exploration of culture in efl/esl settings

Kramsch (1993) believes second and foreign language learners necessarily become learners of the second culture because a language cannot be learned without an understanding of the cultural context in which it is used. leaning culture is as universal and natural as learning language. in efl/esl situations, the ease or difficulty of entering into the new culture and new language depends on the individual s capacity for accepting and learning new ways of doing and saying things. language -the means for communication among members of a culture- is the most visible and available expression of that culture. and so a person s world view, self-identity, and systems of thinking, acting, feeling, and communicating can be disrupted by a change from one culture to another. similarly, tang (2019) asserts that to speak a language well, one has to be able to think in that language, and thought is extremely powerful. language is the soul of the country and people who speak it. language and culture are inextricably linked, and as such we might think about moving away from questions about the inclusion or exclusion of culture in foreign language curriculum, to issues of deliberate immersion versus non-deliberate exposure to it. in a word, culture is a way of life (brown, 2018).