Language and culture : explicit and Implicit Dimensions of Teaching Culture

Learning another language does not consist of learning lists of grammatical structures and pages of vocabulary. It also involves inside knowledge of the foreign culture. Teaching culture is an important part of language teaching. In this thesis I will discuss the intercultural approaches within the framework of teaching culture with both explicit and implicit alternatives. I will show a lot of implicit and explicit facilities for teaching culture in the primary school with the new Project I. course book. The strong cultural focus of this book enables students to explore differences and draw comparisons with their own cultural background. The wide range of exercises may also help to establish a close relationship between language and culture developing the ability to use language for intercultural communication and to come to terms with the different ways of viewing the world. Analysing the literary background of teaching culture, the elements of basic documents of primary education, I give examples for many implicit and explicit ways of culture teaching. Using foreign language teachers' survey on teaching culture I will demonstrate that exploit more and more opportunity to teach culture is very important.