The Fifth Language Skill: Using Cultural Scripts to Inform Communicative Competence

We study languages for a number of reasons, foremost among them to communicate with people from around the world. Language learners spend time developing and mastering the skills and systems that lead to proficiency. Traditionally, this has included four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, given that communication is inextricably linked to the cultural context in which it is used, proficiency in what has been called "the fifth skill" is gaining attention. As language teachers, we are best positioned to introduce cultural norms and expectations to our students through our choices in the classroom environment. In this practical session, we borrow from studies in the field of intercultural communication to investigate the analysis of known cultural scripts for both understanding our own and making sense of other cultures. Through a series of activities designed to unearth the scripts that we ourselves unknowingly follow, we will look at two models that can be used in the classroom to encourage our learners to develop the crucial fifth skill. By the end of the workshop, we will be better able to identify cultural scripts, use them to foster more creative participation from our learners, and ultimately, develop communicative competence in our learners and ourselves.