Learning about history in the foreign language classroom

The effect of a learner's point of view of history on his or her attitude toward a language and its learning has been recognized, particularly with reference to English language learning with regard to the political/power status of the language. However, the effect of learning about the history of the target language has not been addressed. The significance of learning about culture in foreign language learning has become generally accepted as being essential to the process, but learning about the history of the target culture has been ignored. In response, an introductory English as a foreign language course was designed that included, amongst other innovative concepts, discussions about the history of the English language and the initiation of the United States of America. Classroom-based research was then undertaken with the objective of learning about the participants' perceptions of their experience of the course. Analysis of the data collected clearly indicates that learning about history in the foreign language classroom is an adult learner need. In this article, learner-participants' comments on and descriptions of how they considered the discussions about history to have been beneficial to their language learning experience are examined.