Enhancing Intercultural Competence Using MultiCultural Literature in Culture Classes for Preservice English Teachers

This article discussed the need for culture education for preservice English teachers in an ever increasingly globalized and consequently multicultural world. Instruction on culture should be expanded from the gaining knowledge to the formation of attitudes and acquisition of intercultural competence. This classroombased study aims to propose a new direction to which preservice English teacher education should advance in terms of the intercultural communicative competence. Intercultural communicative competence has to be integrated into the curriculum for the prospective teachers. Based on Rodriguez (2013), this paper makes recommendations for the effective use of mulicultural literature in enhancing intercultural communicative competence of preservice English teachers. This classroombased action research was conducted with English education major students registered for the American and British culture course in 2018. This study suggested that a culture class should rectify its direction in the cultural awareness education and proposed a teaching procedure which integrates reading multicultural literary texts into the intercultural communicative competence, following the sequence of decoding, text information building, and readermodel construction (Koda, 2010). In the three cycles, the students have shown that they gained knowledge about the culture, formulated the attitude, and acquired the skills. The multicultural literature was a good starting point to a new direction although any generalization should be made with caution.

Ⅰ Introduction

Learning a second language implies learning a second

culture The goal of second or foreign language learning

(ESL or EFL) is no longer limited to the acquisition of

linguistic competence, nor to the acquisition of

communicative competence In fact, the models of

communicative competence have been developed and

modified to encompass not only linguistic, discourse, and

sociolinguistic but also pragmatic and sociocultural

competence (Brown, 2014, p.210) English teachers are

required to teach the target language with its cultural

facet, which implies that the qualification for a competent

English teacher should include cultural aspects as well

as linguistic aspects (Salazar & Aguero, 2016; Sercu, 2006) Although the inclusion of the culture in the language classroom seems indisputable as suggested by the term

languaculture (Agar, 1996), the direction it should take

needs to be reconsidered In a globalized and multicultural world, where the English language has undergone a change

in its status as a global language, an international language (EIL), World Englishes, or English as a lingua franca (ELF), the cultural aspect of the language teaching should also be redirected accordingly In other words, learning

or teaching the culture should not be regarded as imitating the Americans or the British Learning the second/foreign language is not to imitate the American or British varieties, but to use the English language in learners’ own local

* 교신저자: 순천대학교 사범대학 영어교육과 신은영 교수 (Email: shiney@sunchon.ac.kr)

http://dx.doi.org/10.15812/ter.58.2.201906.195

Enhancing Intercultural Competence Using Multi-Cultural Literature in

Culture Classes for Pre-service English Teachers

Shin, Eun Young *

Sunchon National University

ABSTRACT: This article discussed the need for culture education for pre-service English teachers in an ever increasingly globalized and consequently multi-cultural world Instruction on culture should be expanded from the gaining knowledge to the formation of attitudes and acquisition of intercultural competence This classroom-based study aims to propose a new direction to which pre-service English teacher education should advance in terms of the intercultural communicative competence Intercultural communicative competence has to be integrated into the curriculum for the prospective teachers Based on Rodriguez (2013), this paper makes recommendations for the effective use of muli-cultural literature in enhancing intercultural communicative competence of pre-service English teachers This classroom-based action research was conducted with English education major students registered for the

American and British culture course in 2018 This study suggested that a culture class should rectify its direction in

the cultural awareness education and proposed a teaching procedure which integrates reading multi-cultural literary texts into the intercultural communicative competence, following the sequence of decoding, text information building, and reader-model construction (Koda, 2010) In the three cycles, the students have shown that they gained knowledge about the culture, formulated the attitude, and acquired the skills The multi-cultural literature was a good starting point to a new direction although any generalization should be made with caution

