Reimagining culture in language teaching: Theory and practice

Recent research on the nature and role of culture in language teaching has begun to have a profound effect on language teaching practice. Languages education is increasing coming to conceive its nature and purpose as emphasising questions of interculturality in terms of both behaviours and identities rather than having an exclusive focus on the linguistic code. This change in emphasis has called upon languages educators to re-evaluate what is meant by culture in the context of language teaching and to reimagine pedagogical practice in the light of this re-evaluation. This paper will examine ways in which culture has been conceptualised in the context of language teaching with a view to capturing the dimensions of change which have affected contemporary understandings of culture and examine some of the pedagogical practices that are emerging as a result of the new understandings. In doing this it will examine the dichotomy between the cultural and the intercultural and explore the ways in which this dichotomy is related to issues such as the goals of language learning, static and dynamic constructions of cultural content, the place of active construction and reflective learning and the relationship between language and culture and the nature of the languages curriculum.