Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classes

Esther Stockwell
(Hosei University, Tokyo Japan)

Stockwell, Esther. (2018). Teaching culture in foreign language classes. Foreign Language Education Research,
22, 11-23.

Even though many researchers emphasise the interrelatedness of language and culture and the
significance of teaching culture in foreign language education, understanding how culture can be taught
has proven to be a difficult undertaking in many respects. This problem is hardly new, and the problems
of defining what culture is and how to teach it in language classes have been of concern to researchers
for decades. Developments in technology have opened up access to cultural resources from all over the
world, and to this end, methods of teaching culture using technology have started to appear more
regularly in research associated with second language teaching and learning. A glance through the
literature reveals, however, that where in the past many teachers focused on teaching a single culture
within a language class, in recent years there has been a movement to try to broaden the focus to include
general intercultural communication competence, but a systematic approach for methods of teaching
culture have been still lacking. However, it is generally accepted that cross-cultural understanding is
indeed a by-product of foreign language learning, and language should be taught as an explicit element
of cultural practice. Therefore, it is necessary to consider issues about teaching culture in foreign
language education such as what role culture plays in language teaching and how it is being taught.
Based on current developments in technology, it is timely to think about effective teaching
methodologies for integrating culture and language that prepare learners to communicate and collaborate
effectively in the 21st century

Key Words: Teaching culture, Intercultural Communication Competence, Culture learning portfolios

Ⅰ. Introduction

Over the past several years, many universities around the world aim to bring up their
students to be globally aware, focusing heavily on foreign language education to achieve
this goal (e.g., Rivers, 2010). Much of this language education, however, occurs quite
independently from enhancing cultural awareness, despite the strong correlation between
language acquisition and developing cultural awareness. Language and culture are
closely interconnected, and students cannot have a comprehensive grasp of a language
without understanding its culture. Because it is language in its cultural context that
creates meaning, creating and interpreting meaning is done within a cultural framework.
12 Stockwell, Esther

For example, how to choose suitable words and behave appropriately in certain
situations to communicate with native speakers and also one language does not simply
translate to another language because they exist in different cultural contexts. It is also
possible that sometimes linguistically correct sentences could cause misunderstanding or
confusion when they are used in different cultural contexts. These are all related to
knowledge of its culture.

Ⅱ. History of teaching culture in a foreign language education

In the early stages of foreign language education, culture received little to no

attention, where “...prior to the 1960s, the lines between language and culture were
carefully drawn. The primary reason for second language study in the earlier part of this
century was access to the great literary masterpieces of civilization” (Allen, 1985, p.
138). People generally learned a second or foreign language in order to read and study
its literature, and communication was of far lesser importance, and it wasn’t until the
1960s and 1970s that cultural awareness had its real beginnings. Brooks (1968)
advocated the importance of culture not in relation to the study of literature but in the
means of foreign language learning, and his seminal work Language and Language
Learning offered 64 topics regarding culture associated with human daily life in society
such as greetings, town and country life, cafes, bars, restaurants, verbal taboos, patterns
of politeness, and so forth. These topics are covered nowadays, and similar topics can be
seen in most modern situational-functional EFL textbooks.
Researchers in the 1980s emphasized the studying the dynamics of culture and its
impact on “successful” foreign language learning (e.g., Canale & Swain, 1980; Cargill,
1987; Byram, 1989). The interrelationship between language and culture was closely
examined and the need to integrate linguistic and culture learning in foreign language
education was suggested. During the 20th century, as the world became more globalized
and/or internationalized, foreign language teaching began to cross national and ethnic
boundaries and be viewed at in a “transnational and global context” (Risager, 2007, p.
1). English came to assume a role as an international language, which demanded changes
in culture dimension of how it is taught (Wandel, 2002). One such change was the
movement towards an intercultural approach in foreign language education that aimed to
develop students’ intercultural sensitivity and awareness. Based on this evolution, the
concept of intercultural communicative competence also has come challenged through
such globalisation (Alptekin, 2002). For example, it is not unusual to see people from
different linguistic and cultural backgrounds using English to communicate in various
settings such as travelling, academic study, or conferences. As English has come to be
used as a proxy lingua franca, non-native speakers are engaging in specific intercultural
 Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classes 13