Key words: Intercultural competence, teacher education, British/American culture class, prospective English teachers

contexts Most culture lessons in the English language

classes are limited to the culture of the English-speaking

countries such as USA or UK The cultural facet in the

language classroom seems to have been oriented almost

exclusively to the culture of these two countries, once

incorrectly regarded as the owners of the language The

purpose of this study is to change the status quo by pointing

at the right direction of the language classes loaded with

cultural discussion and to suggest a class procedure using

the multicultural literature designed to enhance intercultural

competence of prospective English teachers in Korea

Ⅱ Literature Review

1 Culture and Language

Language and culture are inseparable, which is reflected

in the term languaculture Learning a language without

learning about the culture is void It has been regarded

as natural that language classrooms serve as the locus of

teaching the culture Indeed, most EFL/ESL textbooks,

classes, and even curricula deal with cultural aspects

(Brown, 2014; Durocher, 2007) However, there have been

two major problems First, the cultural aspects dealt in

the language classroom have been limited to the objective

culture, which is also referred to as Culture with a capital

C (Durocher, 2007; Wintergert & McVeigh, 2011) This

means that cultural products such as art, literature,

painting, music, and institutions have been the focus of

the culture portion of the language classes and textbooks

both at high school and college levels However, this is

only part of the culture, leaving out the subjective culture,

which is also referred to as culture with a small c This

includes both invisible components such as value systems,

beliefs, social norms, and assumptions, and visible

components such as behaviors characteristic of a group

of people As one of the teaching principles, Brown

advanced that language teachers should expand the domain

of the culture they deal with by including a complex system

of cultural custom, values, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting (Brown, 2014, p.82) This part of the culture has been paid less attention to by language teachers, probably because of the lack of class time, teachers’ own lack of knowledge, and sensitivity of the issue If the focus

of the culture education moves from Culture to culture, some would mistakenly think that learning a foreign culture is accessory to learning the foreign language, or that having to learn a foreign culture is cultural invasion When the culture education is mistakenly understood as the acquisition of the knowledge about the target culture, this would result in the second problem of the culture education That is, when cultural understanding is required

by learners of the target language in unidirectional ways, the culture education misses out its intercultural aspect This is especially true of the aspects of the invisible subjective culture However, dealing with the culture in

a language classroom should not be mistaken by coercing learners into the cultural norm of the target language community Rather it should be regarded as fostering intercultural communicative competence, or intercultural competence1)

Some still argue that intercultural competence doesn’t deserve highlight in culturally homogeneous countries (Homes, 2006; Phipps, 2003) That is, it is ESL countries’ business, most of which are culturally diverse However,

in the times of globalization, intercultural competence is essential not only in ESL but also in EFL countries, at the macro level as well as the micro level within and across countries Any language classrooms cannot be culture-free In fact, language classrooms have to be culturally-oriented to a greater degree than ever

2 Intercultural Communicative Competence

Intercultural competence is defined as “the ability to

1) Alternative terms include biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, cross-cultural adaptation, cross-cultural awareness, cultural competence, intercultural sensitivity, ethnorelativity, intercultural cooperation, transcultural communication (Fantini, 2006) Intercultural competence, or intercultural communicative competence (ICC in short), is the most common term that gains its ground, which will be used interchangeably throughout this paper.

interact effectively with people of cultures other than one’s

own (Byram, 2009, p 297),” “the ability to deal with

differences that derive from everyday communication

(Ortactepe, 2015, p 97),” or “the ability to comprehend

and analyze the cultural narratives that appear in every

kind of expressive form (Koda, 2010, p 5).” The core

meaning would be communication between people from

different ethnic, social, and gender groups or subcultures

In this sense, intercultural competence is also termed as

cross-cultural communicative competence, intercultural

communicative competence, or transcultural communicative

competence Whichever term is chosen for intercultural

competence, the bottom line is that language teachers

should be able to help their students enhance their

intercultural competence, not to mention that qualified

language teachers should be interculturally competent

themselves Culture should be now brought to the forefront

in the language teaching

Intercultural competence consists of knowledge, skills,

awareness, and attitude (Byram, 1997; Fantini, 2006)

