Resumen de Language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness – relationships, comparisons and contrasts

Michael Byram

• The vexed question of the relationship between ‘language’ and ‘culture’ will be the starting point. I do not propose to ‘resolve’ the question but to consider some ways in which relationships between cultural awareness and language awareness might be conceptualised and then have some impact on language education. By ‘language education’ I refer to the teaching and learning of all languages in a curriculum, whether this be the synchronic experienced curriculum of a learner at a given point in time or the diachronic curriculum of their lifelong learning. I will draw on the Council of Europe's concept and platform for ‘Languages in Education, Languages of Education’ and plurilingual and intercultural education to provide an overview of the issues involved. Finally, I will consider the impact on teaching and learning in practice by suggesting that, in the best cases, language and culture teaching produces, through the development of linguistic and intercultural competence, alternative conceptualisations of the world and contributes to the education/Bildung of the individual in society.