Culture and Language Learning

by | Apr 14, 2020 | Articles

When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language.
It’s hard to understand one’s culture without accessing its language directly.And learning a new language, doesn’t just involve you in learning the alphabet, the word arrangement, the accent, and the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific society’s customs and behavior. When learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the language belongs be referenced, because language is very much deep-rooted in the culture.

 

Because no textbook perfectly combines language and culture education, teachers need to build up supplemental activities to make culture learning a consistent fundamental of their language classes. Ideally, these activities will reflect real language use while providing the instructor the opportunity to assess the learners’ efforts.

Also, the variety of cuisines around the world show different cultural distinctiveness. Language and food are such key elements of a culture that often they become interconnected; that is why according to surveys, one of the first word/phrases a student learn in languages is in relation with food, such as “tayeb (Arabic), sedap (Malaysia), sarap(Philippines) , delicioso (Spanish)” , etc.

So, next time you eat on something, have a quick think about how it is used in your language, you might be surprised by how much you apply the word without realizing.

All there is left to say is, Bon Appétit!