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The Language Learning Journal

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Culture and foreign language teaching

Colin Simpson
a a

Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education

Available online: 06 Aug 2007

To cite this article: Colin Simpson (1997): Culture and foreign language teaching, The Language Learning Journal, 15:1, 40-43 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571739785200091

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Language Learning Journal, March 1997, No 15, 40-43

Culture and foreign language teaching

Colin Simpson
Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education
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INTRODUCTION
This essay considers various approaches to the teaching of culture in connection with foreign language (FL) teaching with a view to making a realistic suggestion as to how to integrate the language and culture elements. I am particularly concerned with FL students at the lower and intermediate levels, where the cultural input is often omitted on the basis that students' linguistic skills do not allow them to study authentic information sources. There are many good reasons for considering which aspects of culture can be taught in the FL classroom. These can be divided roughly under two headings: motivation and cognitive development. Many students appear dissatisfied with language courses which aim to teach either 'essential' transactional phrases or the elementary grammatical rules governing basic structures. Students often say that they feel they are not 'making progress' despite the fact that the number and complexity of structures introduced by the teacher increase as the course goes on. I think that this is due largely to the neglect of non-linguistic elements in certain courses, which fail to challenge students' preconceived attitudes to what they are studying. The emphasis is on the rehearsal of 'realistic' situations without the need to communicate thoughts and feelings. The consequent demotivation leads not only to a high drop-out rate, but also to inertia in the cognitive development of those students who persevere. Many of our students want to see more of the culture of the countries where the target language is spoken. It is crucial to use this natural curiosity to present students with alternative sets of cultural values and concepts which enable them to look critically at their native culture. There is also the desire on the part of many teachers to break down cultural barriers and undermine the dominant association of certain languages with certain economically powerful nation states and the stereotypical images many people have of foreign countries. FL learning has traditionally

been associated with the assumption of a deeper knowledge of the countries where that language is spoken. In practice, much of the knowledge which FL students gain of the target cultures is unsystematic and incidental. In addition to choosing which items of socio-political knowledge we want students to study, we need to consider the extent to which we ought to be enabling them to raise their consciousness of the process of language learning, undertake research projects, ask questions about their awareness of their own culture, etc. However, it continues to be easier to describe the benefits of FL learning which are not specific to the language than to plan a syllabus which incorporates areas of non-linguistic competence. Whilst everyone agrees that teaching a FL involves introducing their students to that culture, few agree on which parts of that culture their students would most benefit from getting to know.

A RADICAL SOLUTION
The various arguments in this debate are centred around the question of whether FL teaching should take place in an independent study field, or be attached to some other subject, in order to present language in natural communicative contexts. This is a reaction against the perceived failure of language teachers to teach real language use. Instead of this they are said to have emphasised discrete aspects of language performance Which their students have had to learn out of context through unnatural grammar drills or stiff role play exercises. The trend toward communicative language teaching techniques has not significantly altered the end result, because these tend to put students in unrealistic rehearsal situations which do not contribute to a wider awareness of the cultural parameters associated with the target language and as sucra are often demotivating. A widespread conclusion seems to be that language should not be taught as an isolated skill, but needs to be embedded in a content-based

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CULTURE AND FOREIGNLANGUAGE TEACHING

