Academic English Project: “Relationship Between the Language and Culture” – 20 Topics to Cover

Writing a project or an essay on the relationship between language and culture can be termed as one of the more difficult writing tasks out there due to the limited information on the subject matter. Therefore, to ease the troubles of anyone assigned with such a project, this article was written to provide you with a roadmap that can be followed right from the start to develop your own thoughts.

But before delving into today’s topic, it is important for you to know that this is the second article in a 3 article series covering the relationship between language and culture. These three articles were written to provide you with facts, essay project topics and sample essays on how to go about working on your project.

Now, the second article will help you choose topics on the relationship between language and culture for your essay. Lastly, included below is a sample essay chosen from the provided list and worked on to provide you with a realistic view of the task ahead. So sit back, relax and soak up the timely information contained here as it will serve you perfectly when working on any writing projects.

Here are the topics:

1. Discussing the Relationship Between Language and Culture
2. Cultural Learning in Language Education
3. The Relationship between Language and Culture and the Implications for Language Teaching
4. How Does Culture Influence Language?
5. The Role Culture Plays in Learning the Second Language
6. The Role of Culture in Cross-Cultural Communication
7. The Relationship Between Language, Culture and Gender
8. The Relation Between Language, Culture and Thought
9. The Role of Culture in Teaching and Learning Languages
10. The Inseparable Link Between Language and Culture
11. Language, the Individual, Society and Language
12. How Culture Influences the Way We Speak
13. Developing Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching
14. The Importance of Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Classrooms
15. Exploring the Relationship Between Language and Cultural Identity
16. Symbols and Language in Human Culture
17. Understanding the Factors that Influence the Acquisition of a Second Language
18. The Effect of Environment and Culture on Language Development
19. Is Language Acquisition a Cultural Process?
20. How Culture Affects the Language Development Process of Children

These are definitely some cool essay project topic on the relationship between language and culture for your project. Very important is the fact that most of these topics are quite easy to research and draft when the need arises. But if you are still at a loss on how to proceed, the next paragraphs will provide a sample article based on one of the topics on the list.

The chosen essay topic is ‘The Role Culture Plays in Learning a Second Language’. As earlier stated, this essay is written with the aim of providing you with appropriate guidelines on how to easily draft an essay on any of the topics on the list above.

Sample English Project: The Relationship Between a Language and Culture

The National Centre for Cultural Competence defines the term culture as an integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values and customs as well as the expected behaviour of a racial, ethnic or social group and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations. This means that language is not just a part of how culture is defined but it also reflects culture.

This means learning a second language is quite synonymous to understanding the culture that had born that language and this essay will attempt to shed more light on the roles understanding a society’s culture has to play in learning the language synonymous to it.

Linguists and anthropologists have since stated that learners of a new or second language must acquire knowledge of the culture for this gives them insight into the use of certain terminologies and the intonations that go appropriately with them. This simplifies communication for the learner as it ensures that he or she uses the right expressions when greeting, making requests and concurring or disagreeing with someone. Such in-depth understanding eliminates the possibility of accidental misunderstandings or fracas occurring due to the student’s poor command of the language.

It is also a known fact that language is the basis for communication. And communication is not just an exchange of information, but it is a highly cognitive and important activity that takes into context the social life and the lifestyle of a people. Therefore teaching cultural differences as well as what is acceptable by a culture to students learning a new language provides the learner with some perspective of how people from that particular culture view the world. For example, it is important that students understand how seriously position or seniority is viewed in France so they make use of the right pronouns when addressing people in authority when speaking in French. This cultural knowledge will provide students of the French language with the understanding needed to use the informal form of address ‘tu’ or the formal form ‘vous’ in an appropriate manner.

The importance of culture has also been in highlighted by many foreign language teachers who believe that culture should be taught as a fifth language skill in addition to listening, speaking, reading and writing due to its role in understanding the expressions and terminologies of a language. These teachers also believe that when teaching a new language or culture to a set of students, the teaching process should be devoid of racism, superiority complex and any preconceptions or stereotyping. This is because such factors may affect the attitude of the learner towards the people from a particular culture thereby integrating a condescending attitude in the student’s speech patterns.

In conclusion, learning a second language is one of the best ways to receive insight into the cultural way of life prevalent in a society. And this makes it important for students, to learn more about the culture that produced the second language they have considered learning.

Here we come to the end of the second article in the Language and culture series and we believe this sample will provide you with the information you need to draft an excellent essay on today’s subject matter.

References:
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Dhur, K. (2004). General Introduction to Sociology: A theoretical perspective.
Goode, T., Sockalingam, S., Brown, M., & Jones, W. (2004). Infusing principles, content and themes related to cultural and linguistic competence into meetings and conferences.
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/gucdc/nccc/ncccplannersguide.html
Maiga, C. (2004). Learning Culture and Language through ICTs: Methods for Enhanced Instruction 25-30.
https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=ihwv7TNtUSgC&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=http://www.+cal.org/resources/digest/0309peterson.html&source=bl&ots=fa63R4Ck0x&sig=wO9jD4nxFXN3Y50xaZhGExKz-hU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-vNC1x4TOAhVJBMAKHS_nBAYQ6AEILzAE#v=onepage&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.%20cal.org%2Fresources%2Fdigest%2F0309peterson.html&f=false
Crystal, D. (2002). The English Language 38-45.
Brock, N. & Nagasaka, Y. (2005). Teaching pragmatics in the EFL classroom? SURE you can! TESL Reporter, 38 (1), 17-26.
Jiang, W. (2000). The relationship between culture and language, 54(4), 328- 334.