Canadian Students’ and it presented quite shocking results of their study. According to the article, Bulgarian students (and also international students studying in Bulgaria) have generally very little knowledge about Canada and their perception of Canada is based on stereotypes presented by various mass media. This led me to the idea to repeat the research with Slovak students as a part of a bigger research project dealing with Canada and its culture and its inclusion into teaching and learning English language.

Byram (1989, 25) states that one of the aims of foreign language teaching is to introduce learners to and help them understand otherness. Language and culture are so close that are being identified as synonyms (Scarcella – Oxford 1992) as language is not only for communication but it is used to express people’s cultural thoughts, beliefs and culture is embedded in the language. It is clear that only linguistic competence alone is not enough for fluent communication, thus learners of a foreign language need to require also intercultural competence. The relationship between language and culture was summarized by Brown (2000, p.177) as follows:

“A language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture.”

Kramsch (1993) states that cultural awareness and the acquiring a foreign culture can only aid the attaining of second language proficiency. Hymes (1996, 75) concludes that schools have long been aware of cultural differences, however, culture has often been considered invisible in everyday interaction. Buttjes (1991) traces the role of culture in foreign language teaching to different motives.

1. pragmatic motive which prepares language learners for international contacts and communication (often in certain fields such as trade and commerce),
2. educational motive which points to learner’s enrichment through the acquisition of a foreign culture,

Kramsch (1993) states that teaching cultural facts or information is not enough as it has not enabled learners to understand foreign attitudes, values, and mindsets. He thinks that the purpose of culture teaching is to make students understand why the speakers of two different languages act and react the way they do, whether in fictional texts or in social encounters, and what the consequences of these insights may mean for the learner (Kramsch 2003, p.32).

While teaching foreign languages, we want our students to become intercultural speakers. They are described by Byram and Fleming (2010) as people who have a knowledge of one or preferably more cultures and social identities and have capacity to discover and relate to new people from other contexts for which they have not been prepared directly. According to Lustig and Koester (2010), communication and culture are closely interrelated in terms of attaching similar meanings and values to the objects of life. Kim (1994) states that the most challenging issues of intercultural communication are cultural differences, unfamiliarity, and incompatibility among the individuals. Because of the current status of English (an international and intercultural source of communication as more than 750.000.000 speakers of English are not native speakers) there are many issues and challenges for teachers and learners of English to overcome. It is undoubtful that linguistic knowledge is crucial for effective communication, however, we cannot omit the cultural context of the target language and developing intercultural competence of our learners.

The purpose of this study is to examine perceptions and misperceptions of Canadian realia among Slovak students of English. This study will help us find out what kind of knowledge Slovak students of English have about Canada. We assume that the respondents have some knowledge about Canada – they attended classes in geography, history and English. This part of the research can provide us also a valuable feedback about Slovak educational system. Moreover, it will also provide important data about how Canadian culture and its people are perceived by Slovak students of English. This will help us improve the syllabuses of the existing course, and/or to consider including Canadian studies as a separate course. The study is also a good way how to find out how mass media influence young people by presenting various stereotypes. A questionnaire was used as the data-gathering tool in order to find out university students’ (mis)perception of Canada. The questionnaire was retrieved from the article ‘Perceptions and Misperceptions of Canada among Non-Canadian Students’ (Yankova – Andreev, 2018). Before the research, we decided to test the instrument with Slovak students to find out whether it is suitable also for Slovak students as they are the aim group of the research. The sampling unit consists of twelve respondents. They were asked to answer honestly according to their knowledge and/or feelings. Some of the questions in the questionnaire were misinterpreted by the respondents thus the questionnaire was a little bit modified for Slovak students. At the moment, the data is being collected.

Right now, only 11 questionnaires were collected and analysed. Based on the results of the piloting the questionnaire, some questions were modified. The modified questionnaires are going to be distributed during the beginning of the upcoming term (January – March 2020). Thus, the results should be ready for the conference. The analysis of the questionnaires collected during the piloting the questionnaire shows that: • Most of the respondents: know where Canada is situated and which countries it borders, can name the capital of Canada, know the currency and the official languages of Canada cannot name other three cities than the capital (33% cannot name a single Canadian city), have no idea about Canadian population or territory or when it was founded, are not sure about political organisation and the head of the country. • The most famous Canadians seems to be Justin Bieber, Drake, Avril Lavigne. • Respondents know very little about Canadian social policy, crime level and religion in Canada. • Only two respondents visited Canada (Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto), however, 100 % would like to visit the country. • Respondents imagine an average Canadian has the following qualities: very polite, proud to be Canadian, friendly, resistant to crazy winters, bilingual, loves maple syrup and hockey, open minded, clever, fan of ice hockey, not as emotional as Americans, not that serious as Brits. • The most typical phenomena for Canada are: ice hockey, maple syrup, maple leaf, maple, Canadian flag. • Canada is viewed a peace-loving, democratic and tolerant place which is not imperialistic, totalitarian and politically unstable. • Very general answers about immigration of Slovak people to Canada were provided. • Answers were influenced by respondents’ stay in Canada, media (Murdoch Mysteries, How I Met Your Mother), the Internet, family and friends, geography lessons, personal interest in the topic.

BROWN, H. D. 2000. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York : Longman, 416 p. ISBN 978-0133041941. BUTTJES, D. 1991. Mediating languages and cultures: the social and intercultural dimension restored. In: BUTTJES, D. – BYRAM, M. (eds.) Mediating languages and cultures: Towards an Intercultural theory of foreign language education. Clevedon : Multilingual Matters, pp. 3-16. BYRAM, M. 1989. Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education. Clevedon : Multilingual Matters, 176 p. ISBN 978-1853590184. BYRAM, M. – FLEMING, M. 2010. Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective: Approaches Through Drama and Ethnography. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 320 p. ISBN 978-0521625593. HYMES, J. 1996. Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Toward an understanding of voice. Bristol : Taylor & Francis, 276 p. ISBN 978-0748403479. KIM, Y. Y. 1994. Intercultural Communicative Competence. In: TING–TOOMEY, S. - KORZENNY, F. (Eds.) Cross-cultural Interpersonal Communication (pp. 259-275). New York : State University of New York Press, 345 p. ISBN 978-0791416334. KRAMSCH, C. 1993. Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 304 p. ISBN 978-0194371872. KRAMSCH, C. 2003. Teaching Language along the Cultural Faultline. In: LANGE, D. L. – PAIGE, R. M. (Eds.) Culture as the Core: Perspective on Culture in Second Language Education (Research in Second Language Learning). Greenwich : Information Age Publishing, 384 p. ISBN 978-1931576239. LUSTIG, M. W. – KOESTER, J. 2010. Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures: International Edition (6th ed.). Boston : Pearson, 400 p. ISBN 978-0205705191. SCARCELLA, R. C. – OXFORD, R. L. 1992. The Tapestry of Language Learning, Boston : Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 240 p. ISBN 978-0838423592. SCHMIDT, G. 2000. Teaching Culture and Language for Specific Purposes. In: LIDDICOAT, A.J. – CROZET, C. (Eds.), Teaching Languages and Teaching Culture. (pp. 131–140). Canberra : Applied Linguistics Association of Australia. YANKOVA, D. – ANDREEV, A. 2018. Perceptions and Misperceptions of Canada among Non-Canadian Students. In: Central European Journal of Canadian Studies (vol. 12/13), pp. 177– 189. Brno : Masaryk University, 2018. ISSN 1213-7715.