Fostering the “Intercultural Reader”? An Empirical Study of Socio-Cultural Approaches to EFL Literature

ABSTRACT

The work presented here is a qualitative study of socio-cultural approaches to literary texts in a selection of upper secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Norway. The article explores opportunities and challenges related to the fostering of competent “intercultural readers” in  foreign language (FL) educational contexts by examining how notions of interculturality are implicated in the teaching materials and classroom discourse. The analysis indicates that the examined text interpretation processes rely on a complex interplay between literary texts, tasks and classroom participants in such respect. Two particular strands of the analysis, pertaining to how issues of intertextuality and the emotional dimension of literary reading play a role in the data, are highlighted. The article concludes by discussing the didactic implications of findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural pedagogy
• teaching literature
• socio-cultural reading practices
• EFL education

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See e.g. Deardorff (2004), Dervin (2010), and Perry and Southwell (2011) for an overview of different theoretical definitions and models.

2 In this case, the primary text was a level 2 rather than a level 1 text, as it constituted a reader’s (i.e. the film director Baz Luhrman’s) interpretation of Shakespeare’s original play. The learners also read an excerpt of Shakespeare’s text (“The Balcony Scene”).

3 For the sake of transparency, Appendix A provides an example of how this analytical process was carried out through the use of the coding sheet.

4 For the sake of transparency, Appendix B provides lengthier data extracts showing the context of the citations used in the discussions of findings.

5 Level 2 communication in the examined data involved alternative versions of the level 1 text in the form of film adaptations or cartoon summaries, audio recordings of “expert” readers discussing the text and how it was received at the time of its publication, or interpretative statements about the text incorporated in the discussion prompts.