Culture for language learning in Australian language-in-education policy

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Liddicoat
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Static Information ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Australia’s language-in-education policy documents have consistently included references to the place of ‘culture’ in language teaching. This paper seeks to examine how the major national policies conceptualise culture and interculturality in relation to languages education. For each policy, this study will analyse the language focus, the conceptualisation of the relationship between language and culture, the contexts in which the policy envisages cultural knowledge will be relevant, and the overall educative vision for language and culture learning. From these analyses it can be seen that successive policy documents have shifted the domain and purpose of interculturality and have constructed views of interculturality that are increasingly instrumentaly focused. The policies show a transformation from a humanistically focused construction of education and a view of languages as relevant to diversity, to an economically focused construction of education and a view of languages as capital for economic deployment. At the same time, they have preserved a largely static, information-focused construction of culture which is not consistent with the user-oriented policy goals.

Learning Chinese

2018 ◽  
pp. 44-69
Author(s):  
Kaishan Kong
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
American Students

Both ACTFL standards and the world-readiness standards for learning languages include five aspects in foreign language education, among which are connections and comparisons. While many instructors consider these two aspects as means of effective instruction, in this chapter, connections and comparisons are studied as learning strategies that four American students adopted to apply in their study abroad contexts in China. Despite the different focus of their study abroad programs, this chapter discusses a variety of examples where the participants made connections and comparisons to enhance their language and culture learning. Findings reveal that connections and comparisons were not only fostering language learning but also developing cultural knowledge. Results provide implications to foreign language educators related to teaching and preparing students for study abroad experience.

scholarly journals An Investigation of Intercultural Teaching and Learning in Tertiary EFL Classrooms in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Si Thang Kiet Ho
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Efl Classrooms ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

<p><b>Intercultural competence has become an important goal of foreign language education in response to the need for learners to function effectively in an increasingly multicultural world. Language and culture are seen as interwoven and inseparable components and therefore learning a foreign language inevitably means learning about other ways of being and behaving. Many foreign language programmes around the world, particularly in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, have adopted an intercultural pedagogy which seeks to integrate into the language teaching experience opportunities for developing intercultural competence for language learners. This study investigates intercultural teaching and learning in tertiary EFL classrooms in Vietnam, a context in which intercultural approaches to language teaching and learning have not been widely considered.</b></p> <p>The study consisted of three phases. The first phase involved a curriculum review in which I critically evaluated the extent to which culture and culture learning are represented in the curriculum frameworks for tertiary EFL programmes and in the national education policy on foreign language education in Vietnam. The findings showed that the importance of culture and culture learning is not emphasised, and the designation of culture to separate culture courses establishes a separate status, construct and treatment of culture and culture learning in the EFL programmes.</p> <p>In the second phase of the study, I analysed the perceptions of fourteen Vietnamese EFL teachers and two hundred Vietnamese EFL students on culture in language teaching and learning, and their classroom practices. The findings indicated that the teachers' beliefs about culture teaching revealed a predictable priority for teaching language rather than culture. Their culture teaching practices were greatly influenced by their perceptions and beliefs regarding culture in language teaching. The students also treated culture as a subordinate priority in language learning. Overall, they found culture learning beneficial for their language learning and supported the teachability of language and culture in EFL classes. Both the teachers and students identified a number of constraints that restricted their opportunities and motivation to engage in teaching and learning culture.</p> <p>The third phase of the study involved an empirical study investigating the effect of adopting an intercultural stance in English speaking lessons on thedevelopment of the learners' intercultural competence. Over a nine-week teaching period, eighteen English speaking lessons (90 minutes / lesson / week) for two equivalent, intact classes (seventy-one students) were observed. For one class, the lessons were adapted to reflect the principles of intercultural language learning. For the other, no changes were made. The results showed that the intercultural competence of learners in the intercultural class increased by significantly more than that of learners in the standard class. In particular, the students in the intercultural class were able to better articulate ethnorelative awareness and attitudes towards their home culture and the target culture. The findings also showed that the reflective journal was an effective tool to assess learners' process of acquiring intercultural competence, particularly affective capacities that are not easy to evaluate by other means.</p> <p>Overall, the study provided evidence for the feasibility of intercultural teaching and learning in tertiary EFL classrooms in the Vietnamese context. It also showed that intercultural teaching and learning cultivated learners' affective capacities which are often overlooked in the EFL classroom. It is hoped that the study can inform the work of curriculum designers, education policy-makers as well as EFL teachers and students for the implementation of intercultural language teaching and learning in Vietnam and elsewhere.</p>

scholarly journals An Investigation of Intercultural Teaching and Learning in Tertiary EFL Classrooms in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Si Thang Kiet Ho
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Efl Classrooms ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

