Introduction

The claim I would like to make in this paper is that contemporary foreign language teaching methodology, commonly referred to as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or the Communicative Approach (CA), gives learners only fragmentary information about the target language (TL) culture and does not raise their cultural awareness. Cultural information is usually superficially presented and is not contrasted with the learners’ native culture.  Foreign language courses do not provide the learners with what Byram calls ‘cultural knowledge’ (Byram 1991). This term, according to Byram’s definition refers to a structured way in which ideas and facts about the TL country or countries are presented and contrasted with ideas and facts about one’s own country.

To support this claim we can provide numerous examples taken practically from all ‘English as a foreign language’ (EFL) textbooks available on the Polish market, in particular those that were published for the first time in the 80s for the so-called ‘international’ learners. Some of the prominent features of those, let me call them after Risager (1990), post-modernist presentations of the TL country culture, is their fragmentation, the apparent absence of value prioritisation, the lack of historical perspective and no reference to the learners’ national, regional and linguistic identity. In fact, prominence is given to momentary encounters of tourists or visitors whose interests are trivial and totally pragmatic. Also the topics dealt with in contemporary EFL textbooks are frequently trivial, usually remote from real life concerns of the learners, sometimes they are even shockingly inappropriate. Instead of teaching the English language together with providing cultural knowledge about the TL countries, EFL textbooks focus nearly entirely on the so-called ‘communicative activities’ in a vague, international context. Since the majority of non-native teachers of English are not prepared to question the authority of EFL textbooks, even if they critically reflect upon the cultural impact of EFL courses, it is difficult for them to teach the English language culture explicitly, without any assistance offered by the teaching materials.

Paradoxically, since the opening in 1990 of the new English Teacher Training Colleges (ETTC), The Polish Ministry of Education required them to include British and American culture studies in their curricula. The revised 1993 curriculum for ETTC lists ‘culture’ as accompanying British and American ‘life and institutions’ syllabus, including art, music, popular culture, film and theatre (Arceusz et al. 1993: 68). Yet, ‘culture’ is understood as a separate subject, it is not integrated with practical EFL skill development. Further in the syllabus ‘the arts’ are treated as one of ‘other possible topics’ (ibid: 75), which may be introduced in the course along with other subjects.

Similarly, there seems to be a great gap between the TL culture taught at the postgraduate studies, university MA courses, and even ETTC British and American studies licentiate courses and Practical English and methodology courses at the university and college level. The culture of English speaking countries, mainly Great Britain and the United States, is taught to university and college students as a separate subject, whereas mainstream Practical English or EFL courses teach English as an international language for adults and English across curriculum for school children. Methodology courses, in turn, include teaching culture only marginally, as a content aspect of EFL curricula. It seems that such an approach is a conscious, political choice on the part of British educational policy makers and textbook writers. It is not, however, a conscious choice of EFL teachers in Poland. Let me illustrate the above claim with some examples based on small-scale research.  

 

How is English language culture perceived and taught by Polish EFL teachers

EFL teachers at all levels are hesitant in their views on how to teach the English language culture although they usually realise that culture is an important aspect of language teaching and they would probably agree that the final aim of TL teaching is giving learners some means to participate in the TL culture.  

A small-scale research project has provided data for an analysis of EFL teachers’ and students’ perception of English language culture (Pruta 1997). Pruta interviewed nine secondary school EFL teachers who used Headway Pre-Intermediate about their teaching of English language culture on the basis of the textbook and their evaluation of the textbook in this respect.

None of the teachers mentioned the cultural focus as their reason for choosing the textbook. When asked about the role of culture in EFL teaching, however, they all stressed its significance. What does culture mean to English language teachers? In most cases, ‘patterns of behaviour’, but one teacher said explicitly: ‘… the cultural context involves not only information about cultural heritage, literature or institutions but, first of all, it means presenting different attitudes, beliefs and (...) responses to various situations’ (Pruta 1997: 45).

