The Importance Of Teaching Culture In The Foreign Language Classroom.docx

1、The Importance Of Teaching Culture In The Foreign Language ClassroomThe Importance Of Teaching Culture In The Foreign Language Classroom Dimitrios Thanasoulas Member of TESOL Greece and the AILA Scientific Commission on Learner Autonomy akasa74 I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor,

2、Dr. Doreen Du Boulay for her assistance and insightful ideas, and record my thanks to my friends Joshua Jackson and Eleni Vassilakis, who were unstinting in their support, reading drafts of the paper and making thought-provoking suggestions. Nevertheless, any shortcomings or problems regarding the p

3、resent thesis remain my responsibility. Finally, I would like to thank my family, Theodoros and Eugenia Thanasoulas, for their emotional and financial support, and my sister Penny, who, though she does not know it, has helped me in many ways. “Shes The One.” AbstractThe thesis is concerned with the

4、contribution and incorporation of the teaching of culture into the foreign language classroom. More specifically, some consideration will be given to the why and how of teaching culture. It will be demonstrated that teaching a foreign language is not tantamount to giving a homily on syntactic struct

5、ures or learning new vocabulary and expressions, but mainly incorporates, or should incorporate, some cultural elements, which are intertwined with language itself. Furthermore, an attempt will be made to incorporate culture into the classroom by means of considering some techniques and methods curr

6、ently used. The main premise of the paper is that effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency and that, apart from enhancing and enriching communicative competence, cultural competence can also lead to empathy and respect toward different cultures as well as promote objecti

7、vity and cultural perspicacity. IntroductionForeign language learning is comprised of several components, including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards ones own or another culture. For scholars and laymen alike, cultural co

8、mpetence, i.e., the knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country, is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning, and many teachers have seen it as their goal to incorporate the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum. It c

9、ould be maintained that the notion of communicative competence, which, in the past decade or so, has blazed a trail, so to speak, in foreign language teaching, emphasising the role of context and the circumstances under which language can be used accurately and appropriately, falls short of the mark

10、 when it comes to actually equipping students with the cognitive skills they need in a second-culture environment (Straub, 1999: 2). In other words, since the wider context of language, that is, society and culture, has been reduced to a variable elusive of any definitionas many teachers and student

11、s incessantly talk about it without knowing what its exact meaning isit stands to reason that the term communicative competence should become nothing more than an empty and meretricious word, resorted to if for no other reason than to make an “educational point.” In reality, what most teachers and s

12、tudents seem to lose sight of is the fact that knowledge of the grammatical system of a language grammatical competence has to be complemented by understanding (sic) of culture-specific meanings communicative or rather cultural competence (Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 4).Of course, we are long past a

13、n era when first language acquisition and second or foreign language learning were cast in a “behaviouristic mould,” being the products of imitation and language “drills,” and language was thought of as a compendium of rules and strings of words and sentences used to form propositions about a state

14、of affairs. In the last two decades, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of language in relation to society, which has led to a shift of focus from behaviourism and positivism to constructivism to critical theory (see Benson & Voller, 1997: 19-25). Yet, there are still some deeply i

15、ngrained beliefs as to the nature of language learning and teachingbeliefs that determine methodology as well as the content of the foreign language curriculumwhich have, gradually and insidiously, contrived to undermine the teaching of culture.One of the misconceptions that have permeated foreign l

16、anguage teaching is the conviction that language is merely a code and, once masteredmainly by dint of steeping oneself into grammatical rules and some aspects of the social context in which it is embeddedone language is essentially (albeit not easily) translatable into another (Kramsch, 1993: 1). To

17、 a certain extent, this belief has been instrumental in promoting various approaches to foreign language teachingpragmatic, sociolinguistic, and communicativewhich have certainly endowed the study of language with a social “hue”; nevertheless, paying lip service to the social dynamics that undergird

18、 language without trying to identify and gain insights into the very fabric of society and culture that have come to charge language in many and varied ways can only cause misunderstanding and lead to cross-cultural miscommunication.At any rate, foreign language learning is foreign culture learning,

19、 and, in one form or another, culture has, even implicitly, been taught in the foreign language classroomif for different reasons. What is debatable, though, is what is meant by the term “culture” and how the latter is integrated into language learning and teaching. Kramschs keen observation should

20、not go unnoticed:Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evi

21、dent the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. (Kramsch, 1993: 1)The teaching of culture is not akin to the transmission of information regarding the people of the target community or countryeven though knowledge abo

22、ut (let alone experience of) the “target group” is an important ingredient (see Nostrand, 1967: 118). It would be nothing short of ludicrous to assert that culture is merely a repository of facts and experiences to which one can have recourse, if need be. Furthermore, what Kramsch herself seems to i

23、nsinuate is that to learn a foreign language is not merely to learn how to communicate but also to discover how much leeway the target language allows learners to manipulate grammatical forms, sounds, and meanings, and to reflect upon, or even flout, socially accepted norms at work both in their own

24、 or the target culture.There is definitely more than meets the eye, and the present paper has the aim of unravelling the “mystery,” shedding some light on the role of teaching culture in fostering cross-cultural understanding which transcends the boundaries of linguistic formswhile enriching and giv

25、ing far deeper meaning to what is dubbed “communicative competence”and runs counter to a solipsistic world view. I would like to show that the teaching of culture has enjoyed far less “adulation” than it merits, and consider ways of incorporating it not only into the foreign language curriculum but

26、also into learners repertoire and outlook on life. The main premise of this paper is that we cannot go about teaching a foreign language without at least offering some insights into its speakers culture. By the same token, we cannot go about fostering “communicative competence” without taking into a

27、ccount the different views and perspectives of people in different cultures which may enhance or even inhibit communication. After all, communication requires understanding, and understanding requires stepping into the shoes of the foreigner and sifting her cultural baggage, while always putting the

28、 target culture in relation with ones own (Kramsch, 1993: 205). Moreover, we should be cognisant of the fact that if we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning (P

29、olitzer, 1959: 100-101). The History OF Culture Teaching As will become evident, the role of cultural learning in the foreign language classroom has been the concern of many teachers and scholars and has sparked considerable controversy, yet its validity as an equal complement to language learning h

30、as often been overlooked or even impugned. Up to now, two main perspectives have influenced the teaching of culture. One pertains to the transmission of factual, cultural information, which consists in statistical information, that is, institutional structures and other aspects of the target civilis

31、ation, highbrow information, i.e., immersion in literature and the arts, and lowbrow information, which may focus on the customs, habits, and folklore of everyday life (see Kramsch, 1993: 24). This preoccupation with facts rather than meanings, though, leaves much to be desired as far as an understa

32、nding of foreign attitudes and values is concerned, and virtually blindfolds learners to the minute albeit significant aspects of their own as well as the target groups identity that are not easily divined and appropriated (ibid.) All that it offers is mere book knowledge learned by rote (Huebener,

33、1959: 177). The other perspective, drawing upon cross-cultural psychology or anthropology, has been to embed culture within an interpretive framework and establish connections, namely, points of reference or departure, between ones own and the target country. This approach, however, has certain limitations,