<p><b>Intercultural competence has become an important goal of foreign language education in response to the need for learners to function effectively in an increasingly multicultural world. Language and culture are seen as interwoven and inseparable components and therefore learning a foreign language inevitably means learning about other ways of being and behaving. Many foreign language programmes around the world, particularly in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, have adopted an intercultural pedagogy which seeks to integrate into the language teaching experience opportunities for developing intercultural competence for language learners. This study investigates intercultural teaching and learning in tertiary EFL classrooms in Vietnam, a context in which intercultural approaches to language teaching and learning have not been widely considered.</b></p> <p>The study consisted of three phases. The first phase involved a curriculum review in which I critically evaluated the extent to which culture and culture learning are represented in the curriculum frameworks for tertiary EFL programmes and in the national education policy on foreign language education in Vietnam. The findings showed that the importance of culture and culture learning is not emphasised, and the designation of culture to separate culture courses establishes a separate status, construct and treatment of culture and culture learning in the EFL programmes.</p> <p>In the second phase of the study, I analysed the perceptions of fourteen Vietnamese EFL teachers and two hundred Vietnamese EFL students on culture in language teaching and learning, and their classroom practices. The findings indicated that the teachers' beliefs about culture teaching revealed a predictable priority for teaching language rather than culture. Their culture teaching practices were greatly influenced by their perceptions and beliefs regarding culture in language teaching. The students also treated culture as a subordinate priority in language learning. Overall, they found culture learning beneficial for their language learning and supported the teachability of language and culture in EFL classes. Both the teachers and students identified a number of constraints that restricted their opportunities and motivation to engage in teaching and learning culture.</p> <p>The third phase of the study involved an empirical study investigating the effect of adopting an intercultural stance in English speaking lessons on thedevelopment of the learners' intercultural competence. Over a nine-week teaching period, eighteen English speaking lessons (90 minutes / lesson / week) for two equivalent, intact classes (seventy-one students) were observed. For one class, the lessons were adapted to reflect the principles of intercultural language learning. For the other, no changes were made. The results showed that the intercultural competence of learners in the intercultural class increased by significantly more than that of learners in the standard class. In particular, the students in the intercultural class were able to better articulate ethnorelative awareness and attitudes towards their home culture and the target culture. The findings also showed that the reflective journal was an effective tool to assess learners' process of acquiring intercultural competence, particularly affective capacities that are not easy to evaluate by other means.</p> <p>Overall, the study provided evidence for the feasibility of intercultural teaching and learning in tertiary EFL classrooms in the Vietnamese context. It also showed that intercultural teaching and learning cultivated learners' affective capacities which are often overlooked in the EFL classroom. It is hoped that the study can inform the work of curriculum designers, education policy-makers as well as EFL teachers and students for the implementation of intercultural language teaching and learning in Vietnam and elsewhere.</p>

scholarly journals Intercultural Language Teaching: What Skills are needed to cope with a 21st Century EFL classroom?

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 701-705
Author(s):  
Smail BENMOUSSAT ◽  
Nabil Djawad BENMOUSAT
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Foreign Language Pedagogy ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
National Boundaries

The purpose of this article is to enrich EFL teachers’ understanding of the re-considerations involved in the nature of language learning with respect to the increasing process of global economic, political, linguistic and cultural integration. Needless to say, the globalization process tends to blur national boundaries, and this has already started with the European Union. What is more, the use of computer-assisted learning devices and other ICT tools, which have reduced the world into a village-like planet, have tremendously affected the field of foreign language pedagogy. All this, virtually creates a need for greater cross-cultural knowledge. The language learning communicative ends of the 70s and 80s have been re-moulded on intercultural grounds to give birth to a new concept: inter/cross-cultural competence. This intercultural scheme, one might argue, ensures the link between teaching language and learning culture, hence the intercultural language teaching or ‘teaching-and-learning language-and-culture’ approach (hereafter written TLLC), a term coined by Byram et al. (1994).

Articulating a foreign language sequence through content: A look at the culture standards

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Byrnes
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Literacy ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
K 12

Curricular articulation and the integration of cultural knowledge with language development over extended sequences are among the most persistent challenges for contemporary language teaching and learning. The paper examines the nature of those challenges in light of theories of language and culture while using as the site of investigation the culture standards that have been developed within the framework of theStandards for Foreign Language Learning, a key document for L2 education in the United States, particularly at the K-12 level. Taking four perspectives, it suggests ways in which simultaneous content and language teaching might be tackled through a genre-based way of constructing extended curricula and by using genre-based tasks for informing pedagogical decisions. In this fashion, learners might be able to progress toward a competent cultural literacy that is language-based.

scholarly journals The role and place of intentionality as the basis for teaching foreign languages in line with the dialogue of cultures

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-95
Author(s):  
O. A. Maslovets
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
The Relationship

