Language and Intercultural Communication

Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2012, 56
73

Addressing the intercultural via task-based language teaching: possibility

or problem?
Martin East*

Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street,
Auckland 1150, New Zealand

A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching

is a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated as
an addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This
article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfully
address the intercultural dimension. Using findings that emerge from a series of
one-to-one interviews, this article explores practitioners’ current understandings
of cultural knowledge, and how these understandings influence their practices. It
identifies strengths and weaknesses and considers the steps that may be necessary
if TBLT is to be a more successful mediator of the intercultural dimension.

Un problème fréquent avec les approches communicatives pour enseigner les

langues étrangères est la négligence de la dimension interculturelle. La con-
naissance culturelle est souvent traitée comme un supplément contenant
l’enseignement de faits sur le pays en question. Dans cet article je présente
l’approche actionelle et j’examine si cette méthode peut adresser avec succès la
dimension interculturelle. J’utilise quelques informations récoltées au cours
d’entrevues pour analyser la façon dont les adeptes comprennent la connaissance
culturelle, et comment cette compréhension influence leur enseignement. J’étudie
les opportunités et les problèmes et j’identifie le fondamental pour l’implé-
mentation de la dimension culturelle au sein de l’approche actionelle.
Keywords: foreign language education; proficiency; intercultural competence;
teaching approaches

Introduction
In many foreign language (FL) teaching and learning programmes worldwide, a
primary goal is to develop learners’ proficiency in communicating successfully with
first language (L1) speakers of the target language. Implicit in the notion of
communicative proficiency is the ability to interact appropriately with L1 speakers,
that is, to understand and negotiate both linguistic and cultural differences.
However, a frequent weakness of so-called ‘communicative approaches’ has been
their neglect of the intercultural dimension of language learning. That is, although
Brown (1994), for example, argues that ‘[a] language is a part of a culture and a culture
is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate
the two without losing the significance of either language or culture’ (p. 165), in
practice language and culture are often separated in the FL classroom, and culture

*Email: m.east@auckland.ac.nz

ISSN 1470-8477 print/ISSN 1747-759X online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2011.626861
http://www.tandfonline.com
 Language and Intercultural Communication 57

becomes little more than an addendum which focuses on ‘learning facts about the
target country’.
Brown’s (1994) perspective suggests, however, that language is a primary medium
through which culture is expressed, such that navigating cultural differences requires
more than the accumulation of facts: it requires competence in negotiating
differences appropriately using language, or relating effectively to ‘otherness’
(Byram, 1997; Zarate, 1993). This necessitates, in addition to selecting contextually
appropriate language, a realisation that relating to otherness demands critical
reflection on what differences in understandings of what is ‘appropriate’ mean in
practice for all interlocutors in the interaction, both linguistically and behaviourally.
This article explores how task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a distinct
realisation of communicative language teaching (CLT) might address the inter-
cultural dimension. This issue is explored from the perspective of New Zealand,
where the introduction of a new curriculum for languages has placed equal emphasis
on language knowledge and cultural knowledge. Using evidence that emerges from a
series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practitioners’ current under-
standings of cultural knowledge, and how these understandings influence their
classroom practices, with a view to considering whether TBLT can enhance FL
learners’ ability to relate to otherness.1

Communicative approaches to FL teaching

CLT ‘began life in the late 1960s as an alternative to ‘‘structural’’ and ‘‘grammar
translation’’ models of teaching’ and ‘rapidly became an axiom of language teaching
methodology’ (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 10). In parallel with this pedagogical
development, a range of theoretical frameworks of communicative competence
began to be articulated (such as Bachman, 1990; Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain,
1980). From both theoretical and practical perspectives, therefore, there has been a
distinct move in FL pedagogy towards a communicative orientation that has ‘focused
attention on learners who were learning languages because they needed to use them
in an ever-shrinking world’ (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 11, emphasis in original).
CLT itself may be regarded as a broad and overarching construct which is
realised in FL classrooms in a variety of ways (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). TBLT is
one such realisation which ‘is being promoted in many countries around the globe
as a potentially very powerful language pedagogy’ (Van den Branden, Bygate, &
Norris, 2009, p. 1).
The potential power of TBLT is that it has been seen as a means of overcoming
two contrasting shortcomings within CLT: so-called ‘strong’ CLT that emphasised
communication but negated any place for grammar teaching, thereby hindering
learners’ adequate development of grammatical competence; and so-called ‘weak’
CLT that drew on communicative activities as a kind of ‘add-on’ within a more
grammar-focused pedagogy, resulting in lessons that were often perceived as dry and
irrelevant (Long, 2000).
On the one hand, and in common with strong CLT, a primary emphasis of TBLT
is communicative interaction.2 That is, ‘learners learn to communicate by commu-
nicating’ (Nunan, 2004, p. 8) such that ‘the most effective way to teach a language is
by engaging learners in real language use in the classroom’ via ‘tasks . . . which
require learners to use language for themselves’ (Willis & Willis, 2007, p. 1).
58 M. East

