Raising sociocultural awareness through contextual analysis: some tools for teachers

Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of sociocultural context in meaning making, criticisms have been levelled at communicative language teaching (CLT) for failing to effectively address this at the level of classroom practice. In fact, it has been argued that the way CLT presents content reveals a fundamentally reductionist view of communication. This paper uses examples of dialogues from the New Interchange series to briefly illustrate what can be considered a typical shortcoming of many modern commercial English language textbooks: the neglect of the place of sociocultural context in dialogues and dialogue-related activities. This paper shows two ways in which this neglect is manifested and then suggests some concrete ways that teachers can use the SPEAKING model developed by Hymes (1972) to increase their awareness of elements of sociocultural context and also develop analytical questions for learners.