for our third review, I would like you to design a Lucidchart display of the contents of the reading assigned to you. Here's the link to it https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/
Paste the link of the mindmap on the comments section below. Make the post by midnight on Friday next week and write a reaction before Sunday by midnight. You need to react to the two posts from your classmates.
Make your posts meaningful and don´t be afraid to disagree with your classmate's take on the issues found in the readings. Post should be around 300 words or more.
Let me know if you have any questions!
The grading criteria include:
- Punctuality to make the post
- Quality of mindmap
- Following the instructions given
- The quality of your responses, which should show accurate and deep engagement with the materials read
- Commenting on your classmates' posts and replying the comments they make of yours.
Please stay safe and indoors!!
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteHope you are spending some quality time with your family in this critical moment.
Here I attach my Lucidchart.
https://www.lucidchart.com/invitations/accept/29ce6da3-586b-4950-8bff-ccb71eea44d9
Look forward to your constructive comments
stay well & safe
Yi-Fen Liu 劉怡芬
Dear Yi Fen,
DeleteI hope everything is ok for you and your family. Thank you for sharing your Lucidchart I found it very concrete in relation to intercultural encounters namely the case of the sojourners. I believe the terms and dynamics of ICC are becoming more familiar to us as we advance in the doctorate, however, every time I read about how interaction and communication takes place and the ways it has been addressed through time, I learn more and realize how complex humans are and thus socio-cultural encounters and communication (which entails the use of language). These phenomena just like our very nature, is not static as objects that can be possessed and even exchanged, these phenomena are dynamic, constructed through the interaction with different communities, the exchange of ideas etc.
As you clearly show in the diagram, although tourists and sojourners have intercultural encounters, the latter has a more meaningful experiences since it entails living for a period of time in a different society, while in the first case, the interaction stays in the shallow stage of the encounter since the visit is shorter. As you show, aspects of communication such as proximity, interaction and relationship take place when being a sojourner. I believe the part on EFL could be broaden or authors could have been cited for further reference since it has been the center of discussion regarding ICC and assessment in FLT. Other than that, I think the diagram is clear.
Do stay safe and sound during these times.
Regards,
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteDear Yi-fen,
DeleteThanks for that detailed and appropriate flow-chart you did about such enriched concept as “Intercultural Encounters”.
Since I listened that term during my seminar studies, I have been really curious on the topic.
In terms of the article, I remark the difference you displayed about “Soujourners and Tourists” about those Intercultural Encounters. I had to understand the meaning of such those words and the context we are discussing to transfer those definitions to the EFL learning and teaching.
In the flow chart, the experience of the sojourner is enriched and improved rather than the tourist view of those intercultural encounters. The definition of “Sojourner” is a person who resides temporarily in a place, but as well in the article consider that this person is able to enhance its own conditions and to communicate according the linguistic and cultural situation. In fact, as I see in EFL learning and teaching, teachers and students are sojourners, experiencing many new and unexpected things in terms of a new language, having the sense of those things, developing an insider’s perspective to define and to respect differences among individuals.
Ivonne
Dear Ivoone,
DeleteI hope you are well and safe. It was disappointing not seeing you in our last meeting, it's always nice to hear your voice and input in our class discussion.:)
Thank you so much for your comments, you brought up an interesting concept of viewing EFL teachers and learners as sojourners. I guess one can mentally live abroad and experience another culture through English books, documents and texts.
Take care & talk soon
Dear Andres,
DeleteA virtual hug for you, too. I guess the pandemic has changed our non-verbal /kinetic communication. It must be awkward for Colombians not to greet each other with a hug and a kiss on the cheek!
First, thank you for your constructive comment on my lucid chart. I want to clarify that I didn’t reference other authors in the chart because I was assigned the introduction part (less than 6 pages, so there’s no literature review section). On the other hand, I’m impressed by your lucid chart, it has a detailed illustration of different ICC models proposed by various scholars. Great job :)
Yi-Fen Liu
Dear Luz,
DeleteThank you so much for your input. I'll look into the concept of ethnocentric vs ethnore-lative. I also consider power-relations to be an important variable that affects a sojourner's ICC development, which needs to be taken into account in future ICC research.
Dear Yi-Fen and all, lively discussion. Sojourning seems to be what called your attention the most. It makes sense that Byram started his book reflecting about it since this was seen as one major source of intercultural encounter and 'real' contact with language and the target culture. From this experience, it was expected that sojourns would develop cultural competence. In places like the US, sojourning through study abroad constituted basically a must for foreign language majors. In the US, I did not run into anyone who was a foreign/second language teacher that had not been to the country (ies) where his/her target language was spoken. This speaks of mobility but also the idea North Americans have of learning a language and approaching its culture. Besides, study abroad is a big business in the US. Most universities if not all have their own office for these types of exchanges. The downside, as we could find through research that I conducted with a colleague of mine on study abroad, is that in many cases the programs are advertised in subtle ways as vacation getaways and participants do not seem go beyond the tourist gaze. Aside note for Yi-Fen, I found several typos in the flowchart.