On the other hand, unlike strong CLT, TBLT does not neglect the importance of
developing learners’ grammatical competence. Unlike weak CLT, however, where
grammar is foregrounded in pedagogical practice, this may be done, for example, via
post-task focus on grammatical form (Long, 1991, 2000) or corrective feedback
during negotiation of meaning in conversational interaction (Long, 1996; Swain,
1995, 2007).
TBLT therefore offers a potential reconciliation of the perceived weaknesses of
strong and weak CLT. However, negotiation of meaning is often interpreted in
linguistic terms. Our understanding of meaning negotiation must arguably move
beyond the purely linguistic to include the intercultural (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002;
Scarino & Crichton, 2007). If, as Liddicoat and Crozet (2000) argue, communicative
competence is ‘now being redefined in terms of cross-cultural understanding,
intercultural and critical communicative competence’ (p. 3, my emphasis), the
challenge for communicative competence, in theory and in practice, is to include an
intercultural dimension (that is, navigation between the cultures represented in the
interaction). Scarino and Crichton (2007) assert nonetheless that ‘[c]urrent
approaches in languages education, such as communicative language teaching or
task-based language teaching, do not adequately address this challenge’ (p. 3, my
emphasis).
This apparent lack is perhaps a reflection of Adams and Newton’s (2009)
assertion that TBLT and intercultural education are ‘two quite distinct fields of
research and scholarship within the field of applied linguistics’ (p. 13). Although it
would appear that TBLT can address the linguistic limitations of strong and weak
CLT, its contribution to the intercultural dimension of communicative proficiency is
less obvious.

Interculturality: the missing dimension of TBLT?

There are perhaps two reasons why the challenge for FL teaching and learning to be
intercultural might not be perceived as relevant to TBLT. First, the development of
‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL classroom has traditionally often been interpreted as
the teaching of ‘a series of selected facts, customs and traditions learners need to
understand and appreciate in order to become ‘‘culturally competent’’’ (Flinders
Humanities Research Centre, 2005, p. 3). In practice, therefore, teachers’ attempts to
help their students to ‘be intercultural’ and ‘relate to otherness’ are often focused on
developing students’ extrinsic knowledge of facts about the target culture (Aleksan-
drowicz-Pe˛ dich, Draghicescu, Issaiss, & Šabec, 2003), an approach that may be
labelled ‘culture as artefact’ and ‘culture as nationality’ (Sehlaoui, 2001). Although
this may be a useful and enjoyable starting point for students, when cultural
knowledge is conceptualised as a separate component of the FL learning experience,
it becomes something that can be treated as distinct from, and an adjunct to,
developing learners’ communicative proficiency. However, such an approach does
not help FL learners to encounter the ‘other’ in interaction and thereby to experience
what it means to relate to otherness.
If a closer link is conceded between culture and language, this raises the second
reason why addressing the intercultural might not be seen as necessary in TBLT. The
negotiation of meaning in intercultural interactions may be interpreted as a
straightforward matter of selecting situationally appropriate language. This profi-
ciency is a crucial dimension of sociolinguistic competence (Canale & Swain, 1980) or
 Language and Intercultural Communication 59

pragmatic competence (Bachman, 1990), and is therefore already a component of

both communicative competence (traditionally understood) and the meaning
negotiation that may take place in the process of task completion. In this case the
intercultural dimension does not require specific attention over and above language
learning.
Byram (1997) suggests, however, that truly intercultural communicative compe-
tence, or ICC, requires more than just factual knowledge and appropriate language
use. Byram asserts that knowledge of the language that is appropriate in different
contexts is arguably ‘the acquisition of particular formulae’. Using linguistic
formulae does not adequately take into account that language is a ‘visible symptom
of a more complex phenomenon: the differences in beliefs, behaviours and meanings
through which people interact with each other’ (p. 3).
Byram (1997) presents a framework for ICC in terms of the development of
several savoirs (knowledges). Within Byram’s framework, explicit knowledge of facts
about the target culture has an important place (savoir apprendre), as does realising
this knowledge in interaction (savoir faire). Beyond these, savoir être requires the
willingness of learners to step outside themselves, to recognise that their own
‘culture’ (that is, their own beliefs, values, practices and ways of doing things) may be
very different to the target culture. Savoir être creates the space to interpret culture
from the perspective of the learners (‘us’) and the target interlocutors (‘others’) in a
way that facilitates what East (2008) describes as ‘us
others reciprocity’.
Furthermore, as Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman (2004) argue, who we are in
relation to others is socially constructed (that is, we identify ourselves as ‘us’ in
relation to the ‘other’ based on particular implicit ‘agreements’ about, for example,
what is appropriate or acceptable behaviour). An appreciation of what this means for
relating to L1 target language speakers requires ‘a critical stance towards our taken-
for-granted ways of understanding the world (including ourselves)’ (Burr, 1996, cited
in Holliday et al., 2004, p. 138).
Such a critical positioning requires ‘critical cultural awareness’ (Guilherme, 2002),
or savoir s’engager, which encourages FL learners to ‘reflect critically on the values,
beliefs, and behaviors of their own society . . . through a comparative study of other
societies’ (Byram, 2009, p. 323). This will include comparison and contrast between
cultures, and the space to explore the feelings evoked by the encounter with the
‘other’.
Another way of conceptualising this space of exploration is as a place of
‘thirdness’ (Kramsch, 1999), that is, a space between learners’ own culture (C1) and
the target culture (C2) in which learners can create their own understandings. Lo
Bianco, Liddicoat, and Crozet’s (1999) ‘third place’ concept has a similar aim to
savoir être/savoir s’engager or ‘thirdness’. It is the standpoint required of inter-
locutors if successful intercultural communication is to take place. The third place is
a place of accommodation between C1 and C2 which leads to a new cultural
positioning, created and negotiated in response to cultures (Liddicoat, 2008).
Language teaching that is truly intercultural ‘prepares language learners to know
how to negotiate comfortable third places between the self and the other/the foreign’
(Lo Bianco et al., 1999, p. 1, emphasis in original) and recognises that similarities
and differences are ‘accomplished discursively within a context of use’ (Liddicoat,
2005, p. 204). Intercultural learning must become a critical engagement with cultural
practices as embedded within and integrated with language in use (Crozet &
Liddicoat, 2000).
60 M. East

