1.What do you think of the idea of using student native culture as content in the EFL classroom as a means of fostering cross-cultural awareness? What might be the possible benefits and shortcomings (if any) of using student native culture?
2.Choose a or b :
a) By referring to the article by Post and Rathet (1996: 12-17) in English Language Teaching Forum, suggest a new language learning activity for Turkish learners of EFL where you use the Turkish culture. The activity that you will design could appeal to any levels of proficiency (i.e., beginners, elementary, intermediate or advanced) and it can involve any language skills. You need to specify the aim(s), your learner profile preparation, procedures of the activity.
b) By referring to the article by Tavares and Cavalcanti (1996: 18-23) and examining the suggested activities in the article, suggest one activity of your own design to develop cultural awareness in EFL classroom (if you like, you could choose a feature film in English and you might prefer to take up a certain cultural practice in the film and compare and contrast it with the Turkish culture.
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1)I think it could be nice to some extend.Yes our past teacher didn't or couldn't give so much importance to the culture of The language with learn.However I think that it is much enjoyable learning a language with its culture. I realized it when I came here as I learned the Englsih culture I started to gain more pleasure what I learned or read.Because As we know they cannot be thought as different things from each other.So for awaking a cultural consciousness in our class, we can start our culture and by means of this we can have an opportunity to make comparison or finding similarities.The content cannot be only the native culture of course.I didnt mean that the classes must be based on native culture.It is falso.As every culture is really different from each other in some cases.Because we have all different
ReplyDeletetraditions and point of views. These differences can awake curiosity about the language in my opinion.According to their age we can supply various games for example related to teaching the cluture of L2 or their foods, different tastes , traditional songs..They all give the students the opportunity to realize cross culture awareness I think.
2)Finding a new strategy about this point is a hard task. But the games which I offer them probably related to the differences between cultures. Because interesting points or the traditions which we haven't but they have attract their attention.however firstly we must have awaken the conscious about our culture that they could realize the culture's importance on language.I think a native persons memories can help us.
1) Language is a whole world with its society,linguistics, literature and culture. Therefore, while learning a language one should at least have a idea about who speaks that language, how people use the language and how is their culture. However, if one has no idea about the language s/he speaks there is no drawback for him to speak that language. I think people shouldn't only learn a language just to speak it, but also to have knowledge of its culture. Because of this, I believe target culture should be taught in schools addition to language rather than teaching a language with native culture. But that's generally not the case in Turkey. I ashamed that I've learnt the culture of English that I've been learning for eleven years before I'll become an English teacher.
ReplyDelete2)We as prospective teacher should ask themselves: How can we teach target culture? First of all, using authentic materials in some parts of teaching is important because it gives the learners about the real language in its own culture. Some listening activities for example a talk between two friends, a father and daughter or a seller and customer are really helpful as it is a part of cultural conversations. Secondly, we should make the learners familiar with the countries speaking English, at least they should know where England and USA is. In order to achieve it I think Tavares and Cavalcanti proposes map activities with matching that could be both funny and informative. Lastly, I think teachers could bring interesting reading texts or listenings related to British or American culture for example Tintagel Castle. After studying on this material, they could speak about the important castles in Turkey, which helps the students recall the subject better.
1- ı think it is not possible to seperate language an culture because they are lake two dimension of one object. as you know withot culture language is only words letters and sounds but when we add culture to language then sentences iddiona and phrases come to place. for example sometimes we say something but mean somethig else if a person know only language for a big probable he or she will understand onle what we said and because he won't understand what we mean there will be miscominication. so ı think we should teach language and culture together in any case.
ReplyDelete2- ı think the activities suggested in articles are very useful and meaningful but ı think watching films and videos, reading news paper and magasines in target language is most felpful activities. of course if it is possible makeing classroom multicultural sendind some of students to english speaking countries will be perfect.
I agree with the opinion of giving the students culture awareness of the target language. While teaching a language, you have to teach some greetings, body language, utterances used in dialogues, gestures which are peculiar to that target culture. That knowledge helps students to develop communicative skills and intercultural and international understanding. For the activity, I can say that role plays can work well to help the students understand cultural differences. For example, while doing role plays last semester, I realized that the speaker used to say “Oh my God! “ .When she was surprised and this was something new for me. This is because in our culture the name “God” is related to religion so much and it is not accepted one’s telling “God” all the time. I said to myself why she is telling that utterance all the time is it because she is religious or the kind. Then, I realized that this utterance has another function related to culture. During role plays, we put ourselves in the shoes of native ones and try to look at the world from their perspective and for that reason role plays are very much like the real life experience.
