Judging by the number of conferences held and papers published the ever growing interest of EFL teaching in a more humanistic “cultural context” has brought about nearly a universal agreement on the necessity of incorporating a cultural component in the language-teaching content. Indeed the concept of ‘culture’ is so widely used and debated that has become something of a fashionable cliché in language teaching circles in recent years.

This growth of interest to a cultural component in FL teaching can be explained by a variety of factors ranging from pragmatic tasks to purely linguistic ones. These manifest themselves in some English-speaking countries (mainly the UK and the USA) in the need for ‘acculturation’ of numerous Asian and Latin American immigration. When talking of the current Russian landscape one should point out political and economic developments in the country that resulted in a much more open society and greater exposure to the Western world, which, in turn, called for an adequate degree of cross-cultural awareness of English users.

To some lesser extent the growing interest in ‘culture-in-language’ issues is accounted for by shifting priorities within the linguistic science itself. On the one hand, we are witnesses and participants today in an exciting general tendency. From structural linguistics with its focus on formal patterning of discourse the scholarly interest has been shifting to functional and cognitive linguistics with the emphasis on the relationship of context and culture, on patterns of social and cultural behaviour.¹

The process of “acquiring” a second culture is a complex one and involves investigations into a wealth of anthropological, social, psychological and cognitive aspects, in addition to the linguistic aspect per se.

What is, then, culture? As any general term it allows for many interpretations and we have to agree on a definition. Of a wealth of approaches two definitions may be highlighted that are of relevance to EFL teaching.

The first definition comes from the humanities; it focuses on the way a social group represents itself and others through its material productions, be they works of art, literature, social institutions, or artefacts of everyday life. This approach has been a traditional part of high school curricula and has taken the form of special courses, such as British or American Studies (stranovedenje) in Russia, Civilisation in France or Landeskunde in Germany, just to mention a few. These courses emphasise British (and American) culture (which usually means high culture with a capital C) – major elements of the ‘big C’ being history, geography, institutions, literature, art, music –and the way of life.

The second definition comes from social sciences: it refers to what is called by some educators the ‘ground of meaning’, that is the attitudes, values and beliefs, ways of thinking, behaving and remembering shared by members of that community.² It is often used to mean popular culture or ‘little c’ culture.

Some research shows that in the EFL teaching the traditional subject of British life and institutions or ‘big C’ culture has been broadened to include culturally influenced beliefs and perceptions, especially as expressed through language, that is ‘little c’ culture.³

What is culture in relation to EFL teaching? To what extent is culture the responsibility of the language teacher? “One of the major ways in which culture manifests itself is through language. Material culture is constantly mediated, interpreted and recorded – among other things – through language. … Culture in the final analysis is always linguistically mediated membership into a discourse community that is both real and imagined. Language plays a crucial role not only in construction of culture, but in the emergence of cultural change.”⁴

The target culture acquisition is primarily based on coming to recognise and appreciate not so much the cultural commonalties as the ways in which the native and target cultures differ. In so doing foreign-language learners develop cross-cultural awareness, tolerance of cultural factors, and raise critical thinking about cultural stereotypes.

As is well known, the very progress in the mastering of English presupposes various levels – normally starting with the beginner’s level and through to the advanced level. Accordingly, the amount and content of the cultural component and, consequently, the correlation of cultural differences and similarities necessarily varies from one level of English proficiency to another.

For the purposes of the present paper it will be convenient to use the system of L.Wong-Fillmore in characterising the important stages in second language acquisition⁵. Focussing on relatively specific language skills, she noted five qualitatively different stages in second language acquisition.

Novice speakers (stage 1) depend almost exclusively on situational clues and first language strategies and vocabulary.

Advanced beginners (stage 2) understand most face-to-face conversations and can use rules to produce language but are generally limited to functional kinds of tasks and interactions.

“Competent speakers” (stage 3) know most basic rules of grammar and conversation, think in the language, and make relatively few serious mistakes.

“Proficient speakers” (stage 4) can select language effectively to meet specific goals, even if they have to bend the rules to do so: they have developed reliable intuitions as to which word form is most appropriate. (Her fifth level, which we have not incorporated here, she exemplifies as entailing the ability to write professional-quality poetry in the second language).

In terms of cultural-awareness raising each level has its own specificity.

