CCU 6

Citation: Cakir, Ismail. (2006). Developing cultural awareness in foreign language teaching, turkish online journal of distance education, 7(3): 154-162. 

The main purpose of this article journal has been to provide necessary information for the foreign language teachers and learners so that they can establish a good connection with the target language and its culture. Based on this article journal, I got some information that I might be useful later.

Developing cultural-awareness in Engling as Foreign Language classroom is important because every culture has its own cultural norms for conversation and these norms differ from one culture to another, some of the norms can be completely different and conflict with other cultures’ norms. Consequently, communication problems may arise among speakers who do not know or share the norms of other culture.

To avoid or solve the communication problems in the target language in the EFL classrooms, the students have to know and understand the culture of the target language and the teacher should be more understand to the students’ weaknesses so that they will not lose their motivation.

In developing cultural awareness in the classroom, the teacher should help the students differenciate between the cultural norms, beliefs, or habits of the majority within the speech community and the individual or group deviations from some of these norms. The students should be able to discuus their own culture with their foreign-speaking friends at the same time that they are provided with a real experiential content. Language teaching is a long process in which performance is not absolute so that the teacher should not expect that all of the students will acquire perfect native like behaviour.