The practical integration of culture in EFL courses Since the mid to late 1980s, a number of teachers and educationalists

have been arguing that an intercultural approach to foreign language teaching prompts us to examine the most basic assumptions about what language does, and what a language course should seek to achieve. Current communicative methods of second language teaching generally view language as a means of bridging an information gap. Communicative language learning also assumes that by bridging a series of information gaps, learners will naturally develop their linguistic knowledge and skills, ultimately to the point where they will acquire native speaker competence. This view of language and linguistic development has tended to underrate culture. Stern (1992:206) notes that despite a sustained and consistent body of work, particularly in America, drawing attention to the importance of culture in language teaching, the cultural component has remained difficult to accommodate in practice. In fact, cultural content was often stripped from learning materials. Pulverness (1996:7) says of English language teaching (ELT) in the 1970s: English was seen as a means of communication which should not be bound to culturally-specific conditions of use, but should be easily transferable to any cultural setting. Authenticity was a key quality, but only insofar as it provided reliable models of language in use. Content was important as a source of motivation, but it was seen as equally important to avoid material which might be regarded as culture bound. Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, syllabus design and materials writing were driven by needs analysis, and culture was subordinated to performance objectives. However, more recently, there have been fresh attempts to integrate culture into the communicative curriculum. While acknowledging the obvious importance of language as a means of communicating information, advocates of an intercultural approach also emphasize its social functions; for example, the ways in which language is used by speakers and writers to negotiate their place in social groups and hierarchies. It has long been evident that the ways in which these negotiations take place vary from community to another. A language course concerned with culture, then, broadens its scope from a focus on improving the four skills of reading, speaking and writing, in order to help learners acquire

cultural skills, such as strategies for the systematic observation of behavioural patterns. Moreover, as learners come to a deeper understanding of how the target language is used to achieve the explicit and implicit cultural goals of the foreign language community, they should be prompted to reflect on the ways in which their own language and community functions. The intercultural learner ultimately serves as a mediator between different social groups that use different languages and language varieties. The ultimate goal of an intercultural approach to language education is not so much native speaker competence but rather an intercultural communicative competence (e.g. Byram, 1997b; Guilherme, 2002). Intercultural communicative competence includes the ability to understand the language and behaviour of the target community, and explain it to members of the home community and vice-versa. In other words, an intercultural approach trains learners to be diplomats, able to view different cultures from a perspective of informed understanding. This aim effectively displaces the long-standing, if seldom achieved, objective of teaching learners to attain native speaker proficiency. English language teaching has long been a multidisciplinary field in practice, but it has drawn mainly upon research into linguistics and psychology for its theoretical insights. An intercultural approach continues to draw upon these disciplines, but gives equal weight to other areas of research and practice in the humanities and social sciences. Some of these disciplines, such as anthropology and literary studies, are well established; others, such as media and cultural studies, are relatively young and still developing. A development of cultural awareness in EFL classes

It seems important to talk of cultural awareness and what that would denote here since, although language and culture are considered to stand on separate grounds (see Byram, 1989), language is so culture bound that the tendency to treat language independently of the culture to which it refers cannot be justified (ibid. pp. 39-101). Culture has been referred to as knowledge which is shared and/or negotiated between people, and belongs to all of them, not to a single one of them separately (ibid. p. 82). In the foreign language situation, it is difficult to talk of 'culture' and not of 'cultures, since a language such as English carries behind it the culture of British people, American people,

Australian people, and so on. In the EFL situation we can thus talk of cultures, since English as an international language reflects the cultures of many different peoples. The values of the Anglo-Saxon language (whether it is the medium used by British, American or Australian people) will impose and superimpose themselves on the values of the native speaker's culture; on the other hand, the foreign language instructor who is not a native speaker will transmit with that language a view of the world that reflects the cultural assumptions of the Ll educational system (see Kramsch, 1993). A middle way, however, seems to be sought for in foreign language education nowadays: 'a search for an understanding of cultural boundaries and an attempt to come to terms with these boundaries' (ibid. 12). The relation between literature and culture seems to be based on the assumption that literature reflects the values of a certain cultural group of people, even if the author's values are not the same as those of the cultural group to which he belongs (see J. M. Valdes 1995). Thus, it becomes the task of teachers of foreign languages to have one more good reason to teach literature in the language classroom, and that is to make clear to their students the values underlying the behaviour of characters in literary works as well as the points of view of their authors, so that their students understand these values, and through them the literary works.

Intercultural competence in foreign language education through Arts In the present era of interconnectivity and globalization, defined as the intensified and accelerated movement of people, images, ideas, technologies, and economic and cultural capital across national boundaries (McCarthy et a.2003: 454), it is not surprising that foreign language curricula throughout the world are including a new emphasis on the cultures of the languages in their programs. Educators are all stressing that a deeper understanding of the foreign languages cultures is now needed in order for students to develop an appreciation and tolerance for the complexities of foreign cultures while they reflect on the multiple dimensions of their own native culture(s). Bredella (2003b: 230) points out that experiences with art can provide encounters of imaginative immersion and self-reflection that equally characterize rewarding acts of interculturality. That is all forms of art have the potential to involve the reader-spectator in a foreign world: we share the otherness of an aesthetic text/ object, the point of view of the author/ creator, his or her culture, etc.