The catalyst effect: cultural scaffolding in literary-based intercultural communicative language education
Oussama Ahmed Gaid
M’sila University, ALGERIA; https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8116-7323
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36534/erlj.2026.04.07
Bibliographic citation: (ISSN 2657-9774) Educational Role of Language Journal. Special Volume 2026-2(3). DECOLONIAL AND SITUATED APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, pp. 75-93.
Abstract
The present study investigates the differential impact of two types of pre-reading support on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ engagement and intercultural competence when reading a culturally dense literary text. Traditional approaches in EFL contexts often prioritize lexico-grammatical pre-teaching (LG-SPS), potentially aiding surface-level comprehension but failing to foster deeper affective engagement or intercultural growth. The present study proposes and tests an alternative: Culturally-Scaffolded Pre-reading Support (C-SPS), which explicitly links text-specific cultural references to learners’ own experiential frames. Using a within-subjects, counter-balanced design, 82 first-year undergraduate EFL students at a university in Algeria engaged with a literary excerpt under both C-SPS and LG-SPS conditions. Quantitative measures included reading dwell time, a Likert-scale engagement survey, multiple-choice inference questions, and the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS). Qualitative data were gathered from a written reflective prompt. Results from within-subjects t-tests and repeated-measures ANOVA reveal that the C-SPS condition produced significantly higher task engagement, greater inferred meaning accuracy, and more substantial gains in intercultural sensitivity compared to the LG-SPS condition. Qualitative content analysis of student reflections showed a marked increase in perspective-taking and cultural comparison markers following the C-SPS intervention. These findings suggest that cultural scaffolding is not merely an assistive tool but a catalyst that transforms linguistic accessibility into meaningful intercultural learning and sustained engagement. The study advocates for a “culture-first, language-second” pedagogical model within literary-based Intercultural Communicative Language Education (ICLE), demonstrating its efficacy even in resource-constrained, monocultural EFL settings. It should be acknowledged, however, that the design compares cultural scaffolding versus no cultural scaffolding rather than the ordering of culture versus language, and discussed in the implications of this distinction for future research.
Keywords: cultural scaffolding, intercultural competence, literary texts, EFL, task engagement, ZPD
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