Undergraduate Student Interests and the Cultural Content of Textbooks for German

Abstract

more prominent in the profession of foreign language teaching. Especially influential were the works of Nelson Brooks and H. Ned Seelye, who triggered a vivid discussion in almost all leading journals in the field. While overwhelming agreement exists that culture must be a vital part of the foreign language class, because a language is inseparable from its culture, the discussion centered around the following questions: 1) What is culture? 2) Which aspects of culture should be part of the foreign language curriculum? 3) How can these aspects be taught?2 Which aspect of culture a foreign language teacher considers worthwhile teaching depends upon the general theoretical and methodological approach that he or she takes. Hand in hand with the Grammar Translation Method, for instance, went the teaching of achievements and achievers in literature, music, art, history, politics fields that are widely referred to as components of capital-C Culture (hereafter: Culture). Especially in the wake of the teaching for Communicative Competence and the Proficiency Approach, however, the perception of culture has been broadened. As a consequence, small-c culture (hereafter: culture) moved into the center of ttention of the foreign language curriculu : if the student is expected to function in the foreign language culture, she has to be fam liar with everyday life, habits, values, thoughts, beliefs, food, dress, etc., of the people.3 Both of these two extremes and a variety of other approaches are reflected in the type of topics that foreign language teachers now use in the classroom and that actually appear in textbooks. Textbook authors and foreign language teachers also have made a choice in the sequence of introduction of topics: they believe it necessary to have a thorough knowledge of the language and of the patterns of everyday life before the student is able to appreciate literature and the fine arts (Omaggio: p. 363). Therefore, most recent textbooks appear to concentrate on culture in the initial phase of language instruction (first semester and part of second semester), while Culture topics are introduced later (usually during the second year of instruction). Although most textbooks published in this decade dedicate considerable space to culture and topics, how much of a variety of topics should be included in a textbook and how to control for the quality of presentation are still issues under discussion. In fact, the notion of cultural bias has been brought up in connection with how textbooks handle infor-