area of the syllabus. This begs many questions about which area would be most suitable and how language competence could be achieved at all. One of the most radical alternative approaches to this problem was put forward by Lambert (1974). It is interesting to note that his proposals were a response to 'growing dissatisfaction among students with standard programmes of FL instruction' in US Institutions of Higher Education, reflected in, among other things, a drop-off in enrolments.Lambert sees part of the problem as the rigidity of the FL teaching profession and its unwillingness to change according to the changes in the nature of the demand for FL courses. One of the reasons why standard FL courses were perceived to be anachronistic was, according to Lambert, their focus on distant countries and cultures when large numbers of citizens from those countries were living in the States. This influenced students' perception of the value of those cultures in two ways. Firstly they saw how people who came from those countries usually occupied menial jobs and suffered poverty in the States. This was unlikely to convince students of the benefits of learning the language of the target group. Secondly, the aim of inspiring students with an interest in a foreign culture was misguided, as students perceived that the character of the countries from which those people came was being systematically misrepresented in the language classroom. Having identified the main culprit as the misguided cultural focus within FL classrooms, Lambert goes on to suggest that the language teaching element should be taken out of the traditional teaching centre altogether, which would free FL teachers to get on with the business of teaching culture. Lambert suggests that 'a good part of the routine task of teaching languages in schools and universities might be shifted to training centers where native speakers of the languages could provide a more natural language learning experience'. This would allow language teaching in the schools and universities to be centred around the study of 'people and language', a discipline which would be based in the human or behavioural sciences i.e. anthropology, political science, sociology, psycholinguistics and socio-linguistics. He then gives examples of certain academics from the FL sphere who have drawn on the behavioural sciences for their work and vice versa. The examples given are a fascinating insight into areas of research where psychology and language meet in various socio-cultural settings. The examples of international exchanges and visits abroad might help teachers seeking new approaches to introducing authentic cultural elements into advanced classes. For teachers of ab initio and intermediate FL classes the problem is more complex. This is partly because the lower level of FL competence in these classes makes it difficult to exploit the authentic materials provided by such exchanges, unless care is taken to ensure careful grading of the material and provision of appropriate
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reference materials. The funding of such exchanges is given low priority status in most institutions and the necessary investment would probably be considered unwise for beginners, given that traditional approaches offer cheaper alternatives. Lambert's conclusion side-steps the issue when he suggests that 'the practitioners in the new field should become fully trained in the behavioral sciences so that they can have a deeper base for learning and teaching about people's ways of life, language included.' This points out yet another deficiency in the knowledge and practice of FL teachers, without showing how the suggested remedy would improve the quality of their classes. The main objection to Lambert's approach is that he seems to be encouraging FL teachers to turn away from their subject altogether and do something else. Such a radical solution is surely not called for when what we are really trying to achieve is a better understanding of how to improve the quality of a process which is already recognised as taking place, i.e. the learning of socio-cultural and other 'non-linguistic' elements in the FL classroom. A less radical approach seems to be one which analyses the corpus of cultural knowledge into its constituent elements and integrates these into the syllabus.

THE "CULTURE TEST"

Rebecca M Vallette (1977) considers the solution to be a more conscious inclusion of cultural elements within the FL syllabus than has traditionally been the case. She outlines several aims of a cultural syllabus which a foreign language course ought to achieve and suggests ways of assessing these skills. Vallette is clearly thinking of a certain age group and level of education when she warns against the 'dangerous polarization' which can result from illadvised attempts to 'free these young people from the strait jacket of monoculturalism'. Nevertheless, her ideas are more generally applicable and it is worth quoting her four cultural goals in full: developing a greater awareness of and broader knowledge about the target culture; acquiring a command of the etiquette of the target culture; understanding differences between the target culture and the students' culture; understanding the values of the target culture. It is easy to see how these aims can be broken down or elaborated and included at appropriate levels in various language syllabuses. Vallette includes examples from 'the culture test' which show how thoroughly these aims can be assessed. The advantage of this model is that it forces the teacher to separate the non-linguistic elements and examine their worth as items of knowledge to be taught either alongside or through the FL. It is assumed that
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students' competence in these skills will vary as does their language ability, and that they can be graded accordingly. Vallette's aims are useful for any analysis of what constitutes culture in a FL setting, but they need to be treated with caution. Apart from the relative notions of 'greater awareness' and 'broader knowledge', there is the difficulty in defining the 'target culture'. If one takes students of Spanish, for example, there is a wide range of cultures, depending on the geographical area with which the students are primarily concerned. The presence of very large German and Italian speaking minorities outside their countries of origin raises the question whether it is correct to assume that our students will be mainly interested in those countries. We need therefore to be very clear about which target culture we are teaching. Another difficulty is in the selection of the teaching objectives or non-linguistic skills which we expect our students to learn. Etiquette is an area which carries very specific details for each situation and which is subject to frequent change. It might prove quite difficult to select aspects of etiquette which are appropriate to our students' needs.

contribute to the cultural competence of students.

