Teaching Symbolic Competence - Einzelansicht

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Dear students, all courses will be taught as online courses until further notice. Once you have signed on in PULS and have been admitted in PULS, your instructor will email you via PULS to let you know when and how to access the online material (moodle, etc.).

Testatsleistungen (course requirements) may be subject to change. Students who cannot (yet) access PULS: Please email your instructor directly. It is possible that classes can be switched to classroom teaching (Präsenzlehre) at some point during the semester. If this happens, your instructor will let you know and classes will take place at the times originally scheduled.

Symbolic competence, as initially conceptualized by Claire Kramsch (2006), was described as the ability of multilingual speakers to manipulate language (symbolic system) so as to make meaning and to position oneself to one’s benefit in a social context that reveals unequal power relations. Such an ability involves an understanding of language that goes beyond grammatical competence (Canale & Swain, 1980), communicative competence (Hymes, 1966), or intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997). Symbolic competence instead, defies static definitions and linear applications of language, while it embraces multiplicity, ambiguity, and complexity of meaning. Due to today’s age of globalization which has brought about unpredictability and uncertainty of meanings, driven by communication technologies, social media and today’s increasingly multilingual and multicultural classroom compositions, symbolic competence becomes particularly relevant to foreign language teaching and learning. This course is designed for students interested in the relationship between language, culture, and symbolic power, both in theory and in foreign language practice. Questions covered in this course include (but are not limited to): What exactly is symbolic competence and how does it differ from intercultural competence? In foreign language teaching and learning, how can instructors foster symbolic competence in using literature, Twitter, YouTube etc.? How do instructors draw upon their symbolic competence in the language classroom so as to discuss controversial topics, global and complex issues (climate change, food waste, democracy etc.)?