Response paper 4: Comment on the article “Culture in Second Language Teaching”

Language definitely isn’t only part of culture, but also reflects culture like any type of beliefs of a group of people. These beliefs might even change within the same culture within different groups of people that form part of that culture. For example in Germany, representing one culture, you find many groups that have different beliefs and practices (types of food for example vary lots). Of course the diversity in the States is even much bigger because people of all sorts of ethnical, racial and religious backgrounds live there.

“Teachers must be taught the social skills needed to interact effectively with students from other racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds” (Cited from Diversity within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society written by James A. Banks, Peter Cookson, Geneva Gay, Willis D. Hawley, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Sonia Nieto, Janet Ward Schofield and Walter G. Stephan. Published in The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Nov., 2001), pp. 196-198, 200-203
(article consists of 7 pages). Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440100).

“ This means that language is not only part of how we define culture, it also reflects culture.” (Culture in Second Language Teaching , ELIZABETH PETERSON AND BRONWYN COLTRANE, CENTER FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS.) That’s why we mustn’t forget that when we teach language, we teach culture at the same time, and that we should make that explicit to our students, getting them to know the target culture by exploring it and therefore become empathetic with the way people say, see, do things in that culture.

Only then we can assure that our students master the language within the concepts of culture, and not only are merely able to produce some grammatical correct structures. This will help any learner to become efficient because she/he will know when to say what to whom, how to react in different situations, to respect for example physical distance and so on, and being aware of that there are so many things we have to be careful with when moving within a culture that naturally isn’t our own.

But how can we teach all the different aspects of culture? Using authentically resources really helps a lot, as long as it isn’t taken out of context. To be appropriate, literature texts and other sources must carefully be chosen according to the age and proficiency level of the group.

I liked the suggested activities like discussing nonverbal behavior, role-plays to demonstrate correct/incorrect behavior in different situations, or including individuals from the target language in the lesson. Movies and films are great because they teach learners communication in real-life: nonverbal behavior, response-time and so on…

As teachers we should think about when planning a lesson how we can give the language that we are going to teach a cultural context, since language and culture are always enhanced.