Axiological Aspects of Foreign Language Teaching

Foreign languages (FL) have been taught for various reasons and it has been done in different ways. Thanks to multimedia contents and the development of didactics of FL teaching, the process of FL learning has recently been turning into an encounter with a different culture and a different value system. According to the dominant, current trends, the prevailing opinion is that the inclusion of value systems into FL classes can have positive effects. Students should be helped to understand the deep and serious implications for the functioning of the system of values, as well as to be encouraged to be open and critical towards them. Due to the immense importance of the acquisition of values during primary school education and because of the fact that the teaching of FLs, especially intercultural activities are very suitable for the adoption of the same, the authors of this paper conducted a survey among Croatian primary school FL teachers with the aim of finding out the extent to which teachers themselves are aware of the importance of certain values and the potential that they could be passed on through FL teaching and intercultural contents. A self-structured online questionnaire was used. For each item of the questionnaire, the mean values were analysed. According to the results, FL teachers in our sample believe that through FL teaching intercultural contents can be passed on to students. Knowledge came first, followed by openness and critical thinking. According to FL teachers prejudices and stereotypes can be suppressed most easily.