비평적 미국문화교육 방안을 위하여

Towards a Critical Teaching of American Culture Using Films

&nbsp;&nbsp;This paper aims to show why to teach culture for foreign language education and how to teach American culture critically using movies.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Teaching culture is usually considered subordinate to language teaching in EFL classes. Teachers tend to think cultural education is next to listening, speaking, writing, and reading. However, this language-oriented perspective in teaching foreign languages needs to be reconsidered because misunderstanding of other culture can cause much linguistic confusion and miscommunication, and understanding culture, including its social, historical and political backgrounds, can help students learn their target language more fully and effectively.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In this regard, movies can play the role of alternative texts in providing various authentic cultural subjects in target culture. Movies cover a lot of cultural dimensions including historical developments, human struggles, social issues, political happenings through ages, which help students build cultural competence and awareness.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Teaching culture cannot be neutral. Culture involves historical, political, and ideological points of view surrounding gender difference, ethnic problems, color struggles, and social classes. For example, American frontier history told by white Americans and Native Americans comes up with very different versions because both groups will rehearse antithetical histories based on their own ethnic experiences. To show a critical method of teaching American culture, this paper will select Malcolm X by Spike Lee and suggest various topics for students to think of in order to understand an important and on-going racial issue in the United States.