Not all teachers are aware of teaching culture. One of them said: ‘I might teach culture but I am not aware of it. One does not think about it since it is so obvious that when we teach a different language, we explain things without realising we are explaining culture’ (ibid: 45). Two of the interviewed teachers believed that they could not teach the TL culture because they were not native speakers of that language.

When asked directly what cultural knowledge the teachers passed to their learners besides the one included in the textbook, the teachers revealed a very limited range of topics. The only topic introduced by the majority of the teachers in Pruta’s study was Christmas traditions and customs in the English language countries. Also most teachers introduced popular songs as elements of youth culture in the English-speaking world.

Asked about the attitude of their learners towards the TL culture, some teachers noticed that after a visit abroad their students were more open to cultural knowledge. On the whole, however, according to the teachers, the students were largely unaware of the distinction between their own culture and that of the TL. When asked about possible references to the Polish culture in the TL lessons, half of the teachers admitted that they made such references, frequently stimulated by the students’ questions. No examples, however, were provided.

The teachers seemed uneasy when they were asked about their own preparation to teach the TL culture. Although they claimed that they were well prepared to teach cultural aspects of their EFL courses at the secondary school level, they criticised their college or university courses of British Studies or Life and Institutions, for teaching them a knowledge that was largely of little interest to the learners. Yet, they did not offer anything else instead What and how did they teach?  The answers were simple. They used the textbook of their choice “Headway Pre-Intermediate” and they evaluated it highly. However, when asked to specify what it was they did not like about the cultural focus of the textbook, they realised that it was the marginal role the TL culture played in the textbook and the fact that the cultural knowledge was fragmented and scattered throughout the whole book.

What conclusion can we draw about the teachers’ perception of the TL culture and their teaching of it? It seems that the interviewed teachers were inconsistent in their answers and confused about what the teaching of the TL culture involved. A close look at the cultural knowledge introduced by Headway Pre-Intermediate and its arrangement supports the teachers’ opinions that there is no structured ‘cultural’ syllabus and the items are fragmented and randomly scattered throughout the textbook. For example, the historical background is represented by the Romans as the founders of London, a rose as a symbol of England and the suffragette movement. Socio-linguistic knowledge is limited to useful phrases expressing politely that we do not like something, how to make a polite request and offer, how to give directions, how to accept or refuse an invitation, how to propose a toast and what to say when somebody sneezes. There are no comparisons made even between those elements of British culture and the corresponding elements of the learners’ native culture. What to do with the cultural information is left entirely to the teacher. And probably the teacher educated in History of England courses would be more likely to provide additional information about the War of the Roses than about the pragmatic uses of the English language. The question arises whether this kind of fragmented historical information is relevant to the learner.

No doubt students who were taught English on the basis of Headway Pre-Intermediate acquired only fragmented bits of cultural information. However, their attitude towards the English language culture was significant. The students who were more interested in cultural matters and scored higher on the cultural information test administered at the end of the school year admitted that their knowledge of the TL culture was inadequate and that they would like to learn more (Pruta 1997).

 

How to combine language and culture teaching - some theoretical considerations

Byram (1990:20) developed an integrated model of language and culture teaching. The model consists of the following four components:

I. L2 learning: skill oriented teaching with a focus on the TL, mainly through the TL medium

II. Cultural experience: knowledge oriented teaching with a focus on the TL culture, through the TL medium

III. Language awareness: socio-linguistic knowledge oriented teaching with a comparative           focus, through the L1 medium

IV. Cultural awareness: knowledge oriented teaching with a comparative focus, through the L1 medium.       

The objection we could raise against the model is its excessive use of L1 and its knowledge orientation. Yet, the model is useful because it turns our attention to the cultural components of TL teaching. It seems that both the language and cultural awareness components could be taught through the TL medium, by means of integrating them with the development of TL skills and the cultural experience components. Thus, the process of TL skill development can be closely linked with cultural knowledge learning. The Communicative Approach should have its cognitive component, in which learners should reflect on the TL language and culture, comparing them, respectively, with their L1 and with the L1 culture. The responsibility of textbook writers is to provide materials which should show the specific character of the TL and the TL culture in comparison with the L1 and the L1 culture. Such an approach can be implemented when TL teachers and textbook writers are themselves bilinguals, aware of the two languages and the two cultures - those of L1 and those of TL. 

