Sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and intercultural aspects in the Spanish learning outcomes programmes

Abstract

In the past eight years, the Spanish syllabus, mainly that of Years 7 and 8, has been subject to several revisions. For a while, a content-based syllabus was dominating the teaching and learning of Spanish as a foreign language, which was later replaced with a content-oriented syllabus prioritising communication to a greater extent. However, the cultural component of both syllabi was not explicitly related to the unit's topics affecting the incorporation and treatment of sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and intercultural aspects. In 2018, Celine Marie Borg did a phenomenographic study, which analysed the Spanish teacher's conceptualisation of culture and its integration in the Spanish foreign language classroom. Her findings concluded that teachers' conceptualisation of the culture of this phenomenon was not always explicitly linked to the ways socio-cultural integrated in teachers' everyday practice. Many seemed to refer to only encyclopaedic factual information. However, since then, the Learning Outcomes Programmes replaced the previous syllabi in Years 7 and 8, adopting a methodology where all language components, including culture, are integrated into specified outcomes to have a holistic point of view. Therefore, this dissertation aims to analyse the Spanish Learning Outcomes Programmes for Years 7 and 8 to determine whether and how sociocultural, sociolinguistics and intercultural aspects are addressed in this documentation. Consequently, it also explores Year 7 and 8 teachers of Spanish understandings and practice of sociocultural, sociolinguistic and intercultural aspects in the Spanish FL classrooms. In fact, by adopting a qualitative methodology, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with Year 7 and 8 teachers of Spanish. The research findings suggest that the teachers portray language and culture as crucial for teaching and learning a foreign language. However, when looking at the LOF, they do not perceive socio-cultural, sociolinguistics aspects in the document.