A text-based approach to developing EFL learners’ intercultural awareness in Higher Education

Recent research suggests that learners should be provided with opportunities to negotiate meanings with other cultures and critically evaluate and reflect on their own culture. Texts have a great potential to provide such opportunities, especially in contexts where learners do not have the chance to experience other cultures through real-time observations. This case study investigates what the readers-as-text-ethnographers approach (RaTE) offers to promote intercultural awareness (ICA) in higher education. To this end, seven texts were selected following certain criteria, and a 15-week implementation was designed. Data were collected through learners’ written productions, classroom video recordings, a post-implementation survey, and key informant interviews. Findings revealed that studying texts with the RaTE approach helped the learners develop their ICA in understanding the complexity of culture, otherness, and self. Furthermore, findings also showed that the learners had difficulties in certain areas, such as reading between the lines and textual analysis during the implementation.