AN INSIGHT INTO TEACHING CULTURE WITHIN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LESSONS IN SLOVAK PRIMARY SCHOOLS

One of the main priorities of the new Concept of Teaching Foreign Languages at Primary and Secondary Schools in Slovakia is to equip pupils (European citizens) with the ability to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries in multicultural and multilingual Europe, in other words to acquire intercultural communicative competences. By means of using several research methods we mapped and analysed how the cultural aspects are implemented within English language education at Slovak primary schools. A lot of data was gained from the observation, and the most surprising finding was that only less than a half of the observed lessons included cultural aspects. Also from interviews we gained additional data, considering implementation of cultural aspects into English language lessons. We found out that most teachers include the socio-cultural knowledge into their lessons and the sociolinguistic, pragmatic and para-linguistic aspects of culture they either neglect, or do not realize their importance, in the process of acquiring intercultural communicative competences. We conclude that many teachers do not know what cultural aspects comprise of and do not understand the importance of acquiring intercultural communicative competences.