Teaching Immigrants Norwegian Culture to Support Their Language Learning

Abstract

This study was conducted with 48 adult immigrant students studying Norwegian under basic education program of the Ski Municipality Adult Education Unit between 2009-2011. Using the framework of Genc and Bada (2005), we tried to replicate their study in new setting - Norway. The study investigated migrant students' perceptions learning Norwegian culture and its effects on their learning of the Norwegian language. The participants responded to a set of questionnaire and one open-ended question adapted from Bada (2000) and Genc and Bada (2005). Descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis procedures were used to analyse the data. The results showed that teaching culture to immigrant students raised their cultural awareness of their own and the Norwegian society. It also improved both their language skills and attitudes to the Norwegian culture. The study revealed some similarity between the students' views and the theoretical benefits of a culture class as argued by some experts in the field. The results provide some further evidence of the benefits of learning cultural content as an integral part of learning a new language.