Adriana Umaña Hossman, PhD

Integrating culture in foreign language teaching

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When faced with the question of integrating culture into the foreign language classroom, one must first of all acknowledge the complex meaning of culture.  As Lafayette points out in his article, most teachers spend most energy and resources in teaching grammar and vocabulary, sometimes forgetting to include culture in their lesson plans.  And as we all know, textbooks tend to neglect this important component in learning a second language, which is unfortunate, as language does not exist on a vacuum.  I think this is due in part because of the complex nature of culture.  What is culture?  If we follow the definition provided by the dictionary, we encounter a very large concept as culture includes all intellectual aspects that make up the customary beliefs, social, and material traits of a group which shape their of everyday existence and their behavior.  Judging from the immensity of the material that would need to be covered in attempting to teach it to language students, it is easy to understand the reticence of the teachers.  This is where the Indiana guide should be seen as a model to follow.  By delineating very clear goals, it reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed by the material and makes the task much more manageable.

In my experience, culture must be included and integrated into all aspects of teaching a foreign language.  I agree with Lafayette in unifying form and content as it increases the interest of the students, all of a sudden what they are learning becomes real and alive.  Their motivation to learn grows and their curiosity drives the learning experience.  What makes a language interesting to most people is the fact that other people use it everyday for communicating and interacting with others. This becomes the best tool for teachers to inspire their students on the tangible value of learning a second language.

The suggested activities in the article are a great starting point for all of us that have the responsibility to teach others a foreign language, but we must invoke every inch of creativity in us to make these exercises interesting.

Comments

2 responses to “Integrating culture in foreign language teaching”

  1. Peggy Patterson Avatar
    Peggy Patterson

    Aumana, I enjoyed reading your comments on the article. Good job!! You mentioned that neglecting culture in language teaching is due in part to the complexity of culture. I agree with you… but as you said this is only.. “in part” . There are other reasons that culture is not taught to beginning students. Chris mentioned in his blog the problem that non-native teachers may have, that of not knowing the culture well enough to teach it. (This is not true of all non-native teachers.. just a possibility with some). This can be a problem for the non-native teacher if the textbook does not include much culture. I often see another reason for the lack of teaching culture in beginning classes. That is that we try to cover SO MUCH grammar and vocabulary in one semester that we often get behind and of course, the thing that gets eliminated is the culture. This is sad but is a fact of life. The students have to know the vocabulary and the grammar in order to do well on a test. Sadly the culture becomes secondary. I like the list on p. 50 of Lafayette’s article with examples of ways they integrate culture in the proficiency writing activities. I think it is important for us to learn how to incorporate the culture into our grammar and vocabulary lessons.

  2. indranildutta Avatar
    indranildutta

    Adriana, I agree with you completely. I think you are right in pointing out that culture is complex by definition. In most cases when we talk of culture or try to teach culture we end up providing an essentialized version of it. In other words, knowledge of a set of cultural mores, artifacts, famous political, literary and social icons, still is an essential view of culture but not a holistic understanding of it.

    In my classes, which are advanced level classes, and hence make it possible to approach culture from a holistic point of view, a large portion of the cultural knowledge is gained through contextualized reading and critical discussion. This reading is not an uncritical reading in that we don’t accept the fact that in one culture or the other a certain event is performed, but we try to be as critical as we can in understanding the same socio-political and historical issues that native speakers of the language are also grappling with when discussing the same event. Having said that, it is possible for us to do this in an advanced course.

    I do also fervently agree with you that we need to bring an enormous amount of creativity into the exercise of including culture in our curriculum. A level of creativity that encourages critically thinking about what culture is and what it is not. Whilst monuments, iconoclasts, table manners and such make up culture, they don’t constitute it under any circumstance. We should strive to make our second language learners think critically about culture the same way all native speakers do, this way we are able to provide our students with a contextualized entry into the discourse of culture rather than an ossified formal instantiation of it.

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