“Challenges to the Teachability of
Intercultural Competence”
ICC 2016, Tucson
Friederike Fichtner, Washington University in
St. Louis
Background
• MLA report (2007): “deep cultural knowledge and
linguistic competence are equally necessary if one
wishes to understand people and their communities”
• FL learners “cannot truly master the language until
they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which
the language occurs” (National Standards, 1996)
• Byram & Kramsch (2008): language teachers are
“challenged to teach not language and culture, but
language as culture” (p. 21)
• FL learners at American universities explore socio-cultural
connotations of FL words/expressions from early on in their
learning experience, e.g. when engaging students in
conversations about their family, friends, personal
relationships
• In German introductory courses, the culturally different
meaning and use of expressions of affection addressed
early on, e.g. the seldom use of “lieben” (vs. “love”)
• Yet, language educators often lack confidence and feel
“left to their own devices“ when teaching about cultural
differences (Byrd et al., 2011, p. 5)
• FL students at the beginner level often do not reflect on
or understand the interconnection between language
and culture (Drewelow, 2013)
• Teaching about culture (including the cultural
contexts in which language is used) in the
classroom rather than through life experiences
requires abstraction
• Culture needs to be ‘represented’ in a ‘teachable’
form
• Idealized FL cultural knowledge has been
rendered as intercultural competence
(Byram,1997):
– a “critical cultural awareness” that entails “an ability
to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit
criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s
own and other cultures and countries” (p. 63)
Rationale of this study
Despite the fast progression of the theory on the
teaching of intercultural competence, large empirical
gaps remain
 Byram’s (1997) notion of intercultural competence
presupposes a measurable, definable and
predictable intra-cultural “baseline” of commonly
agreed-upon, lingual-cultural norms within a speech
community
 In order to work towards intercultural competence,
FL learners would need to arrive at perceptions of L2
use that coincide with NS perceptions of these same
practices
Rationale of this study
There is little evidence about…
(a) whether the lingual-cultural expressions that –
according to textbooks – encapsulate essential
divergences in outlook between cultures, or
whether NSs of the FL (here, German) perceive the
socio-cultural connotations of such terms
homogenously enough to warrant their status as
cultural traits
(b) to what extent native speaker views of such socioculturally connoted FL words/expressions actually
align with student views
Research questions
RQ1: How do NSs of German describe their use of
expressions of affection – and do these accounts
indeed ratify the assumption of pertinent lingualcultural norms?
RQ2: How do student and German NS views
on German expression of affection compare?
RQ3: How do students describe their learning
outcome after lessons on German expressions
of affection?
Method: participants
• 52 German native speakers: all born and raised in Germany;
age 20-76 years, average age of 38; 22 male, 30 female
• 154 students enrolled in the seven sections of this firstsemester German course at a large midwestern research
university in the Fall 2011
- students’ ages ranged between 18 and 39 years, average
age of 20
-90 student participants were male and 64 female
- most participants (150) grew up in the US, speaking English
as their L1
Method: instruments
• Germans completed a questionnaire on the meaning
and use of German expressions of affection
• Before and after instruction, students completed (1) a
nearly identical questionnaire & (2) a questionnaire on
their learning outcomes after instruction on German
expressions of affection
• post-instruction interviews with 19 student
volunteers
• quantitative (Likert scales) and qualitative (open-ended
questions) items
Results
RQ1: How do NSs of German describe their use of
expressions of affection?
Frequency of expressing affection and types of
expression
• 7 addressees: partner, friend, mother, father,
child, pet , food
RQ1: How do NSs of German describe their use of
expressions of affection?
In general:
• Large degree of agreement in terms of
frequency ratings (Likert scale rating)
• Large degree of intra-cultural variation in
terms of expressions of affection
• Large variety of (‘other’) expressions of
affection that did not fit any of the major
categories that emerged from the data
analysis
RQ1: How do NSs of German describe their use of
expressions of affection?
Results
RQ1: How do NSs of German describe their use of
expressions of affection?
Expressions of affection toward a partner, as
stated by German NSs, N=38
Ich liebe dich
50.00%
42.11%
Other
34.21%
Ich hab dich lieb
0.05% 0.05%
Es ist schön, dass es
dich gibt
Du bist mir wichtig
Approximate translations:
Ich liebe dich – I love you (romantic)
Ich hab dich lieb – I love you
Es ist schön, dass es dich gibt – I’m happy that you are in my life
Du bist mir wichtig – you’re important to me
Expressions of affection toward 'friends' (Freunde) as stated
by German NSs, N=44
Other
70.45%
Expressions of
gratefulness
Ich hab dich lieb
22.73%
11.36% 9.10% 9.10% 9.10%
Ich mag dich
Es ist schön, dass es
dich gibt
Approximate translations:
Ich hab dich lieb – I love you
Ich mag dich - I like you
Es ist schön, dass es dich gibt - I’m happy you are in my life
Du bist mir wichtig - you’re important to me
Expressions of affection toward
a mother, as stated by German
NSs, N=32
46.88%
43.75%
Ich hab
dich lieb
Expressions of affection
toward a father, as stated by
German NSs, N=24
45.83%
Other
41.67%
Other
18.75%
Ich hab
dich lieb
Danke
12.50%
12.50%
Nonverbal
• Ich hab dich lieb – I love you
• Danke – Thank you
Nonverbal
Expressions of affection toward a
child, as stated by German NSs,
N=18
Other
50%
38.89%
22.22%
Ich hab dich
lieb
Es ist schön,
dass es dich
gibt
Approximate translations:
Ich hab dich lieb – I love you
Es ist schön, dass es dich gibt - I’m happy you are in my life
Expressions of excitement about food, as stated by
German NSs, N=48
Lecker
45.83%45.83%
41.67%
Other
Schmeckt
16.67%
Compliments
12.50%
6.25%
Approximate translations:
Lecker – Delicious
Es schmeckt – It tastes good
Lieben – to love
Eat more
often
Lieben
Expressions of affection toward
a pet, as stated by German NSs,
N=13
61.54%
46.15%
Terms of
endearment
Other
RQ2: How do student and German NS views on
German expression of affection compare?