The article represents an effort to specify the essential characteristics of the relationship between the intentionality of consciousness, language and culture, and on this basis to reveal the features of the process of foreign language teaching.The author considers intentionality as a phenomenon that defines and provides the content of consciousness, allowing one to commit an act of self-determination and gaining subjectivity. In the activity of consciousness, the author distinguishes intentional flows of both relatively objects and subjects, which is a prerequisite for comprehending another I, a different cultural entity, and at the same time a condition for self-knowledge and deeper penetration into one’s own culture.Culture is a complex semiotic text, it is a context in which the language being studied as a secondary modeling system acts as a means where various phenomena can be sequentially described and interpreted by students.The openness of the subject to the world, nurtured in the course of intentional teaching of language and culture, allows its utter uniqueness, and at the same time utmost universality, to manifest itself. Such an attitude actualizes the internal regularity of human actions, the possibility of self-development and the formation of a system of deferred actions, which allows a person to realize, take place, actualizes the intentional field of his capabilities.The author comes to the conclusion that the process of foreign language teaching should be interpretative, significative, semiotic in nature. Taking into account during teaching а foreign language the intentional conditioning of any action, including speech, will ensure the achievement of a coordinated consciousness.

scholarly journals The spread of computer-assisted language learning

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Chapelle
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Research Perspectives

This paper argues that the vertical spread of computer-assisted language learning (CALL), i.e., a spread throughout language materials and curricula, makes it difficult to draw a clear distinction between CALL and other language materials. In view of the emphasis that teachers, researchers, and administrators have placed on evaluating CALL, I argue that some valuable lessons about materials evaluation can be drawn from reflection on issues in CALL evaluation. In particular, I discuss the opportunities for professionals to reconsider assumptions held about comparative research, draw upon research perspectives and methods from applied linguistics in materials evaluation, and include critical perspectives which examine the opportunities that materials offer language learners to engage in language and culture learning.

scholarly journals The notion of language in language education policy: a comparative analysis of Lithuania and Denmark

2017 ◽  
pp. 199-299
Author(s):  
Daina Urbonaitė
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
The State ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Language Education Policy ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Policy Documents

The article analyses the notion and ideology of language formed at the state level in Lithuania and Denmark. The aim is to examine the notion of language and the understanding of language functionality conveyed in the documents of language education policy and ideology emerging in them, also the purposes raised for language education. The official language education policy formed by the state exerts direct influence on language teaching at school and on the students’ formation of the notion of language. Therefore, the questions raised in this research are aimed at identifying what is implemented with the official language education policy, how much attention is devoted to developing the students’ communicative, argumentative skills and skills of independent critical thinking, and how much the policy focuses on the advocacy of national ideology and identity. The data of the research includes national language education policy documents which determine the implementation of language policy in the system of education of Lithuania and Denmark. The following aspects have been analysed: language functions as presented in the education policy documents: the communicative function and the function of national identity; the formation of ideology of nationality through language education; the formation of standard language ideology in language education policy; also the students’ linguistic competences to be developed at school. The results have shown that the notion of language emerging in the Lithuanian language education policy documents encompasses ideologies of standard language, language correctness and linguistic nationalism. The main goal of the Lithuanian language teaching is the implementation and strengthening of a single standard language norm and the formation of the notion of language as a protector and disseminator of national identity. However, the aim to develop language as a communicative tool as well as to develop the students’ critical thinking is also identifiable. The main goal of the Danish education policy is the development of the students’ communicative language function, critical-analytical thinking, and the formation of the notion of language as a means of communication, as well as of the notion of linguistic variation.

scholarly journals The Relationship of Indonesian Language Learning with the Environment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Persis Siswandi Tinambunan
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Strongly Agree ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

From the results of filling out the questionnaire that the author has done, it can be concluded that many students or prospective teachers agree and even strongly agree to makeIndonesian language teaching materials with environmental themes. Because by using the environmental theme in learning Indonesian, it can introduce students to the environment, so it is hoped that it can increase students' sense of care for the environment, especially for thecleanliness of the environment.

scholarly journals Culture learning in a daily space of kitchen: the case of Korean digital kitchen

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaeuk Park
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Innovative Technology ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Real Objects

AbstractThe rapid advancement of technology has allowed computer-assisted language learning (CALL) to have made inroads in the area of pedagogy for language and culture learning. While the majority of studies have used online and virtual environments for culture learning, very little attention has been paid to a real world environment. This study is based on a digital kitchen where students can learn foreign language, culture and cuisine at the same time through cooking tasks. Learning cultural aspects can be properly realised via cooking because the daily activity provides a window into culture, and the digital kitchen provides users with opportunities to directly encounter the target culture themselves via cooking and tasting. 48 international participants conducted two cooking sessions, one in a digital kitchen using real objects and the other in a classroom by looking at typical pictures/photos in a textbook. A range of data sources were employed, such as questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and video-observations to answer the research question. It was found that students learned foreign cultural aspects better when in direct engagement in a digital kitchen by handling actual items than when in a classroom by simply using photos. This study contributes to the development of the real world learning environment for culture learning via innovative technology.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document