TEACHER EDUCATION IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY: APPROACH TO CULTURAL AWARENESS AND DISTANCE LEARNING IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

With the ever growing impact on a narrowing of the world due to the technologies available there is an urgency to incorporate the cultural awareness and fast growing advances in communication. Teacher education cannot suffice with solely the content disciple it must incorporate the influx of technologies which are constantly evolving and producing innovative manners of teaching second languages. Another aspect that is available via the technologies is the cultural elements that are now at the educators and learners fingertips, no longer is it absolutely necessary to be in the target language country. What needs to be inculcated to teacher candidates are how to incorporate them in the language classroom be it on ground or virtually. More and more the use of distance learning of a language is increasing in popularity, even if there are those that believe that language learning can only be in a classroom setting. This paper will address these issues and give examples of how to incorporate cultural awareness and technology in the language classroom.