Discussion 6: Teaching Culture

          Culture in my view is everything that makes up a group of people.  Culture really is what defines a group of people.  When people asks about where a person is from, where they grew up or where there family is from, what they are really asking is about their cultural background.  They want to know where that person came from because it helps them to better understand that person in a very important way.  This is why I believe it is so important to teach L2 culture.  Teaching C2 is just as important as teaching the language.  What is language without culture?  A foreign language should be taught within a context and that context is culture!  It is easy for language instructors to forget the most important aspect of teaching language, because they become overwhelmed in the details of the language and overemphasis how important grammar and vocabulary are.  

            I don’t think that it is impossible to teach L2 culture in a classroom setting, but being restricted to a classroom does make it more difficult.  I think it is too easy for a language instructor to want to teach only “Olympian culture,” or “culture MLA,” and only show his/her students the best of that culture.  However, students are better served if they are also taught “Hearthstone culture,” or “culture BBV,” (beliefs, behavior, values) because students need to get an idea of everything that makes up a culture.  The limitations to teaching both aspects of culture is that teaching the “best” of culture is a lot easier than trying to teach culture as “everything” in human life.  The limitation is that there is so much that could be taught, so trying to focus on what should be taught is hard. The Spanish culture for example encompasses the culture of Mexico, Central American countries, South American countries, Caribbean islands, and of course Spanish culture from Spain, but people try to put all these different aspects of Spanish-speaking culture into one category.  Chapter 8 mentioned how students may get the idea that all Spanish-speaking people eat tacos, go to bullfights and take abundant naps, when this is not the case.  I have even had someone ask me in the past if I was Mexican and I do not look Mexican at all.  It would be wrong for students to believe that all Spanish people are like Mexicans especially the Americanized version of Mexican people, who eat spicy food, wear sombreros, ponchos, cowboy boots, eat tortillas and want to cross the border to get to the US. 

I think that teachers can easily teach “Big C” which focuses on product, such as the food, music, art and literature from that country (aka “Olympian culture”).  In high school I learned about “product” and was the only time I remember being tested on an aspect of culture was when I had a test that I had to match the date with an important Spanish holiday.  It takes a lot more effort for a teacher to teach perspective and practice, so students learn about “small c” which is daily life, which includes the beliefs, behavior and values of a people (aka “culture BBV”).  It is the nitty-gritty, what truly defines what a culture is and sadly it is the aspect of culture that is most often stereotyped.  Testing students on aspects of culture is crucial because that shows students that culture is just as important as language.  A teacher can list facts for students like Mexicans listen to mariachi music and Dominicans like bachata, but it is the attitudes and the reason “why” they listen to this type of music that is harder to teach.  I like how the book suggested using native informants and having students make semantic maps and do word associations.  Allowing students to explore their own word connotations and realizing that these are tied to their own cultural bias, can help students understand how the way others see their world is based on their own cultural beliefs.  I also like the idea of teaching students proverbs or idioms (un “dicho”) because these can say a lot about a culture and the belief system that the culture has.  It also shows that not all the ideas of one culture can be “translated” to another culture.

 Another important aspect of culture that is usually ignored is humor.  I wish that my Spanish classes in high school had done more on humor.  I think a teacher could easily have a “joke of the day” posted on the board each class and it would be a good way to either begin or end the class.  It would be a fun way to introduce new vocabulary or a new concept.  I realized when I went to Mexico last year how much “Mexican Spanish” I did not know.  I would be watching a cartoon show like “El Chavo” which is a very popular cartoon show in Mexico and I could not understand everything that was being said, but at least this show was meant for younger audiences so the jokes were a little easier to understand and they were acted out well.  It was even worse when I watched “El Platanito show,” a comedy show meant for adults and I couldn’t understand any of the jokes made.  It was frustrating because I could understand the individual words, but not the words as a whole.  An example in English would be the kid’s joke, Q: “How do you know when it’s raining cats and dogs?”  A: “When you step in a poodle.”  A native speaker of English would have no trouble finding this joke funny, since they understand the expression, “raining cats and dogs” and also understand that a “poodle” is a type of dog and that “poodle” sounds a lot like the word “puddle,” but a person learning English might not understand the joke/pun being made. 

