With the recent developing trend of redefining ‘culture’ across
disciplines in intercultural and foreign language education (Corbett, 2003;
Shaules, 2007; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2010), it is widely agreed that
culture requires a broader definition to improve the teaching and learning
of it. Wilkinson (2012) suggests “a redefinition of culture in
anthropological rather than aesthetic terms” (p. 302) to ensure that
intercultural and language learning leads to Intercultural Competence (IC).
Others (Buttjes, 1991; Risager, 2006) also note the importance of
anthropological conceptualization when culture is taught in foreign and/or
second language classrooms, because motivation to learn the language is
increased. Byram (1991) similarly emphasized the need to include active
‘cultural experience’ in the foreign language classroom, and provided
examples including cooking and geography lessons, in which students learn
about the food and geography of the country whose language they are
studying. A crucial element in research within the anthropology field is
ethnography. Thus, to achieve a fuller understanding of culture “as the full
gauntlet of social experience that students of foreign languages both learn
and participate in” (Wilkinson, 2012, p. 302), including Holliday's
(2004) concept of ‘small culture’, students should take on the role of
ethnographer too; ethnography practices, in a variety of forms, have become
central to intercultural approaches to culture and language teaching and
learning (Corbett, 2003).
The Role of Grit in Students’ L2 Engagement in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom