Research on the Cultivating Model of Students’Intercultural Communicative Competence in College English Teaching Based on the Third Space Theory

Tianjin Vocational Institute,Tianjin,China E-mail:lina870624@163.com

[Abstract]With the progress of the world globalization,the economic and cultural exchanges between countries become more frequent.Cultivating talents with world vision and multiple vales has become an important goal of foreign language teaching in colleges.The Third Space Theory originating from architecture,is an interdisciplinary theory which was used in intercultural language teaching to bridge the gap between native language and culture(L1/C1)and target language and culture(L2/C2).This paper starts from the relationship between language and culture and the current situation of intercultural foreign language education in Chinese colleges,and tries to explore the new language education model in colleges and find the third space between two different cultures.

[Keywords]cultivating model;intercultural communicative competence;the Third Space Theory

Introduction

With the rapid development of the Internet,people of all countries in the world can communicate at any time through social networking platforms.Intercultural competence has become an indispensable competence for effective international cooperation and exchange,and the cultivation of intercultural talents has become an important mission of higher education.English teaching is at the forefront of intercultural talent cultivation.“The College English Teaching Guide”of China emphasizes that one of the most important tasks of college English courses is to carry out intercultural education to help students improve their understanding of different cultures and cultivate intercultural communicative skills.However,the current situation of intercultural foreign language teaching in China is not optimistic.On the one hand,college English teaching mainly focuses on the linguistic aspect of language education and the humanistic characteristics of language are ignored; on the other hand,foreign language teaching overemphasizes the negative transfer of mother tongue and native culture.The teaching of culture in foreign language education lacks scientific guidance.This teaching model not only ignores cultural diversity and heterogeneity,but causes cultural aphasia,that is,the lack of cultural identity of language learners.

The globalization of economy and culture has promoted the international upsurge of cross-cultural research and also gave birth to the Third Space Theory.The Third Space Theory is one of today’s post-modern scholasticisms.It breaks the traditional binary opposition model and forms an open,flexible and diverse cross-cultural vision,which is used as a powerful weapon for cross-cultural communication research.

The importance of cultivating students’intercultural communicative competence

Widdowson(1983)pointed out that it was necessary to set up the purpose when learning a foreign language and the most common purpose was for communication especially for intercultural communication.Cross-cultural communication is bidirectional and is a communicative activity between native and non-native language groups.Different geography,history,customs and religions will have different influences on people with different cultural backgrounds in language habits,customs and social culture.The choice of foreign language teaching model is a process of continuous understanding,adapting to the external environment and meeting the needs of social development.The change of learners’learning purpose will inevitably lead to the change of the teaching model.For more than 100 years,culture teaching in foreign language education has developed from focusing on the cultivation of reading ability,to the cultivation of communicative competence and now focusing on the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence.

Language and culture

In“Language and Culture”,Kramsch C.pointed out“Language is the expression,embodiment and symbolization of culture reality”(Kramsch,1998,p.98).Language and culture are inextricably linked.Language is the carrier of culture,and culture is the base of language.The acquisition of any language is not only a grasp of the knowledge of the language system,but also includes a comprehensive study and understanding of the cultural background on which the language depends,because English learning is a two-way cross-cultural communicative activity.Culture permeates in language,any language communication,no matter written or oral,is the expression,interpretation and new generation of culture.In view of the inseparable connection between language and culture,some scholars suggested generating the new word“linguaculture”to represent the comprehensive concept of language and culture.

The close relationship between language and culture has promoted the cultural turn of foreign language teaching.In 1992,UNESCO proposed the concept of cross-cultural education and issued the“Cross-cultural Education Guide”in 2006,pointing out that cross-cultural education is not an independent,new school curriculum,and its concept should be integrated into the school education system and the teaching process of various courses,especially language teaching.In 1996,the Department of Education of US revised the national standards for foreign language teaching and determined the core position of cultural teaching.The new foreign language syllabus includes five objectives,namely Communication,Cultures,Connections,Comparisons,Communities(the 5C Principle).Cultural teaching and cross-cultural communication in foreign language teaching have become two important contents in American foreign language teaching.

