A presentation given at Salisbury University, Maryland, USA, on the possibilities for achieving cross-cultural competence using the community of purpose model, as well as the idea of comparing stories derived from Jerome Bruner. The presentation argues that current approaches to intercultural competence often do not take into account the presence of difference within learners' and educators' consciousness.

1. Teaching Culture in an EFL Setting
Challenges and (Possible) Paths to
Success
Laurence Raw

2. Language Teaching

3. Language
teaching
with a
“culture”
garnish

4. “It is possible that learners can
feel alienation in the process of
learning
a foreign language, alienation
from people in their home
culture, the target culture,
and from themselves”
Turkish Teacher of English Language, 2007

5. Ideology
Educator
Reluctance
Learner
Nervousness
Obstacles to Developing Inter- or Cross-
Cultural Awareness

6. Acquiring Inter- or Cross-
Cultural Competence

7. A tripartite model of acquiring intercultural
competence

9. INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE COMPRISES …

10. JEROME BRUNER (1915 --)
DISCOVERY LEARNING

11. A learning situation in which the principal content of
what is to be learned is not given but must be
independently discovered by the learner.

12. We use story as a form of telling about what happens in our
life and in our own lives …. Not only are stories products of
language … but telling stories … becomes intertwined with,
even at times constitutive of, cultural life (Bruner 2002)

13. Cross-Cultural Awareness =
Discovering the ‘stories’ that
individuals and/or their
communities use to make
sense of their lives

14. Discover, recognize and negotiate difference

15. COMMUNITY
OF
PURPOSE

16. Its scope is flexible yet clearly defined

17. Discover and reflect on your own stories as a basis for
discovering others’ stories

18. Everyone – learners
and educators – are
involved in creating and
sustaining that
community

19. Educators and learners should understand
how to sustain that community through
feedback and discussion of future needs

20. Flexible
Competencies
and standards
negotiated by
individual
communities

21. NEGOTIATE BINARIES