The Introduction of Culture in Foreign Language Teaching

刘   丽  

Abstract: The thesis is concerned with the 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 structures 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 currently used.

Key words: foreign language teaching, language and culture, the introduction of culture

Introduction

   Speak of foreign language teaching, we will easily think of the teaching of listening, oral expression, reading, writing and some other basic language skills. However, it was found that many students feel boring and nothing valuable have learned in language class due to those bald practice of grammar rules and sentence pattern drill in unreal language context. The reason for such situation ascribed to large extent to the ignorance of non-language content in language teaching.

In fact, students would like to learn more knowledge about the target language’s culture in that culture learning can make language learning more active and can release students from bald learning of grammar and vocabulary. Students hope that the language knowledge they learned can be used in actual life. Therefore, foreign language teaching should provide students occasions for learning the target culture and cultural behaviors.

At any rate, foreign language learning is foreign culture learning, and, in one form or another, culture has, even implicitly, been taught in the foreign language classroom—if for different reasons. What are debatable, though, is what is meant by the term “culture” and how the latter is integrated into language learning and teaching. Kramsch’s keen observation should 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 evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. (Kramsch, 1993: 1)

⒈Language and Culture: What Is Culture And Why Should It Be Taught?

In this section, we will briefly examine the relationship between language and culture and see why the teaching of culture should constitute an integral part of the English language curriculum. To begin with, language is a social institution, both shaping and shaped by society at large, or in particular the ‘cultural niches’ in which it plays an important role. Thus, if our premise is that language is, or should be, understood as cultural practice, then ineluctably we must also grapple with the notion of culture in relation to language. Language is not an ‘autonomous construct’ (Fairclough, 1989) but social practice both creating and created by ‘the structures and forces of [the] social institutions within which we live and function’. Certainly, language cannot exist in a vacuum; one could make so bold as to maintain that there is a kind of “transfusion” at work between language and culture. Amongst those who have dilated upon the affinity between language and culture, it is Duranti who succinctly encapsulates how these two interpenetrate: to be part of a culture means to share the propositional knowledge and the rules of inference necessary to understand whether certain propositions are true (given certain premises). To the propositional knowledge, one might add the procedural knowledge to carry out tasks such as cooking, weaving, farming, fishing, giving a formal speech, answering the phone, asking for a favor, writing a letter for a job application (Duranti, 1997: 28-29).

The question arises, however, that if language and culture are so intricately intertwined, why should we overtly focus on culture when there are other aspects of the curriculum that need more attention? To begin with, we should concern ourselves with culture because, even though it is inherent in what we teach, to believe that whoever is learning the foreign language is also learning the cultural knowledge and skills required to be a competent L2/FL speaker ‘denies the complexity of culture, language learning, and communication’ (Lessard-Clouston, 1997). Second, it is deemed important to include culture in the foreign language curriculum because it helps avoid the stereotypes that Nemni (1992) has discussed and the present study has intimated. The third reason for expressly teaching culture in the foreign language classroom is to enable students to take control of their own learning as well as to achieve autonomy by evaluating and questioning the wider context within which the learning of the target language is embedded.

⒉Incorporating Culture Into the Foreign Language Classroom: Some Practical Considerations

     A question germane to our discussion is, how can we incorporate culture into the foreign language curriculum, with a view to fostering cultural awareness and communicating insight into the target civilization? According to Straub (1999), what educators should always have in mind when teaching culture is the need to raise their students’ awareness of their own culture, to provide them with some kind of metalanguage in order to talk about culture, and ‘to cultivate a degree of intellectual objectivity essential in cross-cultural analyses’ (ibid.: 5). What is more, another objective permeating the teaching of culture is ‘to foster…understanding of the target culture from an insider’s perspective—an empathetic view that permits the student to accurately interpret foreign cultural behaviors’ (ibid.).

First, culture teaching must be commensurate with the dynamic aspects of culture. As Lessard-Clouston (1997) notes, students will indeed need to develop knowledge of and about the L2 or FL culture, but this receptive aspect of cultural competence is not sufficient. Learners will also need to master some skills in culturally appropriate communication and behavior for the target culture…Cultural awareness is necessary if students are to develop an understanding of the dynamic nature of the target culture, as well as their own culture.

