Extending reading research with a focus on cultural understanding and research on intercultural communication: an empirical investigation in Argentina

Abstract

The work presented here is an empirical study of how advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Argentina access and understand the culture-specific dimensions of literary narrative texts. It has three purposes. First, to extend research into reading in a foreign language to take account of the culture-specific content of texts. Second, to extend the focus of research on intercultural communication to include the analysis of reading processes. Finally, to introduce an approach to the analysis of the cultural dimension of the reading process using a new model of levels of cultural understanding. It is argued that cultural understanding goes beyond the quantification of prior knowledge or background knowledge in the form of idea units as evidence of the comprehension process. In this sense, the proposed model succeeds in portraying a more detailed picture of cultural understanding in this setting.

Keywords:

• cultural understanding
• English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading
• model of cultural understanding

Acknowledgements

My sincere and profound gratitude is for Prof. Michael Byram (Emeritus, University of Durham, UK) for his continuous support in the process of writing this article. His detailed reading of several earlier drafts encouraged me to see issues I would not have been able to perceive otherwise. The errors that remain are however my sole responsibility.