Foreign Languages: Communication, Culture, and Global Understanding

The Value of Foreign Languages in Communication and Culture

A language is the expression of a whole culture; it is a way of understanding the world and organizing relationships among people. Hence, learning a foreign language means learning both a linguistic code and cultural elements. Foreign language teaching must introduce students to the most outstanding social and cultural aspects of a country and help them develop attitudes of tolerance and respect. As stated by Crystal, if a student perceives a country or culture to be unpleasant for any reason, the negative attitude is likely to influence language learning achievement.

This topic is of paramount importance since effective communication in a foreign language is more than elaborating grammatically correct sentences; it also involves the appreciation and respect of its speakers and their culture. The Foreign Language Curriculum for Primary Education emphasizes the significance of this topic by including in its objectives the value of the foreign language as a vehicle of communication and understanding among people with diverse origins and cultures.

Why Learn Foreign Languages at School?

Learning a foreign language is necessary nowadays. According to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, Foreign Language Teaching must be increased and diversified. If possible, children must learn more than one language. There are several reasons why foreign languages must be promoted at school:

• Sociological reasons: Learning FL allows students to access a wider range of professions, to improve their channels of information, and to communicate with people from different countries.
• Educational reasons: Learning foreign languages will deepen the knowledge of the mother tongue and improve students’ general communicative competence.
• Cognitive reasons: Children discover that what they have learned in their mother tongue can be expressed similarly in other languages. This develops their cognitive capacity.
• Linguistic reasons: Children are better prepared to learn a language than adults at an auditory and phonological level; their oral understanding and pronunciation are better.
• Affective reasons: Children’s spontaneity is very useful when they are learning a foreign language.

Current Language Families

• Indo-European Languages: Descend from a common linguistic trunk whose influence expanded from India to Europe. They are divided into twelve branches, being the most important:
  • The Germanic Branch: Includes languages such as English, German, or Dutch.
  • The Italic Branch: These languages are all derived from Latin, like Spanish, French, or Italian.
• There are other Linguistic Trunks nowadays, like Caucasian or Semitic.
• Other Languages such as Japanese or Korean do not have similarities with other languages.

The existence of a common linguistic trunk makes it easier for children to learn foreign languages, since they can apply the knowledge of their mother tongue to the learning of languages that have similar features.

Creation of an International Language

Language is the main means of human communication, although it also constitutes the main barrier. The existence of so many languages prevents people from understanding each other. However, a common language is necessary in a global world like ours. Three possible solutions have been suggested for the creation of an international language: The adoption of a dead language, for example Latin; the creation of an artificial language, such as Esperanto; or the use of an existing language as a lingua franca.

English as a Lingua Franca

A lingua franca is the use of a common language by speakers of different mother tongues. History demonstrates that there have been precedents in the idea of using a foreign language to exchange ideas. In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, Latin was the language used. From the 18th century onwards, French was used in international diplomacy, and since the 19th century, English has progressively gained status as an international language, and nowadays its hegemony is unquestionable.

The importance of English as a lingua franca is demonstrated in many fields: politics, economy, culture, sports, education, technology…

• The UNESCO estimates that English is spoken in more than 60 countries and it is well-established on all five continents. More than 750 million people speak English.
• English is the language of the most important world institutions, like UNESCO.
• English is the language of business; it is widely used in literature, cinema, music, television, and radio, and it is also the language of scientific and technological advances.
• Millions of children in the world study English in Primary Education.
• It has been estimated that about 20,000 English words spread into other languages every year.

From the point of view of international communication, the substitution of languages with small expansion by languages widely spoken is a cultural advantage. Linguistic minorities need to learn an international language for their integration, so this fact may also be considered another cultural advantage.

For linguists, on the contrary, the disappearance of a language implies the loss of useful materials for its study. But this disappearance means something more important at a social and human level; it is the loss of a way of thinking and interpreting the world. So, the loss of a language cannot be compensated by the expansion of any other.

However, there are many reasons to support the existence of a lingua franca:

• It facilitates international relationships at social, economic, cultural, and political levels.
• It favors tolerance and respect towards a different culture. Learning a language broadens the mind and helps children to overcome their innate egocentrism.
• It increases self-confidence.
• It increases respect for the mother tongue.

Interest in Linguistic Diversity Through Foreign Languages and Culture

It has been demonstrated that language learning promotes understanding, tolerance, and respect for the cultural identity, rights, and values of others. Foreign language learning also broadens our minds because we encounter other ways of thinking and helps children overcome egocentrism, which is typical of this age. In this sense, foreign language teaching has an essential role in preparing our pupils to cope with an ever-changing environment. It is also adequate to say that learning a foreign language is one way to fully appreciate one’s own language.

On the other hand, foreign language learning fosters the development of attitudes that are very important to a child’s education:

• Interest in traveling to places where the Foreign Language is spoken.
• Reading information about the people and habits of those countries.
• Interest in traditions and habits of any other different culture.
• Acceptance of people coming from other countries (emigrants).
• Interest in events happening outside their countries.

To realize the value of language as communication, learners must have the experience of communicating in that language. The Communicative Approach is a method that emphasizes communication and real-life situations. The goal is for students to communicate their needs and thoughts without worrying about perfect grammar.

Communicative activities are tasks and exercises that students carry out for real communication. They focus more on the message than on the linguistic features of the language. According to the Communicative Approach, the practice of communicative activities will produce an unconscious learning of the structures of the language. Some examples of oral communicative activities are information-gap activities, role-play, problem-solving, or communicative games. To practice written communication, we can ask our students to write letters, greeting cards, notes, recipes, e-mails, or fill in forms.

Communicating in a language is a complex activity that implies using the following skills appropriately: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Our current educational system establishes that learning a language in Primary Education has a practical objective: to be able to communicate. Therefore, the four skills must be taught from a communicative point of view; students must have a motive for listening, speaking, reading, or writing. The best way to do this is to use the language as an instrument of communication from the very beginning, and teach the language in a natural way.

Socio-Cultural Aspects of the English Language

The main purpose of teaching languages is that students acquire communicative competence. One of the competences derived from this is socio-cultural competence. Students must be aware of the cultural background of the language they are learning in order to communicate appropriately. In fact, students cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs.

Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how communication progresses, but it also helps to determine how people encode messages and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent or interpreted. Culture is the basis of communication.

In addition to enriching communicative competence, socio-cultural competence can also lead to empathy and respect towards different cultures. The aim of teaching culture is to develop students’ curiosity towards the target language and culture and their users, helping them to make comparisons among cultures.

In Primary Education, the teacher will give information that is close to the children’s world so that they become interested in the new culture. Pupils will often learn a range of details about the target culture, especially everyday life, songs, rhymes, stories, special festivals, and celebrations. In addition to these aspects of daily life, certain geographical or historical aspects may appear naturally in textbooks and other materials. These are some of the aspects that we can work on in class:

• Geographical Aspects: The teaching of geographical aspects includes the knowledge of the main English-speaking countries, capitals and cities, weather, population… These resources can be used to teach geographical aspects: Maps (locate the main countries where English is an official language, as well as important cities), Flags (match nationalities and countries with their flag), Puzzles (of Great Britain or the USA by cutting its parts into pieces, so that students can join them later), Listenings (listening to a weather forecast while completing a map).
• Historical Aspects: In Primary, children can learn about historical characters or events, like Henry VIII and his wives, Queen Victoria and British Imperialism, the great writer William Shakespeare, the American War of Independence… We can use comics, texts, songs, videos, and films of historical background.
• Cultural Aspects: Cultural aspects in Primary Education include a variety of topics: Courtesy formulas and their use in each situation, Education (Types of schools, uniforms, subjects, classrooms…), Food and drink (English breakfast, pancakes, tea…), Houses (Children can learn about the different types of houses like detached, semi-detached, and terraced houses, their characteristics and distribution), Money (Children must be familiar with British and American money, and with the value in Euros), Names (It’s important that they know a variety of Anglo-Saxon names, not just the most frequent), Festivals (Children must know about traditional festivals such as Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, Easter, St Valentine’s Day… as well as vocabulary related to them: cracker, Christmas card, candle, Easter egg…), Music (we can use different types of music: tailor-made songs, popular and traditional songs, or international hits), and Monuments (Students will have seen in movies many monuments of Great Britain or the USA. We can reinforce and enlarge this knowledge through pictures, postcards, videotapes…).

From the first day, teachers are expected to bring posters, pictures, and other realia into the classroom to help students develop a ‘mental image’ of the target culture (Peck, 1998). The main activities and materials for teaching culture include: Realia (Using real objects from the country increases students’ motivation and helps to engage them in authentic cultural experiences. Films, television shows, websites, photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, leaflets, tickets, money, or labels can be used too), Songs, rhymes, and stories (a very appropriate way to introduce historical, traditional, or social elements through them), Proverbs (reflect historical and cultural background), Role-play (Each student plays a role in a specific situation. They are useful to practice social conventions, like greetings, asking for something, thanking…), Projects (Students work on a topic, using the knowledge they already have and looking for more information about it), Recipes (useful to practice food and drink, and are also connected with celebrations), Celebrations in class (Celebrating British or American festivals, like Halloween, Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, or Easter), Making contact with real people (Older pupils can be encouraged to interview native speakers, writing requests for information, writing to pen friends…).

Our foreign language students want to feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language (Peck, 1998). The accent in the language classroom must be on cultural experience rather than on cultural awareness.

Conclusion

To conclude, the main aim of this essay is to put forward two basic ideas. Firstly, that culture is an integral part of language acquisition, in this case, the acquisition of English as a Foreign Language. Cultural understanding and cross-cultural comparisons, on the other hand, are necessary components of language pedagogy. The overall idea is that there is no clear division between language and culture acquisition, so in essence, ‘second language learning’ becomes ‘second culture learning’. Secondly, language learning will broaden the minds of our young learners because they will encounter other ways of thinking about things, and it is also a good way to help them fully appreciate their own language.