The Importance of Cultural Awareness in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

The relation between language and culture has always been an important issue for both language teachers and scholars. It is clear that learning about culture also provides lots of benefits for EFL learners to understand the target language community. The aim of this paper is to state that the importance of culture and increasing of cultural awareness will also be useful while teaching English in EFL classes. This is a literature review study. Therefore, research made from past to present on this issue were examined, necessary literature review was researched, and some suggestions were submitted. Some basic headlines of the research are: culture and cross-cultural understanding in language teaching; relationship between culture and language teaching; cross-cultural communication skills;the role of non-verbal behavior in culture and attitudes of the learners towards other cultures.

Keywords

• Culture, cultural awareness, English as a foreign language, teaching English.

Yabancı Dil Olarak İngilizce Öğretiminde Kültürel Farkındalığın Önemi

Abstract

Dil ve kültür arasındaki ilişki hem dil öğretmenleri hem de bilim adamları için sürekli önem arz eden bir konudur. Kültürü bilmek aynı zamanda yabancı dil öğrencilerine de yabancı bir toplumu tanıma konusunda pek çok imkânlar sağlamaktadır. Bu makalenin amacı İngilizce’nin yabancı dil olarak kullanıldığı sınıflarda, İngilizce’yi öğretirken aynı zamanda da kültürün öneminin belirtilmesinin ve kültür bilincinin artırılmasının yararlı olacağını göstermektir. Derleme türünde bir çalışmadır. Dolayısıyla bu makalede geçmişten günümüze bu alanda yapılan çalışmalar incelenmiş, kaynaklar taranmış, değerlendirilmeleri yapılmış ve önerilerde bulunulmuştur. Çalışmanın bazı temel başlıkları olarak da yabancı dil öğretiminde kültür ve kültürler arası anlayış; kültür ve dil öğretimi ilişkisi; kültürlerarası iletişim becerileri; sözel olmayan davranışların kültürdeki yeri ve öğrencilerin diğer kültürlere karşı tutumları ele alınmıştır.

Keywords

• Kültür, kültürel farkındalık, yabancı dil olarak İngilizce, İngilizce öğretimi

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