Southeast Asia Language Teaching and Learning (SALTeL) Journal

Vol.1, No.2, July 2018, pp. 27~ 31

ISSN: 2614-2684 27

Intercultural Teaching and Learning English through Reading

Skill
Fauzi Miftakh1
1
Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang
Article Info ABSTRACT
Article history: In this globalization era, teaching English has to also involve
Received Mar 20, 2018 intercultural aspects in order that students can develop their
awareness towards the differences of the culture of the target
Revised May 26, 2018
language. The intercultural teaching and learning English can be
Accepted Jun 20, 2018 corporated with reading skill activities as suggested by Usó-Juan &
Martínez-Flor (2008). This study was a qualitative study which
potrayedreading activities to assist intercultural teaching and learning
Keywords:
English. The data were taken with observation of teaching learning in
Intercultural Teaching the classroom with 25 students of 2nd semester at a state university in
Reading Karawang, West Java. 6 students were also selected to have interview
English in order to know their response and understanding. Finaly, there were
some reading activities, such as critical reading and cultural bump,
conducted in the classroom that could quite effectively improve the
students’ intercultural awareness. Some students also responded by
giving positive statements about reading skill activities so their
intercultural understanding could improve. However, implementing
these activities were not an easy task because the teacher needs to
understand the theoritical concept of intercultural language learning

Corresponding Author: Fauzi Miftakh, Lecturer at Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang, email:

miftakh.fauzi@yahoo.co.id
Copyright © Association of Language Teachers in Southeast Asia.
All rights reserved
1. INTRODUCTION
English language teaching now has also incorporated with intercultural communicative competence. The
students are not only taught English language itself but also they are taught how to communicate with other
people from different backgrounds or culture effectively and appropiately in many ways. In addition,
intercultural English teaching is also important for students to make them become an intercultural persons.
As we know that in English language teaching itself, there are four skills that have to be mastered by students
namely speaking, writing, listening and reading skill. The last one mentioned is an important skill that should
be learned by students so that they can be a good and critical students especially in seeing differences among
cultures. Therefore, intercultural English learning is very possible to be brought with reading skills. It can
improve students’ reading skill while they also learn other cultures and make them aware how to use
language aproppiately.
As suggested by Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor (2008), intercultural English learning can be incorporated with
the four skills of English including reading skill. There are many ways of teaching intercultural English with
reading skill to be performed in the classroom. In addition, teaching reading allows students to read various
texts such as texbooks, newspaper, magazine, and etcetera. However, Gomez (2012) suggests that EFL
learners should not entirely acquire language through textbooks, but also through the use of authentic texts.
Authentic text can be an appropiate text to be read by students especially because it contains wider and
various informations. Specifically in intercultural English learning, the most important thing is that the
teacher is possible choose appropiate which consists of cultural contents. It will be vey useful as media in the
reading class.
Furthermore, there are some researchers who also conducted similar relevant studies in field of intercultural
English learning with reading skills in recent years. The previous studies include a study by Gomez (2012)
that focuses on intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary text. The other
studies were conducted by Nie (2017) concerning intercultural study through novel reading, Sharp (2010)