Byram (1997) and Fantini (2006) argued that awareness

among these four subcomponents is central in that the

other three dimensions promote and enhance awareness

Awareness, in turn, stimulates development of the other

three subcomponents, and therefore, is critical to the

development of intercultural competence Knowledge and

awareness are distinguishable in that knowledge can be

forgotten while awareness is irreversible Just as

knowledge can be gained, awareness can also be

developed and enhanced This is possible through

reflection that occurs when one compares one’s native

culture with the target culture Awareness focuses on the

self in relation to everything else such as things, people,

thoughts

Salazar & Aguero (2016) in their quantitative study

showed that most European prospective teachers

displayed an intermediate level of intercultural

competence and argued that it would be necessary to

improve future teachers’ training, focusing on behavioral

flexibility or communicative awareness Unlike a

multicultural context like Europe, a comparatively

culturally homogeneous Korean context, it has not been

long before the multicultural competence among students started to be reflected in teachers’ professional development in practice According to Lee (2016), little research has been done with pre-service teachers with this regard Although Lee (2016) conducted a study of perceptions of multicultural education and teaching efficiency by pre-service teachers, the study dealt with teachers in general, not English teachers Considering that the language classrooms is the loci of intercultural education, it follows that language teachers’ intercultural competence is critical Kwon’s (2015) quantitative study with in-service and pre-service Korean English teachers reported that they considered themselves to be interculturally competent However, the study was conducted with teachers who just participated in an oversea training program in the USA Although direct cross-cultural contact would be the best way to help teachers enhance intercultural competence, it would not

be realistic or practical to implement an overseas teacher training service to all student teachers during the training program The curriculum somehow needs to search for

a way of fostering on the intercultural competence in addition to the linguistic and communicative competence Since a typical language class in Korea is culturally and linguistically homogenous in most cases, communication among culturally diverse people is rare within the classroom unless it is searched for actively unlike ESL settings reported in Jin (2018) As one possible way, this study will propose a classic and readily available method

to contact the target culture or other cultures That is, the literature through which learners can contact with other cultures will help learners see their own culture with different lenses This study suggests a class model that helps enhance cultural awareness, which in turn fosters learners’ intercultural competence by reading the multicultural literature Even in an EFL setting, where everyday communication in the target language is not readily available outside the classroom, the importance

of cultural aspect is not minimized In fact, the locus of dealing with intercultural competence has to be in the language classrooms especially in EFL settings

3 Literature in the language and culture classes

Although incorporating cultural awareness in language

classrooms is known to have positive effects (Byram &

Feng, 2005), a simple instruction would not change

students’ behaviors and cultural norms Min (2015)

reported that students at a college level were in favor of

the multi-modal and intercultural approaches to learning

culture According to Koda (2010), intercultural

communicative competence can be fostered by means of

reading instruction, which involves three operations:

decoding, text information building, and reader-model

construction In fact, he asserted that reading instruction

could play a pivotal role in promoting transcultural

competence Decoding means that readers extract

information from a text which is linguistically encoded,

which is related to knowledge and awareness according

to Byram’s model Next, readers integrate extracted

information to larger text units Lastly, integrated text

information is then supplemented by readers’ prior

knowledge in order to construct the text meaning, which

is related to forming the attitude in Byram’s model Koda

further argued that ‘transcultural competence could be

promoted through focused training designed to improve

reading ability (Koda, 2010, p 6).’ That is, ‘viewing the

world and themselves through the lenses of another culture

is a critical component of transcultural competence,’

