This mens tht lnguge is not only prt of how we define culture it lso reflects culture.
Работа добавлена на сайт samzan.net:
The National Center for Cultural Competence defines culture as an “integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations”. This means that language is not only part of how we define culture, it also reflects culture. Thus, the culture associated with a language cannot be learned in a few lessons about celebrations, folk songs, or costumes of the area in which the language is spoken. Culture is a much broader concept that is inherently tied to many of the linguistic concepts taught in second language classes.
Through initiatives such as the national standards for foreign language learning, language educators in the United States have made it a priority to incorporate the study of culture into their classroom curricula. Cultural knowledge is one of the five goal areas of the national standards:
Through the study of other languages, students gain a knowledge and understanding of the cultures that use that language; in fact, students cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs.
This Digest discusses the importance of incorporating culture into second language teaching and recommends strategies for infusing cultural issues in classroom instruction.
The Importance of Culture in Language Teaching
Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that language (Krasner, 1999). Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
In many regards, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the cultural features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied. For example, when teaching subject pronouns and verbal inflections in French, a teacher could help students understand when in French it is appropriate to use an informal form of address (tu) rather than a formal form of address (vous)—a distinction that English does not have. An English as a second language teacher could help students understand socially appropriate communication, such as making requests that show respect; for example, “Hey you, come here” may be a linguistically correct request, but it is not a culturally appropriate way for a student to address a teacher. Students will master a language only when they learn both its linguistic and cultural norms.
Although the theory of language teaching today has undergone drastic changes by acquiring a sociolinguisticaspect, but a well-designed socio-cultural emphasis is still missing.Culture, as Vahdany mentions, “has always been touched but not hugged dearly enough: its relevance andcontribution to language teaching has grown blurred and mystic.” (p.93)There is a lot of discussion among scholars e.g., Chastain, and many others who strongly advocate the idea that the culture of a foreign language must be taught alongside the language itself. This idea has been actualized and reflected in a number of commercially developed textbooks such as Interchange, Top Notch, and Headway series, to name a few. However, the school textbooks used in some developing countries like Iran the role of target language culture has not fully been considered. For instance, the authors of Iranian school textbooks have tried to use only Iranian names, ceremonies, and the like. This decision might have been made on political grounds but it anyhow impedes the teaching of the target culture. Brown (2007b) provided a series of principles for teaching a foreign language, one of which pertains tointe grating culture into language classroom. He suggests that the language-culture connections must behigh lighted by teaching not only the language but cultural customs, values, ways of thinking and acting. Along the same line, Kumaravadivelu suggests raising cultural consciousness to shed light on classroom processes that acknowledge their power and knowledge structure. Although some scholars call “culture” the fifth language skill, Kramsch goes even further by saying that: “Culture in language learning is not and expendable fifth skill tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard won communicative competence, challenging the ability to make sense of the world around them.”
Why should we teach culture?
Kramsch identifies three ways how language and culture are bound together. First, language expresses cultural reality (with words people express facts and ideas but also reflect their attitudes). Second, language embodies cultural reality (people give meanings to their experience through the means of communication). Third, language symbolizes cultural reality (people view their language as a symbol of their social identity). Tomalin and Stempleski (1993, pp.7-8) have enumerated the goals of cultural instruction. According to them, the teaching of culture should help students
• To develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors;
• To develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the way in which people speak and behave;
• To become more aware of conventional behavior in common situations in the target culture;
• To increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language;
• To develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of support in gevidence;
• To develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture;
• To simulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people. Along the same vein, Stern (1992) indicates that the aim of teaching culture should be:
• Knowledge about the target culture.
• Awareness of its characteristics and of differences between the target culture and the learner’s own country.
• A research-minded outlook.
• An emphasis on the understanding socio-cultural implications of language and language use
• Affective goals; interest, intellectual curiosity, and empathy.
CEF as cited in Saluveer offers a list of seven categories that are considered characteristic of a particular European society and its culture. These include everyday living (e.g., food and drink, holidays andworking practices), living conditions (e.g., housing conditions), interpersonal relations (e.g., class structure, family structures and relations between generations), values, beliefs and attitudes (e.g., social class, wealth, regional cultures, minorities and arts), body language, social conventions (punctuality, dress and behavioral and conversational conventions) and ritual behaviors (e.g., birth, marriage and death).
