Teaching a language has to be complementary with the study of culture, knowing the culture from that specific language makes us objective and gives us a specific cultural perception in order to avoid misunderstandings and hostility for those foreign people. In this way teaching is not only about grammar and structures but it also goes deeper in idioms, expressions and customs of those that use that language we are learning.
As culture being the primary subject of discussion is necessary to define what is, and according to Chahak and Basirizadeh (2012) are “…patterns in the behavior of specific given people the ones who had to have the ability to transmit those patterns to the succeeding generations”. In this way we can infer that culture responds to the way of acting in a specific land and it is limited in order to satisfied basic physical and psychological needs, and also by gender, age and other specific characteristics of the people on a particular area, that starts being tough in the family and is reinforced in the school life and society in general.
It is crystal clear that when we are learning about culture in another language makes us be aware on our own culture, their values because language is a reflection of that, in that order we make comparisons among them, but Tang (1999) says that “in order to speak well we have to be able to think in that language”; that considers to change our minds letting go our own culture and values for a moment and replace it with the foreign culture. This can cause some changes in our behaviors that can be noticed by our equals of our home culture and as a result make them alienate us, to block us because we are leaving on a side our primary culture. That’s why the refusal to acquire these different points of view and other forms of manner in our lives, it causes us a psychological inhibition to show others what we have learnt and know about English, in this case. But somehow we have to make our students respectful of other behaviors because that’s what culture is about the way people do things in their own coherence.
There are four main reasons of teaching culture for communicative purposes, not only to fill up the goals of communicating but also acquiring social culture knowledge of the second language and they are: develop the communicative skills, use of more authentic language, motivation to learn language and develop intercultural and international language.
Neff and Rucynski (2013) said that culture is not only considered the fifth skill in teaching a language but it is considered as a currently, important and necessary part of the background knowledge that all of us have to know about. For example; in grammar we cannot translate all the words exactly because sometimes don’t have a logical explanation; there are some expressions and idioms that cannot be translated. For an American native speaker “break a leg” means to wish good luck for someone in a task or specifically in a test. A foreign can considered this as an offense because that person doesn’t have the background knowledge called culture.
Peterson and Coltrane (2003) reaffirm that “…students cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs” that’s why with the study of other languages; students gain a knowledge and understanding of the cultures that use that language. So is highly recommended to incorporate culture into second language teaching and recommends strategies for infusing cultural issues in classroom instruction.
It can be thought that the best way to learn about culture is in a few lessons about celebrations, folk songs, food or costumes of the area in which the language is spoken but it is considered that the best way to learn about aspects of culture is talking directly with native speakers or putting ourselves in their environment but this is not available for all of us, so instead of that is proposed for Chahak and Basirizadeh (2012) to have the role playing and acting dialogues as the primary activities to develop in our classroom. The role playing is considered for Bandura as the first activity or game made by children to acquire knowledge about professions using the imitation to do it. So in role playing we can imitate the foreign speakers, their expressions, their intonations to speak and others aspects of communication to acquire their culture.
In addition to this Peterson and Coltrane (2003) said that is not a matter of which strategy to use instead of having authentic material from the country of which language we are studying. He recommends films, news broadcasts, and television shows; Web sites; and photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials originally taken for the country referred. The most commonly used in our university have been literary texts and films. The first one to obtain a formal language and notions of writing, grammar and structure and the second one to achieve the right pronunciation and more focused on slams, idioms and informal language according to the movie we watch. The most commonly used in some academy of languages are exchanges students where those students through speeches of their experience share authentic insights about the home and cultural life of native speakers of the language.
As we were saying previously language reflects specific aspects of the personality and manners are involved in this, we cannot express the same way to a friend in comparison to a teacher, but maybe another languages don’t make that distinction or maybe they do, that’s why, in order to be polite we need to learn about the right way to express ourselves having the culture as a guidance to act, we need to considered what to say to whom and in which situation. For instance language learners need to be aware, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. We should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in our own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. We have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
As a matter of fact teaching culture will made us be more aware on politeness on ourselves for others, it also will made us be more comfortable in communicating effectively with native speakers, in this way the communication act will be “smoother”. It is necessary that both learners and teachers of a second language to understand cultural differences, recognize openly that people in the world are not all the same beneath the skin and in that way considered culture as the fifth and main skill that has to be taught in our daily activities in the classroom.
