After having analysed the importance of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom, we will finally provide some practical ideas.
Communicative methodology has not always paid enough attention to the culture of the target language. Fortunately, culture, in the sense of sociolinguistic and sociocultural aspects of the target language speaking community, is now part of the Spanish curriculum in modern foreign languages.
It has been widely recognized that culture and language are interrelated and that language is used as the main medium through which culture is expressed (Montgomery and Reid-Thomas, 1994).
This way, one of the ways of teaching foreign language culture is by exploring culture-based activities, which have the following characteristics:
- Needs and audience. There is lack resource material for exploring the target culture in the classroom.
- Objective. The aim of these activities is to increase students’ awareness and to develop their curiosity towards the target culture and their own, helping them to make comparisons among cultures.
- Determining topics. Some of them are: social identity, belief and behaviour, media, arts, etc.
Culture and language are both very important and go hand in hand with each other. Very interesting and useful blog! Thanks a lot María 😁