Ways of teaching culture
Many researchers have put forward numerous approaches and techniques associated with the teaching of culture. However, we cannot jettison the fact that the choices we make depend on various factors, the most important ones being:
• The context in which the language is being taught (EFL or ESL);
• Learners’ age and their language competency;
• The teacher. Stern (1992, p.223) distinguishes between three situations in which the teaching of culture can take place:1. Culture is taught in language courses, where students are physically and often psychologically removed from reality of the second culture. In this case, culture teaching provides background and context and helps the learners visualize the reality. This seems to be the most common situation for teaching culture in many countries where there is no access to the target language’s native speakers.2. Culture is taught in a situation, which prepares a student for a visit or work in a new environment. Even though the student is physically far away from the culture, he/she is psychologically better prepared and also more motivated to learn.3. Culture is taught in the cultural setting (e.g., to immigrants, students studying in a target language community). In this case, students need more help to come to terms with the foreign environment to avoid cultural misunderstanding. Each of the situations discussed above determines the goals and objectives of culture teaching and the topics to be covered throughout the course. For instance when the aim of the curriculum is to fill the students with some information about the new culture, the most suitable activities might be, reading and discussing literary and newspaper texts, watching videos and films. For the second and third situations, learners need different skills of cultural practices. These skills can be best developed through role plays, drama, and dialogues. While devising and utilizing these activities, teachers have to take the students’ age and language proficiency level into account. Byram emphasizes that “teaching and learning aims which include understanding, tolerance, empathy, and related notions presuppose a psychological readiness in learners which may be age-dependent, may be influenced by social factors, may be furthered or even inhibited by exposure to a foreign culture and language. ”If the approaches and activities that the teacher chooses are to be successfully implemented, the teacher must have a thorough grasp of the context, the situation, and the people involves. Byram (1997, p.62) in this regard states that “the teacher should be aware of the nature of the challenge to learners’ understanding of their culture and identity.”
Teaching Culture Without Preconceptions
Cultural information should be presented in a nonjudgmental fashion, in a way that does not place value or judgment on distinctions between the students’ native culture and the culture explored in the classroom. Kramsch (1993) describes the “third culture” of the language classroom—a neutral space that learners can create and use to explore and reflect on their own and the target culture and language.
Some teachers and researchers have found it effective to present students with objects or ideas that are specific to the culture of study but are unfamiliar to the students. The students are given clues or background information about the objects and ideas so that they can incorporate the new information into their own worldview. An example might be a cooking utensil. Students would be told that the object is somehow used for cooking, then they would either research or be informed about how the utensil is used. This could lead into related discussion about foods eaten in the target culture, the geography, growing seasons, and so forth. The students act as anthropologists, exploring and understanding the target culture in relation to their own. In this manner, students achieve a level of empathy, appreciating that the way people do things in their culture has its own coherence.
It is also important to help students understand that cultures are not monolithic. A variety of successful behaviors are possible for any type of interaction in any particular culture. Teachers must allow students to observe and explore cultural interactions from their own perspectives to enable them to find their own voices in the second language speech community.
The most common approaches in teaching culture
Teaching culture has been an important part of foreign language instruction for decades. Throughout the history of language teaching and learning, different approaches to teaching culture have come into vogue and gained importance. Among these approaches some have lost popularity; some others had been and remained dominant. These approaches can be classified in different ways. Saluveer (2004) has divided the minto two broad categories: 1) those which focus only (or mostly) on the culture of the country whose language issue died (the mono-cultural approach) and 2) those which are based on comparing learners' own and the other culture (the comparative approach). Risager (1998, pp.243-252) describes four approaches to the teaching of culture, namely, the intercultural approach, the multicultural approach, the trans-cultural approach, and the foreign-cultural approach. The intercultural approach draws upon the idea that culture is best learned through comparison of the target and the learners’ own culture. Though the main focus is on the target culture, the intercultural approach pinpoints the relations between the learners' own culture. This approach is aimed at developing learners' understanding of intercultural and communicative competences, enabling them to act as mediators between the two cultures. However, Risager (1998, p.246) considers this approach inadequate as it is "blind to the actual multicultural character of almost all existing countries or states" and suggests that teachers should use the multicultural approach. The multicultural approach is based on the idea that in every country a number of sub-cultures exist within one culture. This approach not only includes a focus on the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the target country, but also on the learners' own culture. Similar to the intercultural approach, comparison is an important factor here. Risager (1998, p.246) stresses that a balanced and anti-racist view of cultures should be involved. This approach emphasizes the principle that cultures are not monolithic. The third approach propounded by Risager is called the trans-cultural approach. The fundamental tenet behind this is that due to mass communication, World Wide Web, globalization, and the ensuing phenomena, them odern world cultures are intricately interwoven. Since a large number of people use the foreign languages as lingua-francas, this approaches considers the foreign language as an international language, so that it is not necessary at all to link the foreign language to any specific culture. However, Byram (1997, p.55) asserts that although it is possible to introduce topics which are of universal significance in all cultures, such an approach leaves learners without topics which are characteristic of a particular country, that is the ones which "characterize its uniqueness for the language learner". Foreign-cultural approach is shaped upon the concept of a single culture and focuses on the target culture. It solely focuses on the target culture and neither takes the learners' own culture into consideration nor does it compare the two cultures together. What is important here is to develop the target language’s communicative competence and cultural understanding. However, this approach has been criticized on the grounds that it does not focus on the relations between the two cultures. Stern (1992, p.223-232) presents eight approaches and techniques to teaching culture, which include:
• Creating an authentic classroom environment (techniques include, for example, displays and exhibitions of realia);
• Providing cultural information ( for example, cultural aside, culture capsule and culture cluster);
• Cultural problem solving (for example, culture assimilator);
• Behavioral and affective aspects (for example drama and mini-drama);
• Cognitive approaches (for example student research);
• The role of literature and humanities (for example, literary reading and watching films);
• Real-life exposure to the target culture (for example, visits to the class by native speakers, pen-pals and visits to other countries);
• Making use of cultural community resources (for example, when a foreign language learning takes place in the target-language community, the everyday environment can be used as a resource).
