Culture and cultural competence How is culture taught in a foreign language class?

This thesis focuses on the teaching of a foreign language and the meaningfulness within the development of intercultural knowledge followed by skills that include the possibility of leading toward one’s own cultural knowledge and foreign culture to cope with teaching the learned language. The language learners need to develop other skills than the basic social cultural knowledge and to do so the access for improvement and enhancement of interpersonal interactions and acquirement of an intercultural awareness. The study threats on the perception of teachers and their students when it occurs on the topic of ’’intercultural competence’’ and how these interpret and include the subject in their lessons. The study also aims to understand and identify the obstacles that can be encountered while teaching intercultural competence in a foreign language class. For the purpose the study led to a conduction of observations guided in two secondary schools in Sweden and two teachers about their concept of intercultural competence and approach, their students interpretation and their concept and understanding. The study shows with the results that are not general, that the observed teachers distinguish intercultural competence and inclusion in their teaching. The cultural composites that detained by the students are not large and limited to factual knowledge and sometimes to stereotypes. The results that shouldn’t be generalised indicates furthermore that teachers have different approaches toward culture in their teaching. The way culture is portrayed in the observed classes is biaised toward France and leaves out other speaking countries