contexts so require strategies for interpreting cultures and languages when they
communicate with native or/and other non-native speakers.
Movements of understanding teaching culture in foreign language education have
shifted from:
 culture as distinct from language to culture as integral to language
 cultural absolutes to cultural variations within and across cultures
 cultural stereotypes to cultural generalizations
 culture-specific model to culture-general models of intercultural competence
(Paige, Jorstad, Siaya, Klein, & Colby, 2003; Talebinezhad & Akbari, 2004;
Jalali, Sa'd,& Hatam, 2014; Stockwell, 2016)
Many studies on teaching culture have shown that language and culture are closely
related and are best acquired together. Brown (2000), for example, describes this
interrelatedness by stating, “a language is a part of a culture, and a culture is a part of a
language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without
losing the significance of either language or culture” (p.177).
Based on this understanding regarding teaching culture in language classes, we can
think about the role of culture in education, and more specifically, how culture has been
taught in language classrooms. Strasheim (1981) found that teachers spent
approximately 10% of teaching time on culture. Lafayette (1988) noted that teachers
spent the greatest amount of time and effort on teaching grammatical and lexical
components of the language, leaving the culture as the weakest component in the
curriculum. Over a decade later, the results of a study by Moore (1996) indicated that
26% of the respondents taught culture in all their lessons, and a follow-up study
conducted ten years later by Moore (2006) found that at least 80% of the teachers
surveyed indicated they were teaching culture in their class. As the results of studies
suggest, the last 25 years have seen dramatic improvements in the amount of time
dedicated to teaching culture in language classes.
Although teachers have begun to incorporate more culture in their lessons, the major
concern is finding effective ways to integrate culture and language to prepare learners to
communicate and collaborate effectively. There has been no shortage of methods and
approaches for teaching culture, which include the use of authentic materials, cultural
capsules, culture clusters, culture assimilators, incorporation of proverbs, music, songs,
celebrations of festivals, and study-abroad programs. For example, Hughes (1986)
proposed teaching strategies for cultural awareness that include the comparisons, culture
assimilators, a “culture capsule,” dramas, newspapers, and the media. Krasner (1999)
promoted observations of culture through movies, news broadcasts, maps, or menus and
requiring students to visit ethnic sections of cities or restaurants.
However, in actual classroom settings, the methods of teaching culture have mainly
14 Stockwell, Esther

followed traditional ways. In Moore’s 1996 study described above, 210 randomly
selected foreign language teachers in New York were asked about whether or not they
were teaching culture and if so, the methods they used. Of the 26% of teachers who did
teach culture, more than half (54%) indicated that the most frequent activity for teaching
culture was asking students to read the notes in the textbooks, followed by 46% of
teachers who used lecture notes. Sources like textbooks and lecture notes that were
widely used by teachers are predominantly limited to presenting basic facts about the
target culture, and do not engage students in the process of deeper understanding of the
target culture. A potential cause of this may be, according to Byrd (2014), that language
teachers often struggle to identify cultural resources for their learners. The textbook
becomes the most often used resource for teaching culture, and teachers rarely provide
additional materials for culture teaching (Kahraman, 2016). Although this may in part be
due to a lack of appropriate materials, anecdotal observations and experience also
suggest that teachers have little freedom to choose their own teaching materials for
administrative reasons, which may limit what they can do.

Ⅲ. Teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching culture

According to Yang and Chen (2014, 2016), there are three categories about teachers’
attitudes towards teaching culture in their language courses; 1. Teaching culture is not
important, 2. Teaching culture can be considered as a forerunner to precede the teaching
of grammar, and 3. Teaching culture is part of a meaningful context. Language teachers
in the first category do not seem to teach culture at all as part of their classes. Some
language teachers simply do not recognise the significance of teaching culture in a
foreign language course, and as such do not include any culture-related content in their
students’ assignments or assessment. Teachers in the second category view culture as an
additional, or add-on component of teaching language. In this perspective, teachers
describe culture as a dispensable component in language classes, where cultural
knowledge is little more than an “appetizer” to the imparting of language knowledge as
the main dish of a meal. Culture is used only as a way to add interest to a language class
rather than as an integral part of learning the language, and is supplementary, not a major
component in the classes. Some instructors in these studies, for example, believed that
talking about cultural points in class would attract students to the target language but
they rarely considered teaching culture to be one of the major objectives in class. One
Spanish instructor cited in Yang and Chen’s study (2016) showed this culture-as-
appetizer approach when she shared her personal experiences from her time spent in
Mexico to capture students’ attention. She argued that sharing her personal cultural
experiences when teaching grammar made it easier for her to organize the class and
 Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classes 15