Second, it is important to eschew what Lessard-Clouston (1997) calls ‘a laissez-faire approach’, when it comes to teaching methodology, and deal with culture teaching in a systematic and structured way. Third, evaluation of culture learning is a necessary component of the “foreign culture curriculum,” providing students with feedback and keeping teachers accountable in their teaching. A fourth point is made by Cruz, Bonissone, and Baff (1995) pertaining to the express need for linguistic and cultural competence as a means of achieving and negotiating nations’ political and economical identities in an ‘ever shrinking world’, as they put it.

Our world has changed, but in many ways our schools have not. Linguistic and cultural abilities are at the forefront of our ever shrinking world. Yet we continue to shy away from addressing these very real global necessities. Just as no one superpower can dominate without censure from others, citizens must now begin to see their global responsibilities and must learn to move comfortably from one cultural environment to the next. Persuasion rather than armed coercion has become the way to do things politically and effective persuasion requires that one know the other party’s values and manner of establishing rapport. (ibid.) Apparently, culture can become a third (or second, for that matter) “superpower” dispensing justice and helping maintain stability and equilibrium if need be.

Through exposure to the foreign civilization, students inescapably draw some comparisons between the home and target culture. ‘Cultural capsules’ (Singhal, 1998, and others), also known as ‘culturgrams’ (Peck, 1998), attempt to help in this respect, presenting learners with isolated items about the target culture, while using books and other visual aids. Yet, according to Peck (ibid.), a more useful way to provide cultural information is by dint of cultural clusters, which are a series of culture capsules. Seelye (1984) provides such capsules, such as a narrative on the etiquette during a family meal. With this narrative as a springboard for discussion and experimentation, students can practice how to eat, learn how, and to what extent, the members of the target culture appreciate a meal with friends, and so forth. A word of caveat is called for, though. Students must not lose sight of the fact that not all members of the target community think and behave in the same way.

Cultural problem solving is yet another way to provide cultural information. In this case, learners are presented with some information but they are on the horns of a dilemma, so to speak. For example, in analyzing, say, a TV conversation or reading a narrative on marriage ceremonies, they are expected to assess manners and customs, or appropriate or inappropriate behavior, and to employ various problem-solving techniques—in short, to develop a kind of “cultural strategic competence”. Singhal sets the scene: students are in a restaurant and are expected to order a meal. In this way, learners are given the opportunity to step into the shoes of a member of the target culture.

⒊Conclusion

By way of conclusion, we should reiterate the main premise of the present study: the teaching of culture should become an integral part of foreign language instruction. ‘Culture should be our message to students and language our medium’ (Peck, 1998). Frontiers have opened and never before have nations come closer to one another—in theory, at least. As a result, people from different cultures weave their lives into an international fabric that is beginning to fray at the edges by virtue of miscommunication and propaganda. In order to avoid this ignominious cultural and political disintegration, and foster empathy and understanding, teachers should ‘present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language’ (Singhal, 1998). And this will be achieved only if cultural awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalized subject within the foreign language curriculum; that is, when culture “inhabits” the classroom and undergirds every language activity. According to Singhal (1998), language teachers ought to receive both experiential and academic training, with the aim of becoming ‘mediators in culture teaching’ (ibid.). At any rate, culture teaching should aim to foster ‘empathy with the cultural norms of the target language community’ and ‘an increased awareness of one’s own ‘cultural logic’ in relation to others’ (Willems, 1992, cited in Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 67). This cultural logic, though, is achieved through ‘a recognition of‘othernesses, and of the limitations of one’s own cultural identity’ (Killick & Poveda, 1997).

References

Kramsch, C. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman.

Duranti, A. 1997. Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge: University Press.

Lessard-Clouston, M. 1997. Towards an Understanding of Culture in L2/FL Education. In Ronko, K.G. Studies in English, 25, 131-150 Japan: Kwansei Gakuin University Press.

Nemni, M. 1992. Mefiez-vous du discours interculturel! Canadian Modern Language Review, 49 (1), 10-36.

Straub, H. 1999. Designing a Cross-Cultural Course. English Forum, vol. 37: 3, July-September, 1999.

Singhal, M. 1998. Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom. Thai TESOL Bulletin, Vol. 11 No. 1, February 1998.

Peck, D. 1998. Teaching Culture: Beyond Language. Yale: New Haven Teachers Institute.

Seelye, H. 1984. Teaching culture: Strategies for inter-cultural communication. Revised edition. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.

Williams, R. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana.

Killick, D. & Poveda, J. 1997. Perceptions of Cross-Cultural Capability: is EFL Another Language? Proceedings of the conference at Leeds Metropolitan University, 15-16 December 1997.