DeleteDear all,
ReplyDeleteHere is the link for my lucidchart:
https://www.lucidchart.com/invitations/accept/732b0d1c-d626-45ad-92d1-37c56ba21c51
In case you want to download it as PDF, here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ohuncVCOPM8ywgk7UF6_Gln2VCD7K60y/view?usp=sharing
Please remember to stay home and take care of your loved ones.
Virtual hugs!
Dear Andres,
DeleteHow extraordinary mind map you designed! with clear concepts and a clear relation among the variables. I have enjoyed reading the chapters through your idea. I appreciate the job you have done! Congratulations.
First of all, I want to highlight the definition of ICC you presented here. I completely agree with that simple but embracing concept “Communicating across linguistic and Cultural Boundaries”, especially, as regards to the part of “Cultural boundaries”, I found myself in that ideal world in which there are not more constraints in terms of ethnicity, culture, values, etc., to be part of a global community and to grow as one.
On the other hand, the author Stern argued about the lack of sociocultural aspect in the FLT and I could not agree with it more. Without that essence of social interaction, then, the ICC is absent in all aspects. Moreover, Van Ek(1986), presents a pioneering framework for comprehensive foreign language learning objective, which I consider very useful for my teaching practice as a EFL teacher in a public school, due to the idea of providing a path to understand how to achieve learning objectives. However, I beg to differ with the idea of focusing the linguistic, sociolinguistic and sociocultural competences on the “Native Speaker” as a model for the FL learners, there is a contradiction here, because I have my own stance on EFL teaching and learning, which is that the best teacher is the one who lived the same situations as the learners, that individual is going to be willing to understand the struggles and the possible outcomes after living a similar experience, for me it is a kind of “process empathy” for learning a foreign language. Indeed, that fact is not easy for a native speaker to recognize and to consider as a part of its teaching practice.
Have a nice evening, and take care with this pandemic situation!
Ivonne
What a detailed & complex lucidchart! It demonstrates your deep understanding & analysis of different ICC & ELT theories. Going over your chart has also reinforced what we have learned in our last meeting about ICC models proposed by scholars such as Habermas, Argyle, and Poyatos, etc).
DeleteI like how you contrasted the opposing views of Argyle and Poyatos on non-verbal communication. Argyle (1983) pointed out that variation in non-verbal communication between cultures provides infinite scope for misunderstanding and confusion. On the other hand, Poyatos (1992) non-verbal communication can be separated from verbal communication and can be taught. This has triggered my reflection; over the years I’ve received comments on my facial expression and gestures from my students in teacher evaluation. Some of them are negative, which might be caused by misinterpretation and misunderstanding. I thought about clarifying it to my Colombian students. However, I found it extremely difficult to explain, if not impossible. Blaming it on cultural differences would be overgeneralization and oversimplification because there’re so many factors involved. Are my facial expressions and gestures representative of Taiwanese people? Or it is the result of my cultural, educational background and personal /professional experiences? Apart from having qualifications in language teaching, I obtained my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music in the UK, and I used to perform in public as a pianist and a viola player in an orchestra. Maybe that’s the reason why I tend to be more expressive in my non-verbal communication in comparison to other language teachers that my students are accustomed to. I have to say I disagree with Poyato’s view that non-verbal communication can be taught, in my view, there are so many factors that affect one’s non-verbal communication, which cannot be easily confined to cultural differences. I argue that an individual’s semiotic resources/repertoire and life experiences also play an important role in his /her non-verbal communication style.
Hello Andrés, this is a very complete mind map. I appreciated that you used some space to include your own critiques. I agree with you some aspects of intercultural communication are hard to be oversimplified in order to be assessed. This is actually what has had under scrutiny the idea of communicative competence (CC): the oversimplification conducted on Hymes’ idea of CC in order to make it measurable. We have already discussed this in class in previous sessions. There is a lot of pressure on models like to this because they can't be assessed parametrically, and the risk is falling in the positivist and rationalist trap of simplifying it to make it fit any measuring system that can then be commercialized. Byram has not fallen into this so far and has left the painful and risky task of quantitative assessment to those who dare do it.
