British Studies Materials for English Teachers in Poland: a cross-cultural approach

 

Ewa Bandura, NKJO UJ, ul. Kanonicza 14, 31-002 Kraków, Anna Golusińska-Ćwiek, NKJA, ul. Kwiatkowskiego 6E, 75-343 Koszalin, Hanna Gołębiowska, NKJA, Nowy Świat 4, 00-497 Warszawa, Anna Gonerko-Frej, Szczecin University, Al. Piastów 40 B-5, 71-065 Szczecin, Henryka Klimczak, IV LO, 91-416 Łódź, Ewa Komorowska, XLIV LO, ul. Dolna 6, 00-774 Warszawa; tel. 022-840 36 48, Anna Tomczak, Katedra Neofilologii, Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, ul. Liniarskiego 3, 15-420 Białystok, Maria Walat, NKJO, ul. Dworcowa 80, 85-009 Bydgoszcz; tel. 052-221 661, Małgorzata Zdybiewska, NKJO, Pl. Stare Miasto 10, 26-600 Radom

 

Editor’s Note: During the conference there were five different presentations by the team of writers who produced the book which gives this paper its title. This paper is adapted from the introduction to the book.

 

Background to the materials project

The materials are the result of a British Studies materials writing project co-ordinated by the British Council, Poland and involving a team of nine Polish teachers and teacher trainers from secondary schools and teacher training colleges.

 

Five of our team had been involved in an earlier materials production project with the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, leading to the materials pack ‘Images of Scotland – British Cultural Studies for the EFL Classroom’, produced in 1998, which can be found in the sixty-three British Studies Resource Points throughout Poland. This project grew out of that one and had similar aims – to combine the teaching of language and culture – with an added focus provided by the objectives of the education Reforma.

 

How did we produce the materials?

The process began in June 1999, when we met at the British Council in Warsaw to decide on broad categories for individual units. The topics we chose (Education, Devolution and Identity, Fashion and Design,History and Heritage, and Newspapers) reflect both our own personal interests and areas which we thought would be useful and interesting for teachers and learners. If the choice appears idiosyncratic, this may well reflect the range of institutions we teach in, and the geographical spread of where in Poland we come from. Given the size of our group, (nine people), and the time-scale of the project, (one year), we never intended our materials to be comprehensive. Rather, we hoped they would be examples of good practice.

 

In September 1999 the British Studies materials writer, trainer and consultant, Alan Pulverness, from The Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE), came to Poland to work with us for a week in Ojców on what proved to be a very intensive materials development workshop. While working on aims for our materials, we were indebted to the work Alan and Helen Reid-Thomas had done with Bulgarian teachers on Branching Out: A Cultural Studies Syllabus. Our own perception of our students’ needs and the education Reforma were other strong influences on the direction we took.

 

Also working with us at Ojców, and supporting us throughout the project, were Michael Houten, the project co-ordinator for the British Council, Simon Smith, Teacher Education projects manager for the British Council at the time, and Richard Bolt, who supervises the British Studies specialisation of the Łódz University Postgraduate Diploma in ELT.

 

Work on texts and activities continued after we left Ojców, and we tried out the materials with our students at school, college, university and on INSETT courses. Alan continued to advise us by e-mail, and made another visit to Poland in March 2000, when we presented the materials to our peers at the British Council-sponsored conference (‘New Directions, New Opportunities’) in Puławy. We then used draft versions of the materials in August 2000 on a national summer course (‘British Studies in the Language Classroom’) in Starbienino for  teachers from Gymnasium and Lyceum, which was jointly organised by the British Council and the INSETT programme.

 

Throughout this process, the materials have undergone many changes and revisions. It is our hope that they will continue to do so, as they are modified and adapted by teachers to suit their own contexts and classes.

 

Who are the materials for?

