Culture and the good teacher in the English Language classroom

Colin Sowden

In the present post-method situation, E LT has become increasingly sensitive to the issue of culture. However, this concept has been dened so broadly that it cannot ll the gap left by the retreat from methodology. In the absence of objective guidelines about what to do in the classroom, the teacher has returned to centre stage, but as a more informed, articulate, and empowered professional.

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Introduction

Many readers must sympathize with Peter Grundy (1999) when he laments the fact that after 30 years in the E LT profession, he still does not know how to do his job. It seems indeed that, despite all the discussion, research, and experimentation which has taken place over that time, it has not yet been demonstrated that there is a best way of teaching a second language. This conclusion has been a common theme in recent writings: although different new methods have appeared to offer an initial advantage over previous or current ones, none has nally achieved overwhelmingly better results. Even the Communicative Approach, which has done so much to restructure how we as language teachers view our activities, has had its detractors and has not proven more obviously successful than other methods in the past. There has indeed been methodological fatigue, leading many to the pragmatic conclusion that informed eclecticism offers the best approach for the future. While condence in specic methods has declined, interest in individual learner differences, such as motivation, aptitude, family background, has noticeably increased. If we cannot say exactly how we should teach, then perhaps we must let our learners determine how they should learn, and be guided by that instead. Thus has developed an interest in learner training and self-directed learning, and in what is termed the student-centred approach, either in its strong form, whereby the teacher and learners negotiate the syllabus, or in its weak form, whereby the teacher tries to ensure that what happens in the classroom responds to learners needs and interests as well as to external or traditional requirements. It is in conjunction with this shift of emphasis away from teaching and towards learning, that there has appeared a growing awareness of the role played by culture in the classroom.

A broad denition of culture

In the past, culture tended to mean that body of social, artistic, and intellectual traditions associated historically with a particular social, ethnic
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or national group. One could talk condently of French culture, the culture of the Marsh Arabs, or British working-class culture. Now this term is used much more broadly. In his analysis of the expatriate teaching situation, Holliday (1994:29) argues that the typical teacher in that context will be involved in a variety of cultures: those of the nation, of the specic academic discipline, of international education, of the host institution, of the classroom, and of the students themselves. To be effective, expatriate teachers must take account of all these cultures and how they inuence the attitude and study styles of their students. Instead of trying to impose cultures of their own, they must work with the cultures that they encounter. Reecting on what determined the approach of local teachers whom he observed during his time in Egypt, he comments (ibid.: 38) the relationship between teacher and student seemed not so much a product of explicit methodology; it was rather derived more naturally from existing, unspoken role expectations, perhaps originating outside the classroom. Holliday presents guidelines for ways in which expatriate teachers can learn from this observation by becoming better informed about local cultures and adapting their teaching styles accordingly (ibid.: 193). Diversity of culture, though, as Holidays analysis indicates, is not conned to the expatriate situation. Even when teachers of English share the nationality of their students, it is misleading to talk of cultural homogeneity. Although they are likely to share many of the cultural assumptions of their students, local teachers, who are not usually native speakers of English, may well be seen to represent certain values that set them apart. In implementing a national curriculum or experimenting with imported new teaching methods, for instance, such teachers may also nd a signicant gulf between themselves and their classes. Canagarajah (1999) explores this kind of situation at considerable length, analysing the way in which Tamil teachers of English in Sri Lanka need to take account in their work of the cultures associated with government policy, particular ethnic aspirations, the colonial heritage of the language, and student lifestyles and objectives.
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The cultures of teachers

