L. Activity 3.5. Intercultural Competence (how to implement it in class)

1- Describe an example of exercise, or unit, from a book, dealing with intercultural competence.

    Looking for information about how intercultural competence is actually included in the textbooks, we've found a very interesting unit to analyze. The unit is called "Culture Vulture", a direct allusion to the topic it covers, as well as to the feeling it aims to arise in the students: curiosity towards other cultures, together with the realization of the enriching value of diversity.

            Indeed, what has caught our attention is the warm-up, a speaking activity in pairs entitled: Test your culture knowledge with this culture vulture quiz!  The activity includes images and short clues about cultural icons related to different arts (such as Kylie Minogue, the play Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare or the painter Salvador Dalí) and students must guess the name and the country of origin of each one. Then, they share their answers with the whole class, and anyone who may know any further details about one of the given topics will be welcomed to share the information with the rest of the group.    

               OpenMind2. Level A2. London: MacMillan (2014).   

2- In your opinion, has the subject been dealt with appropriately? Explain why it has or why it has not.

           From a general perspective, the activity is positive since it covers cultural aspects from different regions and different areas (i.e. England, Spain, Italy...). At the same time, it directly appeals to the background knowledge of the learners on this topic, so the activity may arise their curiosity.

       However, we think that it will be more appropriate (and more enriching for the students) if the authors of the book had included some cultural notions belonging to less known countries. For instance, being a book to work on the English language, it could include images and clues about cultural icons from the different English speaking countries (such as India, New Zealand or Ireland), broadening thus the students perspective while dismantlement the myth that the English world only consists of the UK and north America. After all, we believe that the more and most varied information we give to our students, the better for them to mature as responsible citizens of our current, globalized world.    

3- How would you present/include it in your teaching?

         We'll include this activity while studying the names of countries and nationalities, so by doing the quiz students can put into practice the lexical items they have just learnt. Even though it is aimed at a A2 level, it can also be useful for practicing the grammatical point of comparative and superlative adjectives, encouraging students to make comparisons between the pictures and their own reality.  

          On the other hand, as it is a team-work, interactive sort of task, we will use it at the end of the lesson, when students are more tired and need an incentive to pay attention to the explanation. Thus, we believe that the competition factor will assure the active participation of the whole group.

          We can also take the activity a step further by asking the students to research at home the characters or countries they liked the most from the activity, and then prepare their own quiz to be answered by their partners in the following session.