DeleteYi-Fen, the idea whether nonverbal communication can be taught is still open. You said it yourself, sometimes your students misinterpret your facial gestures; so, perhaps a short explanation of some verbal gestures in Taiwanese culture may unlock intercultural awareness in your students. By doing it, you will be teaching them that nonverbal communication varies across cultural groups.
Dear classmates and professor:
ReplyDeleteHere is the link of my mind map.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=15HUhLGRQ6fTi7XnxNVmYrNuDQNHVUBCh
I had problems with the program "Lucidchart", but I did my best with paint :-) but I also added the file in PDF. Please use the zoom.
Regards,
Ivonne
Dear Ivonne,
DeleteI see you are very resourceful. I have not used Paint in quite a long time and praise your resourcefulness, however, I wanted to have the opportunity to highlight, comment or copy the content for further analysis and that is not possible in a Paint document.
The map is very well constructed since it shows the main characteristics of the referential documents taking into account for teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language. For the CEFR I agree on the complaint made by the author on the omission of the Savoir S’engager in this document. The CEFR took the other Savoirs which are contrastive, content focused. This is a critique made by several scholars since as we all have seen, culture is not a static object and an approach based mainly on contrasts without deep critical analysis does not develop awareness and neither ICC. On the case of the DIDLT, I think it has a meaningful advance when compared to the CEFR, since as the author mentions, it conceives the intercultural awareness as an individual component rather than part of the cognitive dimension (the Savoir) as it was conceived in the CEFR. Another improvement is the overcoming of the contrastive approach for a more critical context focused one. I like the idea of seeing the language as a lingua franca consequently the need of a native as a perfect model is disregarded. Concerning the INCA project, I strongly disagree with the proposed “mastery levels” as they entail that ICC could be fully mastered. In other words ICC is finite instead of longitudinal as proposed in the DIDLT approach, if ICC could be fully mastered it means there is a pool of static knowledge/objects that can be fully stored instead of developing abilities that facilitate proper communication. A positive aspect I highlight from INCA is the advancement on evaluation of ICC for both teaching and learning processes. It suggests 18 descriptors for this purpose. About the AIE I point out its agency focus towards relating to people from different cultures and interact correctly, the weakness of this referent is the lack of a deepening on the etical, political and educative dimensions of ICC. Moving on, I want to highlight the strengths of the CDC approach. This referent includes the ethical, political and educational perspectives toward a democratic culture with strong critical foundations which in my opinion is the most appropriate one for a social justice perspective. Regarding the MCERL-CV I have to say I disagree with the idea of a third culture suggested in order to avoid the communicative difficulties that arise from ideological differences. Instead, I would call this a sensitive space in which the pupil culturally positions him/herself in order to have success in the IC encounter. In regards to the CPIC I have to say I do not like it since in my opinion it still conceives ICC in a static way.
Remember to stay home.
Kind regards.
Ivonne, good review and use of paint. I hope it wasn't a pain using it because I remember it used to make me suffer a lot. I have to also praise González because through his book we are getting a really up-to-date overview of the frameworks that inform intercultural communication in foreign language teaching. His is a good chapter about the most known models. I like Andres’ critical review very much. None of these models can cover the complexity of the phenomenon they are trying to synthesize; this is why more models keep coming out. They all have their pros and cons, but one failure that can't be accepted is having a poor or reductive understanding of culture or intercultural communication. We can't expect the CEFR to include savoir s'engager because the ideological dimension does not fit within a model that intends to serve as a framework of assessment. The CEFR not only fails to do this but also to provide a comprehensive understanding of communication and language. This is because it can't shake off the verbocentric and typographic understanding of language and the limited definition of communication. For example, they only think that multimodal communication only takes place in interaction in online environments. The most recent model is the model of democratic culture. I worked on it and it does combine well human rights with principles of intercultural citizenship, though it does not escape criticism that is underpinned by Western liberal democratic ideologies, rejected by many countries where democracy is widely demonized.
