The Role of Culture in The Acquisition of Foreign Languages by Military Students

This paper highlights the importance of integrating culture in the teaching of foreign languages to military students. The first section of the paper offers some basic definitions of culture and key terms associated with it. The next part of the paper brings into discussion the relationship between culture and language acquisition. There is an intimate connection between language and culture; not only language is comprised in the definition of culture, but it also reflects culture, thus we cannot separate language teaching from culture. The final part of the paper focuses on the military students as future leaders that need to develop cross-cultural communication skills and be aware of the cultural differences in order to avoid potential failures during communication with soldiers from foreign militaries in theatres of operation or on other international missions that they are assigned.