مجلة الحكمة للدراسات الأدبية واللغوية
Volume 5, Numéro 3, Pages 02-18
2017-09-01

The Inclusion Of Cultural Information In ‎civilization Course: Motivating Students Or ‎frustrating Them

Authors : Mohamed Cherif Seddiki .

Abstract

‎ The use of cultural content, in EFL classes, has recently driven a rising ‎interest among language instructors. A lot see that these classes are ‎mere attempts to develop linguistic competencies while many others, ‎university lecturers particularly, see that cultural knowledge should be ‎the main concern rather than language skills. They do believe that the ‎mastery of language is secondary compared to critical thinking and ‎textual analyzing making EFL classes more than a language hub for ‎developing reading, writing and speaking. This eventually calls the ‎content of culture based lessons, tasks and more particularly, teaching ‎techniques to inquiries. The course of civilization has lately incited talks ‎about teaching methods that go in accordance with the nature of the ‎course. Some lecturers think that teacher centred methods are ideal ‎for teaching culture unlike others who focus on variety and learning ‎autonomy to help students explore both the language and its culture. ‎Many others have endlessly, and often enthusiastically, opened fierce ‎debates about what sort of objectives this course should target: ‎developing the learners’ linguistics ability, enriching their cultural ‎knowledge or both. In this vein, the teaching of the course is a bit far ‎away from what it should be. This attempt is made to introduce ‎change, if not refine the way the course is taught, revise its content ‎and suggest relevant tasks that engage students in class. The current ‎paper tries to advocate the fact that cultural studies courses should be ‎professionally and sensitively carried out to serve linguistic and cultural ‎objectives alike. It emphasizes the importance of cultural content in ‎teaching English as an international language, and its pivotal role in ‎diversifying teaching materials and motivating learners if handled ‎appropriately. Using a survey, this work tries to shed the light on what ‎might make civilization course very appealing as it stresses what might ‎go wrong with teaching culture. Added to this, exploring some scholars’ ‎views about teaching culture might help handle challenges in this kind ‎of classes and speculate what might wholly turn British civilization class ‎around. ‎

Keywords

Cultural Content; Linguistic skills; Classroom management; teaching ‎strategies. ‎