ABSTRACT
At present, there is a widespread theoretical and practical view that conceives language teaching as part of a cultural process, which is why certain aspects of the target-language culture are included in the teaching of Portuguese (PFL) and Spanish (SFL) as foreign languages. With a socio-anthropological conception of culture as our starting point, our aim is to understand how target-language culture-related content is used in PFL and SFL lessons, specifically in disciplines related to language, such as: grammar, phonetics, phonology and applied linguistics. In order to do so, we performed a descriptive study of PFL and SFL teaching practices at the School of Humanities and Education Sciences, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, by means of semi-structured interviews. We enquired about the way in which teachers use culture-related content in their lessons, the contributions that they consider most relevant, the resources they use and the pedagogical methods they adopt. Our goal is to make progress in an empirical study about the effective relations built by teachers between language and culture and the productivity of this approach in their teaching and pedagogical practices.
Keywords:
Foreign language teaching; Culture; Spanish; Portuguese; Teaching practice