teaching learners to read through three operations will be

conducive to enhancing intercultural competence

Rodriguez (2013) also proposed a way of enhancing

intercultural competence through multicultural literature

in the EFL classroom The three literary texts used in

Rodriguez’s study were adopted and used in a culture

class required for future English teacher reported in this

study The rationale for the selections was twofold First,

multicultural literature will allow learners to expand their

knowledge of the world by identifying, comparing, and

contrasting similarities and differences between their own

culture and others Secondly, he claimed that reading

multicultural literature will help students reduce prejudice

and cultural stereotypes, which are obstacles to the

intercultural competence In the same vein, this study

attempted to integrate literary texts into the a culture course offered to the prospective English teachers as a potential way of dealing with intercultural competence from a new perspective, which is believed to be different from most of the culture courses in the current curriculum

in teachers’ college in Korea

4 Curriculum for the English Teacher Training Program

Since the 2007 national curriculum, the secondary education started to accentuate cultural aspects in the English language education in Korea, which are still reflected in the current 2015 revised national curriculum

In spite of its emphasis, it does not seem to be dealt with

to an adequate degree, especially in teacher training programs Whereas studies on training English teachers’ intercultural communicative competence have been restricted to overseas training programs and sojourns (Choe, 2012; Sahin, 2008), Paik (2012) conducted a comprehensive study on the courses on culture in the English language education departments in Korea Paik analyzed the syllabi of the culture-related courses offered

in the English language education departments in 37 colleges in 2011 Although the English language education departments in Korea were required to offer culture-related courses in their curriculum, it turned out that most were centered on the British or American cultures The examination of the curricula of the twenty one English language education departments in Korea in

2019 remained about the same as 2011 in spite of the recent highlight on the culture education Except for one university all the departments are offering at least one culture course to abide by the nationwide standards for the teacher training programs In fact, one university turns out to be offering three culture-related courses Among twenty three courses offered by 21 English language education departments, 19 courses contain British, English, and/or American in their titles, among

which the most frequent titles were British/English & American Culture, others including Understanding British

& American Culture, Teaching British & American

Culture, and British/American Culture and English

Education (53.2% in Paik’s data) Only three universities

give their culture-related courses titles including

multicultural/intercultural communicative competence2),

which was about 12.8% in Paik (2012), which she

interpreted as a positive and encouraging onset of the

change In summary, most culture-related courses offered

to the prospective English teachers are still restricted to

the culture of the inner circle countries such USA or UK

Kachro (1992) also noted that the cultural aspect in the

language classroom seemed to be oriented mostly to the

culture of countries in an inner circle, which was back

in 1992 and is not different from the present situation

The preponderance of the inner circle countries over the

outer or expanding circle countries was also reported in

the analysis of high school textbooks used in Korean

EFL settings (Bang, 2013) In this vein, this study

suggests that the culture-related classes required for the

prospective English teacher should be redirected to

change the status quo in practice in two ways First, it

has to move from Culture to culture Second, it has to

expand to the countries in an outer or expanding circle

This study proposes a practical teaching procedure using

the multicultural literary pieces as a starting point in

dealing with intercultural competence, which is

necessitated by the changing world

Ⅲ The Present Study

1 Participants and Context

This study was based on Rodriguez (2013) with major

and minor modifications While his setting was an ESL

English classroom, where students from various cultures

contacted, the participants in this study were English

education majors in Korea, which is culturally honomegeous They were registered for a course titled

as American and British culture, which is required for

junior students in the English education Twenty two students were registered for the course in the fall semester

in 2018 They were all prospective English teachers majoring in the English language education, except for two double-majoring students, whose data were included The data from other two students were excluded from the study, who dropped out of the class in the middle

of the semester The general English proficiency levels

of the participants were measured at the beginning of the semester, using the Quick Placement Tests developed by Allan (2001) The QPT3) results showed that their average English proficiency was at the upper intermediate level (N=20, M=41.55/60), ranging from advanced Level 4 (n=3) to upper intermediate Level 3 (n=9) and lower intermediate Level 2 (n=8)

