Intersecting Language and Culture in the FL Classroom

Abstract

This paper addresses the intersection of language and culture in the context of foreign language (FL) instruction. It is widely accepted that successful foreign language learning requires acquiring cultural competency corresponding to the language being taught, leading to the challenge of how to teach culture, what aspects of the culture or cultures in some cases. This paper contains discussions regarding the problem and offers suggestions for modeling communicative competence that is culturally relevant, the importance of “teaching culture,” difficulties of teaching culture with language instruction, theories of communicative competence, and model elements to create a new meta-linguistic model.