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dealing with intercultural rhetoric and reading comprehension, and Yehezkel & Devora (2017) that carried
out a topic about reading comprehension through intercultural competence in multicultural classroom. These
studies have given the researcher some influential ideas and knowledge to also conduct a study especially in
Indonesia context.
Furthermore, based on the background and previous studies above, this study tries to answer the following
research questions:
A. How are the students’ reading activities in intercultural English learning?
B. Howare the students’ responses to learning reading activities?
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Intercultural language learning
Language and learning are terms that have corelation. In intercultural language learning, language and
learning are fundamentally interrelated concepts. Intercultural language learning is not only about how to
teach a language, but also it involves newer and richer ways to connect languages to other learning areas.
Liddicoat et al. (2003: 46) mention that intercultural language learning involves the fusing of language,
culture and learning into a single educative approach. It begins with the idea that language, culture and
learning are fundamentally interrelated and places this interrelationship at the center of the learning process
(2003:46).
In terms of learning, students engage in developing cultural competence from the beginning of their language
learning (Crozet et al, 1999). Liddicoat et al. (2003) also add that intercultural language learning involves
developing with learners and understanding of their own language and culture in relation to an additional
language and culture. Liddicoat et al. (2003) explain that at a global level the goals of intercultural language
learning are as follows.
1. Understanding and valuing all languages and cultures
2. Understanding and valuing one’s own language and culture
3. Understanding and valuing one’s target language and culture
4. Understanding and valuing how to mediate among languages and cultures
5. Developing intercultural sensitivity as an ongoing goal.
The goal of learning is to ‘decenter’ learners from their pre-existing assumptions and practices and to develop
an intercultural identity through engagement with an additional culture. Jokikokko (2009) adds that, for a
teacher, important intercultural competences are, for instance, the ability to take students’ various cultures,
languages, backgrounds and abilities into account in teaching and learning.
Thus, teachers are responsible to make the learners understand their own culture before exploring the target
culture (Valverde: 2005). As a process of developing intercultural understanding, students need to beable
to‘decenter’ from their own culture (Byram, 1989). In language learning, this decentering takes two forms:
decentering from one’s own language and culturein communicating with others and decentering in the
processes of teaching and learning.
2.2. Intercultural English learning through reading activities
Basically, there are three main stages in conducting intercultural English learning as suggested by Usó-Juan
& Martínez-Flor (2008) that are explanation, collection and implementation. It is formulated based on the
framework of communicative competence that includes five components namely, discourse, linguistic
pragmatic, intercultural competence and strategic. The stages are to help teachers tackle cultural aspects in
the language classroom especially through four skills of English. There are some samples of reading
activities in intercultural English class as suggestd by Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor (2008). including critical
reading, cultural bump activities, activities that focus on written genres or cultural extensive reading.
Critical reading. In this activity, students are given text and they make judgments about how the text is
argued. It is abeneficial reflective activity type for promoting learners’ intercultural competencewhile
practicing the reading ability. In carrying out this activity, the generalframework based on pre-, during-, and
post-reading instruction could be of help.
Teachers can also make learners read situations in which there is a cultural bumpthat is, a situation that cause
people to become uncomfortable or strange give particular cultural beliefs and attitudes. Then, different
written interpretations of thebehavior of the people involved in the situation can follow the account in a
multiplechoice format to allow class discussion and subsequently, check whether learnershave correctly
interpreted what went wrong and why people acted as they did, whichwill definitively help learners become
aware and understand behavior in a targetculture (Williams 2001).

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Learners could also be required to analyze two written texts which have a similargenre as for example,
reading advice columns in daily newspapers but which arefrom different cultures in order to compare if
concerns and debates vary betweencultures (Williams 2001). The sentences of a cultural anecdote could be
scrambled by the teacher and thenlearners could be requested to put the anecdote in sequence. This activity
type is auseful one in order to help learners discern organizational issues in a given text(Celce-Murcia and
Olshtain, 2000).
All material gathered by the learners in the second stage of the project could serveas the basis to prepare
additional activities that make learners develop in activatingall competencies of the communicative
competence construct. Word associationactivities where learners associate words in a given text to a given
cultural topiccould be helpful to promote learners’ linguistic competence. Analysis of the textdevices that
convey the intended meaning of a given cultural text could serve topromote learners’ pragmatic competence.
Furthermore, the practice of previewing ormaking guesses about the content of a given cultural text both
before and whilereading could work to develop learners’ strategic competence.
3. METHODS
This is a qualitative study that investigates students’ reading activities that is incorporated with intercultural
English learning and the students’ response to the teaching and learning activities. There are 25 students of
second semester at a state university in Karawang taken as participants. Two technique of colecting data were
carried out including observation and interview. Observation was done to potrait the teacher and students’
activities in teaching and learning intercultural English incorporate with reading skill, while interview was
conducted to get more information about students’ responses after leraning intercultural English with reading
skill. Six students were choosen to be representative in interview. The data were analyzed qualitatively
through thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006). Furthermore, the data taken from various techniques
including observations and interviews were gathered to be identified and analyzed thematically and later to
be displayed and made a conclusion.
4. RESULTS
This result and discussion are based on the research questions mentioned in the previous chapter, namely: A)
How are the students’ reading activities in intercultural English learning? and B) How are the students’
responses to learning reading activities?Accordingly, there are two main findings taken from the data.
4.1. Students’ reading activities in intercultural English learning
The data finding shows that there are various intercultural reading activities performed in the teaching and
learning process. The text used as authentic media is entitled “How American parenting is killing the
American marriage” that was taken from https://qz.com/273255/how-american-parenting-is-killing-the-
american-marriage/. This text is an argumentative text, so the students may have different perspective in
discussing it. Critical reading activity was done in the classroom. There were three main steps in this activitiy
that are pre-, during-, and post-reading instruction. In the pre-reading activity, students were asked to
determine the content of the reading by previewing the passage and then judge whether the identified content
can be a representative of their own culture.
At first, they said that basically the American culture is different with Indonesian culture especially in
marriege and parenting although there may be similarities too. The students were also asked how they could
know the American’s marriege and parenting whether on internet, movies, magazine or friends, and they
discussed it with the teacher. During reading activity, the students red the whole text and identify the cultural
differences of American and Indonesian marriege and parenting. They also discussed the topic with their
friend and made a list of findings based on their reading. They compared their findings with other students
and discussed it again. The teacher sometimes became facilitator and gave clarifications towards the
students’findings. Finally, in post-reading activity, the students were asked why there are some differences
between American and Indonesian marriege and parenting, and what they should do towards the differences.
The teacher did reflection with the students to summerize their reading. It is the most important part in
intercultural learning where the students should be taught to be a responsible person who aware of and
respect differences as well as do not judge other cultures as wrong altough it is different with theirs.
In the second meeting, the text used was entitled “Developing a social life in the USA” taken from
https://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/way-of-life/social-life/. It is a text that tells about how
students live in American college especially for international students. A cultural bump activity was done,
that is, a situation that cause people to become uncomfortable or strange give particular cultural beliefs and
attitudes. As usual, three main steps were conducted that are pre, during, and post reading. In pre-reading
activity, students were asked to identify the content of the reading by previewing the passage and compare

