' culture, 'common' here understood as the everyday lives of ordinary people. Foreign language teaching in primary and lower secondary education has in recent years focused primarily on the latter.
During the 20th century it has become possible to envisage a separation between culture and the way we live, while as before the two were not only interrelated, but also interdependent. People were born into a culture and stayed there. But for the first time, historically, the 20th century regards identity as something we can create for ourselves;
we have, in fact, a choice of culture. Young people are not only aware of this, but also frequent users of the opportunity to choose between different cultures or subcultures.
Culture can be seen as the identity common to a society or a group of people within that society, but it is also the way members of the society regard this common identity. If we only regard culture as something that 'can be found out there', e.g. paintings, football, literature, food, etc., we will tend to view different cultures or subcultures as objects from a distance. But culture is more than artefacts that 'can be found out there', it is also the glasses through which we perceive the world around us and the language we use to express the culture of which we are an integral part. We are influenced by the culture(s) we are socialized into, and simultaneously we influence that culture. This is a dialectic process, and culture must be seen as a dynamic forc英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】e in continuous flux, not a static entity. The process does not only take place within our own culture; a similar process constitutes the encounter with a foreign culture.
Language as culture
Language or text is probably the most influential factor in the dynamic interrelationship between cultures. If culture is not only what we see, but also the way we see it and the language we use to express it, culture cannot merely be regarded as a body of knowledge which can be transmitted to the learners by the teacher or the textbook. Culture can be seen as 'a web of spoken and written texts, a linguistic landscape consisting of an indefinite number of texts'. (Time 1989) Language is not only communication, but equally important, it is an expression of culture. It differs from other artefacts of culture in that it can be used to express itself about itself. Through teaching and through textbook tasks the visibility of language and text should be preserved. By that I mean that all aspects of the written or spoken text must be 'seen' and not made invisible, which often happens in the classroom when one only concentrates on the subject-matter of the text or on specific linguistic features. The text as a whole, as an entity of form and content, is the carrier and expression of culture. This requires authentic text, text in the widest sense of the word: i.e. spoken texts, written texts of different genres, paintings, etc.
Knowledge (savoir)
Cultural awareness is based on kn
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