is someone with knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and who enjoys discovering and maintaining relationships with people from other cultural backgrounds, although s/he has not been formally trained for that purpose. Besides, possessing knowledge of at least two cultures is the case of many learners in bilingual or multilingual communities. In these contexts, the objective of language learning should then focus on developing intercultural competence, which in turn may involve promoting language diversity while encouraging English as both a means and an end of instruction (see Alcón, this volume). This is the idea underlying the volume, which further sustains Kramsch’s argument (1998) against the native/ non-native dichotomy. Following that author, we also believe that in a multilingual world where learners may belong to more than one speech community, their main goal is not to become a native speaker of English, but to use this language as a tool for interaction among many other languages and cultures.