make her class more interesting and popular. The third type of attitude considers culture
as a wide-reaching and important foundation for language teaching. In other words, it
sees culture as always surrounding a language and helping to determine its
interpretation. Language necessarily exists in a cultural context, meaning that one
language does not simply translate to another language because of the different cultural
contexts. Successful teaching of culture in language classes starts from teachers’
attitudes about teaching culture. It should be in teachers’ minds even at the beginning
levels of learning that teachers should not only introduce the mechanics and format of
the language, but they also need to introduce students to the aspects of culture, if nothing
else, raising their awareness to the interconnection between culture and language. The
last several years have seen some changes in teacher attitudes towards teaching culture,
where the importance of teaching culture is more widely accepted, and many teachers
express enthusiasm to learn more about how to teach culture. Culture is featuring more
centrally in conferences in the field of teaching foreign languages, and there has been a
surge of interest in developing strategies and resources for teaching culture.

Ⅳ. Methods of teaching culture

Since the initial emergence of culture as an important element in language teaching,

methods of teaching culture have continued to evolve. From students’ perspective,
methods of learning culture have shifted from a traditional information acquisition
approach to a process-oriented constructivist approach (Shrum & Glisan, 2005).
Approaches where learners are predominantly told about the target culture by their
teacher have gradually been replaced by approaches where students’ active participation
is encouraged to construct their understanding of the target culture, while at the same
time to reflect on their own culture. This transition has been in part facilitated by
developments of information and communication technology (ICT), which has had an
enormous impact on education that has also filtered down to the teaching of culture. The
integration of digital media has not only made the use of movies and videos can become
more accessible (Belz, 2003), but technology has also contributed to more student-
centered approaches to learning culture, where learners can have first-hand contact with
the target culture to suit their own learning needs. For example, students can use the
Internet to find cultural information while engaging in a class task, or students can use
email or other communication tools to interact with students from different cultural
backgrounds. The past two decades have seen numerous research projects demonstrating
and debating the effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the
development of learners’ intercultural competences in addition to linguistic proficiency
(Müller-Hartmann, 2000; Ware & Kramsch, 2005; Schneider & von der Emde, 2006;
16 Stockwell, Esther

Levy, 2007; Chun, 2011; Stockwell, 2016). International telecollaboration activities is

that students use the Internet communication tools, such as email, chat blog and so on to
develop their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through interacting
with students from other country
It is important to investigate how cultural aspects can be incorporated into the
language classroom. The reason is that many teachers who have used international
telecollaboration activities in their language classes believe that exposing students to a
different cultural environment is by itself sufficient to teach culture or intercultural
ability. This tendency was discovered in a study by Stockwell (2018), which looked at
the articles published in four major journals in the CALL research area—CALICO,
CALL, LLT, and ReCALL—between 2004 and 2013. All the articles that dealt with
Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) in foreign language classes that used
telecollaboration activities were selected for analysis. According to this analysis, 70% of
these classes didn’t provide the students with any teaching, training, or discussion about
cultural issues before, during, or after they were exposed to the target culture. In other
words, at no point were these students given any lessons, trainings or discussion time
about cultural issues. However, many of the studies that were analyzed described
developing cultural awareness as one of their outcomes, based on student surveys. These
were often the result of unplanned circumstances, however, such as participants’
interaction with interlocutors or resources from different cultural backgrounds.
Many recent studies by researchers have revealed that merely communicating with
people from different cultural backgrounds does not automatically lead to intercultural
learning. This suggests that cognitive or ICC development may not be attained
automatically through CMC interactions among peers (Liaw & Bunn-Le Master, 2010;
Kitade, 2012). Many studies have claimed that their subjects developed intercultural
competence by sharing information about certain cultures; however, though the term
intercultural competence is related to some extent to specific cultural knowledge, it also
refers to understanding the attitudes, beliefs, values, and interpersonal skills (both verbal
and non-verbal) of people from different cultures. Therefore, acquiring cultural
knowledge or cultural awareness and developing intercultural competence are not the
same.
With this in mind, how can we help students in language classes develop
intercultural competence, instead of just linguistic proficiency?
As Muller-Hartmann (2007) indicates, learners’ critical reflection and self-
assessment during intercultural discussion are key elements in cultural learning. First, it
is very important for learners to recognize their present cognitive state toward their own
culture and other cultures, e.g., their degrees of ethnocentrism, racism, prejudice, and so
on. As shown in many studies, if learners hold stereotypical images of a target culture
 Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classes 17

