PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Language is often taught in tandem with culture in foreign language classrooms. Learning the culture of the target language speech community has been regarded by foreign language teachers as a necessity, without which teaching is regarded as incomplete. Culture is often a taken-for-granted concept seen as unproblematic, where teachers’ personal knowledge of culture is used to guide their teaching. As teaching of culture in the classroom is dependent on teachers’ own implicit knowledge of what culture is and how culture should be imparted to students, an in-depth understanding of teachers’ conception of culture in the context of foreign language teaching is essential. This study investigated French language teachers’ conception of culture in relation to teaching a foreign language. Ideas about culture in teachers’ talk generated through semi-guided interviews were analysed as constructions in discourse to uncover teachers' approaches to culture. The results show that the teachers use a predominantly structuralist approach to understanding culture, although there is evidence of awareness of context-dependent constructions. Culture is conceived as fixed attributes of national groups, and culture taught to students focuses on differences, neglecting similarities, between French culture and the students’ own culture. Culture is not presented as equal, as the findings revealed a subtle stance of privileging and marginalising particular cultures. Teachers’ practices based on such a conception of culture may inadvertently lead to unintended consequences of stereotyping instead of cultural enrichment. These findings can inform further discussion and reflections on how a more nuanced concept of culture can best be incorporated into the training of foreign language teachers.