PROBLEMS IN FOREIGN CULTURE TEACHING

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JULIAN CABALLERO 4 376 897

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY II

PROFESSOR MARIN

UNIVERSITY OF QUINDIO NOVEMBER 22ND, 2010

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PROBLEMS IN FOREIGN CULTURE TEACHING

It is important to make the learner acknowledge the importance of neutrality when it comes to compare the native against the foreign culture. Any form of language is intertwined with its culture because culture is transmitted with language. Culture is a way of life. It is the context within which we exist, think, feel, and relate to others. It is the “glue” that binds a group of people together (Brown, 2000: 176). When learners are given instruction of a foreign language, they tend to acquire certain stereotypes of the culture they base their learning experience, or in some cases, students do not experience a glimpse of the culture at all. For the first case, it is a must for teachers to revise the material available, so it will have a positive effect in this area for them. For the second case, teachers must find activities to promote the process of acculturation in students; because a foreign language is not only the linguistic aspect, but also the cultural one. To communicate internationally means to communicate intercultural as well. An integral teaching procedure will raise the bar to bilingualism in Colombia.

According to Adaskou et al 1990, culture is composed of literature, music, fine arts, films and plays; but also, culture shows the lifestyle of a community. As I learned in the seminar of culture course: “Culture is like an iceberg” because there are more things embedded in the word culture than we normally see; like values and thought patterns. I think that language and culture cannot be taught separately because if this happens, the student is not going to be familiar with the target

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language and its use in real context. Widdowson (1990) claims that a child acquires the semantic and syntactic systems together with his cultural knowledge.

The idea that a child acquires his native language together with its culture indicates that language can not be taught without cultural background. Ellis 1990 states that students who are interested in the social and cultural life of the native country can learn a foreign language better than the other students, therefore students should be given support which will enable them to acquire the necessary cultural knowledge.

Most students are not aware of the culture aspect of the learning process of a FL, and I believe that these language learners must undergo a sort of immersion in the culture they are learning the FL; they need to be in context with the language to develop a successful negotiation of meaning. It is our duty as professors to guide the learner towards that new culture and to make them be conscious that they are now citizens of the world. Kordes (1991: 302) claims that even though a foreign culture is less learnable that a foreign language, intercultural learning is feasible to at least some degree. I see this statement as true, because we can teach the language through exercises that depict the customs and habits of any part of the world, which will prepare the student in the acquainting of the new place he will live in. The rest of the acculturation process will be acquired when the learner actually lives the “target culture.�

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Acculturation is the creation of a new identity at the heart of culture (Brown, 2000: 182) and this process is presented in various stages. Culture shock is one of them in which the struggle individuals feel when living in a place other than his/her native town takes shape. Since the new environment frustrates the person’s assimilation of the new customs, we must advice learners to be patient and persistent in order to cope with this long and complex process. Consequently, the process of acculturation can break the existing customs and values especially after the culture shock period; but, I believe this is a positive outcome that will work for the FL learner because he/she will have wider points of view in regards to strangers. Language is not an individual code, it is a social one.

Then, it is our responsibility to talk about other horizons, to do some research and illustrate the learner how different cultures work. According to Robinson-Stuart and Nocon language learners must undergo culture learning as a “process, that is, as a way of perceiving, interpreting, feeling, being in the world . . . and relating to where one is and who one meets” (1996: 432). It is obvious that we cannot live the “target culture” in our context, but we have to supply as much information as the learner can acquire, so he/she will be able to recognize how people behave and think. This is why the CLT approach for teaching a FL is so accurate, we need to make the student express himself in the real world because not only are we teaching communicative competence but also we are recreating the common situations one experience when living abroad. “If we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching

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meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning…” (Politzer, 1959: 100-101).

Dimitious Thanasoulas compiled information regarding culture acquisition and language learning and he sees that in the 80’s scholars begin to delve into the dynamics of culture and its vital contribution of language learning as he states: “…

For example, Littlewood (cited in Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 6) advocates the value of cultural learning, although he still ‘keeps linguistic proficiency as the overall aim of communicative. Also, there are many insightful comparisons made between behavioral conventions in the L1 and L2 societies which are culturespecific and which could be said to impede understanding: the use of silence, frequency of turn-taking, politeness, and so forth”. We can see clearly how culture is seen by scholars as human behavior rather than the Arts and the like.

One way to teach cultural awareness is to bring discussion topics about our culture and the target one. We can talk about values, customs, beliefs, music, gastronomy and so forth. We have to take into account the age and the level of the students in order to arrange the activities. As Thanasoulas quoted: “Beginning foreign language students want to feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language’ (Peck, 1998). At any rate, the foreign language classroom should become a ‘cultural island’ (Kramsch, 1993; Singhal, 1998; Peck, 1998).” We need to use realia, so we help students develop a “mental image” of

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the target culture, and we should bring foreign people to the classroom so they talk about their culture and their experience in our country.

To conclude, Language and Culture go hand in hand, one is as important as the other. It is our job to raise the students’ awareness of our own culture, to cultivate a degree of intellectual objectivity essential in cross-cultural analyses and to let them know that there are no superior or inferior cultures in order to avoid stereotypes. Our goal as teachers is to know how to implement techniques that distinguish home and target cultures to prepare the student confront the real world.

WORKS CITED

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Brown, H. Douglas. Principles of Language, Learning and Teaching.

Pearson ESL; 4th Edition, 2000.

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Politzer, R.. Developing Cultural Understanding Through Foreign Language Study. (Electronic Version). Report of the Fifth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Teaching, pp. 99-105. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1959.

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Adeskou, K., D. Britten and B. Fashi. Design Decisions on the Cultural Content of a Secondary English Course for Morocco. (Electronic version).

ELT Journal, 44/1:3-10, 1990.

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Kordes, H. Intercultural Learning at School: Limits and Possibilities. p. 302, 1991.

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Robinson-Stuart, G., & Nocon, H. Second Culture Acquisition: Ethnography in the Foreign Language Classroom (Electronic version). The Modern Language Journal, 80, 431-49, 1996.

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http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue3_3/7-thanasoulas.html

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http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/27/750/9588.pdf