Developing interpersonal and intercultural skills in a university language course

1 Description of context: intercultural language teaching and learning

In the contemporary foreign or second language classroom, language skills and knowledge of the target culture are no longer considered the only learning goals (see for example Sercu 2006). In fact, broader abilities and attitudes, which can be used to understand multiple cultures (including one’s own) can be included as learning objectives. In this case, the role of the language teacher is to introduce materials and tools into the classroom to combine intercultural (as opposed to just cultural) and language goals. As an outcome, students develop their mastery of language structures by using them, for example, to exchange information, explain, discuss, express opinions about cultural practices and intercultural encounters and, in doing so, develop different perspectives.

However, these learning objectives are seldom found in current foreign language manuals and courses. And if we search among models of intercultural competence, few specify how intercultural competence is linked to communicative competence in the foreign language at the operational level (for one example, see Borghetti 2013). Moreover, these models are proposed for any teaching context, regardless of the specific target language, age of students and, what we are interested in here, language level. However, as the development of students’ communicative competence remains a priority in Intercultural Foreign Language Education, what are the implications of proposing intercultural activities to students with a very low L2 proficiency level?

Several studies illustrate how language learning and intercultural learning do not necessarily follow the same pace, so that, for example, a person can possess a high level of linguistic competence and have at the same time an ethnocentric and essentialist vision of the Other (Brislin and Yoshida 1994; Byram 1997; Jackson 2011; Kramsch 1998). On the other hand, a low level of target language competence does not necessarily mean that students do not possess intercultural awareness in their first language, or other L2s in which they are more proficient. In fact, Byram (1997) differentiates between Intercultural Competence and Intercultural Communicative Competence, where the latter implies intercultural competence in a foreign language.

Bavieri and Livatino (2017) show how, in intercultural tasks with groups of students having limited linguistic proficiency, the lack of discourse instruments necessary to carry out linguistically complex actions induce students to use languages different from the target language (for example, English as a lingua franca [ELF] or their L1) so as not to lose the opportunity to communicate their reflections. The intercultural language classroom then becomes a space in which students can resort to their entire linguistic repertoire in order to communicate. This openness to what has been theoretically defined as translanguaging (García and Otheguy 2020) contrasts with the all-too-common attitude of monolingualism in the language classroom.

The first step to introduce intercultural objectives in the L2 classroom is to identify intercultural communicative activities, where the L2 development results from a critical reflection on the Self and the Other, from the exposure to diverse perspectives, and from the mediation between viewpoints. The objective then extends to the development of the abilities to communicate appropriately in intercultural encounters. As noted above, these activities can be proposed in the language class considering a plurilingual communicative environment and at the same time adapting them to the competence level of the students (Bavieri and Livatino 2017).

A very practical tool – very much used by language teachers – to develop a language syllabus has been, since 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001). But the notion of intercultural competence – referred to briefly in Sections 5.1.1.3 and 5.1.2.2 – was not greatly developed in the 2001 version and no validated and calibrated descriptors pertaining to interculturality were included. The new edition of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2018), containing additional descriptors, integrates domains relevant to language education across the curriculum, such as intercultural competence. Here, mediation is introduced as a key concept of communicative language competence: descriptor scales are provided for mediating a text, mediating concepts, mediating communication and for plurilingual/pluricultural competences, in order to build the learners’ intercultural competence.

The role of language learning in developing intercultural understanding through plurilingual communicative competence is emphasized in this latest version. Following the notion of Kramsch’s (1993) third space, here the notion of pluricultural space is introduced and defined as “a shared space between and among linguistically and culturally different interlocutors, i.e. the capacity of dealing with ‘otherness’ to identify similarities and differences to build on known and unknown cultural features, in order to enable communication and collaboration” (Council of Europe 2018: 122).

A study describing the integration of CEFR descriptors with intercultural learning objectives in a B1 level course illustrates how, in general, CEFR descriptors can help raise teachers’ and students’ awareness of the intercultural concepts addressed (Bavieri 2020). But what happens if intercultural activities are proposed in an A1/A2 course? Which level of intercultural reflection can be expressed and reached when language competence is at a basic level?

In the pedagogical practice we report here, the teacher investigated the use of an intercultural activity and its outcomes in an Italian L2 low elementary course at the Language Centre of Bologna University, attended by exchange and degree-seeking students. The study explored how the students engaged with the activity, their level of commitment and the degree to which they considered the intercultural tasks to have had an influence on their behaviours. Students’ comments were collected after the completion of the tasks through audio-recorded semi-structured individual interviews.

2 Account of activity: 24 h Erasmus Life

The proposed activity, 24 h Erasmus Life, is part of the open intercultural learning resources produced as an outcome of the European project IEREST – Intercultural Educational Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers (IEREST 2015). IEREST activities were not designed as language-teaching resources, but they can and have been adapted to the L2 classroom (Beaven 2018; Čebron 2017).

Students’ writing of their personal journals is the leitmotiv of 24 h Erasmus Life. Students are invited to reflect on the intercultural experience they are living abroad around four themes: (1) the emotional dimension of living abroad, linked to the concept of ‘culture shock’; (2) students’ social contacts in the light of their felt or imposed needs (e.g., the need to have ‘local’ friends); (3) the academic life in the host institution; and (4) the language experiences, including identity-related aspects of language proficiency.

