In teaching English as a foreign language, can we stimulate students to apply themselves to reading, writing, listening and speaking through teaching them about the culture of the target language?
The answer would be yes. It is almost standard saying in EFL literature that teaching a language is also the teaching of culture. The teaching of culture helps learners understand the cultural connotations of the materials that they receive and intake, on the other hand, if teaching materials are culturally charged, it can increase the interest or motivation of learners' learning procecess. I guess the most basic approach is to blend culture and language in terms of course design and learning material presentation. My personal experience tells me that even in a class of linguistics, teaching culture sometimes is quite helpful, e.g., to help students understand the different notions of politeness in English culture and their home culture in teaching pragmatics.
The relationship between foreign language learning and culture learning has been recognized. Students cannot actually expert the language up until they have also learned the cultural contexts in which the language befalls. Routine things, like forms of address to appropriate ways of expressing disagreement, culture form an integral part of the language learning. In any case, in order for communication to be effective, language use must be related with other culturally appropriate behavior, not only linguistic rules in the narrow sense.
teaching is a three purposed exercise. viz teaching of English as a foreign language must address three objectives (i) The essentials of English Language - ability of reading, writing, listening and speaking (ii) the learning of etiquette of English speaking places - to apply the English Language skills earned (culture based domain in the present question) (iii) Serving as a part of the education process - augmenting learning, - say if education is defined as the development of mind (let teaching of English (foreign language address that))
I feel blessed as having ;learnt German Language (though on my own before joining University (as a student at evening studies),
As states Martina I drew on their own internalised lingua-cultural backgrounds ( already having learnt English as a foreign language). And added the German cultural aspects to my inventory of knowledge.
In the University had the fortune of getting tutored by a German lehrer, Herr Werr, who did allow us to secure a frame that enabled us to sketch intercultural understanding.
We thus learnt (i) The essentials of German Language - ability of reading, writing, listening and speaking
(ii) the learning of etiquette at German speaking places - to apply the culture based domain (iii) Improved my knowledge and competency in English language otself, since my fall back on lingua-cultural background was always English.
I think for older learners, it is not necessary to ‘teach’ them about the culture of the target language. Rather, teachers can ask them to compare, for example, the ways to expressing something between the target language and their own language, after the learners receive the input or find out some data themselves. Teachers may need to draw their attention to cultural aspects, which lead to the differences, and then teachers can ask them to talk about it in groups (for speaking ability), or write a collaborative essay about it (for writing ability), or do role-play.
@Yi-Men, I believe any content is okay, as long as the context is driven by a three pronged strategy:
Learning (i) The essentials of newer Language - ability of reading, writing, listening and speaking say by connecting with between the target language and their own language
(ii) the learning of culture based domain (iii) Improving knowledge and competency in general.
I think the answer to the question about motivation and teaching culture is that it depends. It can stimulate some students and not others.
A couple of questions that I would like to ask are: What is the target culture of English as a foreign language? English is spoken in many countries, and, in those countries, it many of those countries it is spoken by people of different ethnic and socio-economic groups. Which of groups will you choose as your representative of the target culture?
In my empirical experiences in Indonesian EFL introducing cultural information is an interesting matter especially when the information is brand new to them. Some cultures that is occurring in one country may similar or different from learner's culture. From this atmosphere learners are curious and raises their self awareness of what language skill is being practiced or learned. However, as a teacher we must fully aware that the objective is not to teach the sociology of culture but exploit it as a tool to raise enthusiasm and active participation in language learning.
Considering the culture of the target language, in this case English, to be extremely vast, I would say that by allowing learners to be familiar with cultural aspects from English speaking countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland (and not only England or the US.). is good. Also, many other countries in the world have in its population high rates of fluent English speakers who also corroborate English language culture.
This is also a good way to show English as an international language and how varied it may be in its way of expressing meaning according to the different places it is spoken around the world.
