Investigating Cultural Studies In Foreign Language Teaching

The main purpose of this book is to help foreign language teachers to reflect upon and investigate their learners' views of the countries and peoples whose language they teach. It presents data from a research project and explains its significance and usefulness for teachers.

Written by the winner of the 1987 BAAL book prize, this book deals with the acquisition of understanding of foreign cultures and peoples. It is also a study of the philosophy and purpose of language teaching in all its facets, in the context of foreign language teaching in secondary education. The book is written for language teachers and, though it draws on disciplines not usually included in their education and professional training, it does so from within the profession's own perspective. It is an attempt to raise teachers' and learners' awareness of the full educational value of foreign language learning

Offers some theoretical innovations in teaching foreign languages and reports how they have been applied to curriculum development and experimental courses at the upper secondary and college levels. Approaches language learning as comprising several dimensions, including grammatical competence, change in attitudes, learning about another culture, and reflecting on one's own. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The history of "language teaching" is shot through with methods and approaches to language learning - most recently with "communicative language teaching" - but this book demonstrates that a more differentiated and richer understanding of learning a foreign language is both necessary and desirable. Languages and cultures are interlinked and interdependent and their teaching and learning should be too. Learning another language is part of a complex process of learning and understanding other people's ways of life, ways of thinking and socio-economic experience

This is an account of a major research project which studies the contribution of foreign language teaching to learners' perceptions of and attitudes towards the people and way of life whose language they are learning. Teaching and learning in the secondary school were investigated by qualitative and quantitative methods over a 3-year period. The analysis models the many intra- and extra-school influences and sources of information and relationship of language teaching to other factors in learners' environment. By comparing these cases with an ideal model of language and culture teaching, the book points the way towards modification and improvement of existing practices.

The book presents most recent investigations into foreign language teaching and learning discussed by prominent scholars in the field. A wide variety of topics ranges from theoretical approaches to foreign language instruction to a discussion of findings of empirical research in language learning and pedagogy. The theoretical part of the volume tackles issues which constitute the backbone to the understanding of the processes involved in language development, learning and teaching and thus contribute to applied research. The empirical articles in Parts Two and Three of the volume report on studies focusing on such important issues as various dimensions of awareness (language, cross-cultural competence or affectivity) and specific methodologies implemented in different educational settings (such as, for instance, dyslexic learners) or in teacher training programmes.

Foreign Language Teachers and Intercultural Communication: An International Investigation reports on a study that focused on teachers' beliefs regarding intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. Its conclusions are based on data collected in a quantitative comparative study that comprises questionnaire answers received from teachers in seven countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Mexico, Greece, Spain and Sweden. It not only creates new knowledge on the variability, and relative consistency, of today's foreign language teachers' views regarding intercultural competence teaching in a number of countries, but also gives us a picture that is both more concrete and more comprehensive than previously known.

"This book takes cultural knowledge in language learning not only as a necessary aspect of communicative competence, but as an educational objective in its own right. If the aim of foreign language education is to foster cross-cultural awareness and self-realization, language pedagogy needs to come to grips with a range of fundamental issues: what do we mean by cultural context? Can discourse practices be taught like rules of grammar? What role does literature play in the development of second language literacy? How can learners acquire both an insider's and an outsider's understanding of the foreign culture as expressed through its language? By exploring these and other issues, the book can help language teachers reflect on their profession and place it within its larger societal and educational context. In turn, they can help learners become not only skilful users of the language, but also active architects of a new cross-cultural world order.".