DeleteDear Luz Mary,
ReplyDeleteVery good job on Lucidchart. The graphic aids support the content of the diagram. I think the second chapter of the book assigned helps us review many of the concepts we studied concerning ICC, nevertheless, it is always enriching to broaden knowledge and clarify concepts. In the first part of your graph I like the factor of “savoir etre” or attitudes because in order to have successful communication you need to descenter from your personal beliefs and ideologies so you can understand “other’s” points of view and ways to see the world. This does not necessarily imply leaving one’s own culture and embracing the other’s but being open and understanding different ways of thinking. In relation to the “savoir” part (knowledge) with respect to the part that highlights the knowledge about the cultures of the interlocutors since it means it is a “content” limited to a specific social group I believe there should not be an emphasis on this part. This actually makes me ask the following questions: What happens when the student faces interaction with a person from a culture he/she does not have knowledge about? would not it be better to develop the IC abilities necessary in order to cope with these kind of situations rather than acquiring knowledge of a specific culture? English is used not only in the anglophone countries, how would the student communicate in a context where English is used as a lingua franca by individuals from completely different sociocultural groups? I incline much more to the second aspect proposed which entails the processes of interaction at the individual and societal levels. In my opinion, this requires critical awareness built through a long process in which students are presented not one specific intercultural situation of dysfunction but diverse ones with an emphasis on local problems first and moving towards international ones without the anglophone cultural preference. On page 41 of the text, I disagree on the part that mentions the need for the FL learner to have a particular kind of sociocultural competence in addition to the one acquired in their own country. What I think is needed is a broader sociocultural competence, one that is more flexible and open to the difference. Later in the document Byram mentions the advantages some societies have in terms of this “particular kind” of competence. Some societies have more mobility than other ones (for instance, the european ones), which affects the learner’s experience of “otherness” in regards to this example, I believe the individuals who live in those geographical places do not have a particular kind of sociocultural competence additional to any other one. What they have is a richer competence built through a diverse interaction facilitated by the mobility mentioned which allows them to as aforementioned descenter from their particular way of seen the world and consider others’ views. In general I like Byrams theories and his great contributions to ICC which have facilitated further discussion. All in all, I think what current education needs is a focus on critical justice and FLT should not be apart from it. The native focus is downgraded and an ELF approach needs to take place, the cultural content needs to be replaced by the method to develop the competences necessary to deal with possible cultural diversity dysfunctions etc.
Wishing best to you and your loved ones in these times.
Regards,
Dear Luz,
ReplyDeleteYour lucid chart is very clear and comprehensible for the readers. It represents Byram’s views toward ICC logically and analytically. What I like about our seminar is the fact that I have been able to use the literature that we read to support my research study every step of the way, it, in turn, has also expanded my knowledge and repertoire on ICC. My research participants and I are both sojourners, who teach English as a lingua franca in a foreign context. One of the required qualities of the sojourners stated by Byram is the ability to be able to relate to otherness despite conflicts and incompatibility. In my view, the development of the required qualities might involve a long process of living and working with different linguistic and cultural groups since it is a challenging and difficult task to decenter oneself and take up the perspectives of the other to establish and maintain relationships by understanding differences in beliefs, behaviors, attitudes (Savoir etre) in any professional, academic, business or diplomatic situations. As you pointed out in the chart that knowledge (savoir) is fundamental to successful interaction but not acquired automatically.
In terms of teaching and assessment, Byram argues that there can be no generalizable syllabus for ELT, neither linguistic nor cultural. Many variables such as specific cultural identities, age, purpose, institution….so on and so forth need to be considered. I couldn’t agree more with this view. Education has always been exam-oriented in Taiwan and China, which is the social norm in Confucius heritage countries. Hence, the translation method is seen as an effective method as it can be easily incorporated into evaluation and assessments. In contrast, it may not make much sense for Spanish learners of English as 40% of English vocabulary originated from Latin, so Spanish learners can already identify a good amount of vocabulary words in English.That is why the Byram reiterates the importance of taking into account learners’ origins, languages, and cultures when writing syllabus and text so that it is always circumstance sensitive and responsive to the environment that it takes place.
Dear all,
ReplyDeletethank you, Luz Mary, for this visual review. Very complete as well. I would like to point out something that this flowchart allows to see that Byram's model is not the general descriptor of each component. Sometimes his model is like Saussure’s proposal, too many talk about his work like they know it but few people have really read him in depth. With the model it happens that many people use it and talk about it and they only refer to the general descriptor, but not the objectives. They are indeed what make the model comprehensive in many ways. There are many criticisms to the model as some of you may have perceived: sometimes it sounds as though a nationalist view were being championed or native speakerism seems to rampant. Sometimes what Byram says in one section seems to lose coherence somewhere else in the book. Yes, he has actually acknowledged some of the criticism made. However, I think we have to cut him some slack. This is a 1997 book and a whole lot of new theory and understanding has developed since this book appeared. Also, we can't forget that we are always conditioned by our own locus of enunciation, as some of you pinpoint (Andrés) many of the things said in this book are targeted to the European conditions, yes, naturally someone’s' symbolic products are highly mediated by his cultural positioning and locus of enunciation. This is clear in many of Byram’s statements in this book, because the immediate context of production is Europe. This is how we should approach any text, with open eyes to inherent 'biases' proper of the author's sociocultural and political conditions.