TEACHING CULTURE FOR TERTIARY SOCIALISATION

There is a growing awareness of the need to study language in context, as one can see in the proliferation of published materials attempting to teach language for specific purposes e.g. German for Business, French for Hotel Management, etc. At the other end of the spectrum, much language teaching is informed by the assumption that students are all potential tourists who will need to learn how to survive in a given range of typical situations, such as buying groceries or booking in at a hotel, etc. Michael Byram (1992) points out the shortcomings of this approach which fails to have any effect the on students' view of their own identity and that of others: 'they are implicitly invited to remain firmly anchored in their own values and culture.' Against this he proposes teaching FL as a means to achieving 'tertiary socialisation': 'If young people are led, through learning a language, to integration into their own concepts and value system of the value system and concepts of another mode of thinking and acting another culture - they can be said to move into what I call 'tertiary socialisation'. Byram stresses that it is not the aim of FL teaching to undermine primary and secondary socialisation (i.e. the internalisation of general social roles e.g. gender roles on the one hand and specific social roles and values peculiar to a given society on the other) by creating a sense of anomie in language learners, but by providing other sets of concepts and values to open 'a perspective which is dependent on neither native nor foreign culture.' Byram believes that exposure to a FL is not sufficient to achieve tertiary socialisation and mentions new teaching methods currently being developed in Durham and London which take their starting point in ethnography. This approach attempts to adapt the methods of fieldwork to the FL situation and use insights from ethnography and anthropology to select the culture domains to be studied and analyse data gathered in 'fieldwork'. In an earlier work, Byram (1989) had suggested the integration of a range of different types of knowledge within a syllabus which would have the FL as their binding element, and each of which would contribute to the other (Figure 1). This spread of elements has the advantage of aiming to enable students to increase their cultural and linguistic awareness even if they are not particularly competent language learners. It also has the advantage of making explicit some of the aspects of the cultural experience which FL learning aims to provide, e.g. experiencing being foreign, seeing the native culture from the outside etc. Against
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TOTAL IMMERSION
It would seem appropriate to establish clear nonlinguistic aims for our FL classes in much the same way as we select aspects of syntax or style appropriate to each level. The question is whether this area should be incorporated into the language teaching e.g. via carefully selected materials, or whether it would be advantageous to teach aspects of culture in the first language. This could be taken to the point of planning each language lesson around carefully selected items of knowledge. Widdowson (1978) calls this the adoption of 'use criteria' and contrasts these with 'usage criteria', the latter usually leading to unrealistic rehearsals of unlikely linguistic situations. Widdowson actually goes as far as suggesting that FL teaching can only be meaningful in bilingual or immersion contexts where pupils study their mainstream subjects through the medium of the FL. It is possible to imagine certain advantages of such an approach, e.g. pupils' motivation, elimination of inauthentic drills of units of FL usage etc., but this again is expecting language teachers to teach something which they may not be competent to teach. It is possible, however, to see how adopting this approach in a limited form, by carefully selecting materials in view of their cultural content, could
LanguageAwareness

"It would seem appropriate to establish clear non-linguistic aims"

