Developing English Proficiency and Intercultural Competence, Through English-language Websites
Caroline C. Hwang, US
Caroline C. Hwang received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. She has lived for over twenty years in English-speaking countries, teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, and Rice University in the U.S. and working in the U.K. as the editor-in-chief of a bilingual magazine. Dr. Hwang is currently an associate professor at National Taipei University of Technology. Since 2000, she has been on the Editorial Board of CNN Bilingual Interactive Magazine and The CAVE English Teaching Magazine. She has also coached translators in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Tianjin.
E-mail: f10970@ntut.edu.tw; caroline_hwang@hotmail.com
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Abstract
Introduction
The Ultimate Goal in Learning English
Instrumental Resources for English Pragmatics
Recommendations by International Teachers
My Favorite Internet Resources
Matching Student-centered Activities
Conclusion and Recommendation
References
EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students who have spent many years on textbooks still exit their classes with a paucity of schematic knowledge of the real English-speaking world. It is proposed that English-language websites, due to their genuine interests, real-world relevance, and ready-to-use language, be incorporated into EFL instruction. Examples of instrumental authentic materials, particularly internet resources, as well as matching student-centered activities, are suggested for instructional use. English, if learned in sociocultural context, can offer students not only the elevation of English proficiency but the expansion of intellectual horizons and the development of intercultural competence.
Each language comes with a variety of culturally specific concepts and expressions as well as contextually motivated usages that belong to the realm of pragmatics, i.e. language in actual use. Its native speakers have in common an internal conceptualizing capacity for these usages. But its learners, even the advanced ones that are capable of producing correct grammatical forms and lexical items, could fail to comprehend messages containing culturally specific concepts and/or expressions appropriately. Misconceptions and communication breakdowns are often caused by cross-cultural discursive differences (Tyler 1995; Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei 1998; Boxer 2002; Pohl 2004), as the pragmatic norms between the native speakers of a language and its learners can differ substantially (Fraser, Rintell, & Walters 1980; Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper 1989; Cohen 1996).
Despite the enormous amount of attention paid to pragmatics, EFL learners in East Asia are still largely entrenched in pragmatic inadequacy (Austin 1998; Spencer-Oatey & Xing 2000). There are essentially two reasons: (1) the vast conceptual distance between East Asian and Western cultures; and (2) the East Asian EFL’s naive trust in the generic textbooks produced for the global mass market. Due to the lack of awareness of how English is used and how its background culture operates in real life, the students once encounter real-world milieu, they may quickly arrive at incomprehension or misunderstanding. That a Chinese business’s visit to Britain inadvertently brought about a "face" problem (Spencer-Oatey & Xing 2000) is a case in point. It was initially a regular international business coalition meeting, but almost every step of the meeting, including the accommodation, the seating arrangement, the greeting protocol, as well as the services of the interpreter and the receiving manager, created a fissure between the Chinese delegation and the British host company.
(The details can be seen in http://209.15.42.137/ic.org.uk/publications/IACCP.pdf).
Incomprehension, although frustrating, is relatively harmless. Misunderstanding, on the other hand, is a covert problem. The latter can easily be overlooked and thus become treacherous.
What is the ultimate goal in learning English? To obtain college and postgraduate degrees? To pass the TOEFL and /or TOEIC? To land a higher-paying job? All the above may be true. But the test-driven education in East Asia treats English as a school subject and an artificial code, not as a living language. Students with high grades on English tests can still misinterpret slightly non-literal meanings and polysemous usages in authentic contexts. In other words, their communicative competence in real-world English is rather weak. Widdowson (1990:112) has pointed out: "...our eventual objective must be to prepare learners to cope with the natural conditions of language use." So, L2 learning means at least a working knowledge and a set of skills in natural settings.
Schema, as defined by wordreference.com online dictionary, is "an internal representation of the world; an organization of concepts and actions that can be revised by new information about the world" (http://www.wordreference.com/definition/schema). Children, along with their L1 acquisition, gradually and naturally build up a knowledge base, or a large schematic structure, of their L1 culture. When given new information in their native language, speakers readily search for a match in their memory, since "new knowledge can only be processed coherently in relation to existing knowledge frameworks" (McCarthy 1997:168). If EFL learners keep studying English in a schematic vacuum, even if for a great number of years, they never acquire a living knowledge base of the target culture(s). Once encountering authentic materials or milieus, they look to their L1 schemas for trying to make a bridge. In most cases, the information is blinded or distorted and the message lost.
