Developing intercultural awareness when reading cultural artifacts

Abstract

Integrating culture in the classroom provides the opportunity to contextualize the learning process while students interact in real situation where language is used, to develop the language skills, to construct meanings and reflect critically, to consider their reality and evaluate it in the light of another culture. Those aspects made us reflect about the role of cultural artifacts in the development of intercultural awareness in ninth graders and guided us to carry out this qualitative action research that allowed us to identify students’ critical reflections, their development of own critical points of view and proposals to improve or change their reality. The data gathered through the interviews, the teachers’ journals and students´ products, revealed students’ reflection around topics such as, the influence of globalization and violence in relation to culture, the lack of environmental care, status quo, corruption and poverty, which guided them to reflect critically and come up with proposals to face these aspects.