Page 283 - Beyond Methods

Raising cultural consciousness 271
different cultural communities, Kramsch would like teachers and learners to create what she calls “a third culture” in the L2 class- room. She describes the third culture as a conceptual space that recognizes the L2 classroom as the site of intersection of multiple worlds of discourse. She advises teachers to encourage learners to create this third culture while, at the same time, not allowing either the home culture or the target culture to hold them hostage to its particular values and beliefs. She puts the onus of creating this third culture primarily on L2 learners. It is the responsibility of L2 learners “to define for themselves what this ‘third place’ that they have engaged in seeking will look like, whether they are conscious of it or not. Nobody, least of all the teacher, can tell them where that very personal place is; for each learner it will be differently located, and will make different sense at different times” (p. 257).
Reflective task 12.2
Which of the two cultural scenarios—Color Purple or third culture—appeals to you more, and why? What role do you think teachers and learners ought to play in jointly creating and understanding one or both of the scenarios in the L2 classroom?
Critical Cultural Consciousness
While there are merits in the notions of Color Purple and third cul- ture, it seems to me that a true understanding of the cultural dy- namics of the L2 classroom can emerge only through an under- standing of the individual cultural identity that teachers and learners bring with them. Such an understanding is possible only if teachers and learners develop what I call critical cultural consciousness.
As I see it, the development of critical cultural consciousness re- quires the recognition of a simple truth: there is no one culture that embodies all and only the best of human experience; and, there is no one culture that embodies all and only the worst of human ex- perience. Every cultural community has virtues to be proud of, and every cultural community has vices to be ashamed of. Developing critical cultural consciousness enables one to learn and grow, to