Teaching Culture In Arabic: Perspectives On The Use Of Blended Learning And Hypermedia

Abstract

In contemporary foreign language pedagogy, effective teaching of intercultural communicative competence cannot be separated from the use of technology. Web 2.0, social media, mobile devices, online and blended learning, and wearing technology have made it nearly impossible to develop effective courses without basing them on the target culture. Teaching culture, however, is not salient in foreign language teaching; it is the most neglected part (Sercu, 2005) and culture has to defend its legitimacy to be integrated in teaching languages, just as Kramsch (1995) put it "...culture, in order to be legitimate, has always had to justify itself" (p. 85). As a result, teachers devote around 20% of their teaching time to teaching culture (Castro, Sercu & García, 2004). In recent years, nevertheless, there has been a shift in understanding, implementing and integrating teaching culture in foreign language settings (Bayyurt, 2006, Chamberlin-Quinlisk, 2012; Gonen & Aglam, 2012; Castro, et. al., 2004; Byram, 2002), but at a slow pace (Castro et al., 2004; Sercu, García, & Castro, 2005). The situation of teaching culture using technology in Arabic is not as advanced as for other foreign languages and the attempts to remedy the problems are limited. Although interest in learning Arabic has noticeably increased in the last twenty years, educational institutions are far from ready to absorb the new enrollments. The lack of the integration of culture and technology in the Arabic teaching context has led to conducting three interrelated studies in this dissertation which investigated: teaching culture in Arabic: Teachers' and learners perspectives; teaching culture in Arabic: learners' perspectives on blended learning setting; and teaching culture in Arabic: Learners' affect of Arabic Hypermedia. The results of the three studies showed that the teachers and the learners understand the important role that culture plays, but statistically significant differences exist between teachers' and learners' views of some of the aspects of culture teaching. The results also show that learners had positive feelings towards the blended setting and the Arabic Hypermedia. Finally, in a call for teaching language as culture using technology, the dissertation suggests practical pedagogical implications for teaching foreign language and Arabic language.