Cultural Awareness in English Classes from the Metropolitan University of Ecuador

Abstract

Students are continuously exposed to cultural outputs from almost anywhere on the planet. Globalization made access to information almost immediate. Therefore, approaching the teaching of languages with a conventional, non- contextualized, culturally insensitive method, would bring lack of motivation, and, ultimately, poor results in the learning of the foreign language. This paper presents the experience of including cultural awareness in the teaching of English as a foreign language to students of all majors at Universidad Metropolitana del Ecuador. The inclusion of authentic cultural inputs in the lesson planning and promoting the production of cultural outputs by the language students has been a remarkable teaching experience at the UMET language department.