CULTURE OF THE CURRICULUM IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Sarbasova A.T., Serik A.S.

Karaganda State Medical University city Karaganda, Kazakhstan

The main purpose of this work is to research the meaning of culture in foreign language curriculum.

Foreign language learning is comprised of several components, including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards one’s own or another culture. Cultural competence, i.e., the knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country, is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning, and many teachers have seen it as their goal to incorporate the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum. Byram said, that «knowledge of the grammatical system of a language (grammatical competence) has to be complemented by understanding of culture-specific meanings (communicative or rather cultural competence)». Moreover, we should be know of the fact that «if we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning...»

Brooks in his seminar work «Language and Language Learnings making the distinction between «Culture with a Capital C»—art, music, literature, politics and so on—and «culture with a small c»—the behavioral patterns and lifestyles of everyday people—helped dispel the myth that culture is an intellectual gift bestowed only upon the elite [2]. Admittedly, the main thrust of his work was to make people aware that culture resides in the very fabric of their lives - their modus vivendi, their beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes—rather than in a preoccupation with aesthetic reflections or highfalutin ideas.

Nostrand, developing his idea, supposed, that culture comprises six main categories: value systems and habits of thought society included organizations and familial, religious and other institutions interpersonal as well as intrapersonal conflict ecology and technology included knowledge of plants and animals, health care, travel etc.

Individuals, was about intra/interpersonal variation cross-cultural environment had to do with attitudes towards other cultures [10].

Obviously, everyday language is «tinged» with cultural bits and pieces—a fact most people seem to ignore. By the very act of talking, we assume social and cultural roles, which are so deeply entrenched in our thought processes as to go unnoticed. Interestingly, «culture defines not only when its members should think or learn but also what they should ignore or treat as irrelevant [1].That language has a setting, in that the people who speak it belong to a race or races and are incumbents of particular cultural roles, is blatantly obvious. «Language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our lives» [15]. In a sense, it is «a key to the cultural past of a society» [12], «a guide to social reality» [13].

Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted. Culture is the foundation of communication [14].

It goes without saying that the importance of «any single element in a culture design will be seen only when that element is viewed in the total matrix of its relationship to other elements». Let us illustrate this by drawing upon De Saussure’s semiotic theory [8]: In the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries the word «compromise» has a positive meaning (as a consent, an agreement where both parties win something); in North America it may, at times, have negative connotations (as both parties lose something) (this phenomenon tends to happen highly competitive atmospheres).

The teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing them [19]:

To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors.

To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave.

To help students to become more aware of conventional behavior in common situations in the target culture.

To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words Mid phrases in the target language.

To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence.

To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture.

To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people.

First, culture teaching must be commensurate with the dynamic aspects of culture. Students will indeed need to develop knowledge of and about the L2 or FL culture, but this receptive aspect of cultural competence is not sufficient. Learners will also need to master some skills in culturally appropriate communication and behavior for the target culture. Cultural awareness is necessary if students are to develop an understanding of the dynamic nature of the target culture, as well as their own culture.

Second, it is important to eschew «a laissez-faire approach when it comes to teaching methodology, and deal with culture teaching in a systematic and structured way. Third, evaluation of culture learning is a necessary component of the «foreign culture curriculum» providing students with feedback and keeping teachers accountable in their teaching [9]. A fourth point is made by [4] pertaining to the express need for linguistic and cultural competence as a means of achieving and negotiating nations’ political and economical identities in an «ever shrinking world», as they put it.

Just as no one superpower can dominate without censure from others, citizens must now begin to see their global responsibilities and must learn to move comfortably from one cultural environment to the next.

Before venturing into unknown territories [5], learners must first become conversant with what it means to be part of a culture, their own culture. By exploring their own culture, i.e., by discussing the very values, expectations, traditions, customs, and rituals they unconsciously take part in, they are ready to reflect upon the values, expectations, and traditions of others «with a higher degree of intellectual objectivity?» [17] Depending on the age and level of the learners, this task can take many forms. For example, young beginners or intermediate students should be given the opportunity to enjoy certain activities that are part of their own tradition, such as national sports, social festivities, or songs, before setting about exploring those of the target culture.

Students must not lose sight of the fact that not all members of the target community think and behave in the same way. They can be taught that there are certain words used more by women than by men, and vice versa, and that there are also different dialects which may not enjoy equal adulation and prestige (for example, Cockney as opposed to Received Pronunciation in England) [6].

Alongside linguistic knowledge, students should also familiarize themselves with various forms of non-verbal communication, such as gesture and facial expressions, typical in the target culture. More specifically, learners should be cognizant of the fact that such seemingly universal signals as gestures and facial expressions—as well as emotions—are actually cultural phenomena, and may as often as not lead to miscommunication and erroneous assumptions [22].

Another activity would be to invite learners to role-play emotions [20]. The teacher writes a list of several words indicating emotions (happiness, fear, anger, joy, pain, guilt, sadness) and then asks the students to use facial expressions and gestures to express these emotions. Then follows a discussion on the different ways in which people from different cultures express emotions as well as interpret gestures as «indices» to emotions.

It is important to encourage learners « to speculate on the significance of various styles of clothing, the symbolic meanings of colors, gestures, facial expressions, and the physical distance people unconsciously put between each other», and to show in what ways these nonverbal cues are similar to, or at variance with, those of their culture [18].

Literature is a viable component of second language programs at the appropriate level and one of its major functions is to serve as a medium to transmit the culture of the people who speak the language in which it is written [21].

Culture, as one of the most important part of language learning, should be incorporated in foreign language curriculum. And as culture comprised different elements, not only history and geography, but gestures, behaviors, values, points of view and etc., students should study all that elements in the aggregate. It can be achieved by some methods, such as culture assimilators, role-play emotions, reading literature and so on.

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