Teachers of world languages today have an unprecedented range of materials to select from on the Internet to introduce their students to the people and places that are home to the languages they are studying. Before students embark on a study abroad program, they have access to all of the texts, media, reference materials, and even opportunities for interaction with the cultures that they will visit and study. The material capacity offered by the Internet for learning about people and their culture lays bare the limited knowledge of most teachers and materials developers about how to teach culture. Todayâs resources are an embarrassment of riches in the face of limited professional understanding of culture teaching in first year foreign language courses, but the question of how to teach culture in foreign language courses predates the Internet. Instead, the teaching of culture has been a topic of critical importance to the profession for over fifty years.
This chapter explains how my research investigating culture teaching in French language textbooks fits into this larger interest in the profession. It presents the background for my research by explaining the rationale for studying how culture is presented in foreign language textbooks, justifying my choice to focus on cultural narrative and politics and defining textbook analysis as an area of inquiry in applied linguistics. The first part examines the rationale for studying culture through textbook analysis and sketches the goals of culture teaching in foreign language pedagogy as they have been discussed in the USA, which is the context for my research. I show the continuous quest to improve culture teaching and suggest that textbook analysis is needed to connect teachers and materials developers to the academic discussion of culture teaching. The second part of the chapter introduces my particular area of interest, cultural narrative, and explains the basis for a politically informed cultural narrative as a central area of interest for beginning-level textbooks. The third part lays out the methodological implications for textbook analysis as an area of applied linguistics that intends to offer results of practical utility.
1 Why Study the Presentation of Culture in Textbooks?
What and how students should be taught about culture has been central to the discussion of foreign language teaching for decades. This discussion takes place at multiple levels from theoretical consideration of culture and meaning, the development of conceptual frameworks to inform curricula, and the practical decisions made in the creation of textbooks. Regardless of all efforts toward formulating culture theory and curriculum frameworks, the course textbook remains the cornerstone of the language course at the beginning level. It provides the basis for the syllabus, the springboard for other activities and discussion, guidance for new teachers, and socialization into the practice of language teaching and learning for students. Authors and editors of language textbooks select cultural content that provides an important starting point for students to construct images of the places where the language is spoken and to forecast key aspects of culture that they may study in greater depth in the future when their language abilities increase. Textbook cultural content also provides a starting point from which teachers add explanations in class and build additional materials into the curriculum. Because of the critical role of the textbook in foreign language teaching, it is deserving of careful analysis.
1.1 Culture Teaching Goals in Foreign Language Teaching
Foreign language textbooks reflect the goals of the profession to teach culture as part of the introductory courses. Despite the variation in how this goal is approached in specific textbooks, the commitment of authors to the teaching of language and culture has been evident since the 1960s at least. For example, in the 1968 textbook Basic French: An Oral Approach, this statement about the interconnection of language and culture appears in the introduction that lays out the goals and approach of the textbook:
It is the intention of this book to provide a practicable introduction to contemporary French. As students deal most readily with situations familiar to them, the material is presented first in the form of Conversations situated generally in the university environment, and which have to do with the problems and interests of young people attending the university of Paris. Many of the Conversations will thus lead naturally to discussions on French science, art, education, and other aspects of French culture. The vocabulary tends to be that of the modern spoken language, sanctioned by good usage (Mainous, 1968, p. v).
In the 1960s, the culture aspect of the teaching goals in this French textbook was clear even though the idea of pluricentrism of cultural content had not yet affected French foreign language textbooks in the USA. By the 2000s, French textbooks still stated the intent to teach culture, but they did so from a pluricentric view. In Vis-Ă -vis: Beginning French, published in 2004, the authors included culture of the Francophone world in their statement of the main goal: âTo promote a balanced four-skills approach to learning French throughout a variety of listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities, while introducing students to the richness and diversity of the Francophone worldâ (Amon, Muyskens, & Omaggio Hadley, 2004, p. XVIII). The authors included a detailed explanation about how students were supposed to learn the cultural aspects that they had chosen to focus on:
The cultures of the French-speaking world are an integral part of every page of Vis-à -vis: Beginning French. In particular, they are prominently displayed in the central Correspondance section of each chapter. Located between Leçons 2 and 3, Correspondance brings to life the immense richness and variety of French and Francophone cultures in a single, easy-to-use section. (Amon et al., 2004, p. XVII)
The goal statements in the textbooks typically reflect contemporary professional perspectives as stated in the Standards of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). A synopsis of the most recent version of the official standards document, the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, summarizes the five goal areas:
These Standards are open to interpretation as to the way that they encompass culture learning. Lange (1999) argued that âculture permeates all of the standards, [and] that it appears in any of the topics related to Communication, in any of the disciplines suggested in Connections, and in any use of language in Communitiesâ (p. 59). Three of the standards direct teachers to attend to developing studentsâ cultural competence. Culture, comparisons, and communities all indicate that students should learn to âinteract with culture competenceâ (ACTFL, n.d.). Schulz (2006) sees culture additionally in the communication standard: âCultural knowledge and culture-appropriate communication skills play an important role in all three modes of communication: interpersonal (implying, of course, culturally appropriate interaction); interpretive (implying sufficient knowledge of the target culture to understand culture-specific meanings); and presentational (implying selection of culture-appropriate contents and use of style and register, that is, the conscious or subconscious understanding of what can be said to whom, how, and in what circumstances)â (Siskin, 1998, p. 10). What appears in the textbooks is in part the result of such interpretations of the Standards, but the Standards are only one source of input for textbook producers who are influenced by factors such as international intellectual trends, business calculations, teachersâ judgments, and studentsâ reactions.
