La educación multicultural norteamericana y su aplicación a la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera

Resumen

Three current issues serve the ground for the discussion and application developed in the article. Firstly, teachers feel that they need new tools to face a diverse and multicultural body of students. Secondly, the notion of what culture is and how it should be taught still generales a great debate among educators, and, finally, the existence of a monolithic, dominant type of culture is falling into pieces. Therefore, American multiculturalism is discussed and presented as a model to bear in mind, sorne experiences with multiculturalism or interculturalism are revised, to end up with the application of the notion of standards as the key element for a multicultural syllabus design. Standard-based design may be the best manner to integrate the teaching · and leaming of language and culture. This contribution closes with the outline of a teaching unit in which standards have been adopted for its articulation.