Developing students’ intercultural awareness: How can folktales and storytelling help?
The last few decades have seen a global expansion of English and emergence of different varieties of English. Accordingly, there is now a need for teachers to inspire their students to develop awareness of linguistic and cultural diversities among speakers of different varieties of English, or intercultural awareness. There is also a need for teaching materials to include representation of the users and cultures of diverse varieties of English. In this paper, I aim to provide a guiding framework for teachers to use (i) folktales of different cultures and (ii) oral storytelling performances in order to provide students with opportunities to discuss, understand and appreciate linguistic and cultural diversities among speakers of different varieties of English (rather than view them as deficient). I will use examples from the South-east Asian context, where newer varieties of English have emerged with the increase in the learning and use of English for various purposes. I will illustrate how (i) comparative analysis of Asian folktales written in or translated into English and (ii) multimodal features in oral storytelling discourse can be used as pedagogical springboards to engage students in learning to develop intercultural awareness.
Linguistics and Knowledge about Language in Education 