It may be suggested that tasks, as interpreted from a TBLT perspective, can

become viable vehicles for intercultural learning via language in actual use (see, e.g.,
Müller-Hartmann, 2000). Nevertheless, for the reasons I have already articulated,
TBLT is not necessarily perceived as having this potential. In particular, if the focus
of tasks within TBLT is understood to be the development of linguistic proficiency
(albeit proficiency that includes a sociolinguistic dimension), no provision is made
for the kind of critical reflection on similarities and differences between cultures
that is an important component of savoir être/savoir s’engager or operating
comfortably in a third space. There is arguably a need to make more transparent
how tasks might help FL learners to savoir être and savoir s’engager in intercultural
interactions.

The present study

Background
Recent developments in FL teaching and learning in New Zealand provide a specific
opportunity to consider the intercultural dimension in the context of TBLT. A new
national curriculum for New Zealand’s schools, which incorporates a new learning
area (Learning Languages) has recently been introduced (Ministry of Education,
2007a) and took full effect in 2010. The publication of a revised curriculum provided
the opportunity to evaluate current practices, and to initiate reforms where necessary.
The encouragement for FL teachers to consider TBLT came in response to the
perceived shortcomings of strong and weak CLT. The new learning area proposed
three components, or ‘strands’:

(1) The core communication strand ‘puts students’ ability to communicate at the
centre’, with the requirement that ‘students learn to use the language to make
meaning’.
(2) The supporting language knowledge strand ‘helps students to develop explicit
knowledge of the language, which will, over time, contribute to greater
accuracy of use’.
(3) The supporting cultural knowledge strand helps students (1) to ‘appreciate
that languages and cultures are systems that are organised and used in
particular ways to achieve meaning’ and thereby (2) to ‘interact appropriately
with other speakers’ (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 24, my emphases).

Thus, communication is seen as central, and language knowledge and cultural

knowledge are there to support effective communication.
In tandem with the introduction of Learning Languages, the Ministry of
Education commissioned two extensive literature reviews which focused on (1)
effective language teaching pedagogy (which informed Strands 1 and 2), and (2)
intercultural CLT (which informed Strand 3).
The first report was published well ahead of the introduction of the revised
curriculum (Ellis, 2005), and was disseminated widely to schools, thereby quickly
coming to shape thinking and practice in schools (Erlam, 2008; Ministry of
Education, 2007b). Ellis drew specific attention to TBLT as a viable reconciliation
of the weaknesses of CLT because it ‘gives primacy to ‘‘fluency’’ over ‘‘accuracy’’’
but also helps learners to ‘achieve grammatical competence as a result of learning to
 Language and Intercultural Communication 61

communicate’ (p. 6). Online support guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2007c) drew
attention to tasks in the context of Ellis, with a view to focusing teachers’ thinking
towards TBLT as one means of fulfilling the requirements of Learning Languages:

Ellis describes classroom ‘tasks’ as language-learning activities that require learners to

focus on meaning, include a ‘gap’ that students can close by communicating, require
learners to produce their own language structures, and have a clear outcome. Such tasks
provide students with opportunities for interaction, thinking, problem solving, and
genuine social interactions. (Ministry of Education, 2007c, ’ 13)

The second report (Newton, Yates, Shearn, & Nowitzki, 2010), due to be published
in the course of 2009, was considerably delayed, and was therefore made available to
teachers well after the revised curriculum had been launched.
Despite the delay in the release of the second report, the cultural knowledge
strand was seen as integral to the new learning area. This strand did not neglect the
place of factual knowledge about the target culture, but made it clear that students
needed to appreciate the ‘interrelationship between culture and language’ and to
‘compare and contrast different beliefs and cultural practices, including their own’ so
that ‘they understand more about themselves and become more understanding of
others’ (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 24). Essentially, the message was that
cultural knowledge should embrace three elements: (1) ‘culture as artefact’; (2)
appropriateness of language (i.e., sociolinguistic competence); and (3) savoir être/
savoir s’engager, incorporating critical cultural awareness through comparative
reflection.
In terms of putting an integrated three-strand model into practice, three problems
are apparent:

