OPINION: DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT CULTURE!
books do not offer the cultural perspective, essential for a whole understanding of the language the student is learning. To learn the culture is not only important to understand what the society thinks about some subjects, but also to understand how and when to use certain structures (formal, informal, etc), configuring what some scholars consider as a main point to achieve the native speaker’s skills – if the individual is communicatively competent (Davies, 1991; Liu, 1999; Medgyes, 1992), able to communicate within different social settings (Stern, 1983), etc. With this, the student learns not only one “type” of English, but various settings by only consuming authentic material and understanding language in use. To exemplify this, we could see the use of communicative approaches to create a social setting where the student has to be part of, considering the target public, the objective of that particular speech, etc. A good example of a simulated social setting is the use of roleplays, such as acting, talk-shows, interviews, and so on.
The importance of the source and target culture for the professional of language.