Kramsch (1993) presents a uniquely sharp vision of possible ways of integrating TL and target culture teaching. According to her foreign language teaching is not primarily the teaching of different TL forms to express universal meanings. Conversely, particularity and variability in TL use is more interesting for the learner than quasi-universal understanding, although communication and understanding is a learning objective. In order to attain such an attitude in TL teaching, EFL teachers should be aware that TL skill development is at the same time content learning, which needs reflection on the conceptual content of the L1 and TL. The following case illustrates Kramsch’s contention.

In a pre-intermediate German class in the US the set function topic was ‘Giving and receiving advice’. After the class were asked by the teacher to talk in German on the topic ‘How did you feel the first time you came to this school?’ the class was divided into small groups, in which one student was to play the role of a newcomer at the school and others were to give them advice on the school life. After the lesson the teacher reflected on the activity and was on the whole satisfied with the relaxed atmosphere of the discussion, although he acknowledged the incorrectness of the German produced by the students (Kramsch 1993: 79-81). Yet, Kramsch claims that by refraining from demonstrating explicitly ways of speaking peculiar for the German language, the teacher unwittingly led the students to believe that these ways are the same as the ones in American English. By setting up a familiar topic in a familiar context of an American school, the teacher created the speaking conditions where nearly everything said was acceptable and readily understood.

Kramsch gives suggestions as to what the teacher should have done to avoid the shortcomings and lead the students beyond superficial communicative competence into an awareness of the cultural meanings inherent in the TL forms. Kramsch further claims that the real peculiarity of any language is found in its sounds and words, and the best models of particularity are literary texts, which can create in the learners a deep, intrinsic motivation for the language in which these literary texts have been written.  

According to Meyer (1991) we must distinguish two levels of TL development, taking into consideration the TL culture: a monocultural and an intercultural level. At the monocultural level the learner ‘uses behavioural schemes and demonstrates ways of thinking which are merely adequate for his own culture. (...) The learner’s concepts relating to foreign cultures are stereotyped, cliché-ridden and ethnocentric’ At the intercultural level ‘the learner is able to explain cultural differences between his own and the foreign cultures because he can make use of information he has acquired (...). The information he has may be of historical, sociological, psychological or economic nature’ (Meyer 1991:142).  

Kordes (1991) presents an interesting model of developmental phases in TL culture education: the transitional, the structural and the final phases. The first stage, ‘the transitional phase’ involves coping with disrupted interlingual interaction. FL learners are entirely concentrated on their language proficiency and the interference between their L1 and the TL. They are not able yet to pay attention to the cultural identity of the TL addressee (if there is one) and/or to the cultural impact of the TL they try to comprehend and produce. This stage can be also termed ‘the survival’ and/or ‘the tourist’ stage of TL development. In the FL classroom setting the socio-linguistic context of TL use is additionally weakened by the lack of native addressees. I dare say that the majority of Polish school learners never leave this phase. Probably those who have an opportunity of travelling abroad or meeting foreigners in their own countries may become slightly disconcerted since they start noticing differences between the L1 and TL cultures. This phase is called ‘the structural phase’ when learners cope with disrupted international co-operation.

Finally, with increasing proficiency and more opportunities for international contacts, TL learners may achieve ‘the final phase’, in which they are faced with disrupted intercultural communication. Initial feelings of indifference (phase I) and enjoyment (phase II) accompanying TL communication may give way to the realisation of the complexity of cultural problems, in which understanding and the feeling of being one big world community, and resentment towards others and the feeling of alienation, are present side by side. The ideal state, in which pupils take over the role of mediators between the two cultures is hardly ever achieved, even by TL teachers. Yet phase III should, according to Kordes, be a legitimate goal of TL education. It seems that Kordes has captured something all reflective language teachers’ experience, however difficult it may be to specify the interface between target language and culture teaching.

