Defining, teaching, and evaluating cultural proficiency in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the foreign language teaching profession has significantly altered its understanding and practice of culture teaching. Important strides have been made toward recognizing the development of cultural proficiency in learners as one of the primary missions of the foreign language classroom. The authors of this article consider recent work that has moved the profession closer to a broadly embraced but clear definition of cultural proficiency and propose a model for culture teaching that responds to this definition. They focus especially on evaluation, that is, classroom testing and proficiency assessment - the latter extending beyond the confines of a single course.