(1) Ellis (2005) is a distinct document to Newton et al. (2010). This potentially
perpetuates the perception that TBLT and intercultural education are distinct
(Adams & Newton, 2009). In this connection, Ellis makes only passing
reference to ‘culture learning’ as ‘the teaching of cultural/ceremonial topics’
(p. 5). There is no dialogue about the place of cultural knowledge in
instructed FL contexts, no mention of cultural knowledge in reference to
tasks, and no discussion of critical reflection on ‘otherness’.
(2) The publication and widespread dissemination of Ellis (2005) has meant that
in practice its recommendations have become quite embedded into many
teachers’ thinking (arguably beneficial for Strands 1 and 2).
(3) By contrast, the delay in the publication of Newton et al. would have meant
that, despite a small one-paragraph summary available in the online support
materials (Ministry of Education, 2007c), teachers would not have had any
extensive opportunities to engage with what ICC might look like in practice
(arguably detrimental for Strand 3).

These contextual factors raise questions about how teachers were beginning to
integrate Strand 3 into their practices, and the extent to which tasks might help them
to do this. The study reported here (part of a broader study into language teachers’
understandings of effective pedagogy at the time of the introduction of the new
learning area) focuses on practitioners’ understandings of the cultural knowledge
strand. The following research questions are addressed:
62 M. East

(1) How do practitioners understand ‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL classroom?

(2) How might practitioners use tasks as vehicles to enhance learners’ cultural
knowledge?

Design
Participants were currently practising teachers of one or more of the five most
common international languages taught in New Zealand’s secondary schools

Chinese (n 4), French (n3), German (n 5), Japanese (n3) and Spanish
(n4). Additionally, former teachers who now work at some level in the school
advisory service, which exists to support teachers with their work in schools, were
included (n 8). These two practitioner groups were chosen for two reasons. First, in
common with Carless (2007), a measure of intra-method triangulation was achieved
through interviewing teachers (who were able to ‘provide perspectives from the
practical viewpoint of the classroom in the micro-climate of a specific school
context’) and advisors (who were able to ‘view the terrain from a wider angle to
complement the more narrowly (single-school) focused perspectives of the teachers’
(p. 598)).
Second, interviews with two groups helped to establish the extent to which
understandings and practices differed between current practitioners and what
Littlewood (2004) calls ‘curriculum leaders’ (those who potentially exert an influence
on practice).
The sample of practising teachers can be regarded as largely representative of
experienced and ‘communicatively oriented’ teachers of FL operating in a
representative range of schools in New Zealand (Education Counts, 2010a,
2010b). The majority had had at least three, and in most cases six years’
classroom experience at the time of their interviews. The overwhelming majority
(95%) were female, compared to 75% of all teachers nationally. The predominant
school type was state (government-funded) schools, including co-educational (60%
compared to 78%), boys only (12% compared to 9%), or girls only (27% compared
to 12%).
Participants were invited to take part in a one-to-one semi-structured interview.
Interviews with teachers lasted about an hour. They were wide-ranging, and explored
teachers’ current practices, together with their knowledge and understanding of the
new learning area and its implications for developing practice. Advisory interviews
were more focused on TBLT and therefore shorter. All interviews were digitally
recorded and transcribed. For later reporting, and to protect anonymity, each
participant was given a pseudonym where the first letter of the given name
represented the principal language taught or the person’s role (for example,
Frances was a teacher of French, and Andrew was an advisor).
Thematic analysis was selected as the most appropriate method for ‘identifying,
analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79),
and for providing a ‘detailed and nuanced account’ (p. 83) of the identified themes.
The thematic analysis was theoretically driven in that the principal aim was to
interpret what the data might mean from the perspective of the potential and actual
contributions of TBLT.
 Language and Intercultural Communication 63

Findings
The teachers’ perspective: culture as artefact
Interviews revealed that several teachers’ practices focused on ‘culture as artefact’ as a
discrete component of their work, even though there was recognition that the new
learning area anticipated something more than this. Frances, for example, noted that
‘[c]ulture is not meant to be taught overtly now, as far as I understand the New Zealand
curriculum’ and that ‘you probably just need to tie it all into the language a lot more . . .
rather than this kind of discrete thing on ‘‘French people eat snails’’’. Nevertheless, she
saw a discrete focus on ‘culture as artefact’ as having an important place:

I think sometimes [students] really want to learn about things, and sometimes you just
need to be a bit more overt and say ‘hey everyone, look at this weird French dance’, you
know, and that’s okay, and that’s culture
so it doesn’t necessarily need to be interwoven.

Frances’ understanding of ‘culture knowledge’ was therefore essentially information-

driven and ethnocentric, whereby the C2 was evaluated on a factual basis alongside
students’ C1 and, in comparison, interpreted as ‘other’ in a way that made it
‘strange’.
Sandra similarly recognised that learning about cultural practices theoretically
provided opportunities to build links with language, but that culture could be a
discrete element, even though potentially this made it much less of a priority:

I mean it’s always the thing that you run out of time to do. It’s a shame, it really is.. . .
Talking about things like festivals is something that they really love, and it gives the
vocabulary a context, so I try to do that as much as I can. But . . . if you run out of time
it’s kind of like that section you were going to do on art and culture, that just gets cut.

