Quand le Terme “Noir” Entre en Classe…

Abstract

Language is inextricably linked to culture, in other words language learning also means acquiring its cultural knowledge. Neither the language teacher, nor the student-learner has a full knowledge of its culture. Our major concern in this study is to find out how best to simplify or facilitate the transmission of the didactics of culture within the context of French teaching and learning as a foreign language. We set out to do this by bringing to the classroom the word 'black', a term susceptible of having as many meanings or connotations as the number of divergent cultures represented in our classroom situation. Through carefully planned study on aspects of French culture, we consciously led Nigerian students of diversified cultural backgrounds into comparing their respective cultures  with French culture with the following objectives:

• awakening in them their cultural identities;
• motivating them to, unconsciously, learn more about selected aspects of French culture, and
• identifying areas of similarities, first, between French and Nigerian cultures represented within the classroom and, secondly, between the Nigerian cultures present.

Thus, acquiring new vocabulary as well as more cultural knowledge of  others‟ cultures, some aspects of which may not be so far from theirs, is significant.