Response Paper 5: Chapter 5, Cultural products

Response Paper 5:
5.2 Teaching culture : Analyzing Artifacts:

Artifact: Dog Cleaner, a machine that cleans your dog for you. You can find this artifact in every “Fressnapf” store in Germany.
Practices: It is very easy to use: You just choose the type of cleaning you want, and then push the button. Of course you will have to fill the water and shampoo up, but only once a month. For dogs that don’t like to get bathed, you just enhance the lead on the chain to the collar. You can use it every time you come home from a walk with your dog.
Persons: This product is used by dog owners. It is available in 5 different sizes.
Communities: Only dog owners who walk their dogs regularly buy the dog cleaner.
Perspectives: Dog owners use this machine to save time and backaches! cleaning up their dogs 3 or more times a day. The dog cleaner is solar powered and has a warranty of 20 years, so it is environmentally friendly.

Please see picture on BB.

5.3 Learning Culture: MAPS
My house reflects in many ways the culture I was born in. We take our shoes off when we come in. You don’t come into the living room like it is common in Costa Rica, but into the dining room. My house has 2 floors, and houses in Germany always have several floors. Typically as well is a little laundry room, an extra bed- bathroom downstairs for guests. It is common as well that there is a bedroom upstairs, but my husband and I have separate rooms to have our personal space to work, study, play the guitar… Another culture feature is that there is no television in the bedroom, and there is a fireplace downstairs like in many houses in Germany. And, of course, the dogs have their beds inside and their space and houses outside in the garage.

Please see picture on BB.

5.4 Learning Culture : Flowcharts


Please see flowcharts on BB.


(We celebrate Christmas with presents under the tree and a big meal on the 24th of December. In my home town, in the evening everybody gets together on the market place and watches a box coming down of a house roof that opens up and reveals the baby Jesus, and everybody sings Christmas songs and drinks hot wine and eats a sort of cookie called “Lebkuchen”. )


Is personal relationship to cultural content a factor in your teaching of culture?
Of course it is. If we teach a language, we must teach it in cultural contents. Only in this way language can become meaningful to our students, and they will be able to interact in the target language in a culturally acceptable way. Therefore it is our responsibility as teachers to get familiar with the cultural context of the use of the target language. As language reflects products, persons, practices, perspectives and communities, the language used in different circumstances reflects that people from different cultures, even when doing the same thing, do it in a different way. For example, no one in Costa Rica drinks hot wine on Christmas simply because it isn’t cold.

Please see pictures and flowcharts on Blackboard.