"The significance of identity: An integral approach to the teaching of language and culture."

MELINA PORTO

Ediciones Al Margen en colaboración con la Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

Lugar: La Plata; Año: 2001 p. 72

987-9248-52-X

The advent of communicative approaches has led teachers to embrace the notion of communicative competence without critical appraisal.  Teaching communicatively guaranteed success.  Yet, the fact that there is considerable less agreement on the  extent to which the development of communicative abilities in learners is a realistic goal has been a source of growing discontent.  The problem is rendered more opaque by the fact that some issues have been entirely ignored or, at best, not carefully examined. Dissent has originated in regard to one of such relegated issues, namely cultural awareness.  Passionate positions for and against culture in the foreign classroom have proliferated.  What I seek to do in this paper is to explore ways of reconciling these perspectives realistically.  If teachers are to take the idea of communicative competence seriously and, most importantly, if they are to critically inspect the feasibility of developing communicative competence effectively in learners, the question of culture appears to be unavoidable.  This paper is an attempt to work towards a proposal to integrate the teaching of language and culture in a realistic approach which is not only educationally valid but also pedagogically sound. In order to pursue the inquiry, the unavoidable starting point is a careful examination of what the notion of communicative competence entails.  Section I considers the issue of cultural awareness as inevitable within such notion.  Section II explores the foundations on which an approach to the teaching of language and culture may rest.  Finally, Section III constitutes a step towards a pedagogic proposal to effectively implement the integration of language and culture in the classroom.