5.2 Activities for Critical Intercultural Language Pedagogies
Adriana Diaz
Activity 1
Let’s begin by reflecting on traditional language learning curriculum contents and how they are typically organized (by ‘topics’, grammatical structures, speech acts, everyday activities, etc.).
- What key concepts come to mind? Why?
- Where do these key concepts come from (in your personal/contextual/educational history)?
- How would you justify the selection of these concepts?
- What might this reimagined language learning curriculum look like?
- What would this mean for learners’ development of linguistic knowledge/competence? (Here, it might be useful to think about the kinds of learning objectives that a curriculum solely guided by the acquisition of a prescribed sequence of lexico-grammatical content would look like, versus a curriculum that is guided by meaningful engagement with ‘concepts’ that are relevant to the learners and that can be used as entry points to explore languages and cultures from a more situated standpoint).
Now, with these ideas in mind, consider how this curriculum could be (re)conceptualized/(re)imagined into engagement with a selection of ‘key concepts’ which may be more conducive to transformational (language) learning experiences.
Here are some suggestions of ‘key concepts’ (in alphabetical order) to scaffold this thought experiment.
- Beauty
- Belonging
- Binaries
- Borders
- Difference
- Freedom
- Futurity
- Identity
- Interconnectedness
- Land
- Memory
- Power
- Privilege
- Truth
- Voice
Now choose one of the key concepts listed above and design a learning sequence for the same concept but for different levels of linguistic proficiency (elementary, intermediate, and advanced).
Here are some questions that could guide you in this process. These guiding questions mirror pedagogical principles discussed throughout this chapter:
- How might the chosen concept be translated into the language of study?
- What kind of questions may guide critical engagement with this concept?
- What kind of authentic stimuli (video, audio, images, etc.) might guide a ‘problem-posing’ approach to exploration of this concept? See ideas across a variety of languages.
- What kind of tasks might invite learners to become reflexive co-creators of and co-contributors to these learning experiences?
- What kind of activities might provide evidence of learners’ liberatory/emancipatory understandings of this concept?
- What kind of call to action can be embedded in the design of these learning sequences?
- How might these learning experiences align with local (jurisdictional, institutional) curricular guidelines and requirements?
Activity 2
Consider the following stimulus: Human – The Movie (watch trailer below).
This documentary includes brief first-person video interviews in several languages with people from around the world.
- What might be the benefits of introducing such first-person accounts (also referred to as testimonios)?
- (Here you may want to think about the notions of ‘positionality’ and ‘locus of enunciation’, that is, how our individual perspectives and knowledge(s) are shaped by our unique lived experiences and backgrounds, and how these impact the ways in which we see and explain the world.) How does the introduction of such first-person accounts align with/responds to the pedagogical principles outlined in this chapter?
- How does the introduction of such first-person accounts align with/responds to the pedagogical principles outlined in this chapter?
- (Here you may want to think about whether this kind of material can spark the kind of transformational learning at the core of critical intercultural language pedagogies. Do you think these accounts can spark learners’ curiosity? Do they challenge or affirm biases? Do they creative cognitive dissonance?)
- Would you use the interview segments in the language of study or across a number of languages? Why?
- How do you envisage implementation of this material in your own/different educational context(s)?
- (Here you may want to think as to whether these accounts could be used at the guiding threads of your curriculum or simply as entry points for deeper conversations. What kind of pre-, during and post- activities would you plan to scaffold engagement with selected accounts? Could learners work with the transcriptions to explore lexico-grammatical features? What about pronunciation and intonation? How could this be explored? Do these accounts bring to the fore ‘concepts’ that can be further explored across other curricular areas? Is there scope for learners to collect similar accounts in their local community? You may also want to consider guiding learners to reflect on the difference between the kind of knowledge(s) shared in such first-person accounts versus the kind of knowledge(s) that may be privileged in other [educational/cultural] contexts).
- How does the introduction of such first-person accounts align with/responds to the pedagogical principles outlined in this chapter?
- (Here you may want to think about whether this kind of material can spark the kind of transformational learning at the core of critical intercultural language pedagogies. Do you think these accounts can spark learners’ curiosity? Do they challenge or affirm biases? Do they creative cognitive dissonance?)
- What other lived and embodied experiences are (in)visibilized in this documentary?
- How might these experiences in a documentary titled ‘human’ also consider perspectives that lie beyond the anthropocentric gaze?
- Address the initial questions from Activity 1.
Key Terms in Critical Intercultural Language Pedagogies: A Reflection
The following is a list of selected key concepts in this area of studies.
- Consider how each of these concepts might be translated into other languages in your linguistic repertoire.
- Attempt to provide a definition in your own words and with your own illustrative examples before reading the definitions.
- After reading each definition, what questions come to mind?
- This list is, of course, not exhaustive. What other key concepts would you add?
This is interpreted as a worldview that prioritizes ‘human’ perspectives and experiences above all other considerations, thereby constraining our conceptualization of the world to predominantly social human interactions while overlooking the multitude of non-human entities and forces that surround us. This worldview, which may also be referred to as humanocentrism, is related to other concepts such ‘human exceptionalism’ (see alsoHultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Mylius, 2018), underpinned by a sense of hierarchical superiority, separability and independence from other beings, nature and other ecosystems due to ‘human reason’, language, etc. (see cartographies illustrating and unpacking this concept in Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures).