Teachers' ambivalence in integrating culture with EFL teaching in Hong Kong

Teachers' ambivalence in integrating culture with EFL teaching in Hong Kong

• Luk, Jasmine Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong

Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25(3), 249-264, 2012

Routledge

2012

• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GB English Language
• E Special Education
  • EG Inclusive Education
• P Social Context of Education
  • PH Minorities & Education, Racial & Ethnic Factors
• A Human Growth & Development
  • AE Socioeconomic & Cultural Differences, Class & Family Background
• B Human Behaviour
  • BC Group Process

Cultural Awareness Teacher Attitudes Secondary School Teachers English (Second Language) Second Language Teaching Secondary Education English Studies Teachers Teaching Methods

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Secondary Education

An increasingly important curricular aim of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is to develop learners' intercultural competence for communication with people from different cultures through English. English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture with English learning have been investigated mainly in Europe and the USA, whereas in Asia, these issues seem to have been less explored. This article reports an interview study that collected views about culture and language teaching from 12 secondary school English teachers in Hong Kong, including native and non-native English teachers. The findings showed that the teachers were unanimously positive in their attitudes towards the motivating power of culture (including popular culture) in language teaching, but also revealed ambivalence or contradictory feelings about the means and the end of culture-integrated TEFL in terms of what cultural resources to draw on; the connectivity between cultural components and examinations; and the role of teachers. The findings suggest the need for EFL teachers to deploy culture as a discursive resource for meaning-making, and to consider culture pedagogy as interlingual and intercultural exploratory dialogues with the students. The need for a closer collaboration among EFL teachers from different sociocultural backgrounds is highlighted.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.716849]

• English

Journal Articles

• 07908318

• 10.1080/07908318.2012.716849

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/f84921a6

2014-01-18