It got a little better as time went on and I had been in Mexico longer.  I did “joke” with my friends that I would know when I knew Spanish well when I could understand everything on “El Platanito show.”  Mexicans jokes are pretty vulgar, so learning the use of some of the vulgar words did help, but I still have a ways to go.   Another comedy show, more family-friendly, was “La familia peluche,” which was about a “furry” family and one of the episodes I watched was about the boys in the family wanting to go watch football at a friend’s house but the mother/wife wants them to go over her in-laws house for dinner.  This is an idea that is pretty easy to understand from the point of view of American culture, so it shows that Spanish culture may not be all that different.  Learning about similarities is just as important as learning about cultural differences, though family-life is very important in the Spanish culture.  The use of authentic material such as jokes, interviews, TV shows, etc is a great way to teach about culture at the same time that you are teaching language.    

Teaching Culture

I am a member of a Multicultural sorority, so my idea of culture might be slightly different. I think culture is more than a description of traditions done in a certain society. Culture includes traditions, food, as well as ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, values, and morals. I think it is extremely to teach the students who are learning a second language about culture. Learning about a language isn't simply just learning the language, it also includes learning the cultures that accompanies those cultures. If the learners ever plan on visiting a region in which the language is spoken, it is important to have a basic understanding of what to expect in that region.

There are many different ways to teach culture in a classroom setting. Teachers can have students read and answer questions about a passage in their textbooks. These passages typically include a lot about culture in a way that also pertains to the vocabulary and grammar of the current lesson. Culture can be taught through songs, readings, media, movies, etc. I think culture is best taught when the context of the lesson. For example, when teaching food vocab, you can use a song or a paragraph of text that people of that culture eat during holidays or special occasions.

In my opinion, culture is everything about a people or a country that makes them unique and similar to another people: food, clothing, religious beliefs, money, music, stories, history, art, values, ethics, laws, behavior, and more things that can't be seen or really defined well. In my FREN 790 class, we've been talking about foreign culture with the metaphor of an iceberg. Everything above the surface (10%) is the visible aspects of a culture, like how they dress or the music they listen to. Everything below the surface (90%) is the non-visible part of the culture, like values, beliefs, ethics and morals. One example that is that when visiting someone in their home in France, you will not be given a tour of their home. In fact, you may only see the entry way and the dining or living room. For Americans, that is really weird and rather stand-offish, but the unseen part of the French culture is the importance they place on private and personal space.

It is incredibly important to teach culture alongside the language. Without the knowledge of even the aspects of culture from the tip of the iceberg, let along a glimpse of the bottom parts, a student would be learning words and concepts with no meaning behind them. In addition, if a student went to a country where the L2 was spoken without knowing even a small information about the culture, they would invariably become lost and confused and in all likelihood would offend someone or multiple someones.

The difficulty is how to teach a culture in the classroom setting. In my own L2 experiences, culture topics are usually best introduced through an authentic film or reading that incorporates the aspect of culture. For example, in my high school French classes, we watched Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, a set of films about small town provincial France and the farming communities there. In the films, we got to see what the country side looked like and how they dressed and lived there. In addition, we learned something about the French culture that can be very hard for Americans to come to terms with: they eat bunny rabbits. In fact, the raise and breed them much like we do chickens. It isn't a deep non-visible aspect of culture, but nonetheless it is an important one. Having been to France with this knowledge, I was not surprised, disgusted or taken aback when I saw "lapin" on a menu in a restaurant.

It is much easier to teach the "little culture" aspects than it is to teach the deep invisible underlying "why" culture aspects. I believe that when students are shown and taught the smaller more visible aspects, and when they have more knowledge and experience with the language and its history, they will inevitably ask "why" something is the way it is, which can lead to a good discussion about the deeper aspects of the culture. That isn't to say that the culture should be taught in a cheap, touristy way, with outlandish parties and weird food, but by exposing students to different parts of daily life in that culture, including food, holidays, school, transportation, etc.

Discussion 6

Culture is actually really hard to define. It can be the overarching themes we all know such as literature, art, film, and food, but it can also be smaller stuff such as taking the transit system or going out to buy food at the grocery store. It is important to teach the tart language culture, because without that it may as well be Linguistics. You are learning a language and the point of language is that it is a human creation in which you can communicate thoughts and ideas. You are also not fully learning a language if you take the L2 and place it over the information you know of the L1. The same works for culture. 

