posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Justus Liebig University (JLU) Giessen, Germany
In the current age of globalization, migration and digital communication, developing intercultural and/or transcultural communicative competence has become a priority aim in university and school education. Over the past years and decades, ‘remarkable progress’ has been made in international research in terms of understanding culture and how it is encoded in language. However, looking back at the 6th UCCLLT conference held in San Diego in April this year once again (see my previous post), I feel that official guideline recommendations on ‘teaching culture’ in the foreign/second language classroom, issued by the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL 1996), the Council of Europe (2001), the Modern Language Association (2007), and over here in Germany (KMK 2003; the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs) are partially unknown to interested researchers, teachers, and students depending on where they live, work, or study.
Inspired by Claire Kramsch’s brilliant keynote speech delivered a few weeks ago in San Diego, I would like to draw your attention to the important publications mentioned above (linked to this blog on the sidebar to make them more easily accessible). Since culture and language integrated learning in FL/SL classrooms is of interest to reseachers, frontline educators, and univerity students world-wide, I would very much get to know more about the current state of discussion on teaching language and culture in integrated ways in other countries and what teachers actually do to promote culture-sensitive learning in everyday practice around the globe.
