John F. Lalande

Making a Connection: Telephone Books, Culture and Language Instruction

During recent years the many imaginative (sometimes bizarre!) suggestions for using cultural artifacts in the foreign language classroom have been impressive. Indeed, the ingenuity of German teachers is documented in articles treating the teaching of culture through such artifacts and realia as stamps, opera libretti, Todesanzeigen, posters, greeting cards and songs. This article seeks to contribute to this compendium of ideas by describing how telephone directories can offer a number of interesting cultural insights, while at the same time lending themselves to the reinforcement of basic vocabulary and language skills.