Page 155 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

139 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Fig. 1 Research Methodology

Findings

Culture teaching was limited to comparing, contrasting or giving information when there was an
‘opportunity’ to do it. The cultural dimension, as expressed by most of the participants, was not
planned. This may have to do with the teachers’ understanding of culture. The content knowledge
that is going to be evaluated in the exam and the mandatory nature of these courses seem to be two
restricted factors that define the teaching practices in the classroom as they expressed it in the first
and second interviews.

During the second round of interviews, it was significantly observable the tendency of the teachers
to generalise information about their own country. No much time was allotted to raise awareness of
the differences within the learners themselves who had different origins. In most classes, teachers
elicited information from the whole class as an introduction of the topic, generally the interaction
was that of teacher to the whole class or teacher to a specific learner. They recognised the need to
be more informed about the world changes and the learners’ own context to make communication
more effective and meaningful. The teaching practices demonstrated that language was used to talk
about some cultural aspects of specific national groups. Teachers seemed to recognise that role of
culture in the topics and contents of the syllabus; however, their approach to culture teaching lacked
methodological principles.

The textbook and the programme of these courses may seem to be guiding most of the teachers’
activities despite the lack of context. Teachers found in the textbook a source of obtaining cultural
information about how “other people live or eat”. The cultures referred in the classroom where ba-
sically those referred in the book and the teachers’ own experiences. The USA was the most pre-
dominant English-speaking country used to exemplify and discuss similarities and differences with