外国語活動における「異文化間コミュニケーション能力」の養成 ― 童話を教材として ―

摘要

This paper focuses on how to develop Byram’s “Intercultural Communicative Competence” (ICC) in foreign language activities through the utilization of children’s stories as teaching materials. Cultural understanding has been discussed through communicative competence in foreign language teaching and this paper considers ICC’s three factors (“attitude,” “knowledge,” and “skill”) to gain a better understanding of communication and intercultural competence. Elementary school curriculum guidelines specify that teachers need to give sufficient consideration to foster pupils’ “positive attitudes” toward communication in a second language. This paper therefore attempts to assess the approach in relation to children’s stories which have been adopted in foreign language/English activities since education for international understanding started in Japan. Although they may appear unsuitable as teaching materials for ICC, teaching reading develops favorable relations between ICC and children’s stories. Adapting Burwitz-Melzer’s approach (2001) of applied literary receptionist theory, the author reconstructs the list of how to adopt children’s stories, and shows an example of English language activities using Swimmy written by Leo Leonni.