For both Frances and Sandra, therefore, treating culture as ‘artefact’ meant that it
could, to a large extent, be separated from language learning. In these cases, it could
become (or continue to be) an addendum to the process of language acquisition.
Several other teachers were turning to more experiential ways of introducing
cultural knowledge, particularly in the junior years, with a view to enhancing
learners’ motivation and enjoyment. Even here, the emphasis was on factual
knowledge. Two common foci were food and festivals. Cuifen, for example,
explained, ‘[a]lmost every month we have important [Chinese] dates or festivals,
and then I will introduce special food, special clothes and history background of the
festival . . . and then we do make things, like . . . rice dumplings’. Sophie noted:

I always do some work on Dia de los Muertos [The Day of the Dead], and we do group
work and they make calaveras [skulls] out of Play-Doh and then we set up the ofrendas
[alters].. . . at the same time they’re picking up the names of the things . . . Then they
watch a video of how it is in Mexico and we look at other little things like PowerPoints
about how it’s celebrated in Mexico.

Gail gave examples that drew on a range of languages:

Today we had a French teacher bringing in pancakes and doing that sort of thing. We’re
having a German Kaffee und Kuchen [coffee and cakes] next term.. . . The Japanese
64 M. East

teacher had a karate demonstration going on last week with one of the kid’s fathers who
came in and took them for a formal lesson.

Although more experiential in nature, and thereby arguably providing enhanced

opportunity for intercultural reflection, there was still no evidence in these examples
of integration with language, and still no need to consider tasks as media for more
critical intercultural examination.

Language as a mediator of culture

Engagement with a more integrated role for cultural knowledge was leading some
teachers to practices that enabled greater interweaving of language and culture.
Gretta, for example, outlined the benefit of an integrated approach right from the
beginning: ‘When we do German or when we do French, we start with greetings in
the first lessons. I think that is rich and culturally loaded . . . and the students really
enjoy that. So [it] is fully integrated.’
Grace’s initial description of her approach appeared to suggest an emphasis on
culture as factual knowledge:

We use a lot of YouTube because that is quite real stuff, [or] anything that I’ve recorded
myself. Whenever I go overseas, I really focus on doing little bits and pieces . . . [and] I’ll
use bits of that, for instance, filming at the Christmas markets and saying to [the
students] ‘okay, so what do you see there? What’s interesting about this?’ That kind of
stuff
just talking about things.

However, acknowledging her understanding that ‘[t]he thing with culture is that it
really needs to be interwoven. I don’t believe in having a cultural lesson’, she noted,
‘[i]f we get, for instance, to an expression where it’s really important that you get it
right because otherwise you’re going to be laughed at, we’ll bring it in at that point’.
Grace therefore ensured that the presentation of facts also became an opportunity to
explore contextually appropriate language use.
Two teachers of Asian languages, Jennifer and Chao-xing, had also come to see
the importance of an integrated approach. Jennifer argued that ‘the old way of ‘‘now
we’re going to talk about Japanese festivals’’’ was problematic because ‘I mean, how
can a child remember ‘‘oh there’s this festival, and that festival, and there’s another
festival’’ unless they actually experience it.’ She went on to state her own belief that
culture was naturally embedded within language and therefore needed to be
integrated with teaching the language. Chao-xing similarly suggested that ‘language
cannot be separated from culture because they link together. If you know the
language you have to learn the culture, because in certain culture, certain language
cannot be used, you know’. For Chao-xing, therefore, sociolinguistic competence, or
appropriate choices of language, was important, and students needed to learn how
cultural beliefs might be communicated through language.

The advisors’ perspective: moving towards interculturality

Despite evidence from teacher interviews that an integration of language and culture
was beginning to happen in some contexts, several advisors were concerned with
what they saw during observations as a continuing disjunction between culture and
 Language and Intercultural Communication 65

language. Anita argued that culture could no longer be treated as an addendum, such
that ‘on a Friday afternoon the teacher just needs to show a video about the Eiffel
Tower or something similar’. Andrew noted:

I have to say that in my experience I haven’t seen that many good examples of [an
integrated approach]. We’re still a bit focused on ‘today . . . we’re going to look at Paris’
. . . and so it’s not being taught in a combined way.

Angela asserted that ‘culture has been treated in a fossilised way, you know, ‘‘how
often is the Eiffel Tower painted? How many pots of paint?’’ and it’s sort of facts,
not affective stuff, it’s sort of neutral’. This reality led her to regard the cultural
knowledge strand as ‘the area of biggest change and biggest challenge, I would
say.’
Nevertheless, the advisors saw huge potential in the integration of language and
culture as a means of moving students beyond the neutral into a more affective
dimension of interrelationship. For Annette, for example, ‘learning another language
has a really important role to play in fostering understanding of other people, respect
of other people and tolerance of other people’ (my emphasis). She acknowledged
that, to an extent, these values could be enhanced via ‘culture as artefact’, and argued
‘I’m not saying there’s no place for talking about static cultural images, static cultural
knowledge. There is, because it’s interesting, because it’s motivating and it’s exciting
for kids to learn about.’ It was, however, important to help students to recognise that
‘culture is part of other people, and culture is an inherent part of language.’ This
meant, therefore, that the cultural knowledge strand ‘should primarily be connected
with language.’ An integrated approach and a clear appreciation of ‘difference’
needed to be apparent ‘right from the start’:

I mean, when you learn to greet people you’re looking at the way people using the target
culture [and] target language greet people compared with the way we do, or the way
various people in the classroom do. In most Auckland classrooms, for instance, there’ll
be lots of different cultures within the room, so it’s making connections between
cultures, looking at similarities and differences.

