Cultural dimension of English language learning an- 123docz.net

Teaching a language cannot be separated from teaching its culture because the purpose of teaching a language is to help people communicate with each other and culture plays an important part in communication. Claire Kramsch ( 1993:93) asserted: “If language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the core of language teaching. Cultural awareness must then be viewed as enabling language proficiency. Culture in language teaching is not expendable fifth skill, tacked on, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing”.

Regarding teaching culture in language training, it is very important to mention the conclusion of Robert Polizer, “ As language teachers , we must be interested in the study of culture ( in the social scientist‟s sense of the word) not because we necessarily want to teach the culture of the other country but because we have to teach it” ( 1959: 100-101) . As Englebert (2004) also describes: “…to teach a foreign language is also to teach a

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foreign culture, and it is important to be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleges, our administrators, and, if we live abroad, our neighbours, do not share all of our cultural paradigms.” In addition, Prodromou (1988) argues that the way we teach reflects our attitudes to society in general and the individual‟s place in society. The nature of teaching culture is to increase the students‟ awareness and to develop their curiosity towards the target culture and their own, helping them to gain the understanding among the cultures. If one teaches language without teaching about the culture in which it operates, the students are learning empty or meaningless symbols or when using the learnt language, may use the language inappropriately in a cultural context, thus fail to achieve the purpose of learning a language.

Language teachers must remember that people from different cultures learn things in different ways. For example, in China memorization is the most pronounced way to study a language which is very different from western ideologies where the onus is placed on free speech as a tool for utilizing and remembering vocabulary and grammar sequences (Hui 2005).

In learning a second language, culture becomes highly important because it is “ an ingrained set of behavior modes of perception” ( Brown 2000:118 ). It is impossible to learn a language by simple acquiring the forms without their contents. And the content of a language is always culture-bound. Tomalin & Stempleski (1993:9) said “When students have understood the language being used in a situation and then go on to gain an understanding of the cultural factors at work, this is for them one of the most absorbing and exiting parts of any language lesson”. Equipped with the cultural knowledge and different worldviews, learners can easily fully understand and can use language as a tool to communicate and to avoid stereotypes. Because culture affects our ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Language learners need to be aware , for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express the gratitude, make requests, give and receive compliments…They should understand that language must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior. Therefore, if we want to learn another language, we need to learn to appreciate the culture of which the language is part. Many of the meanings constructed in the language are culture – specific. Culture provides guidelines for our linguistic behavior.

However, many Vietnamese teachers and students have not truly paid attention much to cultural elements revealed in the textbooks, they only focus on vocabulary, grammar and four language skills. Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that language (Krasner,1999). Being lack of cultural knowledge seems to cause misunderstandings in real life communication. The students may face culture shock when they learn and try to understand English language. If the students are equipped fully about cultural background knowledge, they will understand that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviours; social variables such as age, sex, social class and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave;

more aware of convential behaviour in common situations in the target culture; increasing their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language;

necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture; curiosity about the target culture. Basing on those, the students will be more interested in lessons.

Thus, culture must be fully incorporated as a crucial factor of language learning. Teachers should recognize the basic cultural items in every aspects of the language that they teach.

The more the teachers enrich cultural knowledge , the more they are confident about what they teach. This will affect the success of communication as well as teaching English language. Teachers must be learners themselves, if they want to teach culture to their students.

Teachers as well as learners should raise their awareness of the importance of the target language culture and their own. Cultural awareness should become a vital part of foreign language education. When the awareness of culture is raised , teachers will pay more attention to and convey cultural knowledge in lessons more attractively and effectively.

Developing cultural awareness in the EFL classroom is really important that we help our students distinguish between the cultural norms, beliefs, or habits of the majority of a speech community and the individual or group deviations from some of these norms.

Students should be enabled to discuss their native culture with their foreign-speaking friends at the same time. The aim of raising cultural awareness is to promote learning as well as to increase the motivation of learners. The role of cultural background knowledge that derives from textbooks, pictures, and realia is seen as essential. Cultural knowledge makes it easier to understand texts (Brown,1990, cited in Zhang & Yan,2008 ).

It is obvious that culture becomes an indispensable part in any foreign language teaching.

Cultural dimension of English language learning and teaching

Interrelationship between Language and Culture