Intercultural Competence and Postcolonialism in Nye’s Habibi and Gordimer’s “Loot”. Promoting democracy and citizenship through literature in the Norwegian EFL classroom

Abstract

There is broad agreement that the current use of literature in the Norwegian EFL classroom is not realizing its full educational potential due to a lack of practical approaches and an over ambitious curriculum. Thus, literature has become a rare and limited occurrence where students are asked to read for content and linguistical features, rather than for personal enjoyment and growth. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the potential of postcolonial literature in facilitating the development of intercultural competence in Norwegian upper-secondary EFL students as a step towards achieving the new interdisciplinary goals of promoting democracy and citizenship. Through providing postcolonial readings of Nadine Gordimer’s short story “Loot” and Naomi Shihab Nye’s young adult novel Habibi and an analysis of the texts in relation to the theories of intercultural competence provided by Barrett et al. and Michael Byram, this thesis seeks to discuss the potential of postcolonial literature as a genre in the development of intercultural competence through personal growth. The thesis found that postcolonial literature lends itself particularly well to the purpose of developing intercultural competence and that the variety within the genre presents a plethora of opportunities for facilitating this development. Specifically, the thesis found that Nye’s Habibi could facilitate intercultural competence through its potential for student identification and imitation of the novel’s main protagonist, and Gordimer’s “Loot” was found to facilitate through challenging the readers preconceptions and focusing on the role of extreme conditions on human behaviour.