Annette’s understanding therefore included attempts to move learners, at a very basic

level, from a second to a third place (Lo Bianco et al., 1999), and to encourage
critical comparison between C1 and C2 for purposes of savoir s’engager (Byram,
1997; Guilherme, 2002; Liddicoat, 2008).
Anita expressed a similar perspective. At one level, her understanding appeared
to suggest sociolinguistic competence as the essential goal. That is, asserting her
belief that ‘you can’t really communicate effectively without both language and
cultural knowledge’, in her view FL students needed to become familiar with ‘choice
of language and the words that people deliberately select and choose to use for
different purposes’:

So if you’re just having a polite conversation with your boss, you will choose particular
kinds of language. If you’re talking to your mates, you’ll choose other kinds of language.
If you’re talking to your parents or your teenager, having an argument, you might
deliberately choose other kinds of language to get a point across.
66 M. East

Anita went on to argue that the ultimate goal was:

. . . young people who are able to communicate with a certain degree of proficiency in a
language. And it’s bringing both fluency and accuracy up alongside each other. And I
guess there’s the linguistic interpretation of what fluency and accuracy are, but there’s
also the cultural interpretation of what that will be in different areas.

Anita therefore interpreted effective communication (fluency and accuracy) in both

linguistic and intercultural terms, commensurate with the curriculum model that
signalled that both language knowledge and cultural knowledge were equally
supportive elements of communication. In her understanding, what learners required
was more than sociolinguistic competence: Anita was ‘thinking here about
metacognition and what makes you make those choices, and understanding why
you’re doing that, and being able to articulate that as well so that you can manage it.’
Being intercultural and relating to otherness required a deeper and more critical
engagement with what was going on in the interaction.

Being intercultural and relating to ‘otherness’

It was evident that an appreciation of interculturality at a deeper level than ‘culture
as artefact’ and sociolinguistic competence was particularly influencing the thinking
of advisors.3 In this connection, Andrea acknowledged that although teaching facts
about the target culture was ‘really, really important and very rich’, nonetheless in
the cultural knowledge strand ‘we want more than just cultural knowledge, we want
intercultural knowledge’. She went on to suggest a series of questions teachers might
use to help their students with this:

To make it intercultural you bring it back to the individual: it’s all about identity
‘Who
am I? What am I in this equation? What does this mean to me? How do I grow from
having thought and learnt about this?’

Andrew held a similar perspective. On the one hand, ‘cultural knowledge is

knowledge of the target culture’. On the other hand:

[It is] also, I think, knowledge of what culture is and what it means. So what’s my own
culture? What’s someone else’s culture? How does that change over time according to
my experience of the different culture? And where do I fit into that?

Alison also presented some questions that might be posed to students to help to
bring them to the ‘third place’. She suggested ‘that first place is ‘‘do I have a
culture? What is it?’’ You know, New Zealanders need to realise ‘‘yes, we do have a
culture.’’’ Once students had identified how they understood their own culture, and
what that meant to them, they were ready to go on to appreciating who they were
in interaction with the ‘other’. She provided an example of how this might work in
a junior French class. She might begin with getting the students to think about
‘what other cultures have we got in the class?’ and then ‘how do French people do
that?’:

And I think it comes through the language, you know. So in French, let’s take tu and
vous, you know, ‘French people have two forms of ‘‘you’’. Do we in English?’ Some
 Language and Intercultural Communication 67

people might come up with ‘yous’. You might say ‘that’s a very good point, you know.
We need that at times, don’t we?’

This linguistic exploration might lead to other questions which might draw on the
other languages represented in the class, and making connections between cultures
at the beginning stages: ‘how do we show respect in English? How do you show it in
your language?’ Students at the junior levels could therefore be primed to consider
the third place
recognition of difference and a comfortableness in negotiating that
difference. Alison concluded, ‘so I see the cultural knowledge strand as being very
much that way, rather than as thinking ‘‘what do people eat?’’ or ‘‘what do people
do?’’’
In other words, for Alison, as for several advisors, savoir être and savoir s’engager
represented the primary goals of intercultural exploration, of critical comparison and
contrast in order to develop both empathy with apparent ‘sameness’ and comfortable
engagement with ‘otherness’. This was, however, an exploration embedded in
discourse. Bearing in mind that the tasks that constitute a central component of
TBLT also have language in actual use as their primary focus (Willis & Willis, 2007),
there is scope to consider tasks as vehicles for intercultural communication in ways
that would enable greater seamlessness between the three proposed strands of
Learning Languages. To what extent, then, were practitioners seeing the potential of
tasks, so defined, as means of enhancing learners’ ICC?