ReplyDelete1)ı think that culture is a big part of language. foreign language learners should be aware of the culture of the language that they are learning. Of course this culture issue might cause some handicaps throughout the classes as well as it has some advantages.
ReplyDeleteıf we think of a language a big cake. culture is the huge slice of it. simply because while learning English we learn actually how to speak to people, how to greet them; in short how to do "act" in that language. As all these things are the most importan components of culture, one way or another we learn the culture while learning english. actually this is the case that should be normally. if we don't any awareness abouth the culture of target language, we can't learn the language as a whole.
as we all know from our high scholl expereinces the teacher's aim was to prepare us for the exams. due to the fact that in exams we are expected to have grammar and vocabulary knowledge, throughout the courses we do focus on just these things. another reason is of course time limitation. ıf teachers allocate time to create some culture awareness it will be nothing to do with the exams. however it ill be quite benefical for the time after the exam. as an altenative to this problem, teachers should integrte culture ang grammer or reading while teaching the language. so that ıt won't be a time consuming thing.
2a) ıt could be quite benefical to use the native language of the students to teach a new thing. so that english languahe cşasses won't be a bombardment for them. they will have a chance to talk about the things thet already know. by this way they will just have to think about how to say rather than what to say. as a prospective teacher ı can suggest such an activity: so as to give them a chance to make comparison ı show them a video about the british marriage ceremony. so that they will be aware of the differences and, ıf there is, similarities. after watching the video ı want them to tell me the differences that they observe. after this little discussion ı want them to think about our marriage for 2 minutes. and then form groups of three or four, distribute to the groups some sentences that are possibly use in a turkish marriage ceremony. ın two or three minutes they memorize them. ın the end they make some small act outs. the aim of this activity is quite obvious. they will compare and contrast the cultures and by this they will be aware of both cultures. the aim of the video is to make the lesson visualized. by acting out they will have a chance to speak freely. this activity is suitable for all the levels of students.
ReplyDelete1) Language and culture can not be seperated. A language is shaped according to the culture, so learning only language is not enough, a person learning a language should know someting about the culture of that society. When a child learns his/her native language s/he learns the culture of his/her society also.
ReplyDelete2) Additionally, learning culture makes lessons more enjoyable and colorful. The students already know their culture and talking about their culture in a foreign language is not so meaningful, the students get bored. When we become teacher, we sould teach English or American culture by means of enjoyable activites. For example, we can teach simple present tense by means of Traditional gatherings or we can make act out activities about culinary culture and then they compare it with Turkish Culinary. As these thing will be strange for them they will pay more attention to the lesson and they won't forget the subject.
1) culture is a crucial aspect of language learning.regarding that a country's culturu and language mutually affect each other, the target culture should be regarded while teaching the target language. But this should be regared to some extent.A student should of course learn how the people call eacher other, how people ask for something kindly, what people are angry with or so. because this side is the one related to language use. But it is to be discussed to teach about wedding ceremonies, to teach about holidays. If I meet a foreigner, it is important for me to know how to ask something, but ı dont need to know their traditions. If I know how to ask kindly, I think s/he will inform me. So the extend of culture teaching should be the point.
ReplyDelete2) As to the activities to teach culture,the articles provide effective suggestions. but what I want to emphasize is to turn the target of teaching culture into an advantage for speaking, reading listening activites. Teacher may make the students watch a movie, there are lots of movies upon countries' culture, then create a discussion upon a comparison of cultures. Or teacher distribute reading materials also to focus on vocabulary.
I think giving students culture awareness of target language is the most useful choice in teaching language. If your students are Turkish and you teach them English over Turkish culture, this can cause difficulties in comprehnsion and confusion. Because Turkish and English cultures are different from each other, such as greetings or body language. Therefore the learner should know the target language's culture as context at the very beginnig, it makes learning easier with comparisons or similarities between English and their own culture. Maybe for beginner learners, showing examples from native culture can work but it is only for a limited time.
ReplyDelete1)I think we can not seperate culture and language. Without learning culture, we cannot learn a language exactly. Each culture has special idioms and expressions which we cannot understand without knowing their culture. So while teaching a language, we sould also teach some greetings and some special utterances, idioms and expressions which is used daily life.