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the content between their own culture and the target culture. Students provided different statements towards
the topic that was about American social life.
In during-reading activity, students red the whole text and discussed with their friends. They might find some
interesting and strange culture that happen in American social life especially in making friends. The teacher
then provided some situations that required students’ responses in order to know what should theu do in the
situation where there are as non-native people of American culture. The situations were vary such as
responding an invitation to a perty, being introduced to a new friend, and inviting someone for dating. The
students wrote their responses and the also refered to the text they had read before. The students discussed
their answers with the teacher and the teacher checked whether students have correctly interpreted what went
wrong and why people acted as they did. It helped students to become aware and understand behavior in a
target culture.
4.2. Students’ responses to learning reading activities
Students’ responses were taken from interviews with 6 representatives. Basically, students provided positive
comments to the intercultural reading learning process. It gave them new experience and challenges in
learning English. To know the students’ responses from interview, the followings are sample of students’
answer.
Do you like learning English with its culture?
S1 : I like it so much because it is interesting to know other culture.
S2 : It is a new thing of learning English for me because I was also taught the culture of English (target
culture) and I like it.
Do you like the reading activities in intercultural English?
S3 : This reading activities were fun and interesting especially in cultural bump activity.
S4 : I like it, especiallt the text provided by the teacher is interesting. It is about social life in America.
Do you feel that your reading skill is improved?
S5 : Actually, I do not really think that my reading skill is improved a lot, maybe because I only
focused on the cultural issue on the text. But I believe it will give me more ability.
S6 : Yes, I feel I can read the content quite well and I understand the content so I can discuss with other
friends and the teacher too.
How do you see cultural differences in the reading? Do you think it is wrong or not?
S1 : I do not think it is wrong, because they have their own way to do something. It is their culture, and
we should respect to them.
S2: : There is nothing to judge as wrong because we have different habit, so I think they are different
because it is their habit.
Based on students’ response above, there are four important points to discuss. The first, they like to learn
English with its culture because it is interesting and they found it as new thing. The second, Reading
activities perfomed in the teaching and learning Intercultural English were fun and interesting too. Students
are interested to the texts given by teacher and cultural bump activity. The third, Students still think that their
readign skills are not significantly improved because they just performed the activities in two meetings.The
forth is the students show that they become more aware and respect to differences of other cultures. The most
important thing is they do not judge other cultures wrong although some habit and values are different with
their own culture.
5. CONCLUSION
Based on the research questions, there are two conclusions that can be taken in this study. The first, Students’
reading activities in intercultural English learning were vary including critical reading and cultural bump.
These activities provided more opportunites for students to be critical students in viewing differences of other
culture. The texts used also supported the learning activities since they were taken in authentic sources. The
second, students’ responses towards the learning reading activities were positive. They said that they got new
ways of learning reading that is interesting and fun especially the cultural bump activity. However, they still
think that their reading skills are not significantly improved because they just performed the activities in two
meetings. And the most important thing is that they have shown positive attitudes to become persons who are
aware of differences and also respect them. Finally it is suggested to other teachers to also use this kind of
activities in order to give students different opportunities and challanges in learning English especially
reading activities. And it is better for teachers to also understand the theoritical concept of intercultural
language learning.

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