Culture and tasks

As stated earlier, the definition of ‘task’ that has come to influence the New Zealand
context is that tasks (1) require learners to focus on meaning, (2) include a ‘gap’ that
students close by communicating, (3) have a clear outcome, (4) provide opportunities
for interaction, thinking, problem-solving, and genuine social interactions (Ministry
of Education, 2007c, ’ 13). This definition provides scope for both linguistic and
intercultural learning. Several advisors provided examples of interactive activities
that fulfilled this definition.
Anna-Frances4 described an email exchange she had set up between her
students and students in the target country. In the context of work in which
‘[w]e’re learning about schools and we’re learning the vocabulary about school and
we’re dealing with material about schools’ she noted that, through the ongoing
interchange, her students were ‘actually learning to understand [difference] through
that language use’ (my emphasis). She conceded, however, that occasionally
students’ lack of language would hinder negotiation of meaning, and that ‘[t]here
are still times where it turns into a social studies lesson because the students do not
have the language to be able to get the information that they want culturally.’
Anna-Frances did not, however, see this movement into ‘culture as artefact’ as
problematic. Rather, it was ‘a balance’, although ‘I still think that probably happens
more at juniors where children will ask you questions because they’ve got quite
excited and interested in something but they don’t have the language necessarily to
carry it.’
Angela and Andrea saw the potential of utilising tasks, within the context of a
broader e-learning ‘virtual exchange’, as opportunities not only to negotiate gaps in
information around a range of areas, but also to work within comfortable third places.
68 M. East

In common with Anna-Frances, both advisors drew on school as an example of a

topic that might facilitate intercultural communication. Andrea suggested that it may
be that a student in the target country has got some information about their school
day that the students in New Zealand need to find out. In this case, students might
have to negotiate meaning to close the information gap and establish different
understandings of, for example, what ‘after school’ means: ‘In New Zealand it means
after 3.00, after 3.30, in Germany it means after 2.00, in France it means after, what,
6.00 or something or other, in Japan it means after I’ve taken the train home.’ The
interchange was ‘basically . . . in the target language as much as possible, allowing the
kids to grow and ask their own questions and go in their own direction, where they
have to find out information.’
Angela described how she believed a task about school could be set up:

Maybe they would have questions about their own schooling and some questions about
the schooling over in France, and then you would let them loose to discuss it. It would
be an important thing to train them to ask really good questions, really searching
questions, otherwise the dialogue could get quite superficial and peter out.

These questions, in the words of Liddicoat (2008), would be ‘designed to encourage

students to move beyond comprehension and to begin to notice cultural similarities
and differences and to make comparisons between their own cultural assumptions
and the new information they are being presented with’ (p. 287). Mirroring the
concept of post-task focus on form (Long, 1991; 2000), but this time with a focus on
culture, Angela suggested that ‘afterwards you would go through with them and see
how their attitudes possibly had shifted . . . maybe they’ve gone on thinking, for
instance, how awful it is that students in France have to work until five o’clock.’
Formulating ‘good and searching questions’ would no doubt be challenging for
some students, and Angela conceded that this may require allowing students to
operate in their L1, at least occasionally, when knowledge of the FL was inadequate.
Like Anna-Frances, she proposed a balanced approach. On the one hand:

I think for the intercultural communication to be deep and meaningful they have to be
allowed to use their own language because they don’t have the language skills to be
profound enough, to be nuanced enough in the target language.. . . if we get too rigid
and say ‘okay, the function of this is that everybody’s going to improve their target
language’ it completely ruins it.

On the other hand, and in keeping with her own understanding of tasks as
facilitating negotiation of meaning in the target language, Angela went on to suggest
that through the interaction:

. . . they do have the tools to say ‘how do you say?’ so they can be building up their
language skills all the time . . . I think at a junior level it could work really well if the
students . . . felt free to ask for the language that they wanted
‘How do you say this?’
‘How do you say that?’ ‘How do you text in French?’ ‘How do you say LOL?’ for
instance, which is MDR in French, you know, mort de rire . . . those sorts of things.

Discussion and implications for future research

Despite Brown’s (1994) argument that language and culture are tightly interwoven
such that separation of the two diminishes the significance of either, Scarino and
 Language and Intercultural Communication 69