Of course, teachers need to be aware not only of the cultures of their students and their environment, but also of the cultures that they themselves bring to the classroom, whether they are nationals or expatriates. This is not just a question of the historical and social baggage that, for example, an American or a metropolitan from New Delhi, inevitably carries with them, but of the particular attitudes and practices that they have developed as individuals. Woods (1996: 196) refers to a teachers B AK: their underlying beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge. These determine how what is planned is implemented in practice. He says of course design and delivery: When a [plan] is carried out, it is interpreted using familiar structures in a way which is coherent with the teachers BAK. By virtue of this interpretation, the actual curriculumwhat happens to the learners in the classroomis different from the planned curriculum(ibid.: 269). Even when we are dealing with culture in the more traditional sense, this is increasingly seen primarily as a context within which personal identity
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can be worked out. Kramsch is very clear that learning another language necessarily involves learning about the cultures with which it is associated. She says (1993: 8): If language is seen as a social practice, culture becomes the very core of language teaching. However, this does not mean that the learner should merely take on board wholesale all that these other cultures offer or represent. Instead there should exist a border zone between the target language cultures and local cultures (represented by both teacher and learners or by learners alone), which all parties can meaningfully inhabit and within which everyone can interact on equal terms. Effective language learning will take place in this way, whatever the formal requirements of the syllabus, when teachers and learners are constantly engaged in creating a culture of a third kind through the give-and-take of classroom dialogue (ibid.: 23). In similar vein, Canagarajah (op. cit.: 176) argues that students and national teachers of English in periphery countries should negotiate a new identity for themselves through the language, stamping their own identity on it and modifying it in accordance with their own needs and priorities.

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The scope of inter-cultural communication training

These different perspectives on the role of culture in the classroom demonstrate how very broadly the term has come to be employed in the teaching context. It approximates in meaning to the patterns of behaviour and the belief systems which teachers and learners have evolved in response to both their general social context and their particular life experience. Broadly speaking, this could be paraphrased as how people live or aspire to live in their world. Understanding this, it seems, is more important than knowing how to teach in any narrow, mechanical sense of that idea. Certainly the writers whose works I have quoted seem clearly to be indicating that concern for culture must predominate over concern for method, irrespective of what any ofcial teaching syllabus might declare. Naturally, this imperative places a huge burden on the shoulders of the teacher, who must cope with the multi-faceted challenge that it presents. In order to meet this challenge, courses have been developed to improve the inter-cultural communicative competence of both teachers and students. The understanding of culture here is usually the more limited and traditional one, pertaining to the life-style and values of a given people and society, with linguistic and/or pedagogical implications following on from these. Through a series of exercises, such courses aim to sensitize participants to the cultural issues involved in operating in a trans-cultural situation, and to equip them to meet the related challenges that they will face there. This process involves an implicit and sometimes explicit questioning of the learners assumptions and values; and explicit questioning can lead to a critical stance, to critical cultural awareness (Byram and Fleming 1998: 6). A good example here is Utleys Intercultural Resource Pack (Utley 2004). This is a well-designed book which aims, in a convincing way, to promote cultural awareness and encourage self-reection. However, in parts (primarily between pages 19 and 49), it does require users to provide overviews of their own and other cultures. This is no easy matter: there is no guarantee that they will be able to identify or explain relevant features of these cultures. In addition, there is no provision for checking or

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correcting any opinions which are offered, which could well reinforce rather than challenge existing prejudices. This is Guests point (2002: 154) when he warns of the dangers inherent in trying to generalize supercially about other cultures: much E F L cultural research has had the unfortunate result of misrepresenting foreign cultures by reinforcing stereotypes and constructing these cultures as monolithic, static Others, rather than as dynamic uid entities. This distorts our understanding of them and achieves exactly the opposite result from that intended. In fact, to develop familiarity with another culture, to improve ones real inter-cultural skills, it is necessary to live within that culture for a good period of time, to be what Byram (1997: 1) terms a sojourner rather than a tourist. You need to experience the culture from inside as an active participant in a community (Barro et al. 1998: 83). As Barro (ibid.) says, culture is not something prone, waiting to be discovered but an active meaning-making system of experiences which enters into and is constructed within every act of communication. Barro and her colleagues were writing with reference to the year abroad organized as part of the Modern Languages Degree course at Thames Valley University. In the context of a formal, structured setting, it is only through ethnography of the kind required on this programme that real insights and skills can be developed, but it is a time-consuming process which is impractical for most people to undertake. In most cases, therefore, it is doubtful how one can talk meaningfully about developing inter-cultural communicative competence outside of the context in which it will actually be required. Byram (ibid.: 33) identies four main components of inter-cultural communicative competence: knowledge, attitude, skills of interpretation and comparison, and skills of discovery and interaction. While he admits that these can in principle be acquired through experience and reection, without the intervention of teachers and educational institutions, he is nonetheless keen to promote their being taught in the classroom setting. Yet both attitude and knowledge, and to a large extent the other skills mentioned, are essentially attributes that people bring to the situation rather than abilities which can be produced there in a short time. In other words, they reect who a person is, in terms of background, education, personality and experience, rather than what they can be trained to do in terms of discrete skills. This is true for both national and expatriate teachers. Although, as noted above, the cultural issues in question will differ in many respects, the personal qualities that professionals need in order to be able to navigate effectively around them are very much the same: curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and beliefs about ones own (Byram ibid.: 50).

