Teaching culture through audio-visual materials in the EFL classroom: Exposing secondary students to three different foreign cultures

Abstract

[eng] Culture has always been a controversial topic, especially within the educational field. Its presence in EFL classrooms is generally either implicit and almost unnoticeable or directly inexistent. Despite the fact that the intercultural competence has recently been established as one of the key competences in multiple international curricula, the aim of attention is still drawn to merely linguistic aspects. Another forgotten issue is the introduction of diverse varieties of English, consigned to oblivion on account of the traditional focus on British or American standard English. To improve this situation, authentic input is perceived as a viable and attractive option, especially in the case of audio-visual materials. Not only will these tools counterbalance the artificiality of conventional teaching resources in terms of culture and language use, but they will also offer an overview of the realistic context of cultural diversity. Besides, being part of adolescents’ pop culture, films and TV series are a powerful stimulus to students’ motivation. Facilitated by the considerable number of available digital platforms, the introduction of this audio-visual input in the EFL subject is an up-to-date topic within the educational field. Nevertheless, the usage of these visual aids to teach cultures of different English-speaking countries in secondary education has not been a very studied topic. Hence, this paper will formulate a didactic proposal in which secondary learners will examine and learn various cultural elements of three diverse cultures, specifically American, British, and Australian culture, through the screening of several films and TV series’ scenes.