On the whole, EFL textbook writers have tried their best to provide language use examples. But even native speakers' knowledge about their own pragmatic speech behavior is often questionable. Wolfson (1989) has stated this problem:
Native speakers in spontaneous everyday conversation are dependent on sociolinguistic context, and since these distinctions are not intuitively obvious, materials designed for the purpose of teaching language learners are often both artificial and misleading. (p. 43)
Biber, Conrad, and Reppen (1998:80) have also pointed out, "current dictionaries are not...effective in presenting the actual patterns of use most commonly found in spoken and written texts, [and] ESL textbooks often do not provide reliable information about language use." By contrast, abundant exposure to real-world English beyond textbooks can lead to familiarization with its communication modes. This situation is described by Widdowson (1990:112) as "a concurrent discovery of language and the world."
Real-world materials, such as English newspapers, magazines, TV shows, supply up-to-date information on current issues. In addition to traditional printed and audio/video materials, resources utilizing modern technology are copiously available. The following examples are provided for instructional reference:
- Newspapers on CD-ROM
Recommended by Seedhouse (1994). He stated its advantage as follows:
[T]he computer will sort the articles in any order you want. The time spent searching for articles is cut to a few seconds. Alternatively, the text can be imported into a concordancer as an ASCII file, and work can be undertaken on the collocations and contexts of particular words. Word lists and analyses of word frequency can also be created. (p. 5);
- Satellite Television
Recommended by Basanta (1998). "How do nonnative teachers keep their English up to scratch?" she said, "My answer is satellite television. Thank you, modern technology. Consider the advantages…." Examples of her acknowledged advantages are in the following:
It is a cheap source of authentic (British and American) English with a variety of registers and accents.
It provides appropriacy of language in context.
It is entertaining.
Paralinguistic features abound.
It provides excellent exposure to other cultures.
It offers a wide spectrum of programs, from sports and education to films and sitcoms. (p. 35);
As a side but telling note, some remarks from a forum discussion (Sutherland 1994) of TESOL teachers on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) are quoted below to show that even native speakers of English need to be "recharged" periodically with current pragmatics of their mother tongue. These comments are particularly useful in offering insights into how English is different between the inside and outside of the classroom:
When I return to the U.S., I find myself consciously listening to the English used by others.
I recall asking for information in LA airport and using almost a textbook dialog, and got the strangest reply.
[T]he thing that bothers me the most is the idioms and cultural references that I don't understand.
I tend to watch a lot of TV when I'm staying in an US hotel.
In recent years, I have increasingly turned my attention to internet resources because of their ever increasing accessibility and variety. The following are some of the websites I enjoy most and use often in my own teaching:
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ : an MSN-hosted site, including daily news and features from NBC News, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Reuters
It also provides videos of a great variety of interests. The following are some of those from the "Today" show that I recently viewed:
Are side orders making you fat?
Balancing work and motherhood
Are you happy with your hair?
Have a Grand Canyon adventure
How old is your body?
- http://www.sciencemag.org/: an international science journal, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The following are some recent enlightening articles:
The Emergence of Cells During the Origin of Life
Climate Change: The Limits Of Consensus
Is Internal Timing Key to Mental Health?
Psyching Out The Fruit Fly
A Little Gene Xeroxing Goes a Long Way
Tropical Disease Follows Mosquitoes to Europe
- http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/: an educational publication written by mental health professionals for the discussion of general psychology as applied to our everyday lives. Some generally relevant topics are:
personal Growth
relationships
addictions
careers & Work
cyber-Affairs
depression & Anxiety
eating Disorders
eports & Performance
weight Loss / Control
under each of the topics there are many useful articles.
