Some thoughts about intercultural approach to learning and teaching

Testing yourself! People are like stained glass windows: They sparkle and shine when the sun‘s out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you
Calvin Coolidge

It’s How You Look at Things. Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem
Virginia Satir

The problem we are going to discuss is one of the most important, because the very problem arises in connection with the study of everything, everywhere and everybody in different situations of learning. In real teacher’s practice the actual range of problems is much wider, because there are always the key problems and the very complex problems. From this point of view one of the most promising problems seems to deal with intercultural approaches, though the actual range of problems is much wider, if we take into account the whole process of teaching-learning. Much has been done in the field of international communication while cooperation, but undoubtedly much still remains to be done in it. The view has become widely held in recent years.

At present there is a growing interest in students’ point of view concerning special questions about the topics, closely connected with learning and further working. The task was to indicate how much each statement described each student, being as frank and honest as possible. Let us call it Procrastination Scale and be ready to read it attentively in order to possess a vague and general idea of the students’ research focus shifted towards their intellectual and professional orientation.

So, let’s start to think over the answers of those involved in our experiment.

1. I needlessly delay finishing jobs, even when they are important.
2. I postpone starting in on things I don’t like to do.
3. When I have a deadline, I wait till the last minute.
4. I delay making tough decisions.
5. I stall on initiating new activities.
6. I’m on time for appointments.
7. I keep putting off improving my work habits.
8. I get right to work, even on life’s unpleasant chores.
9. I manage to find an exuse for not doing something.
10. I avoid doing those things which I expect to do poorly.
11. I put the necessary time into even boring tasks, like studying.
12. When I get tired of an unpleasant job, I stop.
13. I believe in “keeping my nose to the grindstone.”
14. When something’s not worth the trouble, I stop.
15. I believe that things I do not like doing should not exist.
16. I consider people who make me do unfair and difficult things to be rotten.
17. When it counts, I can manage to enjoy even studying.
18. I am an incurable time waster.
19. I feel that it is my absolute right to have other people to treat me fairly.
20. I believe that other people don’t have the right to give me deadlines.
21. Studying makes me feel entirely miserable.
22. I am a time waster now, but I can’t seem to do anything about it.
23. When something’s to tough to tackler, I believe in postponing it.
24. I promise myself I’ll do something and then drag my feet.
25. Whenever I make a plan of action, I follow it.
26. I wish I could find an easy way to get myself moving.
27. When I have trouble with a task, it’s usually my own fault.
28. Even though I hate myself if I don’t get started, it does not get me doing.
29. I always finish important jobs with time to spare.
30. When I am done with my work, I check it over.
31. I look for a loophole or shortcut to get through a tough task.
32. I get stuck in neutral even though I know how important it is to get started.
33. I never met a job I couldn’t ‘lick’.
34. Putting something off until tomorrow is not the way I do it.
35. I feel that work burns me out [1, p.198].

All the alternative hypotheses (let we name them like this) mentioned above have their supporters and opponents. It is a well – established fact. In accordance with it the mission of a teacher is to organize a teaching process in a maximally productive, effective and rational way, when productive analysis shows the rightness of the best approaches, connected with the best intentions of the students, ready to overcome difficulties and win themselves in the intellectual battle for highest result.

Nowadays, we cannot teach without taking into account the understanding that learning a foreign language cannot (again!) be reduced to the direct teaching of linguistic skills like phonology, morphology, vocabulary and syntax. We mean the contemporary models of communicative competence. They include the vital component of cultural knowledge and awareness (Bachman 1990; Council of Europe 2001). Since those early years, we, teachers, try to be ready to unsettle the good language learners. These students can challenge their ability to make sense of the world around them. A complex approach to the study of Culture allowed us not only to analyze precisely the materials we are interested in, but to reach specific conclusions, based on the analysis, we are considered to be the main point of our research [2, p.10].

The modern world and the efforts of teachers to explain their students what to do in order to make it safety through the process of upbringing in class and teaching in- and-out classroom give them a wide range of approaches, The teachers’ task is to involve them in the process of tutoring, training, coaching – teaching for the sake of maintenance of the very foundation – the values and traditions of generations, which are forever in a close connection of cultures, national traditions, intellectual inventions and soul findings. A teaching practice is not simply as work, as honorable labor, but as mission, vacation, duty. Let us remember the Mission of International Teachers’ Association, 34 countries, (Schools – Colleges – Universities). 34 countries with center in Kopenhagen, Denmark. This teachers’ center constantly tries to establish themselves with Wisdom - being protected as moral Personalities in the Face of Eternity. Wisdom for them is practice and activity, personal as insight and combined, as a group experience, open-up to each other. The materials of the International Teachers’ conferences contain a rich material of combined experience through decisions, intentions and feelings. This experience explains how to classify conflicts and remain gentle, leading the group without dominating, how to remain relaxed even in the hardest circumstances on the way to the core of Personality, being in great demand by a Society wishing Not Leave our Future Behind [3, p. 26-28].