With my friend Kamal I concur on the basis of student experience as well as experience as an educator. Regarding student experience, I studied Spanish and Spanish culture abroad at the University of Salamanca (Spain). All the information came at me in Spanish classrooms, using Spanish cultural presuppositions. At no time did I perform simultaneous translation. Regarding experience as an educator, I served as study abroad advisor for undergraduate students at the University of Connecticut (USA). When students returned, they offered presentations in native Spanish acquired abroad. At the Univ. of Connecticut I taught all my courses in native Spanish and expected native comprehension of my students. This expectation succeeded!

culture may play a role not in how we learn but in what we are interested in learning/knowing as we all bring our lived experiences to our knowing. In other words, our history/culture provides a basis for what we value and what we believe and this has influences on how we engage with the world and on our world views and this engagement coupled with our current world views may influence our willingness to accept new knowledge if it is in dissonance with our current way of knowing

Dear Hemanta

The relationship between teaching and learning is a reciprocal relationship which highlights the leading role of the teacher and student activity.

The school aims to stimulate, direct, encourage, boost the learning process of the students, it has an eminently pedagogical character, ie to take a definite turn for the educational process that takes place in the school environment

The social and emotional development of the student is as important as intellectual development. and the culture may be a contributing factor. Failure often comes not as a result of lack of knowledge, but as a result of ineffective knowledge and emotional maladjustment student to his current situation.

Learning occurs by a process imbued with cognitive motivation, affection and respect. Thus, it is essential to learn and want to be able to do it

It may have some sort of relation but I don't see it so far. I think as a student I am able to learn things according to my own patterns, experiences and effort. I also have foreign teachers who can express themselves very well and I have no problem understanding them and learning what they have to communicate. So, in my eyes this relationship can exist in some cases but it may not be as significant as others.

Capacity to learn anything in the classroom may depend on the mother language of the learner, only in the first stage or in the first semister. As for culture, I believe that all cultures encourage the learning process.

Although I know that in todays e.g kindergarden they teach both languages (Greek and English) I believe that in the first grades mother tonk and culture play a role in learning. In university studies, students are easily adapted to other languages and cultures.

There can be comparison to anyone's Native Language, further the capacity to learn in a classroom is not dependent on language of the learner / on the culture of the region in which they live... however the adaptability to quickly grasp the world happenings with ease and with very minimal or no time/ energy spent on "deciphering" can reduce other psychological pressures associated e.g., whether the concept is understood right or not or tinkered etc.,... hence a universal common language would benefit everyone on a longer run...

Dear Hemanta

In India most of the professional programs are done in English. What we have noticed is that some people have no problem in doing while others have found difficulty. This is because many of those who did all their schooling in mother tongue (English would have studied as a second language) have difficulty to cope with all courses in English. Whereas those that did the schooling in English have no difficulty. It therefore is not a language problem but proper training in the language.

When it comes to international students in US universities, they really excel because they come with better qualifications and excelled in their home countries, because it is very competitive. Further the Americans have a lot of extracurricular activities and part time jobs that occupy a lot of time. The international students concentrates on the studies and as a result they really excel.

I have not actually raised the question of using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. What I am trying to know is that whether learners who speak some particular language at home are on an average slower in learning, whatever be the medium of instruction, than learners who speak some other language at home.

Kamal you are right! Young children can learn easily foreign languages. I think however that the culture of the children should be in harmony with the culture of the family. This may be a reason that young children should start their education in mother country.

Capacity to learn, I understand as similar to ability to learn. I that regard, I think cognitively, neither culture nor language has much of an influence on capacity to learn. Culture in particular might influence the affective state of the learner while language may only be an access issue.

In India, there are many languages in use. There are many communities in India, each community having its distinct mother language. I have observed that students of any particular community speaking a certain mother language at home are mostly either slower or faster in learning basic things than students who speak some other mother language. So perhaps the process of learning is dependent in some way or the other on the mother language. Culture is language dependent, and therefore culture too may in some way effect the learning process.

