Culture, Intercultural Training, and Children’s Literature

Posted on Mar 23, 2025 in Primary Education

Culture and Intercultural Understanding

Culture: Any kind of expression (textual, verbal, non-verbal, or audiovisual) denoting any material, ecological, social, religious, linguistic, or emotional manifestation that can be attributed to a particular community (González-Davies and Scott-Tennent, 2005). Culture in its widest sense refers to everything related to the customs, institutions, and achievements of a country, group, or community.

As a basic review, culture signifies manners, customs, and expectations of behavior within a given society. It can also be identified with nationality and religion. In many cases, people can belong to or function in more than one culture.

Intercultural Training

Intercultural training is directly linked to language teaching. After all, language is defined and developed by a culture. If our students are learning a second or even third language, it would be very helpful to make them understand the culture of these languages and how it can relate to the students’ own culture.

Intercultural training educates an awareness and understanding of a person’s own culture and other cultures. The objective of intercultural training is to promote international tolerance and consideration. This is a very important factor, not only in language teaching but also in all fields of education nowadays. Intercultural competence aims at acting efficiently in more than one culture.

Main Aims of Intercultural Competence:

  1. Communication skills: clear speaking, active listening, and high tolerance for ambiguity, dealing with other points of view.
  2. Understanding of different work styles.
  3. Building, leading, and participating in cooperative teams.

Stages in Cultural Integration

Emotional stages:

  1. Euphoria
  2. Shock, anger…
  3. Recovery
  4. Acceptance

Degrees of cultural immersion:

  1. Facts, stereotypes
  2. Shallow comprehension
  3. In-Depth comprehension
  4. Empathy

Causes of Low Level of English (in Spain)

  1. Mass media is poor in Spain (dubbing is a great business, but it damages the practice of following original versions).
  2. No subtitles: Countries where there is no dubbing and subtitles: children learn to read more quickly.
  3. The drip teaching (a little bit of teaching every day), which is much more effective than concentrated teaching, is difficult to apply in the timetables of a school.
  4. CLIL: Is not, by far, as developed as in other countries.
  5. The English level of a lot of English teachers has a lot to be improved.
  6. The methodology is not rich and flexible enough because of an abuse of books following, in which most of the teachers find more safety.

Children’s Literature: The Evolution

Oral tradition: Myths, Legends, Folktales.

First books for children:

  • William Caxton (15th century): Aesop’s Fables, La Morte D’Arthur.
  • Comenius (1659): Orbis Sensulium Pictus (in English).
  • John Newbury (Newbury Press): Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744).

Rural Tales Adapted to the court:

  • Perrault: 1. French (1697) // 2. English (1729).

The origins of CYAL: The 18th century:

  1. Moralistic Tales: Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children (James Janeway, 1720)
  2. Adaptations of adult literature: Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe), Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift), Ivanhoe (Walter Scott), Novels by Charles Dickens.

Consolidation of CYAL: The 19th century:

  1. Adventures (boys) and domestic drama (girls): Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Louise M. Alcott.
  2. Didacticism: Captain Maryatt.
  3. Fantasy and nonsense: George MacDonald, James Barrie, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll.
  4. Fairy Tales: Grimm brothers, Oscar Wilde, Celtic Revival.
  5. Realism: Charles Dickens.

The 20th century: consolidation and Experimentations:

  1. Fantasy and Science fiction: C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, P.L. Travers, Phillip Pullman.
  2. Didacticism: Captain Maryatt, Mrs. Trimmer…
  3. Realism: Joan Aiken, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl.

Activities

  1. Intercultural: What does your name mean? Where does it come from? To build intercultural respect and understanding.
  2. Intercultural: Time capsule: In groups, each member gets a box. Explain to them that these boxes are time capsules that will be buried for 100 years. After this time, people will know about them by observing these capsules. They can fill them with material that describes themselves, their origins, and their culture. Once they have finished it in various sessions, they can explain, show, and discuss them with the rest of the group. Aim: think and be proud of their identity, know about and respect other one’s cultures.
  3. Song: Imagine, John Lennon.