Investigating Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Teaching: A Book For Teachers (Multilingual Matters) - Softcover

Byram, Michael; Esarte-Sarries, Veronica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 185359086X ISBN 13: 9781853590863

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 1991

Synopsis

This book was inspired by a major research project investigating the widely-held assumption that foreign language teaching makes a positive and influential contribution to learners' views of the people and culture whose language they are being taught. The authors explain the significance of their research to teachers and suggest how some of the material gathered during the project might be used in their daily practice to investigate and reflect upon their own pupils' views of foreign peoples and cultures. For those who wish to follow the full scientific report of the research, cross-references are provided to the companion volume, Cultural Studies and Language Learning. After an introductory chapter on the significance and role of culture as part of foreign language learning, the second chapter provides an overview of the research and the methods chosen to investigate a most complex phenomenon. These and later chapters include suggestions for further reading and references to the companion volume. Subsequent chapters are focused on specific aspects of the research data which will help teachers to consider their own practice. Suggestions are made for using extracts from interviews with pupils in the research project to elicit and refine learners' understanding of a foreign and their own culture or way of life. There are two chapters dealing with the specific influence of teacher and textbook and explaining how the cultural content of the latter can be analysed. A further chapter describes an experiment in using the school trip to the foreign country to reduce the superficial tourist character of such visits and make pupils more aware of the way foreign people live their daily lives. The final chapter suggests how a more deliberate and rigorous approach to cultural studies will make foreign language teaching a truly educational experience.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus at Durham University, England. Having studied languages at Cambridge University, he taught French and  German in school and adult education and then did teacher education at Durham. He was adviser to the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and then on the expert group which produced the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. His research has included the education of minorities, foreign language teaching and intercultural competence, and more recently on how the PhD is experienced and assessed in a range of different countries.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 185359086X
• ISBN 13: 9781853590863
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240