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The prole of a good teacher

Appropriate personal qualities, therefore, are what count most in the development of good intercultural communicative competence. In fact, I would argue, they are the key to overall success in the classroom, and this has not really changed over the years, although concern with the latest technique and method has tended to obscure this fact. As Brumt
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(2001: 115) says the ability to relate to learners, the role of enthusiasm for the subject and the interaction of these with a sense of purpose and organization were as relevant in 1500 as in 2000. Now, in the absence of clear methodological guidelines, and with an understanding of culture too broad to be of real pedagogical assistance, the teacher as person is coming to be recognized as the determining factor in the teaching process, just as the learner as person has been recognized as the key to successful learning. This good teacher, a well-rounded, condent and experienced individual, will be at ease in their classroom role: their teaching will be effective because it will be a natural product of who they are, and be received as such by their students. This is what Prabhu (1990: 172) refers to as a teachers sense of plausibility about teaching. He goes on to say (ibid.: 173) The question to ask about a teachers sense of plausibility is not whether it implies a good or bad method but, more basically, whether it is active, alive, or operational enough to create a sense of involvement for both the teacher and the student. It is the exercise of these qualities which matters and gets results. In a similar afrmation of authenticity, Brumt comments (1982: 16) on the ideals of Humanistic Language Teaching, by saying that . . . successful affective teaching is more likely to emerge when students join a community in which they are provided with an example of the desired behaviour pattern than when the patterns are built into some kind of syllabus structure. In other words, success as a teacher does not depend on the approach or method that you follow so much as on your integrity as a person and the relationships that you are able to develop in the classroom. The ability to build and maintain human relationships in this way is central to effective teaching, as it is to true inter-cultural communicative competence (Byram (op. cit.: 32).

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The role of teacher development

Recognition of this fact has led to the traditional idea of teacher training giving way to the more far-reaching concept of teacher development. If what I do in class depends mainly on who I am as a person, then I must develop myself as much as I can if I wish to improve as a teacher. As far as development in the classroom is concerned, teachers need to enhance those reective and critical skills which will allow them to assess and appropriately modify their performance in the light of experience and of the insights provided by research, both their own and that of experts in the eld. This process is described well by Tsui (2003: 277): the theorization of practical knowledge and the practicalization of theoretical knowledge are two sides of the same coin in the development of expert knowledge . . . and they are both crucial to the development of expertise. Such reection helps prevent that overroutinization which Prabhu (op. cit.: 174) considers to be the pre-eminent enemy of good teaching. It also helps the teacher develop an individual voice, one which does not merely echo external criteria and concerns, but gives expression to the teachers own inner dynamic.

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Of course, the fact that the teacher is all-important means that reection on our classroom activity must involve reecting on ourselves. Such self-analysis can be hard, even painful, because it may point towards changes which threaten our security and self-image. This is why many practitioners, even those apparently committed to the idea of professional development, avoid it, though perhaps unwittingly. They may be impressed by a new idea, but not actually allow it to modify how they behave. As Myers and Clark (2002: 51) comment: Our own concerns centre round our own experience that CPD [Continuous Professional Development] does not always produce related change in the workplace . . . our own thinking is that most people have an assimilative. . . .mind-set to CPDi.e. they see it in terms of accruing knowledge and skills rather than anticipating a deeper, accommodative sort of change that could lead to real change in their subsequent behaviour. It is in order to overcome this barrier that self-exploration needs to be a central element of teacher development programmes, helping participants to progressively unpeel the various personal and cultural layers that they have accumulated.