before interacting with people from that culture, the interaction may confirm their
stereotypical beliefs rather than eliminating them (Belz, 2003; O’Dowd, 2003).
Therefore, it is important that learners have the opportunity to examine their current
cognitive stage, including stereotypical images, biases, or prejudices towards the target
culture, as well as if they have a strong sense of ethnocentrism. This self-assessment is
one of the main ways to prevent negative results from learners’ interactions with people
from other cultures.

Ⅴ. Learners’ critical reflection and self-assessment: culture

learning portfolios through Webquest

In order to ensure that learners practice critical reflection and self-assessment during
intercultural discussion, making culture learning portfolios may be one useful alternative
to traditional classroom achievement assessments. In fact, adopting culture learning
portfolios to the foreign language class is not a “new” method. Regardless of the
methods’ age, however, the most important thing is that educators adopt and apply the
methods best-suited to the students’ learning, linguistic capacities and cognitive
capacities.
I would like to share one example of a culture learning portfolio that I have used in
my English class. I am also in the process of adopting the Webquest activities to make a
culture learning portfolio. Webquests are inquiry-based activities available on the
internet. One of the key points that separate WebQuests from simple Internet searches is
that useful sites can be selected by the teacher based on their relevance, appropriateness,
and, in some cases, linguistic difficulty. The reason for using the Webquest activities is
that many students have English language limitations, and it is stressful for them to
search and understand various types of information online.
This activity is for Japanese students to make a culture learning portfolio in their
English language class. There are three sections: Introduction, Procedures, and
Performance tasks. The introduction explains the purpose of making a culture learning
portfolio, the procedures section explains how to make it, and the performance tasks
explains tasks students must complete as homework. Students need to find information
on the details of these performance tasks. Task 1 is for students to develop and
demonstrate their awareness of general knowledge, such as geographic, historical,
economic, social, religious, and political factors that can have an impact on cultural
perspectives, products, and practices. In addition, it ensures that students are aware of
not only the cultures of English-speaking countries but also their own (Japanese) culture.
Here is one of example of Task 1.
 Task 1.1: Compare an English-speaking country (choose the U.S., U.K., or
18 Stockwell, Esther

Australia) with Japan in at least 10 of the following categories: geography,

climate, population, population density, population composition (race,
immigration status, age, etc.), family structure, languages, political system, life
expectancy, economic system (GNP, imports, exports, etc.), religion(s),
education system, important historical events, traditions, values, norms,
customs, taboos, patterns of behavior, gender roles, and communication styles.
 Task 1.2: Using the information researched for Task 1.1, discuss at least five
similarities or differences. Make sure the discussion includes how these
similarities or differences could influence the two cultures being examined.

Task 2 is designed for the students to recognize the stereotypes and generalizations
they hold toward the target country and Japan, and to evaluate them in terms of what
supporting evidence there is for them. Below is one example of Task 2.
 Task 2.1: Find some general, fixed images of Japan and an English-speaking
country, as well as the people of those countries. For the English-speaking
country, choose the U.S., the U.K., or Australia.
 Task 2.2: Find out how these images (in the findings from Task 2.1) came into
being. You can explain these images through the historical background, the
social organizational structure, religions, language, the diverse cultural patterns
and so on.

The students research information for these tasks, complete them outside class, and
submit their culture learning portfolio at the end of semester. They also have about 10
minutes of group discussion time every two weeks in class to share the information
they’ve found and their experiences with these tasks.

