A recent report from the Modern Language Association enjoins foreign language educators to “systematically reflect on the differences in meaning, mentality, and worldview as expressed in American English and in the target language.” This means teaching not just language and culture, but language as culture. This paper explores why many teachers find it difficult to teach language as culture and makes suggestions based on the teaching of second‐year German at the college level.
In 2007, the Modern Language Association Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages advocated for revising postsecondary second language programs to cultivate students’ “translingual and transcultural competence.” Since then, the meaning, merits, and difficulties of these goals have been much discussed. This article presents the concept of linguistic and cultural perspective as a strategy for helping students to develop the interrelated linguistic and cultural competencies at the heart of these goals. Because of its centrality to both language and culture, this concept can link communicative, form‐focused, and cultural instruction and promote the critical awareness that underlies the target competencies. Instructional examples from beginning, intermediate, and advanced German‐language classrooms illustrate how the concept of perspective can be used to pursue these goals.
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