Bridging The Barriers in British Culture

PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences
ISSN 2454-5899
Nadjouia Hallouch, 2019

Volume 5 Issue 2, pp. 285-292
Date of Publication: 26th August 2019
DOI-https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2019.52.285292
This paper can be cited as: Hallouch, N., (2019). Bridging the Barriers in British Culture. PEOPLE:
International Journal of Social Sciences, 5(2), 285-292.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a
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BRIDGING THE BARRIERS IN BRITISH CULTURE
Nadjouia Hallouch
Department of English, Djillali Liabes University, Sidi-Bel-Abbes, Algeria
hallouch14@yahoo.com
Abstract
There is a general observation among officials that the conflict between cultures has been
dramatically increasing. This can be related to a whole set of reasons including: cultural
unawareness, prejudice, the ignorance of differences in values, norms and beliefs and the media.
The module of British culture is taught at the Departments of English in the Algerian universities
from the first year. Many students think that in the course of British culture, the teacher is the only
performer whose duty is to give them information about the target culture. Teaching British culture
does not require from the teacher transmitting only information but developing positive attitudes,
skills and awareness of values of this culture (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002). The questions
which are raised here are: are we as teachers of British culture preparing our students for a
successful intercultural communication? Are we helping our students to develop their cultural
awareness? This research paper was carried out through a questionnaire applied to second year
students in British culture in particular to assess their cultural awareness. It focusses on the role
of the teacher in helping students bridging the barriers and enabling them to interact successfully
with people from other cultures.
Keywords
Culture, Prejudice, Values, Cultural Awareness, Communicative Competence
Available Online at: http://grdspublishing.org/ 285

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1. Introduction
Today many teachers are afraid of teaching the module of culture because their knowledge
is limited. Providing students with information about the target culture, and enabling them to have
a clear conception are among the main objectives of teaching British culture but this is not all what
our students need. Nowadays, due to the globalization era and especially with the increase of the
conflict between cultures, teachers of British culture should recognize the need to teach their
students cultural perspectives namely attitudes, values and beliefs. The aim behind the introduction
of such perspectives is to enable our students to respect, tolerate, understand and communicate
successfully with people from other cultures. According to (Lopez, 2016: p107): “A person who
has developed intercultural communicative competence is able to build relationships while
speaking in the foreign language; communicate effectively, taking into consideration his own and
the other person’s viewpoint and needs; mediates interactions between people of different
backgrounds and strives to continue developing communicative skills”. Peck (1984) states that
“the study of different cultures aids us to know different peoples which is a necessary prelude to
understanding and respecting other peoples and their way of life”. The objective of the present
paper is to help teachers of British culture understand that it is their role to prepare students to be
good future intercultural communicators by arousing their cultural awareness. In so doing, we first
define the word culture, and then we examine the objectives of teaching British culture with
reference to cultural communicative competence and cultural awareness.
2. What is Culture?
There are hundreds of definitions of the word culture which show that it is “a very broad
concept embracing all aspects of human life” (Seelye, 1993:15). According to (Brown, 1963),
culture is “what binds people together”. Kramsch (1998:10) defines culture as “a common system
of standards for perceiving, evaluating, and acting”. For (Byram 1997), the elements of the ‘big
C’ include history, geography, institutions, literature, art and music and the way of life. The
behaviour culture or ‘little c’ focusses on the behavioural pattern and life styles of everyday people.
Vegh (2019) cites three aspects of culture namely: material (tools, foods and goods), social
(language, religion and law) and physical (norms, attitudes and values). Seelye (1993) provides us
with three components of culture which are expressed through the following diagram:

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Perspectives Beliefs, Values

Attitudes
Products Practices
Sculpture
Painting Patterns of behaviour
a piece of literature accepted by a society
dance
education system
Figure 1: Cultural Components

Source: Seelye, H. N, 1993, p 5
3. What are the Objectives of Teaching Culture?

Teaching culture ‘should not aim at only giving information about the foreign culture,
which is evident during foreign language teaching” (Ciornei, & Tamga, 2013: 1920). The teacher
of culture has also to give the learner the opportunity “to develop cultural knowledge, awareness
society
and competence in such a way that might lead to better understanding of the foreign culture, the
other as well as the learner’s own culture, the self “(Ciornei, & Tamga, 2013: 1920). Seelye (1993)
points out that teaching culture ‘provides a framework for facilitating the development of cross-
cultural communication skills.
Today, our students are living in the globalization era. Many of them have British friends,
some travel abroad while others plan to finish their studies in Britain. In fact, there is still in many
countries intolerance towards and prejudice against other cultures. Therefore, an intercultural
education might be a solution to promote tolerance, acceptance, understanding and respect.
It is not the aim of the teacher of British culture to ‘change the students values but to make
them explicit and conscious in any evaluative response to others’ (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey,
2002). (Byram, 1993: 11) points out that “Misunderstandings are likely to occur between members

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of different cultures; … differences are real and we must learn to deal with them in any situation
in which two cultures come into contact”. The question which is raised here is: -Are we as teachers
of British culture helping our students to achieve a successful intercultural communication?
4. What is the Intercultural Communicative Competence?