The context of the current study was an EFL (English

as a foreign language) setting, where the class is culturally and ethnically homogenous The class met twice a week for fifteen weeks in total The participants all majored

or double-majored the English language education, which means that they have taken English related courses including linguistics and literature as well as English

courses American and British culture was required for

junior students The first 7 weeks before the midterm were allocated for culture in language, language in society, and American Ways The 6 weeks after the midterm were dedicated to the three literary texts, which was the focus

of the current study

2 Text Selection

During the last six-week period, the class read three short stories It took about two weeks to cover each story

2) “다문화 사회와 학교교육”, “문화간의사소통론”, “영어권문화와 다문화 사회탐구”

3) According to Allan (2001), the QPT levels are comparable to other standardized English proficiency tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC.

Lower intermediate Upper intermediate Advanced

The rationale for the selection of the literary texts was

adopted from Rodriguez (2013) That is, the reading

materials were chosen from the US multicultural short

stories written by authors from a variety of ethnic

backgrounds, which is summarized in Table 1

Although the texts selected are all American short

stories, which apparently contracted the claim that the

culture issue dealt with in the language classes should

be expanded to the outer or even to the expanding

countries, these stories were selected because they

reflected multiculturality of the USA, which would

provide the students with a wider spectrum of the world

For each text, the class followed a pre-during-post

reading procedure At the pre-reading stage, students

studied about the author, the background, and the

languages While they read, they analyzed the characters,

identified the plot, and understood the author’s ideas and

themes The pre-reading and during-reading activities

were done in small groups, where students worked

collaboratively and shared and exchanged ideas freely

The learning outcomes were posted to the class site

3 Action Cycle and Class Procedure

This study can be classified as action research in that

it took repeated action cycles with the purpose of improving local educational practices This study investigated a small class in depth to inquire what is going

on in class and to explore a solution that would work for a particular context, rather than making a generalization (Nunan & Baily, 2009) The action cycles are summarized in Figure 1

The action cycles were designed in terms of three operations Koda (2010) suggested in the way reading instruction would help students to foster intercultural communicative competence: decoding, text information building, and reader-model construction, which were implemented in the pre-, during-, and post-activity sequences as represented in Figure 1 According to Koda (2010), intercultural competence can be promoted

Cycle 1 Everyday Use

᭐ Language

᭐ Author

᭐ Background

᭐ Comprehension questions

᭐ Character analysis

᭐ Plot diagram

᭐ Group discussion

᭐ Individual reflection

⇩

Cycle 2 The First Seven

Years

᭐ Language

᭐ Video clip

᭐ Author

᭐ Background

᭐ Comprehension questions

᭐ Character analysis

᭐ Casting

᭐ Plot diagram

᭐ Group discussion

᭐ Extending the story

᭐ Individual reflection

⇩

Cycle 3 Woman

Hollering Creek

᭐ Language

᭐ Author

᭐ Background

᭐ Comprehension questions

᭐ Character analysis

᭐ Plot diagram

᭐ Group discussion

᭐ Individual reflection

[Figure 1] Action Cycles

Everyday Use Alice Walker (1995) African-American

The First Seven Years Bernard Malamud (1989) Jewish American

Woman Hollering Creek Sandra Cisneros (1992) Mexican-American

<Table 1> Multicultural short stories (modified from Table 1 in Rodriguez, 2018, p 101)