- http://www.nbc.com/The_Apprentice_6/video/#mea=95431: a Donald Trump reality show, which has achieved great popularity. This site comes with videos of vivacious conversations/arguments/debates between the American business tycoon and the competitors who are taking on an assortment of creative challenging tasks. It can be exciting and stimulating for advanced EFL learners, especially those who are business/management-minded.
If the real-time information from the abovementioned online resources is put to use, the acquired knowledge can be immediately activated and solidified. Especially with East Asian students who have followed the traditional bottom-up EFL education for many years, their receptive knowledge of the target language (listening and reading) sorely needs to be transformed into productive skills (speaking and writing). The following activities are what I have used successfully in my classes:
- Group brainstorming/problem-solving discussion (approximately four in a group; for 15-20
mins.) - on a topic of the group’s interest that involves issue(s) to be discussed or debated;
reported to the whole class afterwards by a group representative,
- PowerPoint presentation (individual or group) - based on information obtained from the
websites; delivered in front of the whole class,
- Application of The Apprentice projects - particularly for mature and entrepreneuring students to
formulate proposals and even implementing some of the projects, if allowed by circumstances.
- Mind-mapping drawing - using clearly structured articles; e.g. from
http://www.sciencemag.org/,
- Cloze test type of exercises - making newly learned expressions in English into blanks in
passages for students to fill in based on the co-texts,
- Group game designing - using the newly learned English expressions, for the whole class to play,
- Skits/stories making - weaving in the newly learned English expressions and play the skits out
or tell the stories,
- Essay writing - on the articles read, e.g. global warming, from the students’ own perspectives.
All the above activities have proved to be instrumental in (1) achieving learner-centered-ness; (2) developing students’ creative and critical thinking skills; (3) encouraging teamwork and learning autonomy. And they fully utilize the Internet as a convenient EFL learning resource of real-world information. Many of the activities can also be made into competitions to increase excitement.
Among authentic materials, current popular ones are superior choices, because they are most relevant to people's lives here and now as well as contain realistic, ready-to-use language. One caution is that at the introductory stage the way of thinking in these materials has to be universally appealing. Too many culturally loaded references or peculiar remarks/antics could cause frustration in less experienced learners. It is important to make appropriate selections of relatively straightforward yet delightfully engaging language and styles, free from abstruse vocabulary and convoluted syntax. Substantial input of real-world texts that are pegged to learners' levels and interests naturally increases their competence and sophistication in the target language.
With its escalating use for international interactions, English has become a way to interact with the world. (Hall 1996:259). The transition from mono-culturalism to bi-/multi-culturalism can be a fascinating ethnographic experience, leading to a higher degree of self-awareness and personal growth (Brown 1986:38). Learning other peoples’ frames of reference expands one’s own intellectual horizons. To attain such a goal, students need to step out of the playpen of textbooks and gradually develop the necessary intuition for their L2 and venture into an adventurous experience of intercultural communication. Foreign language education indeed offers new and varied vistas if it goes beyond being treated merely as a school subject. Inquisitiveness and wider visions can be developed through online resources on the English-language websites, one of the most effective channels that can lead to language proficiency as well as intercultural competence.
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Basanta, C. (1998). Satellites to the Rescue. English Teaching Professionals, 8: 35.
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Seedhouse P. (1994). Using Newspapers on CD-ROM. TESL-EJ 1.2.A-3.
Spencer-Oatey, H., & J. Xing. (2000). A Problematic Chinese Business Visit to Britain: Issues of Face. In H. Spencer-Oatey (Ed.), Culturally Speaking-- Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures (pp. 272-288). London: Continuum.
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Tyler, A. (1995). The Construction of Cross-cultural Miscommunication: Conflicts in Perception, Negotiation, and Enactment of Participant Role and Status. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17 (2), 129-152.
Vellenga, H. (2004). Learning Pragmatics from ESL & ESL textbooks: How likely? TESL-EJ, 8(2).
Walters, J. (1979). Strategies for Requesting in Spanish and English: Structural Similarities and Pragmatic Differences. Language Learning, 29, 277-293.
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Wolfson, N. (1989). PERSPECTIVES: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Please check the British Life, Language and Culture course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the CLIL - Teaching Other Subject Through English course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the What’s New in Language Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
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