According to many language teaching professionals, intercultural competence was an
extended as intercultural communicative competence (Lazar, et al., 2007). Lopez (2016) mentions
that the intercultural competence is defined as “people’s ability to interact in their own language
with people from another country and culture” whereas the intercultural communicative
competence “focusses on the ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a
foreign language”. According to (Lazar, et al., 2007:9), the intercultural communicative
competence “requires certain attitudes, knowledge and skills as well as linguistic, sociolinguistic
and discourse competence”. In order to achieve a successful communicative competence, he
mentions five constructs that should be taken into consideration including “awareness, attitudes,
skills, knowledge and language proficiency”. He also provides us with some qualities which
describe the intercultural speaker including: “respect, empathy, flexibility, patience, interest,
curiosity, openness, motivation, a sense of humour, tolerance for ambiguity, and a willingness to
suspend judgement”.
Intercultural competence was the subject of the document of the Council of Europe (Jan
2001). The aim was that “mutual understanding and intercultural competence are more important
than ever today” (Barrett, Byram, Lazar, Gaillard, & Philippou, 2014). Besides this, intercultural
competence provides a foundation for being a global citizen. Despite all the recommendations,
many teachers are still relying on grammatical and lexical competence. It is important to produce
correct English either in speaking or writing but does fluency alone help our students to interact
successfully with people from other cultures? The traditional method of teaching culture becomes
no longer efficient. The teacher of British culture should focus on attitudes, values and beliefs
instead of relying on only cultural products and practices.
One of the main objectives of teaching British culture is to enable students to communicate
with people from a different cultural and linguistic background. To achieve this, the teacher has
first to help his student acquire information and develop his cultural awareness.

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5. What is the Cultural Awareness and How Can We Develop It?

Damen (1987) says that “cultural awareness involves uncovering and understanding one’s
own cultural conditioned behaviour and thinking, as well as the patterns of others”. This means
that the process involves recognizing the givens of our culture as well as perceiving the similarities
and differences of the foreign culture. Cultural awareness as defined by (Tomalin & Stempleski,
1998:5) is “sensitivity to the impact of cultural induced behaviour on language use and
communication”. It is considered as the foundation of communication and involves the awareness
of one’s own culture and of the other one (Zhu: 2011). Cultural awareness becomes essential when
we communicate with people from different cultures (Mengenai, 2012).
It is the teacher’s role to make students aware of cultural differences. What is considered
as an appropriate behaviour in one culture is most of the time inappropriate in another one. In
Algeria for example, people kiss each other and this is not the case in Britain. We also shake hands
tens of time a day when we meet a friend. It is not the case in England. In other terms we should
know how people create something elsewhere and behave consequently either in conformity or
not.
Peck (1984) says that our students “want to touch, smell and see the British culture”.
Offering them the chance to achieve this is our role as teachers of British culture. The teacher has
to develop the cultural awareness of the students by making them aware of cultural differences.
The reason behind this is to familiarize learners with the cultural components. Aspects to explore
religion and etiquette are of a great help to promote cultural awareness. Examination of pictures,
the use of currency and stamps, reading of original texts and engaging students in activities
focussing on the life styles of people and on what people do in common situations will introduce
cultural elements into the classroom and increase curiosity and awareness.
Most of the Algerian students see the British as cold, serious and competent. I usually
enter the classroom ten minutes before the lecture. This led many of my students to tell me this
expression: “Oh Miss you respect time like the British people”. It is clear that most Algerian
students of English know that the British people respect time.
In order to assess students’ cultural awareness, I prepared a questionnaire which included
four questions and I asked 20 students to answer them. The questions were as follows:
- How do the British people behave in :
1- Greetings
2- Gift giving

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3- Public places
4- Queuing
I faced a negative attitude from two students. The first said: Miss please we have our own
principles, traditions and beliefs. Are we supposed to follow the British ones? The second said:
“Miss you are so fascinated by the British people”. I had to explain them that it is not the object of
the questionnaire to change their principles.
Table 1: Students’ Questionnaire Results

Questions Responses Number of Percentage
Students
They shake hands
1 They say hello 17 85
They exchange chocolate and flowers
2 6 30
They respect the others

3 They answer politely if you need a help 9 45
4 They respect the queue 16 80
It is clear from the table that the majority of students know how the British people behave
in greetings and queuing. Only 30% know how the British people behave in gift giving whereas
45 % are aware of British behaviour in public places. Though students were asked to answer only
the questionnaire, some of them made a comparison between British and Algerian behaviour. This
shows that students are aware of the great differences which exist between the two cultures.
6. Conclusion
To sum up, in order to overcome the barriers in intercultural communication, we as teachers
of British culture, need to provide our students with knowledge about the British people and help
them to be tolerant, to accept, understand and respect them. Hall.T (1959) points out that “it is the
hidden elements which are responsible for culture shock and misunderstanding”. Once, the student
understands that people are not the same and that differences can exist even between members of
the same society, he will be able to respect the other. (Arabski &Wojtaszek 2011) state that “to

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communicate interculturally students need various kinds of skills, attitudes and cultural
awareness” .Teachers’ challenges in teaching British culture can be the object of another paper.
References
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PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences

Nadjouia Hallouch, 2019

BRIDGING THE BARRIERS IN BRITISH CULTURE

Available Online at: http://grdspublishing.org/ 285

Available Online at: http://grdspublishing.org/ 286

Perspectives Beliefs, Values

Figure 1: Cultural Components

3. What are the Objectives of Teaching Culture?

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4. What is the Intercultural Communicative Competence?

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5. What is the Cultural Awareness and How Can We Develop It?

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Table 1: Students’ Questionnaire Results

They respect the others

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R. S, Lopez. (2016). Intercultural Communicative Competence: creating awareness and promoting

Available Online at: http://grdspublishing.org/ 292

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