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The teacher in charge

If authenticity is the key factor in the classroom and, in a sense, we teach who we are, then teacher development really becomes a matter of selfdevelopment. If this is so, then, arguably, learning a musical instrument, having a child, or achieving a greater level of tness, may be as relevant to your work as improving your technique at teaching grammar and vocabulary if the end result is to make you a more fullled, more condent, more interesting practitioner. Certainly such personal growth will help us deal more easily with inter-cultural challenge: the more we understand the world, human relations, and ourselves, the better able we will be to empathize with others and make connections. This merging of private and professional selves to achieve an integrated identity with which we can feel satised, is a challenging but necessary project. However, while this prospect may be invigorating for an experienced practitioner, it can seem daunting to a novice, who is usually looking for simple signposts to follow. To be told that teachers must rely primarily on their own experience and expertise in order to chart their way ahead, can be alarming. Yet expertise is not an abstract system of rules which can be absorbed and then enacted; it is a personal construct which is built up over a lifetime. As such, it involves a dynamic relationship with the overlapping cultures and schemata within which the teaching takes place. Tsui (op. cit.: 64) comments: Teacher knowledge . . . should be understood in terms of the way [teachers] respond to their contexts of work, which shapes the way their knowledge is developed. This includes their interaction with the people in their contexts of work, where they constantly construct and reconstruct their understanding of their work as teachers. Since teachers lives are different one from another, so their expertise will differ, with no model emerging as an obvious template. What is right is
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what works in a given context in terms of all the various cultures which operate there, including those represented by the teacher. So how can we respond to Peter Grundys lament mentioned at the beginning of this article? If we accept that our profession is an art rather than a science, and if we recognize that our personal qualities, attitudes, and experience are what nally count, providing that these are informed by acquaintance with best current practice and research, then we language teachers can free ourselves from the kind of mechanistic expectations that have dogged us for so long. If we can accept this argument, we become genuinely free agents, able to decide for ourselves not only how best to carry out our jobs but also how to direct our future professional development. How do we know that we are doing a good job? Student response and progress, which must be carefully evaluated, will provide the principal guidance here. Peter must have had lots of positive feedback from students during his career, and seen good concrete results from his teaching. With apologies to Keats: That is all you know in English language teaching, and all you need to know. Final revised version received June 2005
References Barro, A., S. Jordan, and C. Roberts. 1998. Cultural practice in everyday life: the language learner as ethnographer in M. Bryam and M. Fleming (eds.). Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brumt, C. 1982. Some doubts about Humanistic Language Teaching in P. Early. Humanistic Approaches: an Empirical View. London: The British Council. Brumt, C. 2001. Individual Freedom in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byram, M. 1997. Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M. and M. Fleming. (eds.). 1998. Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, A. S. 1999. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grundy, P. 1999. From model to muddle. English Language Teaching Journal 53/1: 545. Guest, M. 2002. A critical checkbook for culture teaching and learning. E LT Journal 56/2: 15461. Holliday, A. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramsch, C. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Myers, M. and S. Clark. 2002. C PD, lifelong learning and going meta in J. Edge (ed.). Continuing Professional Development. Whitstable: I AT E F L. Prabhu, N. S. 1990. There is no best method why? T E S O L Quarterly 24/2: 16176. Tsui, A. B. M. 2003. Understanding Expertise in Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Utley, D. 2004. Intercultural Resource Pack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woods, D. 1996. Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The author Colin Sowden is Director of the International Foundation Course at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. He has taught general English, E SP, and E AP in Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. He is interested in the role of individual differences among learners of English and in intercultural communication. Email: C A [email protected]

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