Under the current language teaching model,the language ability of college students has been significantly improved,but because of their cultural stereotypes,prejudices and lack of culture knowledge,their image and role of intercultural messengers have been affected.Current college students cannot meet the needs of the world economic and cultural exchanges.Foreign language education in colleges and universities should focus on cultivating students’cultural insight and emphasizing cultural differences between languages,which is an important link in improving the quality of foreign language teaching and a common problem faced by foreign language educators.

Current situation of intercultural language education

Foreign language teaching has shifted from teaching that puts too much emphasis on language itself to teaching that attaches importance to culture.However,the target language and target language culture have become the focus of teaching,ignoring the native language and culture.Most of the textbooks in foreign language teaching are lacking in the content of native culture,and there is little content about culture in the examination and evaluation.Objective teaching issues such as teachers’individual teaching concepts and comprehensive cultural qualities,teaching materials,teaching content,teaching methods,examination systems,courses and extracurricular activities are still important factors restricting cross-culture teaching.

First of all,teachers and students have the problem of lacking the awareness of the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence.For a long time,college English teaching has been dominated by teachers,and students listened to teachers passively,which has resulted in fewer opportunities for students to communicate in English.Since college students have to pass the final exam and level test,teachers pay more attention to the explanation of words and grammar during the teaching process,ignoring the cultural differences and intercultural communicative competence.Besides,due to the lack of deep theoretical research and practical goals for cross-cultural language teaching,teachers usually make the comparison between different cultures based on their own understanding,which lacks systematic teaching design and perfect curriculum.What’s more,the current college English textbooks basically do no systematically arrange and scientifically display the cultural content,and the native culture has not received due attention.The ultimate goal of intercultural teaching is to understand culture through language,transcend a single world view,and form a cross-cultural personality.Therefore,in the future college English teaching,exploring new models of intercultural communicative competence becomes an important issue.

The Third Space Theory and the intercultural communicative competence

Intercultural foreign language teaching is not just language teaching,but to help learners to compare and reflect on the target culture,native culture and other cultures and better understand their own national culture and personal cultural reference frame.Kramsch C.pointed out“there was a conflict in the heart of foreign language learners,that is,the conflict between the native language culture and the target language culture.”(Kramsch,2009,p.121).To resolve this conflict,the proper direction of intercultural foreign language teaching should be helping learners to construct a“third space”way of thinking and knowledge structure that blends their native culture and target culture,so that learners can properly handle the relationship between their native language and culture(L1/C1)and target language and culture(L2/C2),thereby achieving communication and transformation between heterogeneous cultures.This study,based on the Third Space Theory,tries to explore a new model of cross-cultural foreign language teaching and develop students’cross-cultural attitudes,knowledge and skills in view of the current status of cross-cultural foreign language teaching.

The Third Space Theory

“The Third Space”was proposed by the American sociologist Edward W.Soja,on the basis of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s space theory and Michel Foucault’s“Heterotopia Theory”.The third space,a new concept both local and global,is both a living space and an imaginary space,and is used by people as a weapon for crosscultural communication research.Soya believes that the third space is the ontological premise of the first space as the space of experience or perception and the second space as the representation of ideology or utopian space.The Third Space Theory established by Soya is the affirmative deconstruction and enlightening reconstruction of the dualism of the first space and the second space.The third space originates from the traditional dualism of the material and spiritual space,which is beyond the reality and the imagination,which is a different space or other space involving diverse real or imaginative factors.

In Homi K.Bhabha’s“The Location of Culture”,he advocated a“hybrid”and“either”cultural strategy,thus looking forward to eliminate cultural hegemony,treating cultural harmony from a multicultural and third perspective and forming a new third space culture identity.As Soja said,we return to cultural identity for repositioning.After all,identity is not conferred by the narrow cultural nationalism wearing a mask of power.Therefore,the intercultural communication of the third space needs to overcome the tendency of ethnocentrism or national nihilism and cultivated a third perspective.The Third Space Theory embodies the cultural communication activities produced and carried out by the joint action of the first space culture(native culture)and the second space culture(target culture)in intercultural communication.It is a process of interaction,miscellaneousness,coordination and gradual progress between different cultures.

