Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics for the subject English – Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2, 0, Dresden Technical University (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Content and Language Integrated Learning, language: English, abstract: Intercultural learning is an essential part in learning as well as in teaching. Furthermore it does not depend on a specific subject, because intercultural aspects are involved in many diverse issues in our daily life. Teaching intercultural is also one of the most important aspects of modern education. In my further comments I am going to tell what we have to understand by “Intercultural Learning” and what we have to keep in mind, when we deal with this specific issue of society as well as of modern foreign language teaching. Therefore, I would like to say something about the iceberg model as a concept of culture, the goals and levels of intercultural learning, as well as presenting a teaching sequence of an ethics lesson. Obviously, culture can bee seen as an iceberg: Only a small part above the waterline is visible. The tip of the iceberg, the larger part underneath the waterline, is invisible.
This part is considered to be the foundation. The same happens with culture. On the one hand, there are some visible parts like architecture, music, language or cooking. On the other hand, invisible parts like social norms or values. Concerning the concept of culture, the visible parts are just expressions of its invisible parts. It also highlights the difficulty of understanding people from different social backgrounds. Although, we are able to see the visible parts of their “iceberg” we cannot immediately realise what the foundations are.
To set an example, when you see a black person on the street you obviously see that the person is black because this becomes visible for you. What you cannot see on the first look is the social background, the religion the person belongs to, the country where he or she comes from, the history the person has, if the ancestors had suffered from slavery or not. Unfortunately, all those things are invisible for you.
With the help of intercultural learning one can acquire knowledge, attitudes or behaviour that is connected with the interaction of different cultures. It can also denote a concept of how people with different cultural backgrounds can live together peacefully. The success of intercultural learning depends on three major goals which are to be dealt with now. Even though, they seem to be autonomous in their aims, they share one main principle, the intercultural competence.