through focused training in these three operations

designed to improve reading ability First, decoding

means readers extract information from a text which is

linguistically encoded Next, readers integrate extracted

information to larger text units Lastly, integrated text

information is then incorporated into readers’ prior

knowledge in order to construct the text meaning, which

is particularly relevant in that ‘viewing the world and

themselves through the lenses of another culture is a

critical component of transcultural competence.’ Behind

the actions implemented in this study is a rationale that

these three operations will be conducive to enhancing

intercultural competence

4 Data Collection

All the in-class worksheets for pre-reading,

during-reading, and post-reading activities were

collected The activities for decoding included

vocabulary and background research on the author or

the history The activities for text information building

included an analysis of characters, a plot diagram, and

the identification of theme Lastly, the activities for the

reader-model construction included a group discussion,

an extension of the story, and an individual reflection

The classroom discussions were observed and

transcribed, when necessary The outcomes of the group

activities were archived in an on-line platform called

Google Sites Students were also instructed to submit

three reflection journals in total after reading each story

At the end of the semester, individual interviews were

conducted The data collected also included the

anonymous course evaluation and the instructor’s

weekly self-reflection journals

Ⅳ Results and Discussion

In this section, the cultural elements that emerged

throughout Koda’s reading step of the literary texts are

reported and discussed within Byram’s three dimensions

of intercultural competence: knowledge, attitude, and skills

1 Everyday Use

First, reading a short story written by an African-American female writer enabled learners to expand their knowledge concerning the culture in multiple directions At the decoding stage, they learned

culture-bound expressions such as chitlins, checkerberry, chute top, orchid, and quilt, which as a student reported

‘reflecting the culture (food, clothes, and life styles) at that time’ This made it possible for the students to learn about the culture-specific traditions and customs of the African-American people This, in turn, gave them a multicultural perspective from which they can look at the American culture, which has been mistakenly regarded

as a homogeneous entity While approaching the Culture, students became aware that the culture is a complex entity which comprises a variety of subcultures, which in turn may conflict and diverge

While students researched on the author and the background of the work, they had a chance of learning about the “Black Muslims,” which was also related to the course materials covered in the class period before the midterm exam This factual understanding made it

possible for them to interpret the characters like Dee and Hakim in the story in depth.

In addition to obtaining knowledge about the culture, two issues surfaced in the individual reflection papers in terms of the attitude One was the inequality African Americans might have experienced

(Young) It says Mama is unable to look a white person

in the eye This reflects inequality.

(Kang) Mama is uneducated because she didn't have an opportunity to go to school just because she is Black.

(Seo) Magie's scar seems to reflect the life of Black American female lives.

The second issue, which most students brought up in the reflection paper, was the tradition or the preservation

of the tradition, which was closely related to the title of

the story Everyday Use While the character Dee, who

was well-educated and sophisticated, changed her name

to Wangero to reserve her African ethnicity, but her idea

of heritage and culture conflicted with that of Mama and

her sister Magie, which was reflected in the way she

treated her family heritage

(Hyun) Dee inadvertently overlooks family history unlike

Mama and her sister Magie.

(Jin) as the title ‘Everyday Use’ suggests, we can

interpret the author's intention that our tradition

and heritage should inherit from the old

generation to the young generation by using it

practically just as Mama and Magie, not as Dee,

who was just hang it on the wall like a

souvenir to appreciate their passed history,

culture, identity, and their mission For me, this

story had a strong impact on me in the sense that

she can continue our heritage in our everyday

lives We can make our traditions materialized

by thinking the best way to revitalize our

traditional architecture rather than by collapsing

all the old buildings and replacing them with

modern buildings

This corresponds to Koda’s (2010) reading stages of

decoding and information building Students did not only

decode the culturally-bound expressions and integrate

decoded information to larger text units but also apply

to their prior knowledge That is, decoded and integrated

text information were supplemented by students’ prior

knowledge in order to construct the meaning out of the

text The former two operations correspond to ‘knowing

about’ and the last operation corresponds to ‘knowing

oneself’ according to Moran’s (2001) culture teaching

model Activating the cultural schemata enables learner

to compare and contrast their L1 culture and other

cultures If the culture class highlights only the

differences, ignoring the similarities, it may yield two

extreme results: ethnocentrism or ethnorelativism

Ethnocentrism is rejecting other cultures due to the

differences and ethnorelativism is accepting other cultures

in spite of the differences However, recognizing the

commonality across the cultures in addition to the

difference made it possible for students to look at the

other cultures through their own lenses

Turing to the skills, two major themes which surfaced repeatedly were empathy and our own culture First, students reported that they empathized with one of the characters for different reasons Second, the conflicts between characters in the way of preserving the tradition were applied their ideas of preserving our culture or the culture in general

(Jo) I couldn't empathize with the story at first However, looking at the story from the general pursuit of happiness, I came to understand the author's intention.