I think that it is definitely possible to teach culture in the classroom. With Latin, we would have units based around certain cultural practices such as how the markets worked or when a boy would exchange their toga praetexta for the toga libera (coming of age ceremony in Ancient Rome). We would also have projects such as cooking a roman traditional food and we would then have a feast of all the different foods. For Japanese, we would often go off on tangent about culture when we read of a scenario from the textbook. This was mainly because the book hadn't been updated from the 80's and our teacher would remind us that things had changed and would explain the cultural differences and what ha changed from the 80's. Also, in 401 we would also watch part of a documentary series called Japanland (which I highly recommend if any of your are remotely curious about Japanese culture) every thursday. In the higher classes, we would talk about more in-depth cultural ideas, and some problems that are caused by culture. Many times we would read an article and have a discussion about it. 

I think that it's important to have culture based in the curriculum, just as important as grammar, actually. Learning a language is extremely boring otherwise and often you will not understand the language without learning the context it comes from. 

Discussion 6 - Teaching Culture

In L2, teaching culture is as important as teaching the language itself. Culture is the history and way of life of the people who speak the language, and without learning the culture students are only experiencing half of the language. Often, there are parts of a language that do not make sense without having the cultural background of the people. For example, in Russian, a common expression is "without down, without feathers", which is essentially wishing the other person no comforts in life. This would seem harsh, but Russian people are used to living without many comforts and think of those who have them to be weak. Therefore, to wish this upon someone means to wish them to wish them strength and success.

It is certainly possible to teach culture in the classroom, but it is not entirely effective all of the time. A teacher can prepare students for some things, but there are parts of a culture that cannot be explained without experiencing them. The idea of "culture shock" is based on this, because it is the idea that a person travels to a foreign culture and is shocked by the differences in their way of life. But this should not stop teachers from trying, which can be done in several different ways. An easy way to teach culture is to inform students about special holidays and the histories behind the celebrations, but a very important part of culture is history. Students need to have historical knowledge about the native people in order to understand the general mindset of the region or country.

If someone who knew absolutely nothing about Russian history learned the Russian language and them went to Russia, not only would the famous landmarks mean nothing to them, they would never catch the nuances that make the language so special. For example, many Russian saying are spoken passively, meaning that things happen to you rather than you actively doing them. An ignorant foreigner would not understand why, but looking at Russia's history of oppression it is not hard to understand why the Russian people would feel like most things are beyond their control and simply happen to them. It is a teacher's job to not simply teach these phrases to their students, but also to stop and point out the cultural background behind them.

To me, culture is everything that a native person knows about how to fit in to their own society. This can be conscious knowledge, such as what type of food is normally eaten, or more subconscious, such as how to walk down the street and "blend in," or how to properly use a slang term in context. I think it is definitely possible to teach culture in a second-language classroom, and it is also important to do so. It is especially important for those students who plan on continuing their language education and might even plan to study abroad.

I'm not quite sure what the video was trying to demonstrate about culture shock, but I certainly did experience shock when I went abroad this past summer. Costa Rica was such a different place with such different people that I often found myself just wishing to be around something--anything--familiar. It was hard to be eating different food, speaking a different language, and living in someone else's house so far away from home. And you can never "turn it off." I did have some idea of what the Costa Rican culture was like before I headed down there, but it is completely different from actually experiencing it first hand. I feel like that is the largest drawback from trying to teach culture in a foreign language classroom. You can't teach the students how it is to really live the culture.

Though there is no perfect solution, I think one of the best things that can be done to teach students about culture is to have native speakers come talk to them, and maybe throw a celebration for a certain holiday while they are there to get their take on how the celebration is really supposed to proceed. If there are any movies that come close to portraying the real culture of a place, those might also be a good tool to use in the classroom setting.

Discussion #6: Teaching Culture

In your view, what is culture? Is it important to teach L2 culture? Why? Is it possible to teach L2 culture in the classroom setting? What are the limitations? How should culture be learned or taught? Use examples to support your points of view. 

Teaching Style & Learning Outcomes

In my point of view, changing teachers to some extent will have effects on the formation of students' learning habits, attitude, even grade. When we talk about teaching style, it relates to a systematic teaching methods that a teacher present in class like how to interact with students to help them master the target knowledge. Whether the new teaching style that brought by the new teacher is suitable for students or not, it will cost students' time to get used to it, rather than let students fully focus on the content they are learning. Assume that students are taught by a teacher who tend to provide a comprehensive context first then leave students to predict grammatical rules, and the next teacher tend to explain grammatical rules first then leave students to solve grammar problems. Apparently, students lose the thinking process from grammatical phenomena to grammatical rules. They may feel confused and waste time on figuring out how to apply rules to grammar problems, and on the contrary, if they are accustomed to the second teacher's method, they may not be able to make hypothesis on grammar rules. It is dangerous to make students feel frustrated when confront this kind of difficulty, which may lead them to form a passive attitude towards learning, and even affect their grade.

