An Analysis of Surface Culture and Its Manner of Presentation in First‐Year College French Textbooks from 1972 to 1978

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Constructing Culture Study Units: A Blueprint and Practical Tools

“…Two-and-a-half decades later, there is a plethora of materials and activities for teaching about culture at beginning levels. Publishers have improved the cultural content of textbooks, although weaknesses persist (see Levno & Pfister 1980;Crawford-Lange & Lange 1984;Uber Gross and Uber 1992;Omaggio-Hadley 1986,362). Other researchers of C2 learning have adapted promising approaches and activities from other disciplines, most notably anthropology.…”

Facilitating the Integration of Culture and Vocabulary Learning: The Categorization and Use of Pictures in the Classroom

“…Comparisons of the inventory with a detailed list provided by Chastain (1976) in his book, Developing Second-Language Skills: From Theory to Practice, reveals an interesting observation. While the list from Levno and Pfister (1980) is very general and could be said to subsume each of the categories of notions from van Ek (1975), the list from Chastain is significantly more detailed and its terms could be more easily integrated into a final version of the taxonomy, thus confirming the validity of the assumptions regarding the development process. By beginning with The Threshold Level, surveying several introductory French textbooks, and then integrating additional culture and vocabulary as needed, the team came up with a list that has very high face validity when compared with the list from Chastain.…”

“…Family Unit and the Personal Sphere The Social Sphere Political System and Institutions Environmental Sphere Religion and the Arts (pp. 103-104) Levno and Pfister (1980), drawing on these categories, analyzed how surface culture was presented in first-year college French textbooks and then developed a model of surface culture. Based on the descriptions they provide of the terms, or concept groupings, in their list, the 18 categories taken from the Specific Notions Inventory provided in The Threshold Level (van Ek, 1975) can easily be mapped into the five concept groupings described by Levno and Pfister. In the process of this mapping, however, the 18 categories actually become 19, given that the political and social affairs category is split so these two concepts map across to Levno and Pfister's two categories, Political System and Institutions and The Social Sphere.…”