FL TEXTBOOK ANALYSIS: COGNITIVE AND LINGUOCULTURAL APPROACHES

Abstract

Textbooks are fundamental didactic tools employed in the foreign language (FL) classroom, even in the era of information technologies. FL textbooks contain relevant information about the target language (TL) and the TL culture, enhance levels of students’ language proficiency and cultural literacy and should aim at developing students’ skills of intercultural communication which goes in line with the main goal of modern FL education worldwide – developing intercultural competence.  Intercultural competence is seen as the ability to conduct communication with representatives of the TL community with regard to the sociocultural background of the communicative situation. Thus, modern FL textbooks should be interculturally oriented and develop FL students’ knowledge not only of the language they are learning, but also knowledge and a better understanding of the TL culture which is quite new to them.

The aim of the paper is to present the structure of the FL textbook analysis from the perspectives of the cognitive and linguocultural approaches in the teaching of foreign languages. The two approaches play an essential role for fostering students’ intercultural competence, the first one aiming at activating students’ intellectual processes, developing their cognitive skills in mastering a foreign language and culture, and the latter – at expanding their linguocultural literacy, enhancing their ability to contrast, compare cultures, find similarities and differences across cultures, and respect these.