Intercultural competence as an aspect of the communicative ...

easily’ (Oksaar 1990: 242), as their linguistic fluency might be mistakenly seen as a sign
of being interculturally savvy, which need not be the case. The possible incongruous
behaviour by such a learner would then be even more disapproved by the participants in
an intercultural exchange, perhaps even more than with learners of lower proficiency,
where intercultural ‘slips’ might be ascribed to the inadequate language use.
Trying to explain the situation in foreign language teaching in Britain in the late
1980s and early 1990s, Byram et al. (1991) state that cultural studies are not present in
foreign language classes for a number of reasons: there is a greater focus on grammar and
literature, teachers are uncertain as to what to include in culture teaching and often have
to resort to their own experiences to make judgments related to culture. There is little
interdisciplinary research and collaboration as well as the lack of theoretical guidelines
for teachers. Finally, the teacher has to be very flexible when accepting students’
interpretations and opinions, which goes against a rather positivistic tradition in teaching.
In terms of methodology, there is a dilemma that ‘strategies proposed in class and used
for solving or describing an intercultural encounter should be the ones considered correct
or adequate’ (Manjarrés 2009: 147). As it has been mentioned, assessment also presents a
challenge, and important questions are whether education should prescribe attitudes and
whether intercultural competence should be evaluated separately from linguistic and
whether ‘levels of competence can be defined’ (ibid).
While the practices have not changed much since the late 1980s and early 1990s,
there has been an intuitive view that culture, cultural elements, understanding of other
cultures should be included in FLT. With the native speaker ceasing to be an ideal to
strive to in both linguistic and sociolinguistic competence, including ICC has even more
grounds 18 .
Authors who try to bridge culture and language, such as Byram, Scarino (2009),
Kramsh (1993), Risager (1998), strive to show that language courses should have a strong
intercultural component for a number of reasons. For example, Scarino (2009) sees
intercultural language learning is ‘about how language and culture come into play in
creating and exchanging meaning’ (2009: 69). Students develop an ability ‘to recognise
and integrate into their communication an understanding of themselves as already situated
in their own language(s) and culture(s) when they communicate with others’ (Scarino
2009: 69). Similarly, students learn to recognise that other people also perceive
18 The figures show that up to 70% of interaction in English is between non-native speakers, which should
be reflected in sociolinguistic, pragmatic and ICC elements that should be included in FLT
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