Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 57

and response of these and, through repeated encounters, they gradually acquire
knowledge of the target culture and develop culture-specific behaviours.
In the language class, culture is everywhere, and in the culture class, language is
everywhere. As established before, the two are inseparable. They are clearly fused
and reflect each other. In class they can be dealt with either separately or together,
but obviously the second approach would be preferable because the learning of the
language would become almost senseless if the learners knew nothing about the
people that speak the language. The products, practices, perspectives, communities
and persons of a culture are embodied in language, which, in turn, is a product of
culture. We cannot practise the culture without its language. In language classes,
according to Chastain (299-300), students become more aware of their own culture
and more knowledgeable of the foreign culture.
Many specialists in the field agree that language and culture are pretty much the
same thing. Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote in 1907:
The spiritual traits and the structure of the language of a people are so
intimately blended that, given either of the two, one should be able to
derive the other from it to the fullest extent… Language is the outward
manifestation of the spirit of people: their language is their spirit and
their spirit is their language; it is difficult to imagine any two things more
identical (Humboldt cited in Salzmann 39).
Learners engage in the cultural experience in class using the four skills: reading,
listening, writing and speaking. They do so while performing various activities in the
language class: reading a text, listening to a recording, watching a video/film,
participating in simulations and role-plays. In this context, the language used is
tailored to fit the students’ level and Moran calls it “language of participation” (Moran
40). Another type of language, “the language of description” (Moran 42) is used to
describe the cultural phenomenon and it expresses the information learners possess
about cultural aspects. One step further is the “language for interpretation” (Moran
44). Based on cultural information, students emit hypotheses, make comparisons,
link the abstract to the concrete. All these stages completed, the “language to
respond” (Moran 45) to cultural phenomena refers to using language to express
feelings, opinions, to make decisions and develop strategies. Essentially, all of these
lead to self-expression in the target language and culture.
Kramsch best summarises the role of culture in EFL teaching:
Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on,
so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the
good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the
limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging
their ability to make sense of the world around them (Kramsch,
1993:1).
57