Before the 1960s, professional inquiry into culture teaching in textbooks in the USA was extremely rare. For example, only one textbook analysis study appeared in The Modern Language Journal before the 1960s (Reinhardt, 1928). Risager (2007) attributes the growth of modern culture teaching in the USA in the 1960s to Ladoâs (1957) book about teaching language and culture. From that point researchers began to define and theorize culture in foreign language teaching in the USA, primarily from the perspective of cultural anthropology, which highlighted âthe need to make visible the cultural content of language teachingâ (Risager, 2007, p. 36). The American anthropological perspective values the language as it is used by real people rather than the study of the classic literature, and accordingly, at least in theory, would be open to a polycentric presentation of the culture of the people who speak the target language. In the 1970s, many American foreign language teachers became aware of the distinction between what was called large âCâ and small âcâ culture. The former refers to the canon of the traditional art, literary, and intellectual history of a people. The latter refers to the everyday way of doing things and developing relationships among people in society. The small âcâ anthropological approach that sees culture as embedded in the everyday practices of people was preferred in the USA, where the emphasis was on teaching everyday cultural practices.
The shift toward polycentrism in French language teaching in the USA is evident in the professional discussion in the 1980s when Ogden (1981) criticized French textbooks because they presented French ânot just as the language of France, but sometimes, one feels, as the language of Paris aloneâ (p. 1). Almost two decades later, Siskin (1998) offered a similar analysis, suggesting that Spanish was taking the lead over French in popularity for foreign language study in the USA because of studentsâ perception that the former is spoken widely throughout the world. He argued that French appeared to be perceived as less useful because it is âpredominantly associated with France, and perhaps QuĂ©bec; however, its importance as a significant world language, which is spoken on five continents, is largely ignoredâ (Siskin, 1998, p. 260). These types of statements by professionals in French language teaching reveal shifting views, but with respect to what is actually taught in textbooks, empirically based studies of actual textbooks are few.
To bring the idea of pluricentrism closer to more tangible goals for teaching and materials development, the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) and the National Commission on Cultural Competence developed a monograph entitled Acquiring Cross-Cultural Competence: Four Stages for Students of French (Singerman, 1996). As the title indicates, four levels of competence are delineated for conceptualizing the culture-related abilities that students are expected to develop through the study of foreign language and, therefore, what should be taught. These abilities are defined as consisting of two dimensions: understanding culture and knowledge of French-speaking societies, the latter of which includes France and major French-speaking regions where French was the language of the European conquerors and settlers: North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, The Caribbean, and North Africa. The AATF document recommended that students should know specific aspects about France in addition to one other French-speaking area. Students should also know what other areas belong to the French-speaking world. Further, the document contained categories of cultural knowledge including communication in cultural context, the value system, social patterns and conventions, social institutions, geography and the environment, history, literature, and the arts.
The clearest message to emanate from these standards and their interpretations is that the need for improvement in culture teaching is continuous. There is a constant quest to better understand and define the goals of culture learning in order to improve the teaching of culture in foreign language in the USA.
1.2 The Need to Improve Culture Teaching
The continuous quest for improvement within the profession was amplified in the first decade of the new century with the public attention attracted by the intercultural and linguistic dimensions of 9/11. Reflections on the events of 9/11 in the USA resulted in connections being drawn between foreign language teaching and national politics, perhaps most prominently through Bushâs National Security Language Initiative. In this context of heightened national attention for foreign language teaching, a report was conceived by the Modern Language Association (MLA). It recommended curricular reform to âsituate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural framesâ (MLA, 2007, p. 4). The MLA (2007) report defines the goal of foreign language study as developing students who are âeducated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural competenceâ (p. 3). It asserted that âThis kind of foreign language education systematically teaches differences in meaning, mentality, and worldview as expressed in American English and in the target language.â (p. 4)
In order to better understand and improve the cultural dimensions of foreign language teaching, the MLA report strongly recommended that the profession rethink the way languages are taught at universities:
The kind of curricular reform we suggest will situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames within the context of humanistic learning. We expect that more students will continue language study if courses incorporate cultural inquiry at all levels and if advanced courses address more subject areas. This means faculty members will have the opportunity to bring into the classroom the full breadth of their knowledge of the society about which they teach, including that societyâs languages and language variants, literatures, and cultures. Many colleges and universities have made a successful transition toward this broad understandi...