The effect of cultural elements in foreign language teaching and the application of these elements within foreign language teaching books

In a global world, between the countries close to each other as if they were towns, a necessity for a compulsory communication has occurred.Formerly going to and coming from other countries or access to the information of those countries with only a key was thought as a utopia, but now it is real.Of course being close to other countries and having some partnership with them lead to communicative problems. First of all to learn the language of the country for communicating with them has become vital.Afterwards knowing the language has become insufficient, as some chaos has occurred about ?not what you say but what you understand from the words of the person you talk?. It is confirmed that only learning the language is not sufficient for communicating. Culture of that language and its rights and wrongs also affected people.To establish a correct relation between people, it is necessary to establish a true communication. As a result of need to language learning, necessity of language teachers has occurred. In the course of time this became a systematic occasion.What was the language? How should it be taught? How should the rules be established? so on. These questions have led to many different methods and techniques in years. Because, with the development of the human being; differences in language teaching and learning have occurred. Each settled method has a deficiency and as a result of the adjustments on them new methods have been introduced.In my thesis, I try to establish ?Intercultural Method? appeared from the second half of the 20. century, in the field of foreign language teaching.Language teaching is a very large area. It comprises many factors and its success depends on the level these factors effect each other. There are four factors in language ?reading, writing, listening and speaking?; these are also called as ?four skills?. ?Culture? which is the fifth and important factor is added to these four factors. Because the experts realized that we can not create a correct and full communication without learning the culture of the country whose language we learn.In this thesis ?mistakes emerging from the cultural differences, what must be done to eliminate these and reasons for the necessity of cultural components in foreign language books? are tried to be explained within the context of ?Intercultural Method?To represent the main subject explanations of the parts of thesis are required.In part I; terminological meanings of ?What is language??, ?What are mother tongue and foreign language?? are defined. Definitions of the scientists from different fields are given. Within the concepts of ?mother tongue and foreign language? ?language acquire? and ?language learning? subjects are explained.In part II in compliance with part I, ?children speaking two languages? are dealt. They are the children who grow up in two different languages. They, their features and the advantages and disadvantages they encounter are tried to be explained.In part III ?Culture?, ?Culture-Language relation? and ?Country Knowledge? are represented. Aim is to represent the effect of culture to the language and of language to the culture.Part IV begins with ?Communication?. In this context differences and similarities of physical and intellectual communication are represented.In part V actual subject has been introduced. Under the title of ?Intercultural Learning? features of the method are introduced.Questions such as What does ?Intercultural? mean? Which things does it affect from? What are its criteria? are tried to be answered. Within this context besides the importance of culture of the country of which we learn the language, the importance of country knowledge is also emphasized. Misunderstandings emerging from the cultural differences and most importantly Cultural Shock are represented. Experiences upon cultural shock are told.In part VI information upon the method is provided. What the method is and why it must be used are conceived. Then rules and features of ?Intercultural Method? are explained.In part VII studies on the books written in accordance with ?Intercultural Method? are provided. Pictures from different books and consisting information on different cultures and their evaluations are represented.In part VIII, the last part, questionnaire evaluations applied to Anatolian High Schools whose first foreign language is German are given.