Abstract:
Foreign language teaching in the present day strives to promote an intercultural
approach to language teaching in order to create an awareness of the interplay between
language and culture. It is noteworthy that there is a remarkable increase in the demand
for learning foreign languages in Sri Lanka. Among the most sought after languages are
Japanese, Hindi, French and German followed by Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian and
Russian. Albeit the teaching methodology adopted by each language may vary, the aim
of all learners is to acquire competency in the target language in the shortest possible
time.
This paper attempts to discuss the importance and effectiveness of integrating
intercultural communication to foreign language teaching in Sri Lanka, examining the
conditions, opportunities and limitations in an intercultural approach to teaching foreign
languages. Further, this paper examines how one’s own cultural background influences
language learning ability with examples drawn from Sinhala native speakers. Since the
introduction of the communicative competence approach to foreign language teaching a
few decades ago, the attention has shifted from imparting purely linguistic skills to the
much broader field of teaching a language within its socio-cultural dimensions. The latest
theories in this discipline emphasise the need to expose learners to all socio-linguistic
variants of the target language virtually from the very first lesson. However, since by
definition, foreign language teaching takes place outside the target-language speech
community, learning confined to the classroom environment offer students less
opportunities to practice the different linguistic registers with native speakers. The
greater the geographic distance between the speech communities, the more difficult the
task becomes.
An understanding of one’s own language and culture is required to observe similarities
and differences in the target language. Thus intercultural communication also helps
learners to increase an awareness of their own culture. However, data collected from
teachers and students of foreign languages in Sri Lanka, do not reflect a significant
awareness among the teachers of the effectiveness of integrating intercultural
communication in foreign language teaching. It is expected that an understanding of the
intercultural barriers in language teaching would contribute to minimizing the learning
difficulties of students of foreign languages in Sri Lanka.