The intercultural communicative competence

The term“cross-cultural communication”or“intercultural communication”first appeared in the book“The Silent Language”by Edward Hall,an American anthropologist and founder of cross-cultural communication studies in 1959.In his book,he proposed the idea of“Culture is to communicate”.In“Communication Between Cultures”by American famous scholar of cross-communication Samovar(1998),he defines cross-culture communication as follows:the interaction of people from different cultural backgrounds.He adds that the key element of this form of communication lies in culture and its impact on communicative behavior,and culture strongly affects the beliefs,values and worldview of communicative participants.Geof Alred(2003)thinks that communication between different cultures doesn’t mean giving up one’s own identity and social values,understanding another vulture makes it easier to understand one’s own culture.In early days,“effectiveness”and“appropriateness”were used as the judgement on cross-cultural communicative competence.In 1996,Chen Guoming proposed the three levels of cross-cultural communicative competence:emotion,cognition and behavior.

Basically speaking,intercultural communicative competence and skills include:the ability to establish a connection between local and foreign cultures,sensitivity to cultural awareness,the ability to identify and use different strategies to communicate with people from different cultures.These skills play a cultural intermediary in native culture and foreign culture.With the cultural turn of modern foreign language learning,cross-cultural communication teaching method replaces language communication teaching method being an important method in foreign language learning,while intercultural communicative competence replaces language communication ability being the main goal of foreign language learning.Intercultural research and language policy expert Lo Bianco summed up the three steps of cross-cultural teaching:learning culture,comparing culture and exploring culture.Corbett(2003)proposed the framework of the cross-cultural teaching method and divided culture teaching into:teaching objects,key teaching points,cultural purpose,teaching process,teaching materials,reflection and consolidation.

Cultivation of students’intercultural communicative competence based on the Third Space Theory

The Third Space Theory,as a new guiding theory for intercultural research,breaks through pure language teaching,advocates the use of cultural teaching to promote language learning.It deconstructs the traditional dual opposition methodology,helps students overcome nationalism or national nihilism,highlights humanistic features of language and helps students from an international perspective and intercultural personality.The Third Space Theory provides a new direction for cultural teaching in college English teaching and the cultivation of students’intercultural communicative competence.Teachers and students need to change their cultural identity,establish a third perspective and act as the messenger of communication between native culture and target culture.From the macro curriculum setting to the micro textbook design,an objective space for cultural communication should be constructed.Internet and modern educational technology should be used as the platform for cultural exchange.

Establishing a third perspective

Kramsch(2009)once pointed out that the only way to understand C1(the first space culture)and C2(the second space culture)in a more complete and less biased way is to create a third perspective.It makes language teachers and learners to understand C1 and C2 both as insiders and outsiders,which can be considered as the third space that intercultural education seeks.The third space provides a third culture identity and perspective to view C1 and C2,which broadens the culture horizon and forms an open and harmonious“third space”.The third space of foreign language learning is no longer a process of assimilation by the target language and culture,but a process of exploring,negotiating and meeting the purpose of communication between the two languages and cultures.

As the main person in charge of teaching activities,teachers,only having a strong cultural awareness and solid cultural knowledge,can help students cultivate intercultural communicative awareness and competence and take the mission of inheriting and developing native culture.Teachers should read books about different cultures,actively participate in reaching seminars and related training at home and abroad,and constantly update our knowledge reserve.As the main body of language and culture learning,college students should establish a scientific culture view in the process of English learning.They should not blindly pursue the target culture or refuse to accept another culture.Teachers and students should learn to treat the contributions made by different cultures with speculative and objective attitude,respect and empathize with different cultures.With the input of the target culture while learning a foreign language,students should take the pride of the native culture and take the responsibility of native culture output.Only by having an objective and comprehensive view to different cultures,the first step of constructing a third space can be made.

