“Their customs can teach us lessons about our own lifestyles”: integrating the teaching of cultural awareness and intercultural understanding to the teaching of language through a task-based approach in a Key Stage 3 French class

Abstract

This paper reports on an attempt to identify and implement strategies to teach Key Stage 3 students about culture, understood through the concepts of cultural awareness and intercultural understanding. Through an action research project, the hypothesis that a task-based approach could be an effective way to integrate the teaching of culture to the teaching of language was tested. The intervention raised students’ cultural awareness of French speaking cultures, but had a limited impact on students’ intercultural understanding. This framework could be improved by making cultural learning objectives explicit to all students and by creating more opportunities for teachers to assess for learning.