This paper examines how the principles about teaching culture in EFL have promoted cultural confrontation in the guise of cultural acquisition. I discuss the impact of the culture-oriented classroom on the three areas of language pedagogy: (1) Approach, (2) design, and (3) procedure. Concerning approach, the theories of learning and language adopted by proponents of the culture-centered EFL classroom resulted in target-and native-culture schematic confrontation, often undermining the students 1 perspective of their own language and culture. Concerning design (the objectives of a program and the roles of teachers and students), the acceptance that cultural knowledge is a basic objective of an EFL program frequently led to an overt or covert promotion of the target language-the foisting of hegemonic Anglo-American culture on the world" (Bex, 1994: 62) -at the expense of the native culture, even though the EFL teacher is not a trained sociologist in cultural acquisition. A typical Student reaction is to create a hybrid "third culture," not relevant to the student's own culture or the target language Community. Concerning procedure, while students expect classroom activities to concentrate on linguistic acquisition, what they get in the EFL culture-oriented classroom is a course in cultural acquisition. A conclusion is that while culture is an important component of language study, cultural confrontation should not take precedence over linguistic acquisition in the EFL, classroom.
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