Teaching Culture In EFL Education: A Critical Approach

Culture teaching in EFL has been a focal research topic since the heated discussion of the relationship between language and culture. During recent decades, the role of culture played in language teaching has been realized and attached more and more importance by instructors in class and researchers in the field. However, "how to teach" and "what to teach" remain to be hard-answered questions, waiting to be responded to.The author of this thesis attempts to introduce critical pedagogy to culture teaching in EFL and utilizes its pedagogical methods, such as, dialogue, reflection, critical thinking, with an aim to develop students' critical thinking skills and critical cultural awareness. Students are supposed to deal with both foreign culture and home culture as well as other social phenomena in a critical and rational manner, while facing multicultural society in this information age. In class, students are to be encouraged to challenge the authorities and traditional viewpoints and take their own standpoints and come to their own conclusions by synthesizing collected information, analyzing critically and judging rationally. The author tentatively proposes some teaching techniques which can be utilized in classroom teaching. Teaching materials about cultural conflicts and those that are contrary to home culture can be selected to encourage inquiries, reflections and dialogues from both students and teachers, with the purpose of introducing cultural knowledge, enhancing students language and communicative competence, as well as thinking skills and cultural awareness. Written homework, term paper and exams are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching methods. .