The necessity of teaching culture in English as a foreign language course: Iranian perspective

The connection between language and culture has always been a concern of L2 teachers and educators. Whether culture of the target language is to be incorporated into L2 teaching has been a hotly debated issue. Mostly it has been emphasized that without the study of culture, teaching L2 is inaccurate and incomplete. This study was conducted to find out what students think about the effects of the culture class they attended. As a result of the study, a significant similarity between the students’ views and the theoretical benefits of a culture class as argued by some experts in the field was observed.

İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak öğretiminde kültür öğretiminin gerekliliği: İran perspektifi

Dil ve kültür arasındaki bağlantı her zaman yabancı dil öğretmenleri ve eğitimcileri için endişe kaynağı olmuştur. Hedef dilin kültürünün yabancı dil öğretimine dahil edilip edilmeyeceği tartışmalı bir konu olmuştur. Çoğunlukla kültür çalışması yapılmadan yabancı dil öğretiminin yanlış ve eksik olduğu vurgulanmıştır. Bu çalışma, öğrencilerin katıldığı kültür sınıfının etkileri hakkında ne düşündüklerini bulmak için yapılmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda, öğrencilerin görüşleri ve kültür dersinin, alandaki bazı uzmanlar tarafından tartışıldığı gibi, teorik yararları arasında anlamlı bir benzerlik gözlemlenmiştir.

PDF

___

Adorno, T. (1993). The Culture Industry: Selected Essay on Mass Culture. London: Routledge.

Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT Journal, 56 (1), 57-64.

Bada, E. (2000). Culture in ELT. Cukurova University Journal of Social Sciences, 6 (6), 100- 110.

Byram, M., & Flemming, M. (1998) (Eds.) Language Learning from an Intercultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Byram, M. (1997). Cultural awareness’ as vocabulary learning. Language Learning Journal 16, 51-57.

Chandler, D. (1994). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Retrieved Online on August 7, 2018 from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html.

Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and Mind (3rd ed.) Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (1997). The language that took over the world. The Guardian, February 22, 1997, 21.

Dilthey, W. (1989). Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society and History. Wayne State University Press.

Foucault, M. (1994). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. USA: Vintage Books.

Hahn, L. E. (1999) (Ed.). The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company.

Hymes, D. (1972). Introduction. In C. B. Cazden, V. P. John, & D. Hymes (Eds.), Functions of Language in the Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Jenkins J. (1996). Native speaker, non-native speaker and English as a Foreign Language: time for a change. IATEFL Newsletter 131, 10-11.

Jenkins J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics, 23 (1), 83-103.

Jenkins, J. (2005). ELF at the gate: The position of English as a lingua franca. Humanizing Language Teaching 7(2). Retrieved Online on August 7, 2018 from http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar05/idea.html.

Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World:Teaching and Learning the Language and Literature (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kachru, B. B., & Nelson C. L. (1996). ‘World Englishes’. In S. L. McKay, & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp.71-102). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kitao, K. (1991). Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Instruction in the Unites States. Doshisha Studies in English, (52-53), 285-308.

Kramsch, C., & Sullivan, P. (1996). Appropriate pedagogy. ELT Journal, 50 (3), 199-212.

Lado, R. (1957). Linguistic Across Cultures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

McDevitt, B. (2004). Negotiating the Syllabus: A win-win Syllabus. ELT Journal, 58 (1), 3-9.

McKay, S. L. (2003). The Cultural Basis of Teaching English as an International Language. TESOL Matters, 13 (4), 1-6.

Quine, W. V. (1980). From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays. Harvard University Press.

Richards, J. C., Platt, J., & Platt, H. (1992). Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics. Essex: Longman.

Sapir, E. (1962). Culture, Language and Personality. University of California.

de Saussure, F. (1966). Course in General Linguistics. C. Bally, & A. Sechehaye (Eds.) in collaboration with A. Riedlinger. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Schmitt, N. (1997). Vocabulary Learning Strategies. In N. Schmitt & P. McCarthy (Eds), Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 199-228). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 133-158.

Smith, L. (1976). English as an international auxiliary language. RELC Journal, 7 (2), 38-43.

Stern, H. H. (2009). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thanasoulas, D. (2001). The Importance of Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classroom. Radical Pedagogy. Retrieved Online on August 7, 2018, from http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue3_3/7-thanasoulas.html.

Wardhaugh, R. (2002). An introduction to sociolinguistics (4 th Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. J. B. Carroll (Ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Wittgenstein, L (1999). Philosophical Investigations. (Translated by. G. E. M. Anscombe) Prentice Hall.

Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and Value. (Translated by P. Winch) Chicago: Chicago University Press.