Part2

    What are the key ingredients to successful cross-cultural communication?

  Do you think Teaching culture will have benefits for your student’s language development?

 

Acquiring a new language means a lot more than the manipulation of grammar, syntax and lexicon. Recent studies focus on the seamless relationship between L2 teaching and target culture teaching. People involved in language teaching have again begun to understand the intertwined relation between culture and language. It has been emphasized that without the study of culture, teaching L2 is inaccurate and incomplete. For L2 students, language study seems senseless if they know nothing about the people who speak the target language or the country in which the target language is spoken. According to Bada (2000: 101), “the need for cultural literacy in ELT arises mainly from the fact that most language learners, not exposed to cultural elements of the society in question, seem to encounter significant hardship in communicating meaning to native speakers.” Thus, teaching culture is not an arbitrary but a necessary activity. It is a vital component of language learning and teaching. It has great deal to offer the development of communication as well as other skills in instruction of any language.

Teaching culture is significantly beneficial in terms of language skills, raising cultural awareness, changing attitudes towards native and target societies, and contribution to the teaching profession. There are some of the benefits of teaching culture as follows: 1. Studying culture gives students a reason to study the target language as well as rendering the study of L2 meaningful. 2. From the perspective of learners, one of the major problems in language teaching is to conceive of the native speakers of target language as real person. Although grammar books gives so called genuine examples from real life, without background knowledge those real situations may be considered fictive by the learners. In addition providing access into cultural aspect of language, learning culture would help learners relate the abstract sounds and forms of a language to real people and places. 3. In achieving high motivation, culture classes does have a great role because learners like culturally based activities such as singing, dancing, role playing, doing research on countries and peoples, etc. The study of culture increases learners’ not only curiosity about and interest in target countries but also their motivation. For example, when some professors introduced the cultures of the L2s they taught, the learners’ interests in those classes increased a lot and the classes based on culture became to be preferred more highly than traditional classes. 4. Besides these benefits, studying culture gives learners a liking for the native speakers of the target language. Studying culture also plays a useful role in general education. In conclusion, Culture must be an essential component of second language learning and teaching. Therefore, we have to teach L2 through culture to enhance students’ linguistic comprehension.