Visual culture of foreign languages: What to do with cultural stereotypes?

Abstract

Although previous studies have shown that learners’ visual representations of a culture and its community can affect performance and motivation in the language acquisition process, there are no studies to date on how students engage and interpret the visuals of foreign cultures. Understanding students’ visual representations of foreign cultures will inform educators about their teaching strategies and classroom practices when conveying the visual cultural content of the foreign language to students. This should also help students to understand their sometimes overly stereotypical representations of foreign culture and to view learning the cultural content of the foreign language as a useful and realistic intercultural experience. This study explores students’ visual representations of foreign cultures. The study was conducted at the University of Namibia in 2022, and the study population was divided into three groups of participants: 21 beginner-level students learning one of the following foreign languages offered in the Department of Humanities and Arts (Chinese, French, Spanish and Portuguese), 24 Visual Arts students enrolled in Visual Culture course but not registered in foreign languages and four foreign languages lecturers from the Department of Humanities and Arts. A quantitative method was used with language students and lecturers through the distribution of online questionnaires. Visual students were requested to produce an artistic work on any medium representing a foreign culture they are not familiar with. Students’ view of the visual culture of foreign languages, both foreign language learners and non-learners, generally stereotyped the foreign culture and underestimated its diversity. From the lecturers’ perspectives, the results showed that all of them include visual cultural material in their teaching, but half of them have really reflected on the cultural content of their teaching resource nor are they well aware of the critical cultural competencies of their students.