Culture in the EFL classroom - which cultures dominate the classroom?

Abstract

In this essay a number of English teachers at upper-secondary level in Sweden have responded to questions concerning the concept of "culture" from mainly two points of view. Firstly, this essay analyses which topics the teachers prioritise and what their attitudes are towards teaching culture within the subject of English. Secondly, the aim is also to analyse which kind of culture is taught in the classroom. The phrase "...which kind of culture" concerns the type of culture and where the culture stems from. "Culture" is a vague concept, therefore a specific and applicable cultural model was adopted. According to the cultural model by Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi (1990:3-10) culture is divided into four categories: Aesthetic culture such as literature, poetry and music, sociological culture such as leisure time, history and family, semantic culture which contains certain words and expressions that are specific for the country and pragmatic culture which contains words and phrases that are necessary for everyday conversations. The results of this small study show that most teachers prioritised the communicative skills such as listening, speaking and learning vocabulary higher than culture. The general attitude towards the importance of teaching culture among the respondents was found to be "Rather important". As to the second question, it was found that most teachers have a sociological and pragmatic sense of teaching culture. In addition, the teachers found it important to address many English-speaking countries and therefore contradicts some of the previous research, in which it was stated that there is dominance of British and American culture in the classroom. In conclusion, teaching culture can be a great tool in order to motivate the students. Furthermore, it might also broaden their horizons in the sense that they learn the connection between the English-speaking countries.