Materials for teaching culture
If a language instructor desires to have an efficient integration of culture in language teaching, he ought to pool alot of resources to make this desire come true. These resources include textbooks, surveys, songs, interviews, biographies, photos, literature, adverts, television programs, histories, music, films, maps and the Internet. Thelist can go on and on, but not all of them are at the teachers’ disposal specifically in an EFL context.
Different types of textbooks
According to Saluveer (2004), most foreign language textbooks used in language classrooms fall into two categories: international/global textbooks and local/locally produced textbooks.
The first category covers materials provided for the international use. Such textbooks address issues which appeal to people from different cultural backgrounds and include topics that can be set any where.The second type, local textbooks, includes materials which are consistent with the requirements of the national curriculum used by a particular country. Such textbooks usually foster learners’ awareness of both their own cultural identity and the target culture. Textbooks can be classified on the basis of their cultural component and how language and cultural syllabi correspond to each other, as enumerated below:
• Those which have a cultural syllabus but make no claims to be language course books – offering themselves sin a supplementary role;
• Those which aim to be fully-functioning language course books but claim to have a serious cultural syllabus;
• Language course books which make wide use of cultural input (but almost always have very little learner cultural output).
Conclusion
The idea of teaching culture is nothing new to second language teachers. In many cases, teaching culture has meant focusing a few lessons on holidays, customary clothing, folk songs, and food. While these topics may be useful, without a broader context or frame they offer little in the way of enriching linguistic or social insight—especially if a goal of language instruction is to enable students to function effectively in another language and society. Understanding the cultural context of day-to-day conversational conventions such as greetings, farewells, forms of address, thanking, making requests, and giving or receiving compliments means more than just being able to produce grammatical sentences. It means knowing what is appropriate to say to whom, and in what situations, and it means understanding the beliefs and values represented by the various forms and usages of the language.
Culture must be fully incorporated as a vital component of language learning. Second language teachers should identify key cultural items in every aspect of the language that they teach. Students can be successful in speaking a second language only if cultural issues are an inherent part of the curriculum.
As mentioned above, culture (as many scholars call it “the fifth skill”) should be an indispensable component of every single language curriculum. To do so, the teacher should set clear and realistic goals and consider anappropriate approach as well as suitable techniques and activities for teaching culture. Nevertheless, the teacher must bear in mind that the ultimate goal of teaching culture is to promote intercultural communication among thestudents.Today, there is a unanimous agreement among scholars (Kramsch, 1993, Byram, 1997, Seelye, 1993,Chastain, 1988) that teachers should integrate language and culture into their classrooms and they should not perceive them as two separate entities. Language is seen as part of culture and culture as part of language, whichis why they cannot be separated and should be taught together (Brown 2007a, p.177).Although the importance of culture in language classes is known to any teacher and anyone who hassomething to do with language teaching, teaching of culture is somewhat limited and is not optimally fulfilled.The primary reason behind this is some practical issues including lack of time, the issues of designing a culturalsyllabus and choosing appropriate techniques and, finally, the presentation of culture-related topics and activitiesin teaching materials.
2. Религия Майя
3. Петербургский национальный исследовательский университет информационных технологий механики и оптики Сп1
4. реферат дисертації на здобуття наукового ступеня кандидата філологічних наук
5. научения учения обучения
6. Хагакурэ Цунэтомо Ямамото Хагакурэ http---www
7. Дипломная работа- Правовое регулирование несостоятельности (банкротства) по законодательству РФ
8. память
9. Гомельскi дзяржаўны унiверсiтэт iмя Францыска Скарыны Факультэт фiлалагiчны Кафедра беларуск
10. филио люблю софия мудрость любовь к мудрости
11. использование машин баз данных; База хранящая данные агрегированные по многим измерениям ~ это хранили
12. Мистецтво ГалицькоВолинського князівства Виконала- студентка 25 ~ групи ІФЖ Го
13. Технические средства реализуются программным и аппаратным обеспечением и решают разные задачи по за.
14. . Расположите элементные базы ЭВМ в правильной последовательности
15. СанктПетербургский государственный технологический институттехнический университетСПбГТИТУ Фак
16. Проблемы накопления нитратов в продукции растениеводства
17. ТЕМА- Сказки для взрослых Евгения Шварца ПЛАН Путь в театр
18. Преобразование сигналов и помех радиотехническими цепями
19. Проект организации работ по строительству участка автомобильной дороги
20. 2009 НФП2013 Введено в действие приказомМинистра обороны Российской Федерации 200от 21 апреля 2009 г