Reseña de texto omparativo de investigación lingüística

Identifying information

Artículo: “Developing the intercultural perspective in foreign language teaching in Colombia: a review of six journals.” De José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia, publicado en el 2014 en Language and Intercultural Communication, en Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.  Con DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2014.896922.

Research design and

Methodology

In order to carry out his project, in which he states the need of inclusion of the intercultural aspect in the Colombian education, Alvarez reviews several articles on Culture and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) selecting them from indexed magazines and reporting  findings from 145 journal issues –taking into account keywords and abstracts  in order to focus on Culture in Language Teaching thanks to the use of a matrix-

It is noticeable the influence of a mixed methodology –quantitative and qualitative research methods are included- in which the author found three main types of articles: data-based, theory based, and pedagogical experiences in order to make them fit on a second matrix designed exclusively in order to work on descriptive information.  

Interpretation of

findings

Based on the need to integrate culture in foreign language teaching in our Colombian context, the author presents an article in which he depicts the conceptual changes of the current teachers who involve the INTERCULTURAL APPROACH in their teaching practices in order to go beyond the characteristics proposed by the formerly –and in many cases still- used LINGUISTIC APROACH thanks to the current sociocultural perspective. It is noticeable that even though this new way of seeing education is interesting, so far we haven’t seen its results in the current curricula in our context. Teachers’ knowledge on the topic should be spread out in order to get effective results.

In his findings the author shows the effort made by a certain amount of teachers who foster their students´ critical thinking on the fact of having canonical authors for teaching sources (textbooks) and   their beliefs about ethnicity and gender; these studies from the selected data-based articles seem to show misconceptions on the concept intercultural communicative competence that lead students to build stereotypes of the target culture. Critical thinking IS the answer to change the fact of thinking that our beliefs and cultural roots are under those of the native speaker.

The theory-based articles likewise show the ‘superficial integration of culture and the lack of understanding  of its role by teaches and policy-makers’ but –at the same time- some other authors explain the importance of considering the cultural aspects while developing language teaching strategies, fostering teachers’ courage to include culture in their classes. This could be the main idea to support the fact of getting to understand the FLT as the compound of strategies that scaffold our intercultural knowledge of the language while diminishing importance to the SLA (which is not the appropriate tool in our context –English wise- .)

Pedagogical experience articles show the lack of in-class research in which school students are involved; but include the class projects –at college level mainly- that nowadays rule the classwork in which intercultural awareness is carried out in order to make students more aware and tolerant of the cultural plurality. This is the key point to establish research methods on the topic in beginners’ stage  students taking into account their teachers’ point of view on the topic ‘culture and intercultural perspective.  

The conclusion shows that culture in language teaching has begun to get a wider field in the Colombian context, presenting awareness from a growing amount of those responsible of the foreign language teaching.  It means that nowadays the awareness of sociocultural competence  and the role of culture during the process of language teaching is affecting teaching practices despite the fast evolution of teaching  techniques, that very often cause the misunderstanding or poor implementation of the above mentioned approaches.

His critique to the government policies, in which the concept of culture is given little or no attention, implies his advice to include in the following process of completion to the national bilingual education policies the integration of culture into the initial stages of FLT.

Despite the increasing value of the intercultural approach, Valencia foretells the long path to walk in order to reach the goal of making out of Colombia a country in which research on interculturality is able to enrich and enlighten the current teaching practices.

Writing quality, clarity,

& style, and the

organization of

information

Due to the order presented into the text, it deploys the contents in a coherent way showing the step by step process used to carry out the research and the results obtained after an accurate and careful parallel among the selected magazines.  Including the analysis of the intercultural aspect in each of the types of articles is an enhancing fact that allows the author to take side on what he expects from the research, in short, from the conception of the policy makers to the executive activity of the class, there is an overwhelming lack of knowledge on the idea of getting Intercultural Communicative Competence. 

The value of the study

To the teaching community the above mentioned article gives a different approach in order to see cultural aspects as a clue concept while developing language growth into the classroom.  It is at the same time a ‘wakeup call’ to all of our policy makers who just start to see and understand that a measurement unit that is not proposed and established in the place where the language process is carried out could be inaccurate and even unfair.  This idea does not mean that there is no need of an average standard of the target language, but that it is necessary to include the inner elements of the culture that aims to acquire it in the development of the acquisition of the formerly mentioned foreign language.