Stop Adding Culture to MFL Lessons: 5 Simple Ways to Weave It In
As a native French speaker, you might assume that bringing culture into my MFL lessons came naturally. Strangely enough, I never felt that being a native speaker gave me any particular advantage when it came to this.
I knew the culture, of course, but knowing it and finding simple, meaningful ways to weave it into a busy language lesson were two very different things.
Authentic videos were a particular frustration. They seemed like the obvious way to bring a little bit of France into the classroom, but the reality was often less straightforward. The language was fast, students couldn't understand enough of it, and what was supposed to be an engaging cultural moment could quickly turn into a rather difficult listening exercise.
And if I decided to do some proper "cultural stuff", that usually meant preparation. Finding the information, choosing appropriate materials, adapting them to the students' level and creating an activity around them. All for something that was then taking time away from the vocabulary and grammar I also needed to teach.
Looking back, I think I was making culture much more complicated than it needed to be.
What if cultural awareness doesn't need to be a separate part of the lesson at all? What if, instead, we simply look for small opportunities to weave it into what we're already doing?
Here are five simple ways I think can do just that.
1. 📅 Start with a cultural calendar
One idea I particularly like is creating a simple calendar of key dates from across the target-language world.
These don't all have to be national holidays or major festivals. The calendar could include regional celebrations, significant historical dates, sporting and cultural events or the birthdays of interesting figures from the French or Spanish-speaking world.
Your calendar can reflect the diversity of the target-language world too, with Black History Month providing just one opportunity to discover different people, places and stories.
A photograph, an interesting fact or a quick question may be all you need. Culture doesn't always need a lesson. Sometimes it just needs a moment.
👉 I've put together some Black History MFL resources on MFL Central if you'd like a ready-made starting point.
2. 📍 Put the language on the map
That same principle can apply to geography. Whenever a place crops up in a lesson, why not take a few seconds to find it on a map?
If Dakar appears in a reading text, locate Senegal. If you're talking about Montréal while practising the weather, find Québec. If Guadeloupe comes up, stop for a moment and see where it actually is.
It sounds almost too simple to count as "teaching culture", but that's precisely the point.
Those little moments accumulate. Over time, pupils can begin to build a much richer picture of where the language they are studying is actually spoken. French becomes more than France, Spanish becomes more than Spain, and it hasn't required another activity, worksheet or learning objective.
The geography has simply become part of the context in which the language is being learned.
3. 📷 Let authentic materials do some of the work
We can take the same approach with the materials we use.
Perhaps the question isn't always, "What cultural activity could I add?" but rather, "Could I make the activity I'm already doing a little more culturally authentic?"
If you're teaching food, could the reading activity use a real menu instead of an invented one? For numbers and prices, could pupils look at a supermarket advert? A real school timetable could provide the material for telling the time. A weather forecast could introduce different cities. Street signs, train tickets, packaging, maps, restaurant reviews and photographs can all provide small glimpses of everyday life.
The pupils don't even need to understand every word.
What can you understand? What can you work out? What looks familiar? What surprises you?
Those can be valuable questions in themselves.
Often, the simplest way to find more room for culture is not to add anything at all. Just swap an invented resource for a real one.
4. 🎬 Think micro, not movie
This one would certainly have helped me.
I used to think that if I was going to show an authentic video, pupils needed to understand it. That inevitably created problems. Native speakers talk quickly. Vocabulary hasn't been conveniently selected from the GCSE specification. And suddenly the lovely authentic clip you've found needs scaffolding, repeated listening and several comprehension questions.
But what if we change our expectations?
We don't necessarily need three minutes of authentic video. We could use ten seconds.
A snippet of an advert, the opening of a weather forecast, a glimpse of a sporting event, a street scene or a few seconds from a cultural celebration could be enough.
And instead of expecting pupils to understand everything being said, we could ask something much smaller:
Where do you think this is?
What did you notice?
What could you work out?
Did you recognise anything?
That shift matters. Not every encounter with authentic material needs to become a listening comprehension task. Sometimes, exposure is enough. Let pupils see and hear the language as it exists beyond the classroom, even if they only understand a fraction of it.
5. 🧠 And then bring the culture back
Finally, if we want these little cultural encounters to become more than fleeting moments, we can revisit them.
We already do this with language. We know that teaching a word once doesn't mean pupils will remember it, so vocabulary comes back through retrieval and spaced practice.
Why not occasionally do the same with cultural knowledge?
Alongside the vocabulary questions in a retrieval activity, slip in:
Which country is Dakar in?
What did we notice about that school timetable?
Which festival did we look at last month?
Can you remember where Guadeloupe is?
An image used earlier in the term can reappear. A city can return in a reading task. A person introduced through the cultural calendar can crop up again later.
It requires very little extra time, but sends an important message: cultural knowledge is part of what we are learning, so it is worth remembering too.
Final thoughts: Perhaps the problem isn't lack of time
I used to see language and culture as competing for the same precious minutes.
Do I practise the vocabulary pupils need, or do I spend ten minutes on culture? Do I teach the grammar, or show them something authentic?
I'm no longer sure that choice needs to exist.
A real menu can teach vocabulary and offer a glimpse of everyday culture. A map can provide geographical knowledge and contextualise a reading. A ten-second clip can expose pupils to authentic language without becoming a lengthy listening exercise. A significant date can introduce another community, place or person without taking over the lesson.
None of these ideas is particularly revolutionary, and that's exactly what I like about them.
Cultural awareness doesn't need to mean elaborate projects, hours of preparation or the occasional dedicated "culture lesson".
One date. One place. One image. One authentic resource. One question.
Little and often.
Because ultimately, we're not just teaching vocabulary and grammar. We're helping pupils discover the people, places and cultures that give the language meaning. And if we spark their curiosity to discover more, even better.
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