ReplyDelete2)Learning culture is an enjoyable process.While teaching culture, we can use movies and videos which is related to this culture. Also if it is possible, we can bring a native person to class and students have a chance to speak and ask questions to him or her. We can discuss some cultural topic in the class.
1) I think students' native culture shouldn't be used as a content because they are already familiar with their own culture and it could be boring for them. However, I don't give so much effort to teach the culture of the target language beacuse English should be taught as a global means of communication and I find the native-like attitude quite unrealistic.
ReplyDelete2)As I said above, I'm not much interested in teaching the target culture, but there are some important points of culture like the capital city of America and England or Statue of Liberty etc. Such things should be included into teaching by means of listening or reading activities.
1)I think using native culture as content in EFL clasrooms is necessary to some extent. I agree that we should base our lectures on the culture of the target language, because language arises from the culture. for example it would be hard for students to know or understand the proverbs or idioms without any knowledge of the culture, because such kind of things are the things that culture gave birth to them.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with Olcay in his point that the students already know their culture. yeah they know , but they don't know how to express them also. for example a student cannot know the names of the bairams or things that that are unique to the native culture, so I think both of the cultures should be handled as the content of the EFL classroom, also a teacher may teach some ather interesting cultures, that would be intersting.
2)a I agree with salih, watching films is a very effective way of teaching culture, besides it helps to improve pronunciation. also, may be students are given some topics to search for and then they present it to the class with prepearing enjoyable activities with the help of teacher.
1-) Culture and language cannot be separated from each other. Sometimes it is not enough learning everything about the language. Always there is something missing if we don’t know anything about the culture of the country or countries of that language. So, language teaching definitely should include native culture teaching. It helps student in many ways. For example, student who learns native culture as content of the language becomes more interested in the language. In that way learning language doesn’t be just formulizing and memorizing. It turns out an entertaining and interesting way of learning for student.
ReplyDelete2-) Tavares and Cavalcanti’s article is useful in learning some techniques about teaching native culture. For example, I really liked the activity teaching English speaking countries. It seems entertaining and at the same time informative. While I reading some ways of teaching native culture materials, I saw ‘newspaper’. I think newspaper is a perfect way of teaching culture. I can find newspapers of a target language easily. I distribute them to students and want them to read them. Then, I want them to find something they didn’t know about that culture and share it with all their classmates. The activity can make the students interested in culture and the language.
1)Language and culture can be thought as a unit. We cannot think to separate culture from language when we are teaching a language. Unfortunately, most teachers don’t prefer to give information about English or American culture while teaching English to their students as far as I remember from my high school experiences. However, they should be aware of the fact that knowing culture of the target language always helps students to understand the language in detail. They also would enjoy while learning English and its culture together. It enables motivation for students as it is based on the article by Post and Rathet.
ReplyDelete2)The activities which can be used to teach culture of the target languages should be interesting and attractive for students to provide them knowledge with fun. As a prospective teacher, I would choose role playing activities for them. By acting, they can characterize themselves with the role that belongs to culture of target language, and this enables them to feel more integrated with the culture. They can also learn some gestures and mimics related to that culture. Other than this activity, providing authentic materials helps them to be familiar with language and culture at the same time.
1. I think while teaching foreign language, their culture SHOULD be teached absolutely. It is not enough to know some grammer rules and structures for learning a new language. Knowing about their culture raises students’ awareness about the language. They start to learn it more willingly. Students should be informed about their culture; I mean their understanding of politeness, special days, special gatherings, cuisines etc. For example, when we learned about special gatherings in my first year in the university, I heard about hen and stag night. Then whenever I encounter them in many films, I am able to understand what people are talking about. Secondly, in my high school, our teacher mention about the suburbs in England are very different from ours in Turkey. In Turkish translation it is “varoş” and not a peaceful place, but in England suburbs are pleasant places. Thus, I think the culture and language should be seen as inseperable in teaching. Teacher should give as much as information they could about the geography, history, accents, ceremonies of that country. so on. However, it may not be necessary to inform about culture to the learners who are in the beginner level, as they are given only basic information.
