Cultural references in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language (ELE) in Chile

In the teaching of Spanish as a second or foreign language, the value of acquiring cultural knowledge in the development of intercultural competence is considerable. Traditionally the formulation and description of cultural contents in ELE has been developed from generalist patterns. This study analyzes the interests and motivations of the students of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile to observe if they coincide with the cultural references as the descriptors of the Spanish as a foreign language manual.The research proposes an evaluation of ELE's cultural content in Chile and a reformulation of its teaching for the development of meaningful learning, because a lack of correspondence between cultural references selected by students, and those in SFL texts it is observed.