Intercultural Awareness Through English Language Teaching: The Case of Kosovo

Abstract

This study seeks to understand opportunities for teaching and learning the target culture for intercultural awareness. Utilizing Moran’s Knowing Framework (2001) and its five cultural dimensions, and reviewing curriculum documents and the English textbook in use for Grade Six in Kosovo, the study finds a misalignment among curriculum documents and the textbook regarding teaching culture for cultural understanding. It is noted that while curriculum documents share the goals and objectives for preparing students to become global citizens through language and culture learning in the English language, this vision is lost along the way and rarely makes it to the English language classrooms. It is concluded that English teachers, in Kosovo and potentially internationally, need to be more creative in utilizing more authentic cultural materials in their classes to bring to life the target culture. Lastly, it is argued that learning about another culture and comparing it with one’s own helps students examine their culture from a different perspective, which in turn potentially makes culturally-richer individuals in deeper and closer touch with their culture as well as cultures around them, near and far.