Stage 1 is the early phase, in which the new culture is almost totally inaccessible; the phase is often referred to as entailing some degree of culture shock. The cultural component is introduced with great care. The introduction into a new culture at this stage could be based on language and cultural similarities, while the differences are sometimes minimal.

Stage 2 – that of the “advanced beginners” level, (also termed “survivor”) is the stage of functional language and functional understanding of culture. For example, manual labour jobs often require no more than “survivor” competence in language and culture.

Thus, the emphasis on the first two stages of language efficiency could be on culturally influenced behaviours: dress, food, leisure, customs, habits and suchlike. For instance: shopping habits (In Britain milk is delivered to people every day in glass bottles); the way the British use their leisure time and spend their holidays; the variety and size of housing in the UK, and suchlike.

A number of researchers (L.Wong-Fillmore, W.R.Acton et al.) noted that the biggest “leap” in internalising the target culture is from advanced beginner to “competent” (stage 3). This is the level of acculturation expected of an educated learner and reached by most literate people who spend an extended period of time working (and/or living) in a foreign culture and who recognise all major values and behaviour patterns of the new culture.

At this stage the cultural component might include the ‘ideas’ sphere: institutions, beliefs, values. Among the teaching strategies there might be, for example, doing ‘agony aunt’ letters from newspapers to help students understand personal and social problems in the UK or study the relationships between men and women, dating customs in the UK, differences in the concept of time in the native and target cultures, accepting a compliment, patterns of appropriate social behaviour and customs.

“Proficient speaker” (stage 4) is almost at the level of the native speaker, in which one has acculturated to the degree that one is rarely tripped up by the subtleties of the language and culture. This person is expected to have both the pronunciation and gestures very similar to those of natives.

The underlying assumption of this stage is that communication, language, and culture cannot be separated. The cultural component could emphasise the traditional ‘big C’ (‘products’) area: literature, folklore, art, and music. It might be include specific cultural patterns of interpretation, different policy statements, or discovering cultural values through proverbs, examining stereotypes and preconceived ideas held about the target culture; factors, influencing cultural identity and, last but not least, focussing on the subject matter of humour in the British humour.

Most humour has some sort of cultural basis and the following is no exception:
If there are no trains at the North Pole, why do Eskimos wear anoraks?

To understand and appreciate the humour one should know among other things, that:

trainspotters of the 80s were railway enthusiasts, people who clustered on station platforms and enjoyed themselves by writing down into their notebooks the numbers of the passing locomotives;

trainspotters were distinguished by their loyalty to the fashion of a generation ago: the quilted, brightly-coloured, nylon anoraks;

by the early 1990s, younger people in Britain were referring to trainspotters as ‘anoraks’.⁶

To sum up, despite the general breadth of the term “cultural component” as used in the context of EFL teaching, it is obvious that at the two lower stages the relevance and importance of the cultural component is subordinate to the language per se and is largely reduced to cultural similarities. The dominance of the linguistic aspects over the cultural component makes it possible to term their inter-relationship as ‘language-in-culture’. The higher levels of “competent” and “proficient speakers”, on the other hand, reveal the predominance of the cultural component in this relationship (with the emphasis on the differences between the native and target cultures) and thus justify the term “culture-in-language ”.

The comparison of cultures with language being taught opens great vistas for the teacher and provides a basis for better intercultural understanding of persons from other backgrounds.
 

Notes

1. Wadham-Smith, N. Language and Social Identity. – In: British Studies Now. Issue 8 – January 1997, p.3
2. Nostrand, H. Authentic texts and cultural authenticity: an editorial. - In: Modern Languages Journal, 73 (1), 1989, pp.49-52.
3. See, e.g., Tomalin, B. & Stempleski S. Cultural Awareness. OUP, 1993, p.7
4. Kramsch, Claire. The Cultural Component of Language Teaching. – British Studies Now, Issue 8 – January 1997, p.4
5. Valdes, J. M. (ed). Culture Bound: Bridging the Cultural Gap in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press, 1986
6. This was borrowed from: Maule, David. Living Words. – Modern English Teacher, vol.6, No.3 July 1997, p.19.
Interestingly enough, later this meaning was widened to include anyone who takes part in an apparently pointless activity. Then it has been extended to cover those caught up in the latest pastime for the brain-dead, surfing the Internet. These sad individuals are now known as techno-anoraks (and ‘sad’ as an adjective to describe them, is moving from the speech of the young people into the mainstream. Trainspotting has recently found another context, that of teenager drug culture.