·         students in ELT or British Studies classes at levels from approximately upper-intermediate upwards (although some sections can be used with intermediate students)

·         trainee teachers in colleges and universities in language improvement, British Studies or methodology classes (in this last category as examples of materials produced with cross-cultural and inter-cultural objectives)

·         teachers on INSETT courses (for content on recent trends in British society and methodology on materials writing and cross-cultural approaches)

 

What are our aims? – Intercultural Skills, Attitudes, and Knowledge

These materials are not intended as a survey course on the United Kingdom nor as a coursebook for language learning. There is no shortage in Poland of either the former or the latter. The primary aim of the materials is rather to help teachers and learners of English link the study of the English language with intercultural skills, positive attitudes towards other cultures and increased knowledge of other cultures and cultural issues. They do this by developing:

·         language skills and vocabulary

·         cultural studies skills of critical reading (authentic texts), comparing and contrasting (Poland and Britain), ethnography (distant in the case of Britain and close in the case of Poland), and research

·         a positive and enquiring attitude towards another culture (UK)

·         knowledge/understanding of another culture (UK)

·         knowledge/understanding of home culture (Poland)

·         knowledge/understanding of cultural issues (connected with the topic themes)

 

The Reforma

We believe that language learning cannot be divorced from a cultural component, and our aims are compatible with the demands of the new educational reform in Poland. According to the National Curriculum Framework for Foreign Languages, (16/02/99, MEN, Guidelines):

 

·         teachers at Primary, Gymnasium, and Lyceum should, ‘develop in students attitudes of curiosity, openness and tolerance towards other cultures’.

·         at Gymnasium and Lyceum students are asked ‘to achieve a better understanding of the culture and issues of everyday life of the country where the language taught is spoken’ and teachers should incorporate into their teaching ‘elements of the lifestyle and behaviours....in the country of the taught language’.

·         at Lyceum understanding of another culture is a means to ‘be able to first interpret cultural events and then compare them with the students’ own culture’, while a further aim is ‘to strengthen students’ sense of cultural identity’.

 

So these new requirements from the Ministry of Education demand not only linguistic and communicative skills, but also put cultural competencies, and in particular inter-cultural competence, at the heart of the curriculum.

 

A Cross-cultural approach

The educational reform also has general curriculum goals of increasing the autonomy and independence of the student, and moving away from the transmission of facts to the development of skills.

 

This reflects our approach to British Studies in the language classroom, where we believe that facts and figures, (the ‘what’: always changing and open to debate), should be subordinate to the skills of interpretation and critical reading (the ‘how’: responding to texts and information). This requires students who are active participants and who are willing to develop research skills. Where the task is based on factual material concerning Polish or British culture, students are constantly expected to make cross-cultural comparisons. One of our main assumptions is the involvement of students. By contributing their own cultural knowledge and experience, students learn how to become both critical and sensitive towards both the foreign culture and their own culture.

 

In the process of collecting, analysing, comparing and contrasting data from two specific cultures (in this case the UK and Poland), students should acquire universal skills that enable them to become independent participants in, observers of, and commentators on, any culture.

 

Using the materials – Open-endedness

Each unit contains a number of sections, within which there is an intentional element of open-endedness. Not only can teachers pick freely from them and change the order of activities within a unit or section to suit their individual teaching styles, but they can also add their own texts, or adapt the existing ones according to students’ needs. In the same way, the use of the sections ‘At first sight’, ‘In greater depth’, and ‘Further Options’ should be viewed as flexible and open to adaptation.

 

Collage

Each unit begins with a collage of images and objects, which is an excellent way to activate students’ prior knowledge, arouse interest and curiosity, and introduce both vocabulary and ideas. Teachers will have their own ways of using this, and it can also provide a model for students’ production of similar collages.

 

At first sight

To complement the collage, a variety of other ways are presented to introduce the themes. Normally these activities would be done first, although teachers may wish to change the order.

 

In-depth

At this stage of the lesson students will be working in more detail and practising analytical skills. The tasks marked with the ‘in-depth’ icon could also be described as ‘there’s more to it than meets the eye’. In exercises of this type students are encouraged to approach texts critically, to decode them looking for hidden meanings, to read between the lines and to go beyond the apparent. Authentic materials are like mini-units of culture: what they appear to be on the surface is just the top layer. The in-depth tasks present the student with a challenge to     look beyond the superficial. Only then can we say that it has been fully understood.  

 

Further options

As part of the open-endedness within the materials, we have suggested a number of ‘further options’. It is entirely at teachers’ (and students’) discretion which, if any, of these they choose to follow up. Further options should, however, lead in a natural way to students developing independent ethnographic and research skills.

