An exploration of students’ stereotypes about the North American culture

Abstract

This study aims at describing the way students challenge their stereotypes regarding North American culture. Even though stereotypes are usually conceived as something negative, we view them as tools for people to take a closer look at unknown features. Accordingly, we came up with the following research question: How do seventh graders challenge their own stereotypes about North American culture in the EFL classroom? This question has guided every step of this research process. It has also led us to realize some changes regarding the initial stereotypes the participants had had during the diagnostic stage of our study. We found out that students had stereotypes whose foundations were derived from mass media and that this led them to have a superficial / general perception regarding North American culture. Three constructs constitute the theoretical framework: the first deals with the different contributions used to define Culture; the second construct focuses on the implementation of a cultural component into the Foreign Language Class by utilizing some ideas derived from intercultural competence; and, the third explores how stereotypes have been studied in different fields. We have concluded that, when presented with pedagogical intervention, participants recognized deeper aspects of North American culture and challenged their stereotypes by contrasting both their own culture and the foreign one based on their own experiences and beliefs; also, they demystified the initial stereotypes they had about the target culture since their way of seeing the North American culture was initially a static view that little by little turned into a more dynamic one.