This paper proposes that language teachers need not rely on ‘borrowed’ content – when a wealth of culturally-relevant content already exists through the language being taught. Taking a trans-disciplinary approach through the lens of the language’s culture can provide rich, engaging and importantly, relevant content, and contribute to learners’ intercultural understanding.
Language teachers will often state their belief in the relationship between language and culture. However, in practice, little place is afforded to cultural content in the language classroom, especially with younger learners – often on the grounds of their language proficiency level, curriculum constraints, materials availability, or teachers’ confidence in delivering cultural content. This therefore remains tokenistic, leaving teachers and learners alike faced with topical content which often fails to motivate and engage. To address issues of motivation in the language classroom, approaches integrating language instruction and content from other disciplines have emerged over the years. One such model, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), provides a useful framework to implement integration – built around the ‘4Cs framework’ of Cognition, Communication, Content and Culture (Coyle, Hood and Marsh, 2010). In this model, it is proposed that language and content, often taken from another discipline, should be given parity, with culture conceptualised as an essential dimension to contribute to learners’ intercultural awareness and provide them with cognitively challenging content. Yet, while many countries across Europe have adopted a CLIL approach to frame their language curriculum, cultural content is still often overlooked in practice, with an over-emphasis on the ‘borrowed’ content, and the language merely used as a medium. To address this, and in order to meet learners’ need to develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to their future success as global citizens, it is argued here that language teachers need not blindly borrow from other disciplines to manage the successful integration of language and content and increase learners’ levels of motivation and engagement: there is, within languages, already a wealth of culturally-relevant content at teachers’ disposal, and envisaging a cross-disciplinary approach through the (inter)cultural lens can be a way forward in re-evaluating how – and why – we teach languages.
