Inkludering af kultur i engelskundervisningen

In most classrooms a lot of different cultures are represented; these cultures influence on how a student develop/work with his own identity. It is a part of a teacher’s responsibility to help and encourage the students to develop identity and to be able to interact positively in a school and a society with diversity. One of the main aims in teaching in the Danish public school is to educate democrats, which can also be considered a cultural aspect of the identity (Hedegaard, E. (2010) Overview of educational traditions)

Research question

Can different cultures be accommodated and met when teaching in the English classroom?

How can teaching culture be included in English lessons?

Theory

When teaching culture it is important to find comprehensive material which provides the students with a good variety of sources and knowledge on culture. Looking at the model made by Lene Dyson and Danielle Eychenne illustrates this (5 aspects: Cultural dimension+ aspect of society).

Discussion

Teaching culture has been widely discussed, as to where to place the cultural education in a specific topic/lesson/class in the school. Byram thinks that the goal of the student in a language class is to become an ‘’intercultural language speaker’’. This means: for the student to become someone who has knowledge of one and preferably more cultures and social identities and relate to new people from other contexts. This will be one of the tasks in a classroom when teaching culture, but a lot of the above mentioned knowledge is gained just by being in the classroom, if it is a multicultural classroom, by using the differences and diversity in a positive way and by encouraging the students to share their own cultures and to be open to others. shows that cultural competence is about expanding and teaching the cultural dimensions in a foreign language in a predominated national spectre. Risager states that there has to be a great deal of focus on the differences in one culture, and not only in the differences between cultures, she criticize that general language teaching in the educational system is done by teaching from a cultural view which is limited or restricted by a certain homogeneous and national orientated opinion (Gregersen, A.S (2009) Den kulturelle dimension i sprogfagene).