One Indian Lecture teaches the course intercultural communication, mainly introduces Landeskund of southeast Asian countries and its neighboring countries. The aim is to improve students' cultural communication competence and their speaking skills. The other lecture from Canada teaches the course Culture Around the daily life, using a course book "People like us". The aim of the course is to improve students' speaking skills and have students know more and understand more about culture. Both small c culture and Big C culture are introduced in the lesson.These two courses are English language courses. I would like to probe into the effects of the teaching of two lectures on developing students' cultural awareness or cultural sensitivity. Could any research help me sharpen my idea to have some research questions? Thanks a million!
Without knowing exactly what is covered in the English classes, I think that a focus on universal gestures and expressions would be interesting to your students. The gestures are lighthearted and fun to demonstrate in a classroom setting. For example, according to sociological theory, there are gestures to indicate height that differ from culture to culture. On the other hand, there are global emotions, such as anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise that everyone expresses that can be recognized anywhere. I hope this helps. Visual aids are essential to this type of presentation.
Well, if they are to learn English, they need to stay interested. Research shows that people learn language better the more senses they employ in the learning process. So to learn better they need visual stimuli, sound as well as writing. Perhaps even smell, cooking etc.
There are several ways to do this. When i was an English teacher here in Norway, i used to play the radio play The War of The Worlds (1938, available on archive.org) for my students. They liked it, and there was a lot to say about the cultural context of the piece. There are documentaries to watch, movies. When i tried to learn French myself, I used a series of apps for a android tablet called " Fun easy, learn french". It is available for English and many other languages. They also need lectures in grammar.
There are lectures on youtube you can have a look at, and probably much new software. There are sites that combine language learning with social media, such as babbel.com and lingq, Here you can do excercises, and have them corrected by native speakers. You can make friends with people who want to learn your language and then you can help each other out. Finally, there is the very expensive software called rosetta stone, which is very similar to babbel.com . I tried it, but it didn't help me that much. Good luck
Hope attached one is useful for your investigation.
Article Cultural Awareness Teaching Techniques
Thank you all of you professors, researchers, and scholars. Your answer are really appreciated.
I once saw a final exam question at Oxford University that read...Does the UK or the USA have a unified literature? After thinking about it, it occurred to me that the United States' literature was not unified...we have regional literature (southern lit) and American Indian lit, feminist lit. southwestern lit. etc. perhaps because our geography is more extensive. The more I thought about it, I realized even our vowel sounds are not unified. We do not have a unified language due to regional dialects. Ex. "Cahawfee", "cafee" and Coffee.Our A vowel alone has 5 different sounds (unlike Spanish that has only 5 vowel sounds totally). I would think first define the diverse people and regions, and then look at their literature. Then see the benefits of diversity. Does it strengthen a national culture or destroy it? Good luck.
We now have an responsibility to ensure that our students develop cultural awareness. We cultivate cultural awareness by express interest in the ethnic background of your students, redirect your role in the classroom from instructor to facilitator, maintain a strict level of sensitivity to language concerns, incorporate methods for self-testing, maintain an inclusive curriculum, involving them in cross-cultural activities through the Internet. when you hear about explosions in Nairobi and you just talked to a friend in Kenya it is meaningful in a way that would never be possible learning from a textbook. you developed an awareness in her students and fulfill desire to learn more about people from around the world.
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