Fostering Language Acquisition and Intercultural Competence Through Authentic Literary Texts: The Use of Short Stories in ELT

Introduction

Language teaching has traditionally focussed on the development of grammatical and lexical skills, whereas nowadays, teachers are becoming aware that one of the main aims of language teaching is communicative competence, that is “the ability to use language, or to communicate, in a culturally-appropriate manner in order to make meaning and accomplish social tasks with efficacy and fluency through extended interactions” (Tarvin, 2014, p. 2).

Structured classroom learning is becoming old fashioned and inefficient as the pace of social changes and new technologies is evolving, in fact, ICT “have enabled the teaching community to redefine some of the strategies and concepts of teaching and learning. This has been done in terms of enriching classroom activities, reorganising course structures, and providing learners with more autonomous as well as more learner-centred opportunities for learning” (Klimova, 2012, p.196). Educators must be aware of important shifts in how students learn inside/outside the classroom, as technology and social media play an important role in the way they are exposed to the new language (Alqahtani, 2019; Pun, 2014; Weideman, 2001). Together with the development of different language skills, teachers and educators are ultimately concerned with the responsibility to prepare global citizens, not only capable of communicating effectively in a foreign language but also able to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, because, nowadays, we live in a multicultural world in which “people with different roots can coexist, learn from each other, and look across and beyond the frontiers of group boundaries with minimum prejudice or illusion” (Kim, 2015, p. 4). Moreover, in our globalized society it is essential to establish cross-cultural relations using English as lingua franca, as it has spread worldwide to become the international language of communication, business and entertainment. In this sense, the intercultural communicative competence results of paramount importance when designing any language curriculum, because it focuses on “the ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language” (Byram, 1997, p. 71).