Educational Environment and Cultural Transmission in Foreign Language Teaching

Abstract

Foreign language teaching is not to teach grammar and vocabulary of the target language and to gain basic language skills only. Foreign language teaching is teaching of the language's culture at the same time. Because of language and community develop and shape together, learning, understanding and speaking a foreign language literally requires that one is able to think like the society that speaks the language natively. This is only possible with learning the culture that shaped the language. Teaching Turkish to foreigners should be put into practice in an environment that Turkish culture is being explained, reflected and lived because a person who learns a foreign language learns a new culture as well. Due to elements that constitute culture are enormous and multifarious, during teaching period, it is not possible to transmit all the elements that shaped Turkish culture, via course material and lessons only. One of the most important aims of foreign language teaching is to teach culture of the target language. Like all other educational environment, foreign language educational environments are supposed to be organized in accordance with its educational aims. Based on this, providing enriched environment with cultural components in educational environment is important. In this context, structuring educational environment with cultural elements can be used as a tool to confront learners with Turkish culture. In this study, relationship between language and culture is mentioned, cultural transmission and its importance in foreign language teaching are accentuated, the role of foreign language educational environments in cultural transmission is discussed and some suggestions about how arranging educational environment can be used as a tool in cultural transmission are given.