However, changing teaching style is not always a bad thing for students. At students' early stage of a learning process, where learning habits are developed, they need a phase to find and grasp a basic way of learning that can help them master the knowledge, but after this, they should try other methods to improve and make their ways of learning more efficient, and during this phase, different kinds of teaching styles are needed. And it won't hurt students' motivation of learning.

For myself as a student, I know that my attitude towards the instructor largely affects my learning.  I become more motivated and interested in a class depending who is presenting the material and how they do it.  If a teacher of mine is dry, even a subject I'm interested in can become my least favorite class and I will become more and more reluctant to attend, pay attention, or put forth any effort towards learning.  Although, it is extremely necessary for students to see different teaching styles and methods throughout their education, this will help them in real life situations as well learning to deal with different types of people in the workplace and collaborating with them on tasks.  Students that are intrinsically motivated whether it be because of their own goals or desire to learn obviously have less of an issue with this, they put forth 100% to do well no matter what the environment is, but students that do not have such an easy time motivating themselves struggle with changes in teachers and styles of teaching.  These students are also going to have to learn to work with different types of people in order to be functioning members of society, therefore having them experience these varied educational situations will most certainly help them in achieving that.

Changing Teachers

I think that changing from teacher to teacher each year does affect students’ learning, but at the same time it is a good thing that students get used to different teaching styles.  Each year students need to adapt to different teachers’ teaching styles and the method in which they conduct their classes.  I like the idea of “looping” and having the same teacher for two or three years in a row and maybe in the ideal world students would have the same set of teachers throughout elementary school, then throughout middle school and then the same set of teachers throughout high school.  However, maybe this is not the best approach.  This method of changing teachers might actually make it harder for students to get used to the new set of teachers when they switch schools, from elementary to middle and then from middle to high school.  Students need to get used to different teaching styles and what matters even more is that students learn how they learn best. 

            A good teacher should teach to different learning styles and to accommodate all students as best as he or she can.  The emphasis needs to be on a teacher being an affective teacher, not so much on whether students should change teachers or not.  From one angle it would be great for students to get used to one teacher and the teacher wouldn’t have to worry about what the students learned last year because she would already know and having this same teacher for 2 or more years would provide continuity and stability for students.  But from another angle, say this teacher was not an effective teacher and the student is now stuck with this same teacher for 2 or more years.  I had never had the same teacher for more than a year until high school. 

I had the same Spanish teacher in high school for 3 years.  There were only two Spanish teachers at my high school and I feel that I got the least effective teacher of the two.  I didn’t learn much in those three years and I think Spanish I-III it felt like we covered the same material each year.  I got straight A’s in her class, but her class was too easy.  I am also not sure why my high school didn’t make it a point to place students in a higher level of a language class, since I had taken Spanish in middle school.  When it came to deciding if I should take Spanish IV I decided not to, because the teacher I had was that un-motivating and she did not expect the most of her students.  Even in Spanish III she did not speak the target language at all times, which would have been appropriate.  So in this case keeping the same teacher each year was not beneficial to me as a student, my grades were good but my motivation to continue learning the language was low.  

Switching teachers

Yes I do believe that switching teachers year to year affects the students' learning because it offers students to be taught in more then one method. From personal experience and switching Spanish teachers in all 4 years of high school I was shown many different methods of learning. Not one of my teachers had the same method of teaching. It ranged from just lecture and notes on the whiteboard to actually going to a museum to learn about art vs. just sitting in the classroom. I found it very beneficial to have a variety of teachers.

Students do adapt to a certain teaching stye from having it every day but I feel that students can adapt to different teaching styles. From m high school experience I was able to grasp a range of different teaching styles that ranged just reading the textbook and doing exercises or watching a powerpoint to learn. I think that if students struggle with the new teaching style they will be able to grasp it by the end of the year and semester. It is important that teachers realize that some students may struggle and of the students continue to struggle then the teacher should change his or her teaching style.

I do believe that the method that the teacher used to teach has a direct connection with the students motivation and grades because if the teacher shows that they are interested in the subject then the students are more likely to benefit. I know this to be true because by the time that I was in Spanish 4 in high school the teacher was able to express her opinions on the class. This showed me that the teacher had a unique style that motivated her students. The teacher needs to have a good teaching style because it shows their motivation and when the teacher is more motivated that class grades and overall atmosphere is positive.