Figure 1

LanguageLearning ~ t

V
Cultural Experience ~--.42 r CulturalAwareness

CULTURE AND FOREIGNLANGUAGE TEACHING

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these advantages there is the objection of the greater amount of L1 use in the class than would be the case with a communicative approach. However, this could be seen positively in modern teaching situations where contact time is at a premium and emphasis is laid on students' use of self-access facilities to supplement their lessons. Many FL text book authors seem to be well aware of the demand for non-linguistic knowledge associated with FLs (see the Breakthrough series (Macmillan), BBC language courses, the Working With series (Stanley Thornes), which gives abundant cultural information in the target language, and numerous 'Business Language' courses which include so-called 'cultural briefing' sections). Given the impossibility of communicating this knowledge in the target language to beginners and intermediate students, they include sections in L1, which aim to increase students' stock of general knowledge. It is interesting to note that few authors include material for testing students' cultural knowledge, whereas the use of L1 in language testing material is widespread, presumably on the grounds that students might be able to understand target language text, but not necessarily the questions written with the aim of testing this comprehension.

INTEGRATED SYLLABUS AND COLLABORATIVE MODULES

A solution which draws together various elements from the above approaches is to create a syllabus which refers explicitly to the socio-cultural, geopolitical elements for each module. For example, complete beginners at a language should be expected to know by the end of the module where their target language is spoken and by approximately how many people it is used. Intermediate students might be expected to know something about the countries concerned, including capitals, basic economic information such as the main industries, products etc. More advanced students might be expected to be able to differentiate between native speakers from different areas, and make appropriate inferences using their knowledge of the institutions and historical and political background of the countries concerned. In addition to the integration of explicit nonlinguistic criteria to be taught and assessed, thought should be given to the possibility of creating common modules for students of different FLs, e.g. an introduction to socio-linguistics or language awareness for all students of FLs enabling them to compare their FL with others. There is no reason why such modules should not be made available to students outside the FL field who have an interest in such areas, e.g. from the fields of sociology, psychology, cultural studies, etc. Such modules could be delivered by staff from various fields and would involve FL teachers making contributions without having to learn whole new areas of subject knowledge. There are obvious resourcing advantages in creating modules which are made accessible to wider student participation, but one of the benefits of such modules would be that FL students would sit alongside students from other fields, enabling a cultural cross-fertilisation to take place. Collaborative modules of this type would also help to locate FL teaching in relation to other subjects.

SOCIO-CULTURAL RESEARCH PROJECTS

One of the activities which can meet some of the non-linguistic aims mentioned above is the sociocultural research project, which can be carried out in libraries and reference centres and submitted in the forms of oral/audio/video presentation and/or extended written dissertation. It is important that these projects should be seen as an integral part of the course and not an added extra. For this reason the topics for research must be chosen with care and research for its own sake should be avoided. Jenks (1974) gives an example of a library project with two procedural models, both of which would work for a whole range of research projects. Unfortunately, the example given is to find out the price of steaks per kilo in local currency in Bogot~i. Jenks makes helpful suggestions as to how one would go about solving the problem if primary sources were not available, such as contacting stock brokers, meat dealers and penpal agencies. The point here is that we cannot expect our students to take seriously research projects which are the FL equivalent of 'Trivial Pursuit'. Clearly the availability of sources should be a major criterion in the selection of individual projects. Of greater importance, however, is the extent to which such knowledge will deepen the students' understanding of the target culture.

"FL students would sit alongside students from other fields"

REFERENCES
M. Byram (1989). Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. M. Byram (1992). Foreign language learning for European citizenship, Language Learning Journal, 6, September. W. E. Lambert (1974). An Alternative to the Foreign Language Teaching Profession, in Altman & Hanzeli (eds), Essays on the Teaching of Culture, Advanced Press of America. R.M. Vallette (1977). The Culture Test, in Modern Language Testing (2nd ed), London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. H. G. Widdowson (1978). Teaching Language as Communication, Oxford: OUE F. L. Jenks (1974). Conducting Socio-cultural Research in the Foreign Language Class, in Altman & Hanzeli (eds), Essays on the Teaching of Culture, Advanced Press of America.

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