Topic > Culture and foreign language: teaching and learning

In this subsection we will present the different approaches to teaching culture in foreign language teaching practice and the different visions of the term “culture” as a means of exploring the close relationship between culture and language and determine what is meant by culture in this study. As mentioned above, there are several definitions of culture. These views have been based on the different theories of language acquisition and teaching approaches that have emerged in the history of foreign language teaching. (Hinkel, 1999) Until the mid-20th century, culture was seen as the transmission of factual information about the target language, which consisted of statistical information about history, literature, art, and geography, among others. This view of teaching culture was known as the “big C” or “success culture” and was criticized for providing only information rather than understanding of the attitudes and values ​​of the target language, (Kramsch, 1993; Tomalin and Stempleski, 1993; Kumaravadivelu, 2008). From this perspective, culture teaching is limited to teaching encyclopedic information about another country without recognizing the variability of behavior within the community of the target culture, or the individual's participation in the creation of the culture. , or the interaction between language and culture in the construction of meaning, (Moore, 1996). Later in the 1960s, the view of culture emphasized people's way of life, their customs, habits and folklore and the teaching of the language as “little c” or “behavioural culture” was known abroad (Kramsch, 1993; Tomalin and Stempleski, 1993). This approach has had a greater impact on theory than practice because the… center of the paper… and beliefs that are learned and revealed by social practices and mediated through language. It means that culture is understood as a particular worldview constructed by people who belong to the same community. In this sense, people in a community construct meaning through social interaction and use language as a mediator to reflect their worldview and interpret how other people construct their own worldview. This means that this understanding is acquired socially. In short, culture has been widely recognized throughout the history of foreign language teaching. As different approaches to teaching culture have evolved, the view of culture has transformed into a more integrated view of language. Nowadays culture is considered part of teaching a foreign language since it is through language that a community of people expresses their culture.