In general:
• Students overestimated the frequency with
which Germans express affection
• Students underestimated the variety of
expressions
Means of German NSs’ reported frequencies of use of expressions of
affection toward seven addressees as compared to means of students’
projected NS use of expressions of affection toward seven addressees
RQ3: How do students describe their learning outcome
after lessons on German expressions of affection?
On their post-instruction questionnaires, students described
what they learned in the lessons on German expressions of
affection
 Four categories of problems emerged:
(1) Learners’ uncertainty about the exact meaning and use of
the German expressions of affection
(2) Learners’ expectation of direct translatability
(3) Learners’ cultural value judgments and essentialized views
of German culture
(4) Learners’ inability to understand or relate to how Germans
express affection
Learners’ cultural value judgments and essentialized views
of German culture
On their post-instruction questionnaire, students described
in brief what they learned in the lessons on German
expressions of affection and friendship
Learners’ cultural value judgments and essentialized views
of German culture
Respondents described Germans as:
 “much more rigid on their friend description”
 “much more conservative with terms of affection”
 “more specific in how they address people and their
relationships to those people”
 “more accurate” or “more reserved when it comes to
expressing affection”
German relationships were described as:
 “very formal” or “different”
 “friends are harder to come by in Germany because of
the distinction between friends and acquaintances”
47.37% of interview respondents expressed similar views and
described Germans as
 “serious,” “more formal,” “a more reserved” and a “more
sincere” culture, “more intimate,” “compact,” “rough,” with
“trying personalities,” “curt,” “introverted,” “more aloof than
Americans,” and “a little bit colder” because “they keep
people a lot further away”
15.79% based their cultural judgments on the very sound of
German:
If you're speaking a rough language, you're gonna have a different attitude
towards what you're saying… like the way words sound affect their meaning
sometimes and how they're used. It kind of reflects culture as well. If you have a
more intense culture, a more ancient culture, you have a more barbaric culture,
they're gonna have more intense language versus, really smart, totally
sophisticated cultures have a more smooth language. – Paul
Learners’ inability to understand or relate to how Germans
express affection and friendship
 reactions ranged from being “surprised” to calling the
German expressions “strange,” “odd,” or “weird”
 some learners even felt “shocked,” in disbelief that Ich
liebe dich was not used “with parents, pets, friends” or to
express “happiness (e.g., I love this place!)”
 others reported that it “bothered” them “that Germans
wouldn’t say ‘Ich liebe dich’ to dogs and cats”
Challenges to the teachability of
intercultural competence
• the degree of quantitative and qualitative
divergence in German NSs’ accounts of their use
of expressions of affection defies the assumption
of a lingual-cultural norm
 lack of a representable/teachable norm
• ‘Misalignment’ of German NS and student
baseline views after instruction
• instruction bestowed upon many students an
essentialized view (Kubota, 2003) of German
culture that defied notions of genuine
intercultural competence
Challenges to the teachability of
intercultural competence
• Students assumed that there was, in fact, a
clearly definable and teachable lingual-cultural
norm regarding both American and German
linguistic practices of expressing affection.
• This assumption was perhaps the result of
students perceiving the contrastive (L1/L2)
cultural notes in the textbook as statements of
matter-of-fact knowledge rather than as insights
that need to be read with a critical eye.
Pedagogical implications
• Teachers might highlight that – although German NSs’
perceived uses of expressions of affection share some
common ground – there is no all-encompassing
consistent and reliable norm, and in turn, no reliable
predictor for the ways German NSs behave
• Teachers can point out where and how behavior in the
target culture is more or less normed. In doing so,
teachers could provide learners with opportunities to
experience how learning an L2 indeed grants new (and
untranslatable) perspectives.
Pedagogical implications
• Teachers can help learners find pathways toward
“relating” to the target culture so as to prevent
students from being “shocked” at Germans’ “barbaric”
expressions of affection and friendship
• With the insight that cultures are not equivalent (and
neither are L1 and L2 words), teachers can engage
students in activities that guide students towards the
realization of intracultural divergences and away from
an undue obsession with cultural contrasts that are
conceptually premised on the essential comparability
of cultures.