Language, Literature and Culture: Practicing Critical Cultural Literacy in the EFL Writing Class through Literature

• Main Authors: HO, CHIA-LING, 何家伶
• Other Authors: LEE,SHU-PING
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/f7gu25

碩士 === 亞洲大學 === 外國語文學系 === 104 === Foreign literature teaching has been a critical issue in the higher education in the EFL context, because of the two existing dichotomies in learning: language training vs. literary studies (Kramsch & Nolden, 1994) and language vs. culture (Byram & Kramsch, 2008). This study explores a possible link of language and content, as well as language and culture, by embedding critical cultural literacy in creative writing tasks to help students gain cultural capital through foreign literature. “Culture” is defined in this study as an open concept, which implies not only passive language learning but active cultural literacy acquisition, for which critical thinking ability is needed to gauge the “third culture” (Kramsch 2009) between the self and the other for the “cultural translation” (Pratt 2002) to take place. Only in the third place can the identity of a foreign language learner be sustained. For theorizing the relationship between language and culture in foreign language learning, ‘third space’ by Homi Bhabha, ‘cultural capital’ by Pierre Bourdieu, ‘languaculture’ by Michael Agar, and ‘cultural literacy’ by Eric Donald Hirsch will be discussed. Furthermore, task-based instruction in the content-based course design will be applied in the literature teaching to activate oppositional practice for both language and culture learning in literary texts. It is concluded that the learning of language as culture through literary texts embedded in the design of a creative writing task is a dialogic process between the self and the other. Through this process is a third place created and critical cultural literacy can hence be achieved. Keywords: language and culture, cultural literacy, literature teaching, third culture, task-based instruction