The Dialogue Approach
Dialogue and the Four Language Learning Thresholds

The Cultural Threshold

It is easy to relegate the cultural threshold to a less important realm considering the two preceding barriers, but it is nevertheless critical. Dialogue treats this issue taking into consideration both psychological and practical issues.

What exactly is the cultural threshold? It is easy to simply call it an interest in the foreign culture (the language, the country). Robert Galisson makes an important distinction for our purposes between the culture of behavior and that of cultivation, between that of knowing and that of prestige. The second, followed by most schools, is little more than an elaboration of the first, and not the reverse, as one may believe or be made to believe. Why have they avoided for so long the issue of culturality by over-stressing cultivation? Why do they remain satisfied to adapt, at the risk of turning students off, material presented to native speakers?

In psychological terms, if the learner gets through the cultural threshold quickly, entering quickly and spontaneously into the “foreign” culture, he will come to think that the task of learning the language is much lighter than he may previously have believed. On the other hand, if the means of expression, whether on a syntactic or paradigmatic level, seems stilted and abnormal, even seemingly illogical, he risks getting bogged down and stagnating. Put otherwise, standing in front of this threshold, the foreign culture seems to be an obstacle to learning; once through, it appears to facilitate the learning process.

Independent of this key psychological aspect, on a practical level it is certain that the method of expressing oneself in a language is radically different from the method of expressing oneself in all other languages. The “je vous prie de,” a form appearing nicer and more civilized in German, may be interpreted in today’s French as pushy and rude.

In other senses, to pass through the cultural threshold is, in part, to understand the true meaning of expressions used by native speakers, as well as the ability to speak their language and use the means of expressing themselves they use with each other. Without that, one only appears to communicate. The teacher’s mission is to inculcate in his students the correct interpretation of the behavior of native speakers, which involves not only verbal elements, but non-verbal and para-verbal as well. He must also make students understand the system of allusions used by native speakers, sensitizing students to the practical application of the language. Without these skills, students will not be able to ask, suggest, accept, or refuse without their utterance appearing stiff and strange.

How does the Dialogue approach enhance the ability to break through the cultural barrier?

Total immersion in the language, also an indispensable condition for passing through the psychological and listening barriers, is extremely important here as well. By undertaking all his activities in the target language, the learner rapidly improves his social relations and cultural knowledge.

Secure in a climate of confidence, the learner, confronted continually with social traps, acts and adapts, without fear of ridicule. He asks natives how he should act in any given situation, he is activated by their remarks and penetrates little by little into the new way of thinking, the new ways of seeing and reacting to occurrences. The “J’ai assez mangé,” more quantitative than qualitative, soon transforms into a “J’ai bien mangé.” Social communication is often more form than content. What the foreigner needs to remember is that he must, as his goal, uncover the basic cultural (and not cultivated) values and make them his own to be able to speak on a basis of equality in a language that is not his own.

The process is rather delicate. We cannot demand that the learner radically change his behavior, and abandon values he considers, perhaps unconsciously, to be inviolable. While the process may advance in fits and starts, it can only occur in a climate of mutual confidence.

Socio-cultural activities—television shows, discussions at breaks, at dinner, in the evening, attending speeches, expositions, meeting native speakers other than the instructors—all facilitate getting through the cultural barrier without a great deal of stress.

This language immersion often provides the occasion for the learner to use and re-use the material he has studied in the systematic learning sessions. Indeed, from the beginning, and unceasingly through the instruction, the student is immersed in culture. Genuine materials, word acts and especially the formulation of feelings and opinions become, in a way, the framework of the training. This is a key path Dialogue uses in giving the learner the “form.” The errors and misunderstandings that arise inevitably in the simulations (discussions, telephone conversations, editing of letters, etc.) become as much opportunities to sensitize the learner as they are to suggest how he may be viewed by a native speaker. The learner doesn’t become comfortable expressing himself until he can do it with enjoyment and using all registers (neutral tone, friendly, familiar, dry, aggressive, etc.) and until he abandons translating. But he will only be able to think in the language when he passed through the linguistic threshold.