    

Teacher’s notes

These come at the end of each unit and give:

·         answer keys to closed questions (although many of the tasks are open)

·         suggestions of how to use the materials in class

·         extra background information

·         links to other sources of information

·         suggestions for further reading

Evaluation and assessment

There is an intentional absence of specific assessment activities. Materials and tasks are presented ‘openly’ for teachers to interact with according to their own aims, and therefore to be evaluated and assessed in such terms.

 

It may be that the materials will be used simply in contrast to everyday coursebook lessons as an opportunity to exercise learners’ language skills on original texts from the UK. Such lessons would perhaps be evaluated in terms of their enrichment of the syllabus and increased motivation of the learners.

 

Teachers may well, however, wish to follow the approach that motivated the writing team, emphasising ‘process over product’, with the aim of introducing learners to cultural awareness and cultural skills, which can only be built up slowly over time. Two of the areas strongly developed in the packages are:

·                                                                                                                                    an awareness of the context of a text, such as the attitudes represented in it, and the skills to take this into account (e.g. recognition of specific phrasings and structuring)

·                                                                                                                                    an awareness of the need for an intercultural approach and the skills necessary for this (e.g. using equivalent sources, comparing like with like and asking the same questions of each society)

 

How might learning be assessed?  The emphasis on cultural awareness and skills discourages assessment purely in terms of language skills and accuracy (which is already well provided for in coursebooks), or the testing of the knowledge available in the texts. Rather, it encourages ‘assessment of learning by doing’, and the application of this knowledge in learner-centred tasks. Some examples of this might be:

Ø                                                                                                                                  the provision of supplementary texts and tasks modelled on those in the packages to assess whether the skills have been acquired

Ø       productive tasks such as writing a letter/leaflet/report etc for a Polish audience on the UK situation or for someone in the UK on the situation in Poland. Both would be intercultural and require not only  knowledge of the UK, but of the similarities to and differences from Poland.

Ø                                                                                                                                  preparing an interview for a UK native (or someone who has visited the UK) to extend understanding

Ø                                                                                                                                  an extension into mini-projects, perhaps individualised, using the materials as a starting point; designing an approach to a new theme or a new society (e.g. the United Sates). The ability to transfer skills is a measure of their success.

Ø                                                                                                                                  cross-curricular activities e.g. with teachers of Polish, geography or history

Ø                                                                                                                                  with NKJO students, the preparation of lessons for schools

 

In all of these it is important to focus on cultural accuracy e.g. “as far as the text reveals...” and to check for cultural errors such as cultural transference (e.g. “if this is the level in a city school, rural ones must be much worse”) or overgeneralisation (e.g. “this family proves that everyone in the UK...”). Cultural mistakes, such as misreading a text, are less serious.

 

Teachers may use the materials as an opportunity to develop their own teaching: reflecting on their classroom approach to culture, practising new methods, extending their knowledge alongside learners and using the materials as models for presenting their own materials and writing accompanying tasks. In doing this, they will  evaluate the effectiveness of the materials.

 

Evaluation of and feedback on the materials is looked for (what worked and what did not), as well as teachers’ ideas for successful extension activities. The teacher who uses these packages becomes a part of them, in a sense a ‘co-writer’, and without this interaction and feedback they are incomplete.

 

Teachers who send feedback in will be kept informed of British Studies events and the development of the project. In this way we hope to build up a network of teachers who are interested in cross-cultural approaches to British Studies.

 

Conclusion

The materials should lead students towards a culture-centred classroom. They provide contexts for language learning, but are also designed to increase students’ awareness of various cultural issues. While helping learners discover their own culture, they should teach them to appreciate the distinctiveness of “others”. The desired outcome is increased awareness of both British and Polish ways of life.

 

Hopefully, the material presented will become a stimulus for further exploration, both for students and teachers. The packages are designed as starting points, encouraging teachers to produce their own materials in similar ways.

 

Research and Project work – where to look

We have stressed in the materials the development of independent reseach skills which will enable students to carry out the type of projects encouraged by the educational reforma. It is therefore vitally important that they are given help and guidance in knowing where to look for information. To this end we have included in the Appendix:

 

Ø       A bibliography of over 100 books and materials which are available from the British Studies Resource Points throughout Poland

Ø       The addresses of the 61 Resource Points

Ø       An annotated list of web addresses providing information about the UK and Poland