(Hyoung) When I first introduced myself to foreign friends (international friends), I wasn't sure whether I had

to use my real Korean name or I had to make

an English nickname the ethnic identity is reflected in the name and I decided to use my own name when I first met a new friend.

2 The First Seven Years

The second story was ‘the first seven years’ written

by Bernard Malamud, whose parents were Russian Jews immigrants in the USA In an attempt to understand

characters such as Sobel, Miriam, Feld, and Max, in the

during-reading activity students were instructed to infer characters’ traits based on the specific evidence from the text, as illustrated in Figure 2

Beyond the historical understanding of the Jewish refugee, immigrants’ lives in the US, and American dreams as factual knowledge, one of the repeated themes discussed was again empathy Some students empathized

with Feld, who is materialistic, and others with a father, who wants his daughter Miriam to marry with an educated man like Max Some students sympathized with Sobel,

a Polish refugee, who secretly loved Feld’s daughter Miriam while working for Feld Sobel was trusted by Feld

in business, who thought that ‘a landsman’ would be better than a complete stranger, but at the same time was

rejected by Feld for his daughter’s man

In the same vein, some students said that reading the texts enabled them to understand other people around them from the perspectives from which they looked at the characters in the story

(Jin) This situation easily can be seen in real situation

around us I could find out that there are some

similarities between the culture that is unfolded

in this story and our Korean culture Our parents

want their children get a university degree

In the interviews conducted individually at the end of

the semester, it was revealed that many students said that

they liked ‘The First Seven Years’ best among three

stories I presume that it is the case for multiple reasons

First, the language was comparatively easier than the

other two stories Secondly, the class activities included

more fun activities such as watching the film in class and

casting Korean actors for the characters in the story Last,

they must have felt that it was meaningful because the

story was relevant the student’s real lives in multiple

ways

The last important aspect of intercultural competence

arose in the way students interacted with the classmates

in small groups The sample in Figure 3 was taken from

a student’s reflection paper, which included all three

issues That is, the student reported that s/he learned about

the cultural issue of the background of the work and that

s/he also emphasized with the characters in the story and

brought his/her life in understanding the story In addition,

it was interesting to note that the student also reflected

on the in-class group activities

Intercultural communicative competence in a broad sense is communicative competence between people from different backgrounds The difference could be countries, ethnic groups, gender groups, or even any other subcultures So communicating with other classmates by sharing the ideas in a small group activity can be interpreted as a positive indicator of the communicative competence at a micro level, which would be readily applicable to a macro level

3 Woman Hollering Creek

After reading Woman Hollering Creek, students

brought up the issue of unequal gender roles Many also

reported that the gender issue in Woman Hollering Creek

sounded familiar with the current social issue in Korea (see Figure 4) Some even stated that it was shocking that the gender discrimination was even worse in the so-called western culture than in the patriarchal culture system Still others also brought up their personal experience and their own beliefs about the gender roles (see Figure 5) This again led to the recognition of the [Figure 2] Sample of In-class activity

common internal conflicts within a society, which made

it possible to look at their own culture more objectively

In the same vein as extracts in Figure 4 and Figure

5 suggest, the commonality of three short stories included

in the culture class was that they were about minorities

in the USA, which has long been left out in the most

culture-related classes However, having learned that the USA itself comprises a variety of races and ethnic groups, which is true of most of the countries, multicultural literary work let the students view the culture from a different point of view Learning the culture should not

be limited to the Culture or the culture of the majority

[Figure 4] Sample of Reflection Paper [Figure 3] Sample of Reflection Paper

[Figure 5] Sample of Reflection Paper