Right Alessandra, I presumed it was more than vast [ as you acknowledge the culture of the target language, in this case English, to be extremely vast" I foresee English is evolving towards transforming the world as a global village, though it is a foreign language for me..
That is why I presume the subject of "Culture" is undergoing a sea change.- "fluent English speakers [can/ must/ should?] corroborate English language culture. I start thinking if "ethics a subset of language?" Not changing focus here, I would request to address this aspect at the following link:
Insightful responses so far to this important question. Thanks for bringing this forward, Michael Marek.
We have to be very careful, though, which cultural aspects to take as teaching materials. It's safe to use environmental topics, I suppose. It might be more difficult to find 'safe' but interesting societal topics. Let me give you an example:
We can talk about the monarchy in the United Kingdom and how it is exercised including criticism and discussions on succession to the throne etc. I would not touch these topics when teaching Thai students since all of them are actually banned in this society under the jurisdiction of lèse-majesté.
So, finding and creating helpful and 'safe' teaching materials needs an understanding of the original culture of your students.
Michael is absolutely correct about 'safe' materials. I teach a number of international students, many of them from the Middle East. They have so many questions about the U.S. and why Americans do this or that. Furthermore, they are more than willing to talk about problems they see in their own societies. However, in general, we avoid religion because it could grow difficult to say the least (and I am an American Muslim to their surprise). But teaching American idioms, cultural norms, language accents, dialects, and such matters are usually safe. Those subjects can be fun and a needed shift from focus on the formal language study (my students are college-educated and relatively fluent grammatically) but they find the Southern American accent hard to understand (so did I for about two years when I first moved to Alabama) and want to understand the culture better. They also face the GRE grad exam so they do need far more cultural awareness on such things as schooling, medical care, major cultural/social issues in the US (the two essays on the test are more difficult for them as a result of their lack of awareness related to American viewpoints on education, school, etc.) Those subjects are safe to use for language development, background for the essays, etc. As always, teaching involves finding that balance between relatively safe and ultimately controversial (and that also goes for classes with American-born students, especially freshmen).
If you teach the culture of the foreign language by means putting your students in real life situations , they are going to engage themselves . I am speaking from my own experience . Have them to understand the differences between their culture and the one of the foreign language studied just by means of real life experiences . Believe me it works .
With our undergrad EFL students we use target culture almost exclusively as the vehicle for teaching reading, writing, listening and speaking. Even when it comes to testing, we ensure that reading and listening texts are deeply embedded in target culture, and that text production is answering a cultural topical question.
In the first semester we confine "target culture" to mean that of the teacher taking their parallel class, so American, British or Irish respectively. With progression of semesters, we branch out and cross-specialise when it comes to culture teaching. Keeping the target area limited at first allows us to concentrate on building a skill set for learning, first just about the one culture, which can then be used for learning about cultures in general. Other than the differences in target culture, teachers with different home cultures teach absolutely in parallel. This standardisation helps fledgling students later on when it comes to using their skill set to compare cultures.
Well, this is the theory!
I wholeheartedly second Arif Jawaid's comment that we should also teach thinking skills in itself; it furthers everything they do in university, not just language skills. The ability to draw connections also helps students to understand the wide application of skill sets learned in EFL. I find that all too often, students have to be told explicitly to use a skill set from a different course. With adequate "thinking skills" this should be self-evident to them.
Ditto above, and I believe one of the most "valid" avenues into 1 (Listening) of the 4 skills of the target language's culture is via cinema. Great care however must be taken to "expose" the students to only appropriate films, thus avoiding Hollywood's current focus on violent, politically motivated and ouvertly sexual themes. Specifically, screening older, "classic" films such as "Citizen Kane", "Gone With The Wind" and "The Grapes of Wrath" are excellent ELL opportunities.
Add the cross-cultural factors to the curriculum design for your area so that you don't have to do all the work of teaching about culture in your subject. Here's an example from my own research in workforce education and development:
Absolutely yes. Foreign culture details specifically those that related to the target language supposed to motivate student towards exploring everything about it.