Towards intercultural competence fostering ESOL learners’ cultural awareness in Ireland through learning materials

The promotion of intercultural competence plays an important role in language education and this study focuses on one aspect of this, cultural awareness. Fostering cultural awareness has an even more central role in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) since efforts are critical to preparing learners to be successful participants in their new society. In these efforts, learning materials are a crucial stimulus for cultural awareness. There is little dedicated material for ESOL in Ireland, and the cultural content of what little there is has not yet been systematically researched. This study contributes to filling this gap by investigating teachers’ views on the cultural content in a most often used material of their choice, and through the researcher’s analysis and evaluation of the cultural content in the most frequently used Irish published textbook The Big Picture, and non-Irish (UK) published textbook New Headway Pre-Intermediate as identified by this study. The study ascertains the degree to which these materials promote cultural content knowledge, and engage cognitive and affective processing of cultural content. To estimate the potential of materials used in ESOL provision in Ireland for fostering learners’ cultural awareness, mixed methods were used in the form of a survey questionnaire and materials evaluation analysed via thematic and content analysis. Data collection and analysis were supported by the frameworks developed by the researcher for analysing materials for (1) the promotion of cultural content knowledge, (2) activation of cognitive and (3) stimulation of affective processing of cultural content as the three components of intercultural competence that foster cultural awareness. This study tested the validity and reliability of these frameworks as well. The study revealed the suitability of one frequently-used resource designed for the Irish context as it promoted appropriate cultural content knowledge via cognitively engaging and affectively stimulating activities; however, another, a UK-produced ELT coursebook was found not to be very helpful in this due to its lack of cultural content appropriate to the Irish context. It also emerged that teachers must put in a lot of effort to compile resources and materials to meet learners’ needs. The findings will contribute to the ongoing research into the needs of, and development of ESOL materials by offering insights into the cultural content of the materials currently in use, and providing practical guidelines in the form of frameworks to evaluate existing and create suitable materials as regards promoting cultural awareness, not only for the Irish ESOL context but also for language teachers in other international contexts.