Analysis of Intercultural Awareness

According to Cakir (2006), language and culture are intertwined and thus can hardly be separated from each other. For language teachers, it is important to teach both language and its culture to learners (Byram, 1989). Developing learners’

intercultural awareness (ICA) has been recommended in order to help learners communicate with people of other cultures properly (Yılmaz & Özkan, 2016).

To investigate the impact of the culture learning program on the students’

intercultural awareness, the pre- and post-questionnaires were implemented before and after the intervention. The pre- and post-questionnaires were adapted from that of

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Chao’s (2014) study to meet the needs of the current study, in which junior high school students were the participants. The teacher-researcher also designed some open-ended questions in the post-questionnaires in order to collect more detailed thoughts from the students. Based on the students’ answers in the questionnaires, some were selected to take part in the semi-structured interviews because they showed particular interests or expressed special ideas.

4.2.1. Quantitative Results

The descriptive statistics in Table 3 showed the paired-sample t-test results of the questionnaires.

Table 3

Paired-sample T-test Results of the Students’ Scores of Intercultural Awareness Before and After the Intervention

N=46 Pre-test Post-test

Dimension M SD M SD t df p

* Statistically significant difference (p < .05) Table 3 revealed significant difference between the pre- and post-questionnaires in Attitude (p-value (0.00) < 0.05), Skill (p-value (0.008) < 0.05), and Critical

Cultural Awareness (p-value (0.00) < 0.05), while the other dimension, Cross-cultural Communication Knowledge, didn’t show much difference between the pre- and post-questionnaires. Also, the p-value (0.059) of the total score showed little significant

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difference between the pre- and post-questionnaires.

4.2.2. Discussion

In the first dimension, Attitude, the p-value (0.00) showed significant difference between the pre- and post-questionnaires. The quantitative data revealed that the students might have some attitudinal changes after the intervention. It could be speculated that the students participating in this culture learning program learned to better appreciate people from other cultural backgrounds. This could be supported by the qualitative data collected from the post-questionnaires.

“Before this culture learning program, I was actually not so interested in other people’s cultures. But now, I’ve realized that the world is much bigger than I imagined before. I will continue learning other people’s cultures to broaden my horizons.” (S32, Pan)

“I’ve learned a lot about foreign cultures and I look forward to meeting people from diverse cultural backgrounds and interacting with them.” (S30, Chuang)

Another dimension, Skill, also showed significant difference in the p-value (0.008) between the pre- and post-questionnaires. The quantitative data indicated that the students’ skills to interpret cultural behaviors or to interact with people from other cultures might have improved after the intervention. The improvement might have something to do with the way how the teacher-researcher conducted the culture learning program. In Baker’s (2011) study, learners’ intercultural awareness (ICA) could be better developed by making comparisons between the target culture and learners’ own culture. The teacher-researcher followed his advice and led the students to make comparisons between cultures in the learning program. Also, the teacher-researcher led the students to view other cultures from different angles, which might

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have helped the students with their skills to interpret other cultures and to interact with people from diverse cultures. For instance, in the first topic of the program, the teacher-researcher guided the students to reflect on the more familiar festivals, Ghost Festival and Halloween, before introducing the target Mexican festival, Day of the Dead, to them. Through the process of making comparisons, the students realized that people around the world don’t always see death in the same manner. The students’

growth in interpreting cultural behaviors could be observed in their feedback.

“After this learning program, I’ve noticed that people around the world see things so differently. I should know more about other people’s cultures before I interact with them to avoid misunderstandings.” (S4, Chou)

“I’m impressed with the New Year customs around the world. This experience might help me a lot when I have the chance to interact with people from other countries some day in the future.” (S2, Wu)

The descriptive statistics also showed significant difference in another

dimension, Critical Cultural Awareness, in the p-value (0.00) between the pre- and post-questionnaires. The results implied that the students might have become more capable of evaluating the actions and behaviors of people from diverse cultural backgrounds in a critical way after the intervention. Baker (2011) mentioned in his study that once learners had the ability to compare the differences between their own cultures and the target cultures, they would better move beyond stereotypes and avoid judgements with the standard of their own cultures. The students’ qualitative feedback also showed their improvements in critical cultural awareness.

“I’ve learned that each culture has its unique way to see the world. Each culture

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is precious and needs to be cherished. We might hold different views on the same thing, but we could not say who is right or who is wrong. The different values between us originated from our distinct cultures.” (S45, Huang)

“I’ve realized the ways I behave are affected by my own culture, so naturally people of different cultures behave differently. We need to view other cultures in a more open-minded way, not just to judge them from our perspectives.” (S13, Li)

The above-mentioned dimensions, Attitude, Skill and Critical Cultural

Awareness, all showed significant difference in the descriptive statistics, whereas the other dimension, Cross-cultural Communication Knowledge, did not change

significantly. That this dimension showed no significant difference was worth discussing in the following paragraphs.

One reason might be the lack of implementation time. The whole culture learning program lasted for only 15 periods with four topics. Another possible reason might be due to the essence of cross-cultural communication knowledge, which involved the understandings of the hidden social norms of the culture. Bennett (1998) made a statement about the concept of “culture” in his study, in which “culture” could be further divided into two perspectives, big culture and small culture. The big culture refers to the routinized behaviors such as art, literature, food, festivals, and lifestyles.

The big culture elements are usually visible and easy to be discovered when learning a new language along with its culture. However, the small culture, associated with the hidden social norms, values, and communication styles, is relatively not so easy to be discovered and is usually invisible. Lin’s (2017) research echoed with Bennett (1998) that more time or efforts were required in the learning of small culture, compared with big culture. The findings in the present study were in line with their respective studies.

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The dimension, Cross-cultural Communication Knowledge, did not reveal significant difference because it would often take much more time and efforts for language teachers to guide the students to learn the hidden social norms, or the so-called small culture elements.

Interestingly, one of the students’ responses might also help explain the reason why the mean scores decreased from the pre-test (mean = 4.09) to the post-test (mean

= 3.89). The teacher-researcher speculated that the students might have revealed a tendency of conservativeness when asked about their cross-cultural communication knowledge after they participated in the culture learning program.

“As I learned more in this culture learning program, I gradually realized how inadequate my global knowledge was. I used to think that I knew enough about this world. But I was totally wrong.” (S5, Hu)

Though the quantitative data showed no significant different in Cross-cultural Communication Knowledge between the pre- and post-questionnaires, the students’

qualitative feedback helped explain the possible reasons. The other three dimensions, Attitude, Skill, and Critical Cultural Awareness, all revealed significant difference. In addition to the descriptive statistics, the students’ qualitative feedback also offered the teacher-researcher some useful insights.

4.3. Analysis of the Students’ Perceptions of the Culture Learning Program