Canada Viewed From a Distance
Canada Viewed From a Distance

Author(s): Maria Georgieva, Svetlin Stratiev
Subject(s): Education, Culture and social structure , Sociology of Culture
Published by: Нов български университет
Keywords: Canadian culture; Bulgarian students;
Summary/Abstract: Cultures can be studied by those who are native to them or by outsiders but there are fundamental differences between the two perspectives. This paper discusses a Canadian Culture Studies Course designed for Bulgarian students of English Philology. The authors elaborate on such major issues of course design as approach, data resources, methodological principles and teaching and learning strategies, supporting their selection of principles of course design with evidence from a survey aimed to explore students' background knowledge and interests in Canada and Canadian people. Evidence from students’ progress, checked in the middle and at the end of the term, is used for evaluation of the effectivity of the theoretical tenets of the course, viz., pluralistic approach to the selection of teaching materials, topic-orientation, genre variety of information input, presentation of sociocultural phenomena in their interrelatedness and experiential teaching methodology with a strong comparative element. The conclusion drawn on the basis of this evidence is that the course provides a broad enough knowledge base but fails to develop to a sufficiently high level students’ skills in interpreting and evaluating the raw data (historical facts, social experiences, survey statistics, etc.), and in forming an objective, independent stance on sociocultural issues pertaining to the target culture.

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