Crichton (2007) suggest that current approaches to language teaching and learning,
such as CLT or TBLT, neither adequately acknowledge the intercultural nor help FL
learners to be intercultural. For TBLT, for example, this is because TBLT and
intercultural education are often viewed as two distinct fields of research and
scholarship (Adams & Newton, 2009). However, a developed understanding of
communicative competence that includes an intercultural dimension, or proficiency
in navigating between the cultures represented in the interaction, has implications for
both CLT in general and TBLT in particular.
This article has explored practitioners’ understandings about cultural knowledge,
and how these understandings influenced their practices. In answer to the first
research question (how do practitioners understand ‘cultural knowledge’ in the FL
classroom?), several teachers mirrored the findings of Aleksandrowicz-Pe˛ dich et al.’s
(2003) study in that they regarded exploring factual knowledge about the target
culture as an important, as well as interesting and motivating, component of
language learning. A number were beginning to provide opportunities for students to
engage with different cultural practices through language. For the teachers, however,
cultural knowledge focused primarily on facts (Flinders Humanities Research
Centre, 2005; Sehlaoui, 2001) and secondarily on linguistic appropriateness, and
only incidentally on developing savoir être (Byram, 1997) or negotiating ‘comfortable
third places’ (Lo Bianco et al., 1999). The advisors were further on in their thinking
than the teachers, and had come to recognise the importance of helping students to
understand both who they were and who their interlocutors were in the interaction,
thereby developing more critical cultural awareness (Byram, 2009; Guilherme, 2002)
and a sense of ‘us
others’ reciprocity (East, 2008).
In answer to the second research question (how might practitioners use tasks as
vehicles to enhance learners’ cultural knowledge?), there was minimal evidence that
the teachers had yet seen the full potential of tasks. However, several advisors held
well thought-out rationales for using especially technologically-mediated tasks as
vehicles for intercultural exploration. These tasks would enable students to engage
more critically with similarity and difference as presented to them in the task, and to
consider what that might mean for them in relating to the ‘other’, or savoir s’engager
(Byram, 1997).
These findings suggest that, in terms of classroom practice in New Zealand, the
cultural knowledge strand of the new curriculum area requires more explicit attention
if teachers are to help their students to get to the heart of its intentions. In this
connection, it is noteworthy and reassuring that the advisors, whose role is to support
the work of teachers in classes, do have a more strongly developed understanding of
ICC and its place within tasks, together with a clear understanding of its value.
One limitation to this study was that it relied on teachers’ self-reports and did not
explore, via observation, either the extent to which these reports were corroborated
by actual practices or the extent to which cultural knowledge played a real part in
students’ language learning experiences. It is also worth reiterating that the literature
review that had been commissioned by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education to
provide information to teachers about intercultural communicative language
teaching (Newton et al., 2010) was released subsequent to the study reported here,
and that teachers in this study would not have had the report for guidance with their
planning in the same way as Ellis (2005). It may be hypothesised that, as teachers in
New Zealand get more used to the new curriculum, and as they engage with the
70 M. East

Newton et al. report and work with advisors, the cultural knowledge strand will
become increasingly interwoven into language teaching and learning practices.
To test this hypothesis, future research might focus on observation alongside
post-observation reflection to deconstruct what has been observed. This may serve to
challenge teachers about their own practices and thereby enhance practices. In this
connection, there is scope for classroom-based action research in which teachers
themselves can become involved. This ‘process for enhancing reflective practice and
professional growth and development’ (Burns, 1999, p. 24) would ‘strengthen the
opportunities for the results of research on practice to be fed back into educational
systems in a more substantial and critical way’ (p. 13).

Conclusion
Bearing in mind that TBLT is being promoted internationally as a potentially very
powerful approach to FL teaching (Van den Branden et al., 2009), the findings of
this study suggest that there is room for advocates of TBLT in various contexts to
consider seriously the potential of tasks as vehicles through which FL learners might
develop their intercultural communicative proficiency. For example, and building on
Müller-Hartmann (2000), ‘virtual exchanges’ could potentially be a broad and rich
source for both linguistic and intercultural exploration. As Angela concluded, ‘so
from fossilised culture we’re moving very much to dynamic culture . . . I think the
experimental approach applies extremely well to that [and] can be best explored very
effectively through ICT [information and communication technologies] tools.’
Furthermore, TBLT, and the tasks that are central to it, do not need to focus on
language acquisition in a way that ignores the intercultural dimension. As Anja put
it, ‘if the task design is firm you can make it interculturally reflective, linguistically
reflective, whatever, you know.’ The data I have presented suggest that it is possible
to address the intercultural via TBLT, although this will require developing teachers’
thinking to help them to understand that communicative language proficiency
includes an intercultural dimension.

Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Tony Liddicoat (University of South Australia) and John Norris
(University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the work that
has contributed to this article, and also the anonymous peer reviewers for challenging my
thinking in several areas.

Notes
1. A more comprehensive presentation of the research discussed in this article, including a
broader discussion of the issues raised with regard to cultural knowledge, is available in
East (2012).
2. There is often a misperception that TBLT essentially involves speaking tasks, whereas
‘communicative interaction’ can also involve listening, reading and writing. Having said
that, tasks requiring spoken interaction are often prominent in task-based classrooms.
3. It should be noted that significant influences on advisors’ thinking were, first, a draft
report of Newton et al. (2010) which had been released prior to the main report and,
second, the model of intercultural language teaching proposed in Australia (ILTLP, 2009).
 Language and Intercultural Communication 71

4. Anna-Frances was interviewed as an advisor, but had only recently stepped down from
teaching French. In her interview, her principal focus was on her recent classroom
experience.

Notes on contributor
Martin East is a senior lecturer and co-ordinator for language teacher education (languages
other than English and Māori) in the Faculty of Education of The University of Auckland. He
principally works with pre-service teachers of languages. His research focuses on means of
enhancing teaching and assessment practices with a view to improving students’ learning
outcomes in foreign languages.

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