Page 44 - LanGuide Project: Research and Professional Insights
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reea Nechifor and Cristina Dimulescu
tive, at users from foreign countries who may visit Romania as expats,
exchange students, teachers, or members of the administrative staff en-
gaged in Erasmus+ mobilities. But in this way, as a very particular case, we
also addressed the other perspective described above, the one according
to which native speakers of Romanian, who are familiar with their native
cultural background, can easily recognize within the tasks, icons belonging
to their own culture, enjoying, at the same time, the opportunity to polish
their English before going abroad.
However, the foreign users are offered the opportunity to learn, via the
same application, the basic words, in the same specialised fields, in Roma-
nian, but before they do this, they can cater for their desire to feel included,
or accepted, and they can address beforehand their sense of belonging to
the community they are supposed to be part of even for only a couple of
months beforehand, by dealing with the cultural element imbued within
the exercises designed for the English language as a pre-emptive move to-
wards the Romanian language:
To identify themselves as members of a community, people have
to define themselves jointly as insiders against others, whom they
thereby define as outsiders. Culture, as a process that both includes
and excludes, always entails the exercise of power and control (Ibid.,
p. 8).
The same opinion was shared by Allwright et al. (1991) who made the
connection between acquiring a new language and processing the acqui-
sition of a new culture, as well as by Byram (1989), who even argued that
teachers of a foreign language are also tutors and instructors of that cul-
ture, taking on abilities from sociology, geography, and history mentors to
convey this complex of information. Additionally, according to Leveridge
(2008), a language teacher’s job is to raise awareness of cultural differences
and to teach about it:
the cultural background of language usage, choose culturally appro-
priate teaching styles, and explore culturally based linguistic differ-
ences to promote understanding instead of misconceptions or prej-
udices. Language policy must be used to create awareness and un-
derstandings of cultural differences, and written to incorporate the
cultural values of those being taught.
Starting from the argument that ‘when academic knowledge and skills
44
tive, at users from foreign countries who may visit Romania as expats,
exchange students, teachers, or members of the administrative staff en-
gaged in Erasmus+ mobilities. But in this way, as a very particular case, we
also addressed the other perspective described above, the one according
to which native speakers of Romanian, who are familiar with their native
cultural background, can easily recognize within the tasks, icons belonging
to their own culture, enjoying, at the same time, the opportunity to polish
their English before going abroad.
However, the foreign users are offered the opportunity to learn, via the
same application, the basic words, in the same specialised fields, in Roma-
nian, but before they do this, they can cater for their desire to feel included,
or accepted, and they can address beforehand their sense of belonging to
the community they are supposed to be part of even for only a couple of
months beforehand, by dealing with the cultural element imbued within
the exercises designed for the English language as a pre-emptive move to-
wards the Romanian language:
To identify themselves as members of a community, people have
to define themselves jointly as insiders against others, whom they
thereby define as outsiders. Culture, as a process that both includes
and excludes, always entails the exercise of power and control (Ibid.,
p. 8).
The same opinion was shared by Allwright et al. (1991) who made the
connection between acquiring a new language and processing the acqui-
sition of a new culture, as well as by Byram (1989), who even argued that
teachers of a foreign language are also tutors and instructors of that cul-
ture, taking on abilities from sociology, geography, and history mentors to
convey this complex of information. Additionally, according to Leveridge
(2008), a language teacher’s job is to raise awareness of cultural differences
and to teach about it:
the cultural background of language usage, choose culturally appro-
priate teaching styles, and explore culturally based linguistic differ-
ences to promote understanding instead of misconceptions or prej-
udices. Language policy must be used to create awareness and un-
derstandings of cultural differences, and written to incorporate the
cultural values of those being taught.
Starting from the argument that ‘when academic knowledge and skills
44
