Àáäóêàðèìîâà À.À., Èãíàòþê À.Ä.
Ìåæäóíàðîäíûé Êàçàõñêî-Òóðåöêèé óíèâåðñèòåò èì.ßñàâè,
Êàçàõñòàí
The Interrelation of Culture and Teaching Foreign Language
There is more diversity in the language teaching field
today than there was 40 years ago. Prior to 1960s, due to the influence of
structural linguistics, language was thought to consist of
phonemes, morphemes and syntactic patterns; and language courses
were organized around these linguistic structures, carefully graded from simple to complex. Later Chomskyan
theory had a remarkable impact in the other areas, though it had little effect on the practice of presenting
language in classrooms. Transformative
grammarians also divorced language from its social context and focused on the sentence-based context. However, in
deliberate contrast to Chomsky's
linguistic competence, sociolinguist Dell Hymes
introduced the term communicative
competence, "...knowledge of
the rules governing the appropriate use
of language in social situations includes our awareness of the factors which govern acceptable speech, such a how to begin and
end conversations, how to interrupt,
how to address people, and how to behave in special speech situations"
(Crystal 1992:74) and the study of language assumed a new direction. From then on, it was communicative competence not
linguistic competence ─the knowledge
of language rules─ that was asked from teachers to focus on. People
began concerning themselves more
with communication. It is thought to be necessary to have a better understanding of the people with whom
one was trying to communicate. Today we should even enlarge the concept and have the
notion of cultural competence, thus
including all meaning carrying signs and symbols that are culture specific. Hence there was a shift away
from "capital C culture", which is the study of art, literature,
philosophy, technology, and so forth of the people associated with the language
and a move towards the teaching of "small c culture" the study of people's customs, manners, values and beliefs.
As a
result of changing emphasis on culture and goals of language teaching, the need
for cultural integration in foreign language programs has been acknowledged in
the abstract, however, it is not always fully realized in practice.
Traditionally, second and foreign language teaching programs emphasize four
skills: listening, speaking, reading and
writing with the current trend of integrating them. The teaching of culture is often a neglected, if not forgotten,
component of the language program. It appears
that the question of "culture" is often left to the end of a
language-teaching plan. It seems as if
it is always something of a bonus if the teacher manages to find time to
introduce a bit of the culture of the foreign language into the classroom. If learners are particularly lucky they get a chance to
spend sometime in the foreign country to "immerse" themselves
in the culture of the country, but is that limited presentation enough? Is
cultural integration necessary to learn a language? This is the question that
"… troubles teachers whether they work with students in classrooms far
remote from the culture of the language they are learning or with students who
are physically immersed in the culture but experientially
and psychologically distant from it"
(Pica 1994:70 cited in Ramona Tang).
As
mentioned earlier, whatever the level or background of language learners,
whether they are instrumentally or integratively
motivated, all language learners do need some cultural input about the language they are
learning. Language meaning would be obscure
without the culture, in which it is deeply embedded. According to D.Hirsch (cited in Bessmertnyi 1994:24) "To understand what somebody is
saying we must understand more than the
surface meanings of words; we have to understand the context as well... To grasp the words on a page we have to know a lot of
information that is not set down on the
page". It is the background information that enables students to take up
the foreign language in context with an adequate level of comprehension, getting the point, grasping the
implications, relating what they understood and giving appropriate
replies. Unfortunately, the current tendency
is to acquire competence in the foreign language with minimal cultural references.
It is
quite wrong to believe that native-like oral proficiency will guarantee total acceptance by the target community although teachers
devote most of their class time to it. Native speakers of the target
language show a high tolerance to the mistakes and errors in forms but they are not tolerant when one of the social
rules is broken. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that for satisfactory
understanding and communication a
familiarity with the cultural background of a foreign language is indispensable.
A common
question in language teachers' minds is "How can we teach culture to a foreign language learner who does not have a
close contact with native speakers of
English and thus have little opportunity to discover how these speakers think,
feel and interact with others in their
own peer group? How can we stimulate their curiosity about the target culture when, sometimes, they do not even
have sufficient time to learn the formal
properties of the language?". TESOL has always
had as its goal the facilitations of communication among people who do not
share the same language and national culture. Before the Second World War, the
term "culture" meant knowledge about great works of literature,
social institutions and historical events, acquired through the translation of
written texts (Kramsch 2001). The rise of linguistics
and of the social sciences after the Second World War, and the demands of
market economies, gave prominence to spoken language and to communication
across cultures in situations of everyday life.
Thanks to
practical interests of politicians, businessmen, diplomats, who were extremely
in need of exploring causes of problems met during communication with
representatives of different nations (and solving these problems), new
scientific currents appeared in the
In
addition to this, in the afterwar period, the
As a
reply to this situation in 1946, the
The
researches at the Institute came to an end in
The
understanding of culture and communication suggested by Hall (communication is
culture, culture is communication) became a focus theme of active discussions
in scientific spheres of the
Analyzing
the main idea of his book about correlation between culture and communication,
Hall made an assumption about the necessity of teaching culture of
communicating with other peoples. His words “if culture is learned, it can be
taught” became a motto of adherents of the idea making intercultural
communication (ICC) a separate discipline. According to Hall, the most
important aim of exploring problems of intercultural communication is
investigation of practical needs of representatives of different cultures for
their successful communication with each other.
Following
Hall’s publications, many scholars’ attention was drawn to the problem of
intercultural communication. Klakchon and Strodberg (1999) suggested their own methodology of
exploring culture. The main culture differences, according to Klakchon and Strodberg, can be
set out by individual culture’s relations to concepts such as “the human nature
orientation”, “the man-nature orientation”, “the time orientation” and “the
activity orientation”.
The
founders of the other trend were Samovar, Porter and Jane (1981), whose
scientific interests were closely connected with problems of verbal and
non-verbal communication. In their book “Intercultural
Communication: A Reader” the authors made an
emphasis on problems of interpretation of non-verbal behaviour, taking into
account that non-verbal symbols being positive for one culture, can be
interpreted negatively by representatives of another one.
By
contrast, the field of intercultural communication in
For the
English teacher, new directions include looking at the social and historical
conditions of teaching intercultural communication through English. New
questions will be asked; not only "How
can I teach English more effectively, so that the people of the world can be
"empowered" by knowing English?", but also:
·
How does the
teaching of English change the balance of the HAVES and the HAVE-NOTS in local
cultures around the world?
·
What kinds of
identities does the teaching of English create and promote in an international
playing field that will never be level?
·
How does our
enabling individuals to speak English and pass TOEFL tests enhance world peace
and harmony?; and, finally
·
How can we train
those who move back and forth over cross-cultural borders ― i.e.
diplomats, lawyers and English teachers ― to foster intercultural rights
and responsibilities?
These are
momentous questions, which the field of intercultural communication is only
starting to address (Kramsch 2001, 205-6).
Bibliography
1.
Bloommaert, Verschueren Kinesics and Context. London: Fontana, 1991
2. Chomsky N. Selections from Knowledge of Language. NY: Praeger, 1986
3. Hall E. T. The Silent Language. New York:
Doubleday, 1966.
4.
Kluckhohn
C., Strodberg. Mirror
for man.
5. Kramsch C. Intercultural
Communication. Teaching English to the speakers of other languages. Ed.: R.Carter, D.Nunan.