Intercultural Competence in Chinese as a Foreign Language Teaching: practice and perspectives of Spanish University Teachers

Abstract

The teaching of culture in the foreign language classroom has evolved in the last decades from the mere teacherstudent transmission of highbrow culture facts to a vision where “culture” has become a complex competence, the intercultural communicative competence. This evolution, nevertheless, is not observed in the Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) teaching field, where culture is still described in the literature as a static set of cultural facts and behaviors that can be taught or trained in the classrooms. However, there are no empirical studies that examine how culture is actually being treated in the practice. With the purpose of clarifying this situation, this study analizes the way Chinese language university teachers conceptualize what is culture and how they seek to develop this competence in their students. To do so, a survey was conducted in all Spanish universities with CFL as an offered major degree, with special attention to translation degrees due to the particularities of its student profile. The results of this groundbreaking study reveal that, in strong contradiction with the vision transmitted from the theoretical analysis, Chinese language teachers have a complete and updated vision of this competence, and its development receives remarkable attention in their classes.