Relational teaching: A way to foster EFL learners’ intercultural communicative competence through literary short stories

Abstract

This article reports an action research study in an advanced EFL class of the language program at a public University in Bogotá, Colombia in 2011. The study suggests that the inclusion of authentic multicultural short stories of the U.S. in the EFL context fosters learners’ critical intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through the implementation of the Relational Teaching approach. The collected data showed how learners developed critical intercultural skills through commonalities (a concept proposed by Relational Teaching) when they read literary short stories. Findings show that applying new teaching approaches and literature in EFL might contribute to create critical intercultural awareness.

Keywords

• EFL (English as a Foreign Language)
• intercultural communicative competence
• commonalities
• multicultural literary texts
• Relational Teaching