AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE CULTURAL AWARENESS OF HUNGARIAN STUDENTS CONCERNING THE UK AND THE USA

Abstract

This paper presents a complex study highlighting the role of cultural awareness concerning the English and American cultures among students, and making an attempt at determining to what extent these cultural elements are known among students of English and Translation Studies in Hungary. The first stage of the research was a process of finding out about previous research and then selecting British and American cultural items that might be relevant for Hungarian students. These are presented as a list in the introduction. Ten instances, where the semantic and cultural meanings are ambiguous or misleading for Hungarian language learners, have been singled out for further analysis in the second section, which also gives information about these cultural and lexical items and the possible sources for student errors. This section also offers information about a survey conducted among a group of students of English and Translation Studies, underlining the need for intercultural education in both courses. More information including students’ personal insights can be found on the beliefs and perceptions of students of English about language and culture in a previous paper (Szele, 2019), and some results of a cultural survey similar to the present one in another (Szele, 2020). The third section of this paper offers a conclusion, suggesting that cultural awareness and good language skills go hand in hand, and both need more focus in language teaching in Hungary.