Related to one of these weekly topics, students are asked to write a short text at home (see Appendix for an example of a prompt). Then, they send it to the teacher, who reads and corrects it. From all these texts, the teacher selects some passages and collects them anonymously in a document used for class discussion. The objective is to help students reflect on their experience, interact with other students and the teacher, compare and possibly review their point of view, and acquire awareness of the intercultural practices linked to the study abroad experience.

To address the students’ limited language competence, the activity was simplified qualitatively and quantitatively. The CEFR states that, at A2 (low elementary) level, students can “convey relevant information contained in clearly structured, short, simple, informational texts, provided that the texts concern concrete, familiar subjects and are formulated in simple everyday language” (Council of Europe 2018: 105)

The task was therefore reduced to 100 words. For the oral discussion, they received factual questions, a lot of written support and pre-prepared basic texts ready for use. The Appendix contains an illustrative example of the type of handout given to students, containing anonymised extracts from their written work, as well as the questions provided for in-class group discussion.

The research questions we identified in this study were:

• – How did students engage with the activity?

• – What kind of commitment did they show relating to the task?

• – To what degree did they consider the intercultural tasks to have had an influence on their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs about themselves and others?

The students’ comments were collected after the completion of the tasks through audio-recorded semi-structured individual interviews. The data were examined through thematic analysis of salient transcribed parts, supported by a thematic analysis of their written reflections.

The interviewees were three PhD students, one female and two males, aged 22–26. They came from Spain, India and China and had been in Italy for three months to one year. Before the language course, Pedro from Spain had never studied Italian, Nalin from India had studied it by himself and informally with Italian friends, while Mei had studied Italian in China for about a year. The students were asked to describe the activities, express a degree of appreciation and tell an anecdote about the completion of the task.

3 Summary of results

In terms of comprehension, the three students gave a detailed description of the activities and understood clearly what they had to do. The objectives of the activity were less clear: Pedro understood only at the end, while Nalin saw them as the ‘teacher’s hidden agenda’ (rather than the explicit learning objectives of the activity), and Mei, who had overwhelming language difficulties in grasping even the basic meaning of the instructions, did not mention them at all.

In terms of appreciation of the activity, the answers went from a general and convinced appreciation by Pedro, to a partial appreciation by Nalin, in particular with regard to the written task, to a lack of judgement due to the significant language difficulties on Mei’s part. The students agreed positively on the high degree of interactivity of the tasks and the input provided to acquire awareness about common conditions of living abroad: ‘happy to see that everybody has the same relational and linguistic problems as I have’ (Mei).

The students felt they were encouraged to complete the tasks, even though they all stressed the language difficulties. During the group discussion, they reported that they all used English when their Italian was too poor to express themselves. They preferred code-switching or code-mixing to remaining silent. Pedro pointed out that the fewer the language difficulties, the more the activity was enjoyable and successful. When the language problems are consistent, the comments are just on language use and not on the intercultural activity itself with different outcomes: in Nalin’s case the effort paid off, resulting in a progression in his target language competence; in Mei’s case on the other hand, it produced an excessive overload and sense of fatigue towards learning.

The intercultural activities impacted on the process of self-reflexivity. They seemed to have influenced Pedro, the student with fewer language problems. Pedro referred to the positive effects of the Erasmus experience on his shyness, on his ability to interact with other people, which the activities contributed to reinforce and support. The development of self-knowledge and self-awareness in relation to the Other is a first fundamental step in intercultural competence development.

In the other two cases, even though occasional intercultural reflections on the benefits of the class encounters were present (Nalin talked about a ‘very diverse class, very different reactions. You can understand you are not alone in the difficulties’), the activities impacted on the reflection on language learning and on the development of abilities to overcome language barriers through relational strategies (Mei talked about ‘playing Switch during and after the course, we share game stories’).

4 Conclusions and future prospects

As we noted in Pedro’s words: ‘Writing the journal helped me to gain confidence and self-esteem’, intercultural learning implies cognitive, affective and behavioural change; it also implies a development of attitudes, knowledge and abilities not associated to a specific cultural group and this development occurs through experiencing cultural diversity, when the experience is accompanied by forms of critical reflection (Borghetti and Beaven 2018). Mei and Nalin confirmed this when they reported that ‘activities were an opportunity of knowledge and sharing feelings… happy to share that…happy to see that everyone is doing so hard. I can say: oh, I’m not the only one’ (Mei); ‘Very diverse class, very different reactions. You can understand you are not alone in the difficulties’ (Nalin).

The activities proposed helped students go beyond cultural comparisons and turn inward to reflect critically on themselves. Their individual journals, their discussions, their presentations were the materials they used to practice L2 vocabulary and grammar structures and develop their skills. When the L2 could not be used due to low competence, students switched to ELF or any other language that could be of some use to communicate. Students’ multilingual repertoires helped the group move forward in the discussion, experience diversity in the very act of discussing it and progress with the L2: Nalin for example observed that ‘when I succeeded to explain something (relating to the L2) to a student, that thing remained in my head more than when I studied it’.

We can conclude that the adoption of an intercultural perspective in language learning implies, first of all, identifying activities for the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence, where the L2 development follows from critical reflection on oneself and others, from being exposed to diverse perspectives, and from the mediation of different viewpoints, so that students develop the ability to interact appropriately in intercultural encounters. The next step will be to adapt the educational offer to students’ language level, taking also into account the opportunities offered by translanguaging and/or the use of a lingua franca for the development of linguistic, discourse and socio-pragmatic competences.