Day 3: Teaching culture in a FL classroom

Barry Tomalin's article and some of the responses to it resonate with my experiences in teaching a foreign language and my struggle to incorporate and teach culturally relevant material in my lessons.  In my opinion, the teacher's attitude and enthusiasm in exploring and learning about different countries and cultures will inspire the students to enquire and learn about other cultures themselves and will enhance their learning.  Understanding a language involves not only learning its phonology and vocabulary but also certain features and characteristics of the culture.  If we want learners to master a foreign language, we need to help them become communicatively competent as much as possible.  I believe that successful learning of a foreign language involves not only using grammatically correct vocabulary and forms but also when to use them and under what circumstances.  In other words, language learning should involve not only communicative competence but also cultural competence.  Classroom textbooks are usually a good resource for developing and teaching culturally relevant topics, such as the daily life of peers in the designated cultural group, their family, their habits, etc.  In looking back, I always supplemented the textbook information with doing research that would facilitate my classroom lectures and discussions about similarities or differences between the culture in question and Canadian culture or by prompting the students to do their own research, as part of their homework or of a larger project.  I found that my students were always enthusiastic in learning about those similarities or differences and developed an increased curiosity about the language itself.  In this sense, I strongly disagree with Barry Tomalin that culture should be taught as "a 5th language skill".  Language cannot be separated from the culture in which it is deeply embedded.  If language learners are to communicate at a personal level with individuals from other cultural backgrounds, they will need to understand not only the language at work, but also the culture that drives the behaviours and activities of those individuals.