Innovation in Language Learning

The final aim of this paper is to raise awareness regarding multiculturalism in our classrooms. In EFL settings, target culture is constantly redefined and enriched with new ways of seeing and thinking portrayed by students’ pluri-L1s. We think that pre-service teachers need a special training in these issues at tertiary level. That is why we feel the urge of developing a multifaceted approach for a cross-cultural understanding of peoples around the world. To develop the above-mentioned approach, we have worked with multicultural folktales from different parts of the globe in our classes so that students learn how to interact with and understand people who are ethnically, racially and culturally different from themselves. Many educators agree that a multicultural approach to education is essential to engage children of all cultures in learning and to prepare students for the diverse and global society they will live in. The goals we pursue are as follows:

1. To familiarize pre-service teachers with the concepts of multicultural, intercultural, intracultural, and transcultural.
    
2. To envisage other cultures as enriching sources of knowledge rather than as cultural perils.
    
3. To move pre-service teachers from informing to empowering.
    
4. To develop future teachers’ cultural awareness.

Keywords: multicultural literature, EFL, teacher training;