 

How to combine language and culture teaching - some practical solutions

I would like to present three examples illustrating my claim that it is possible to integrate TL and culture teaching. Each of them is taken from a different setting and level of proficiency of the learners. The first example comes from a beginner course of German as a foreign language taught at the Goethe-Institut in Germany (cf. Niżegorodcew 1994). The second example is taken from a study skills course for first year students at an English teachers’ college in a small town in Poland. Finally, the third example comes from the final Practical English course for English Department students in a big university town in Poland.

1) In the tradition of German language teaching there has always been a prominent aspect called ‘Landeskunde’ (cultural studies). From the methodological point of view the ‘Landeskunde’ teaching approach of the Goethe-Institut courses was quite traditional, with reading passages devoted to German and Austrian writers, composers, painters, as well as to history and recent social and political events (since the fall of the Berlin wall). In comparison with British EFL teaching materials, which provide learners with a general, international perspective, ‘German as a foreign language' textbooks are much more specifically culture focused (German, Austrian or Swiss). They do not avoid difficult historical or social issues bearing on the life of present German speaking societies (e.g. a pre-intermediate level textbook introduces a passage based on an account of a former Wermacht soldier, now a grandfather, telling his grandson his life story). Another distinctive feature of the Goethe-Institut courses was their contrastive approach to culture. Native teachers of German regularly referred to the students’ mother tongues and their cultures. 

Admittedly, not all passages and topics introduced in the described pre-intermediate course of German were of equal interest to all learners, who came from several countries. They were introduced, however, in such a way that the students could build up their cultural knowledge, develop their vocabulary and become more culturally aware. ‘Poems in the participants’ mother tongues and their translations into German’ was one of the topics. The teacher allowed the students as much autonomy as they wished. She asked individual students to think of a short and easy poem in their mother tongue and translate it into German. On the next day the students gave their translations to the teacher, who introduced some necessary corrections. One of the students from Japan read out her German translation of a Japanese ‘haiku’:

Er liebte reisen

Sein Leben ist eine Reise.

(He loved travelling,

His life is a journey.)

The participants were unanimous in their comprehension of the general metaphorical message of the haiku. On the other hand, each of them had different associations with a ‘life journey’ The teacher involved the students into a group discussion based on those associations. While practising speaking and translating skills, the students were able to acquire some cultural knowledge about other cultures. Their cultural and language awareness were raised through a contrastive approach.

2) Students of the first year of an English teachers’ college in a small town in Poland were asked by the teacher what skills they would primarily like to develop in the second semester of a study skills course. They proposed practising oral presentation skills. The teacher combined practising presentation skills with raising their cultural awareness concerning the places they lived (each of them lived in a different town or village). The students selected their own presentation topics, such as ‘folk stories connected with my town or village’, ‘Christmas traditions in my family’, ‘my town or village during the second world war’, ‘ecological problems in my town or village’, ‘health problems in my town or village’, ‘problems of local self-government in my town or village’ etc. In order to obtain background data about their topics, the students had to carry out interviews, collect leaflets, pictures and maps. All the data they collected was in Polish. The next step in preparing their presentations was to collect materials in English concerning similar topics. Then the students modelled their language of presentation on authentic English language documents. The project, which lasted the whole semester, combined language and culture teaching with study skills development. The students were surprised how much they had learned about their towns or villages. They also realised that their towns or villages could be of interest to foreigners. At the same town the students learned useful vocabulary items and phrases. During particular presentations they shared the language and cultural knowledge they gained with other students.

3) Fourth year students of the English Department of a university in a big town had a special course devoted to translation and interpreting. The course belonged to the whole cluster of courses called ‘Practical English’. At the end of the year the students had to take their final oral exam in Practical English. The written exam they had taken before involved reading comprehension, use of English and writing skills components. In the oral exams the students were supposed to present subjects in the Polish cultural environment. They were first given excerpts from Polish newspapers and periodicals, each focused on a specific cultural issue. The issues concerned both ‘high’ culture, popular culture and social and political problems widely discussed in the Polish society. The students were asked to present them to the examiners in English, using a wide range of relevant vocabulary. The examination task was very effective and had a large backwash effect. During the following year the students were more interested in their own culture and in finding appropriate English vocabulary for the description of cultural events in Poland. Thus, the whole course and the final exam contributed to the development of cultural awareness of the students combined with L2 learning at a very advanced level.

