Why Culture Shouldn’t Be an Add-On in the Language Classroom

As a student studying Spanish in high school, I loved “culture day” because it was a chance to get a peek inside the real life of the people who spoke the language and the places that they called home. After all, curiosity about culture was what incentivized me take a foreign language in the first place. This is probably true for most students. Unfortunately, however, with a packed pacing guide and looming assessments culture is often treated as an extra….

Language and culture aren’t two subjects

Language and culture are inextricably linked. The phrases students learn aren’t meant to be recited in a vacuum; they are a guide for relating to others in that language. For example, why does Spanish distinguish tú from usted and what does it feel like to get it wrong? When we teach the forms without the world they live in, students can produce grammatically correct sentences but may not know when or where to use them. If communication is the goal, culture must be a part of the equation.

The “add-on” model often stops at products

Culture-as-add-on tends to default to easily packaged ideas, such as food, festivals, flags, and famous landmarks. It’s not that these lessons aren’t important; it’s that they only focus on the products. The ACTFL framework asks students to look at the relationship between cultural products and the practices and perspectives of the people. The learning gets interesting, and honest, when students ask more questions. Why is a certain food at a celebration important? How is it presented? What does this celebration reveal about what people value?

Culture motivates

Students feel inspired to practice and learn when they can see how it will benefit them outside the classroom. That’s why learners rarely stay motivated by verb charts alone. They won’t need to conjugate a list of verbs when interacting with people in the target language. They will need to work with, befriend, serve, and understand people who see the world differently than they do. Intercultural competence is a necessary skill that students will carry with them when they leave the language class behind.  

A place to start this week

Fortunately, you don’t need to redesign your curriculum overnight to incorporate culture more fully. Pick one of the these to try this week:

1. Replace one textbook text with an authentic resource.
2. Add one “why do you think…?” question about a practice or perspective.
3. Include one performance task where the culturally appropriate response is part of the success criteria.

Small changes compound. Over a semester, students stop seeing culture as an “add on” and start recognizing it as what the language is made of.