Tích hợp các hoạt động bổ trợ dựa trên nền tảng văn hóa trong giảng dạy tiếng Anh không chuyên ở trường Đại học Sư phạm – Đại học Thái Nguyên

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Minh Tạp chí KHOA HỌC & CÔNG NGHỆ 87(11): 119 - 124

Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu – Đại học Thái Nguyên 119 http://www.lrc-tnu.edu.vn

SUPPLEMENTAL CULTURE-BASED ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

Nguyen Thi Hong Minh*

College of Education - TNU

ABSTRACT

Culture is a particularly important component of foreign language learning and teaching, which

provides the learner with an understanding of the country, people and custom of the language that

they are learning; thence, their love and motivation for the language learning can be improved and

promoted. However, due to a number of reasons, teaching culture cannot be directly taught for

non-majors of English at Thai Nguyen University of Education (TUE). Wishing to bring the

culture of English-speaking countries to the learner, the author has been applied supplemental

culture-based activities in her English class as a way of building a bridge between the student and

the English culture.

Key words: culture, foreign language learning and teaching, supplemental culture-based activities,

non-majors of English.

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INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, researchers declare that foreign

language learning involves not only

grammatical competence, communicative

competence and language proficiency but also

a certain features and characteristics of the

culture. There has been a shared belief in the

society of EFL teaching that cultural

competence, i.e., the knowledge of the

conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of

meaning of another society, is indisputably an

integral part of foreign language learning

[10]. This assumption seems to fit well with

Bachman‟s [1] model of language competence –

that language competence comprises not only

language knowledge but also pragmatic

competence, of which cultural knowledge is a

vital component.

A question arises for Vietnamese teachers

who are in charge of non-English majors that

how culture can be taught to these learners

who usually do not have close contact with

native speakers of English and have little

opportunity to discover how the speakers

think, feel and interact with others in their

own peer group. That how we can stimulate

their curiosity about the target culture when,

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sometimes, they do not even have sufficient

time to learn formal properties of the

language is also another problem concerning

the teachers of in Vietnam.

CULTURE TEACHING IN FOREIGN

LANGUAGE LEARNING

The idea of teaching culture is nothing new to

any English language teachers because while

we teach the language we automatically teach

the culture [2]. Additionally, the teaching of

culture, as many authors suggest, should take

place within the normal language classroom

and begin on the very first day of class and

should continue everyday thereafter.

Why teaching culture

As it is previously mentioned, there is a close

relationship between language and culture.

Thus, in order to communicate well, people

must not only be fluent in the language

spoken, but also aware of the hidden part of

culture, such as communication style, beliefs,

attitudes, values, perceptions. As Bennete and

Fantini state [7], it is obviously clear that „the

study of language cannot divorce from the

study of culture, and vice versa. The

wherewithal to function in another cultural

system requires both prowess in the language

and knowledge of the culture.‟ Sharing the