Questão de Inglês — Inglês e Pedagogia — VUNESP 2025

In language teaching and research on language, the term culture includes many different definitions and considerations that deal with forms of speech acts, rhetorical structure of texts, socio-cultural behaviors, and ways in which knowledge is transmitted and obtained. Culture may find its manifestations in body language, gestures, concepts of time, hospitality customs, and even expressions of friendliness. While all these certainly reflect the cultural norms accepted in a particular society, the influence of culture on language use and on the concepts of how language can be taught and learned is both broader and deeper. To a great extent, the culture into which one is socialized defines how an individual sees his or her place in society.

Although attaining linguistic proficiency is essential for learners to be considered communicatively competent, particularly in the case of ESL learners, this is not sufficient. On the whole, to become proficient and effective communicators, learners need to attain second language (L2) sociocultural competence. Knowing how to say thank you, for example, does not automatically confer the knowledge of when to say thank you, how often to say thank you, and whether any additional action is called for. Quite reasonably, learners first apply the standards that exist in the first language (L1) communities where they were socialized.

(Marianne Celce-Murcia, Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Adaptado)