This kind of a situation is absent in the European countries. Multilingualism does not actually exist in such countries. Accordingly, it may perhaps so happen that my question may look meaningless to some of the RG members.

The significance of language and culture and their probable impact on the learner often depends upon the the subject matter at hand.

In scientific or technological fields, where we focus on self-evident postulates or actual observable physical phenomenon, the role of language and culture is not very significant, thus making it easier for students to excel across linguistic and cultural boundaries. These areas call for cognitive faculties that are not really dependent on language or culture. That said, cultural factors could determine some of the overall perspectives, such as in the case of one's affinity for conventional western medicine vis-a-vis complementary and alternative medicine. But that does not necessary impact learning in the classroom context.

There is, however, a difference in the study of Humanities and the Social Sciences where's one knowledge of a certain language or culture can add meaningful context to their learning experience. The appreciation of Literature for example, presupposes a decent understanding of the language it is written in. Also, deeper comprehension of a social or historical event is much more likely when the learner feels some kind of cultural affinity to it. For instance, a learner who has witnessed war or political strife first-hand is in a much better position to understand a lesson on war-time history or appreciate a literature classic that was written in the backdrop of a war. Similarly, a woman who has faced gender-based discrimination is far more likely to respond to gender issues with a sense of proactive identification.

Different disciplines call for different requirements. There is no one common rule but a set of variable possibilities that could apply to varying contexts and various subject areas.

In fact, I have observed this effect on students studying subjects of science and technology. In the case of subjects of humanities, this effect is quite negligible.

Dear All,

What Nageswara wrote is logical and is founded on experiences in India. However, I do not know whether he has or not comparative data on the results of other countries where students’ and pupils’ mother tongue differ much stronger from the structure and cultural heritage of a foreign language to be used later. Indian kids have had at least 150 years of common history with English impacts and Indian languages as well as the English belong to the Indo-European language family.

What about success rates of Chinese or Japanese children and students? Their language, writing characters, the logical structure of the language and writing, not to speak on the cultural backgrounds are really far-away from the English or say the Russian.

Dear Monica and Hemanta,

You are right regarding mathematical operations and notions. Everybody uses his mother tongue or the language which were used first to learn mathematics. Please, try to solve elementary mathematical problems or operations like addition, multiplication etc. People generally use automatically their mother tongue or first language. Thus, knowledge and use of foreign languages are influenced by the field where to apply them.

Dear Andras

Thanks for your comments. I do not have any specific data but has seen a number of Chinese students in US universities. They have difficulty with English compared to Indian students. But with their initial preparation with very strong Maths and Science preparation, and the hardworking ethic helps them to excel here. Also similar to Indian students they concentrate 100% of their time in studies with very little extra curricular activities. Compared to Indian students they have to expend more effort.

Dear Nageswara,

I can but agree with you. Perhaps, Chinese students were very effectively selected by the Chinese government. As to the Indian young man, for many of them the world is open.

The capacity to learn is not dependent on the mother tongue of the learner and his culture.  One subtle proof is the experience of the foreign teacher. Teaching abroad is a case of simultaneously communicating information and absorbing new data about a culture different from the teacher´s.  The assumption is that if I teach about my culture or about any other in a foreign land, my students will be willy-nilly teaching me about theirs as they acquire my teachings.  Unless reciprocal teaching and learning takes place, teaching in a country different from the teacher´s birthplace is an impossibility. Yet it is an ancient practice for teachers to teach in foreign nations and continues today in the form of visiting professorships. I personally have taught and/or lectured in five different continents, asking and answering questions in all five.

If we graduated from a university of  entrance test "selected" "academically"-prepared scholars, whether from other countries or our own, we may not see such dependency. But for the not-so-"intelligent" and prepared ones and those from cultures that do not give emphasis to education, the dependency would be visible.

However educated and fluent one may be, the elegance of their native language will always precede the other "acquired or learned language"

I would say yes, but that the problems can be overcome by intelligence and persistence.