The teaching of cultural awareness as a skill

Abstract

The article discusses the inseparability of culture and language teaching and explores some problems that teachers of English as a foreign language face. Incorporating culture into language teaching contributes significantly to developing students’ practical English skills, building their awareness and facilitating cross-cultural communication. The article argues in favor of teaching of cultural awareness as a skill, as opposed to teaching cultural information. It also emphasizes the importance of integrating students’ own culture into English language teaching; The data that the authors have collected by conducting surveys among one hundred first and second year students of Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University are presented. The authors of the article have suggested a framework for organizing instruction around cultural themes. The framework consists of four objectives and can serve as a useful resource for teachers as they plan cultural instruction and design cultural activities or create their own teaching materials. The article argues that local culture should be taught together with the target one and suggests ways of how cultural goals can be infused into a proficiency-oriented curriculum. The suggested techniques integrate culture with language study and are interesting and enjoyable for students. Ideas on how to infuse cultural goals into language teaching are offered. Explanations of culture capsules, intercultural connections, and critical incidents are given in the article.