Optimizing course setting and enriching teaching contents

From the macro perspective,the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence should be included in the compulsory content of college English teaching,thus the realization of the goal can be guaranteed by the national policy.From the micro perspective,cultural teaching and the comparison between cultures should be regarded as the indispensable content of each English class and culture becomes one of the goals of the teaching plan.College English teachers,while improving their language skills,should combine culture knowledge with the content of the textbooks to help students expand culture connotations and understand cultural differences.In addition,textbook is the main medium for college students to learn English,and its content and quality reflect the level of higher education.At present in China,the topics of college English textbooks are relatively comprehensive but basically based on Western culture.What’s more,as to the layout and presentation of content,there is little comparison between Chinese and Western cultures.Therefore,one of the important tasks to achieve the balance of Chinese and Western cultural learning resources is to compile English textbooks with Chinese characteristics to promote the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures,and construct an objective third space for the spread of Chinese and Western cultures.In addition to textbooks,language experts and culture experts should have interdisciplinary cooperation in view of the limited reading materials for cross-cultural exchanges.Except for Chinese culture,European and American cultures,Asian,African,and Latin American cultures should be presented in college English teaching related textbooks and reading materials.

Changing evaluation system

Testing is the vane of teaching and learning process,and determines the direction of teaching and learning to some extent.Therefore,incorporating the relevant content of Chinese culture into English teaching can stimulate teachers and students’enthusiasm for language learning,which has a counter-productive effect on the teaching of Chinese culture.In December 2013,the CET-4 and CET-6 examinations in China were reformed,and translation was changed to paragraph translations on Chinese history,geography,economics,and social topics.This is the first step to incorporate the assessment of Chinese culture into the national English test,and achieve the goal of active learning by students in a passive way.Under the existing education system,native culture should be included in the category of foreign language examinations from form to content,and the reform of various English examinations is gradually carried out to provide a guarantee for the construction of the third space.

Using modern technology to implement multi-mode teaching

With the development of Internet technology and modern education technology,traditional classroom teaching can no longer meet the needs of English teaching,and multimedia should be fully utilized to establish an information sharing platform.Textbooks and materials of Chinese culture that cannot be shared in time in classroom teaching are presented through micro-lectures,effectively complementing classroom teaching.Teachers should make full use of language,modern information education technology and other multi-modal means to create student-centered cooperative learning,group reports,case analysis,scenario simulation,exchange meetings and other learning contexts to increase student interest and expand their knowledge,thus promoting the balanced development of students’language skills and cultural knowledge.In view of the current shortage of textbooks and other paper reading resources,we should use Internet mobile platforms,such as WeChat,APP,and online public courses to develop dynamic textbooks to make up for the shortage of curriculum resources.

Conclusion

The exploration of the third cross-cultural space is a complex and arduous task.Cultivating students’intercultural communicative competence in college English teaching is not only conducive to students’grasp of language and cultural knowledge,but also allows students to examine the world’s culture from a global perspective.As a theoretical guide,the third space theory guides teachers and students to reconstruct a new composite intercultural identity,break the duality between the target culture and the native culture,and solve the problems of cross-cultural education from a third perspective.College English teaching should carry out reforms in terms of teaching design,teaching content,teaching methods,evaluation methods and so on to meet the needs of the cultivation of intercultural communication talents.With the deepening of China’s reform and opening up and the rapid development of economy,when learning the target language culture,learners always understand and interpret the target language culture through the framework of the native culture,which is called the“filter effect”of the native culture on the target culture.(Merkin,2006).Exploring the third space of cultural exchange will become an important task for foreign language teachers in the future teaching work.

Acknowledgements

This article is the research achievement of 2019 Tianjin Vocational Institute Scientific Research Fund Project“The Investigation and Countermeasures of‘Chinese Culture Aphasia’in College Students’Cross cultural Communication from the Perspective of Cultural Ecology”(Project number:20192111).