Incorporating Culture into Language Classrooms

Incorporating Culture into Language Classrooms

The purpose of this paper was to consider and devise ways about how language teachers can incorporate the teaching of culture into their foreign language classrooms. Language and culture are inseparable. To teach a foreign language to enhance communication, it is vital to instill in students elements of the culture of target language. Teaching culture has been considered important in foreign language instruction for almost a century. In spite of this interest and importance, teaching culture was not developed well enough and widely emphasized until more recent years in English language instruction, due to several reasons including lack of time, uncertainty about which aspects of culture to teach and lack of practical techniques. Language teachers should identify key cultural items in every aspect of the language that they teach and provide a lot of practice and experiences in the course of English class using techniques and strategies as presented above. Culture teaching should allow learners to increase their knowledge of the target culture. Students can be successful in speaking a foreign language only if cultural issues are an integral part of the curriculum. A culture class is significantly beneficial in terms of language skills, raising cultural awareness, keeping students motivated and changing attitudes towards native and target societies.