Cultural learning in the foreign language classroom

On 23rd March at 18:00 CET, Arqus holds the webinar “Intercultural Competence” revisited – Cultural Learning in the foreign language classroom, by Michael Seyfarth (Leipzig University). The webinar will be broadcast live on the Arqus YouTube channel.

Being an international student at a university in a foreign country is a unique chance to learn a foreign language while also learning about another country and its society. Invented by Michael Byram in the 1990s, the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence still plays an important role in discussions on foreign language learning and teaching, even though the underlying concept of “culture” seems to be outdated. In the presentation, we will take a closer look at modern concepts of “culture” and their impact on cultural learning in the foreign language classroom. Keeping in mind how globalization, media, and international experience shape and change our societies, we will question commonly used classroom tasks, and instead focus on a “discourse approach” to cultural learning to enable learners to play an active role in target language societies (discourse competence).

Michael Seyfarth

Dr. Michael Seyfarth works as a lecturer in the field of methodology/didactics of German as a Foreign Language and as an editor of the journal “Deutsch als Fremdsprache”. He is teaching in both B.A. and M.A. programs with a focus on general aspects of language teaching/learning, curriculum development, and teaching/learning languages for specific purposes. After graduating from Leipzig University, he worked as a German lecturer in Russia and as a research assistant in Nuremberg and Greifswald. He defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Vienna.

This is the third of a series of guest lectures (“Seven months, seven universities”) to be offered in the framework of the Action Line 4 of Arqus, Multilingual and Multicultural University (sub-line 4.8). These lectures focus on specific topics related to language and culture, and target mainly graduate and post-graduate students as well as early-stage researchers interested in those topics.

The webinar will take place on 23rd March at 18:00 CET. It will be broadcast live on the Arqus YouTube channel.