Investigating the Influence of Culture on Teaching a Foreign Language

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the effect of culture on teaching a foreign language. Language and culture are two concepts that cannot be set apart since they are linked to each other and therefore learning a foreign language inevitably means learning its culture. Teaching a foreign language is not only teaching structures, a new vocabulary, and expressions but mainly incorporates cultural elements which are not integrated with language itself. One’s grammatical and lingual proficiency of a given language merely does not ensure the skillful and communicative competence of the foreign language learner. Therefore, learning the culture of the target language is an obligatory ought. Researchers have found that teachers often lack a profound understanding of the place of foreign culture in foreign language teaching. Foreign language is also influenced by global factors and the place of foreign culture is often not substantiated in language teacher education policy. Accordingly this research suggests the need to integrate the foreign culture into foreign language classroom. The descriptive analytic method was adopted in conducting the study. A questionnaire and interview were chosen as tools for data collection. The questionnaire was distributed to (120) language teachers teaching at secondary schools in Khartoum state. An interview was given to (5) experts. The spss program (Statistical package for Social Sciences was used for data analysis. The statistical analysis for the results of the questionnaire showed that all teachers strongly agreed that culture has positive impact on foreign language teaching. They believe that culture teaching in foreign language classroom, makes communication successful. The results of the interview also showed that the experts have positive attitudes towards culture teaching in foreign language classroom. Based on the findings, the study recommended that culture should be integrated into foreign language classroom. The researcher suggests further studies in this field.