Culture learning portfolios can be used for various tasks with learners of practically
any level. At lower levels, the majority of student responses will likely be in their native
language. At intermediate and advanced levels, both the assigned tasks and the students’
analyses and reactions will likely be in the target language. In order to produce effective
results using a culture learning portfolio, students need considerable instructional time
before, during and after the activity, as well as group and individual discussion with the
teacher about their findings and conclusions. Portfolios are said to encourage students’
critical reflection and self-evaluation, and at least in theory provide continuous formative
instructor guidance and feedback. In addition, through WebQuests instructors are able to
select information considering their students’ cognitive capacities and linguistic abilities,
which reduces the risk that students will miss the point of the task or lose their
motivation because it is beyond their cognitive and linguistic abilities. Therefore, the
 Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classes 19

portfolios encourage discussion, collaboration, and revision in the subject of cultural

learning, as well as the use of multiple sources.
Reflection and self-assessments are not automatically attained, however. In order to
help learners think about their own culture and other cultures, they need general cultural
education and ongoing training before, during and after their exposure to different
cultures. Intercultural communication researchers have suggested that learners must first
explore their own culture, in order to understand what it means to be a part of it. This can
even be accomplished before they are ready to reflect on the values, expectations and
traditions of others, by discussing the values, expectations, traditions, customs, and
rituals that they unconsciously take part in (Neuliep, 2015; Samovar et al., 2014).
Language teachers need to help learners recognize their own cultural factors and
offer them opportunities to develop skills for investigating cultural complexity and
promoting cultural curiosity. The teacher not only has to facilitate class but must also
take an active role in establishing successful learning opportunities for learners.
However, it may be very demanding for language teachers to teach culture or be
knowledgeable about different cultures. One study shows that teachers are aware of the
importance of the cultural dimension in language learning, but also aware of their own
lack of knowledge related to the target language culture(s) (Atay, 2005). The result of a
study by Kahraman (2016) also demonstrated that teachers devoted less time to teaching
culture than to teaching language, though they express their willingness to teach culture
in a foreign language classroom. There are many possible reasons why teachers can’t
devote more time to culture teaching, such as overloaded curriculums and curriculum
limits, a lack of time, teaching to required examinations, and their own lack of
familiarity with target language cultures.
For all these reasons, in the long term teachers must be educated about other cultures,
and culture education and language education must be coordinated at an institutional
level. As a preliminary step, teachers can provide learners with materials about their own
culture and other cultures, as well as providing class or small group discussion time in
class to deepen learners’ understanding of their own culture and other cultures. This
would help learners develop attitudes that would allow them to understand and accept
other cultures.

Ⅵ. Conclusion

Byram (1994) emphasized that there are three broad and overlapping categories of
location for acquiring intercultural competence: 1. the classroom, 2. pedagogically
structured experiences outside the classroom and 3. independent experiences. Cultural
learning in the classroom has the potential to offer opportunities to acquire skills under
20 Stockwell, Esther

the guidance of a teacher, even through small group discussion time. The teacher does
not necessarily have to teach culture, but rather guide students to think and reflect on
cultural issues. Outside the classroom, students can find cultural information through
various resources under the teacher’s guidance (e.g., Webquest). In other words, the
classroom can provide opportunities to teach students to interpret and relate to the
content of culture, and learners have a chance to find relations between concepts, such as
“know that” and “know how.” In addition, developments in technology have also opened
up access to cultural resources from all over the world, and methods of teaching culture
using technology have created a movement away from approaches where learners
passively listen to the teacher talk about the target culture, and approaches to developing
cultural awareness have started to focus on students’ active participation in the
construction of an understanding of the target culture, as well as reflecting on their own.
This approach can also be adopted to suit some homogenous cultural environments (such
as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, etc.).
Interest in cultural issues in foreign language classes will continue to deepen and
widen. As a result, reviews about teaching culture in foreign language education are
quite timely. It has been shown that cross-cultural understanding is indeed a byproduct of
foreign language learning, and language should be taught explicitly as a cultural practice.
It would be unrealistic to expect that the formal inclusion of cultural objectives in
teaching and assessment can simply be tacked on to the traditional language-focused
curriculum. However, teachers can start by systematically providing learners with
opportunities to develop such understanding of their own cultures and target cultures.
Therefore, it is necessary to balance the following factors in teaching culture in foreign
language education: the teacher’s attitude toward teaching culture, pedagogical
development, the adoption of appropriate technologies, and the creation of a self-
organized learning environment for learners.

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1135

Stockwell, Esther
Professor
Faculty of Sustainability Studies
Hosei University
2-17-2 Fujimi Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 102-8160 Japan
Tel +81 (0)3 3264 4264
Email [email protected]

Received on 21 April 2018

Reviewed on 8 May 2018
Accepted on 30 May 2018