The presented examples of effective integration of TL culture and language teaching have two characteristic features in common - they compare the TL culture with the L1 culture and they involve students in searching for TL forms appropriate for expressing ‘cultural’ knowledge and experience gained through the medium of L1. Thus, what is ‘known’ to the learner, that is their mother tongue and culture is the facilitating factor and a departure point for gaining new knowledge and experience of TL and its culture.

Such an approach seems to be also recognised by some British EFL textbook writers, who begin to realise the significance of the learners’ L1 and culture. Some recently published EFL textbooks recognise learners’ national or regional identity. They also present a more coherent and structured view of the TL culture.  Furthermore, some comparative aspects of L1 and TL vocabulary and grammar have been taken into account in those textbooks (cf. Littlejohn, Hicks & Szwaj 1997).

 

Conclusion

Language courses with strong cultural aspects integrated into them aim not only at developing TL skills but also give the students’ cultural knowledge and raise their cultural and language awareness. Specific new aspects of the TL culture can be best highlighted by contrasting them with the L1 culture which is familiar to the students. In such a way students can get an opportunity of leaving a monocultural (‘tourist’) level of TL development, ridden by clichés and stereotypes and enter an intercultural level, when they start noticing cultural differences and coping with intercultural communication. Admittedly, TL courses give students only some knowledge of the TL culture but they also provide them with an awareness of cultural differences between the TL culture and their L1 culture, helping them to overcome the boundaries set by limitations of monolingualism, without losing their national or regional identity.

 

References

Arceusz, A. et al. 1993. ‘Curriculum for Three-Year English Teacher Training Programme’. Unpublished syllabus

Buttjes, D. & Byram, M. (eds.) 1990. Mediating Languages and Cultures: Towards an Intercultural Theory of Foreign Language Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Byram, M. 1990. ‘Teaching culture and language: towards an integrated model’. In:  Buttjes,D., Byram, M.(eds.), 17-32.

Kordes, H. 1991. ‘Intercultural learning at school: limits and possibilities’. In: Buttjes,D., Byram, M. (eds.), 287-305.

Kramsch, C. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP.

Littlejohn, A, Hicks, D. & Szwaj, M. 1997. Cambridge English for Polish Schools. Cambridge: CUP.

Meyer, M. 1991. ‘Developing transcultural competence; case studies of advanced foreign language learners’. In: Buttjes, D., Byram, M. (eds.), 136-158.

Niżegorodcew, A. 1994. ‘Learning a second language in a cultural context’. Paper presented at ‘Culture and Literature in Foreign Language Teacher Training Conference’, Polańczyk, April 1994.

Pruta, D. 1997. ‘Students’ and teachers’ perception of culture and cultural elements in the ELT textbook’. Unpublished MA thesis.

Risager, K. 1990. ‘Cultural references in European textbooks: an evaluation of recent tentencies’. In Buttjes, D. & Byram, M. (eds.), 181-192.

Soars, J. & Soars, J. 1991. Headway Pre-intermediate. Oxford: OUP.

 

Appendix

Analysing FL textbooks we can perceive changes that have occurred since the 1980s in the kind of information given to the learners. Risager presents analytical categories useful in the process of comparison of the typical 1980s’ and 1990s’ textbooks. The categories are divided into four groups:

1. Phenomena of social and cultural anthropology: the social and geographical definition of   characters, material environment, situations of interaction, feelings, attitudes, values and perceived problems

2. Social, political and historical matters

3. International and intercultural issues, such as comparison between the TL country and the learners’ own, mutual stereotypes, images, mutual relations

4. Point of view and style of the author (Risager 1990:182).