ReplyDelete2. b. I think the activities that Cavalcanti and Tavares proposed are both enjoyible and instructive ones. The first one which is related to history-geography, and the third, related to marriage is really an interesting and useful activity for learners. However, I think the second one which is about socio-political issues may be difficult for the beginners, but good for the intermediate or advanced learners. I would make my students to watch films or tv series as much as they do. Because, they really reflect the culture of their country. I may want them to point out the differences between the two cultures they see in the film, about the cuisine, friendship, family affairs, houses etc. For example, in “How I met your mother”, “Cheers”, and “Malcolm in the Middle”, we can see many differences between cultures. Then I may do some discussions expanding the topic.
1)I think that language is an inseparable part of a culture so we cannot teach the language without teaching culture. I accept that we can teach present tense,past tense, modals and such grammar things without any cultural background but what about spoken language? The language is not learned by only grammar, the main focus of learning a language should be gaining efficiency in speaking that language. This efficiency is closely related to learning the culture. Think that you are in a formal institute in order to apply for a job but your wearing style is not suitable and you choose the slang words while speaking because of lacking cultural background, then you can`t take the job and your grammar is unnecessary. Of course one can be alienated from the native culture by only giving lectures on the foreign culture but we can prevent this by doing some kind of activities which includes using native culture.
ReplyDelete2) Watching movies and listening something like music in the second lang. help us to learn that culture.Because in movies, we can see their wearing style, their formal and informal discourse, their cultural humour and some traditions and we can pronounce the words correctly so this is a beneficial activity.
1. I think teaching native culture depends on for what purpose you are learning english. If you are learning English for academic purposes, you don'need to learn about cultural issues such as ceremonies, weddings. Learning other cultures is nice but it should not be regarded as a must while learning a language. A person who does not know anything about grammar rules and vocabualry items can not speak with the help of cultural subjects. However; we should learn formal and informal discourse and certain expresions which will help us in some certain situations.
ReplyDelete1. A language of a society reflects the culture of that society. For this reason, mentioning about the cultures in which the target language is spoken has an important place in teaching that language. It is because of the fact that learning a language with its culture provides for students with an awareness of culture difference and helps them to understand the rationale behind the grammar rules, idioms and expressions of the target language better. During that process, letting students to benefit from their native culture is a good technique which increases their motivation to learn by decreasing the affective filter and helps them to make comparison between two cultures and so realize the differences. Being aware of the differences is crucial because students can gain distinct cultural identities.
ReplyDelete2. I found quite useful what Post and Rathet suggested to use as activities to involve native culture in classroom while teaching second language. For example, I liked the idea that talking about something which has different characteristics in two cultures. This kind of activities help students to compare and contrast two cultures and so keep in mind the lexical items of the target language related to these characteristics for a longer time. Also, I think making students watch a movie in the target language which emphasizes the topics of family affairs, relationship between friends, education systems, and cuisine is a good way to show the culture of the language and foster cross-cultural awareness.
as seda said, the role of the culture in language teaching but it is not a must. of course there can be important parts of the culture but the skills of the language you're teaching should be the leading part of the lesson. teachers cannot focus the lesson only on the culture of the target language. teaching the culture can be helpful to some extent but not exactly improve language learning. for example, speaking skill can require students to know about some colloquial items of the language. at that point, ı believe that it is crucial to learn culture but at the basic level I think it is not a must to teach the culture as a major part. after a certain level, the language and culture can procede together taking the level of the students into consideration. of course in the lesson the materials that you use for the lesson involve items from the culture of that language. however, as I said, it should't be seen as a must.
ReplyDelete1. I don't see the point in using students native culture as a content while teaching a foreign language. Students are already familiar with their own culture. However, I believe that while learning a language, to fully acquire it, one needs to get familiar with the culture of that foreign language. So here native culture could be used to compare and contrast with the foreign culture. In this way, students may find it easier to remember the foreign culture as they are involved in comparing it with their own and in developing their own cross-culture awareness.
ReplyDeleteApart from this benefit, there may be a drawback in using and comparing the native culture with the foreign one. If the native culture is very different from that of the foreign culture, students may feel alienated and may not want to learn that language.
I think depending on the learner profile, native culture may or may not be involved in the foreign language lessons. I believe not the native culture, but the foreign culture should be involved in the lesson as it reflects those foreign people and facilitates understanding the specific language items of that foreign language.
2) Using articles and videos to raise cross-culture awareness would facilitate learning for students. Opening a debate about culture differences would also be a nice way to develop a sense about the foreign culture. For example in our public speaking class, we prepared a discussion on culture issues. We examined a film called 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' I think it was an enjoyable film and we had fun comparing the cultures. I'd prefer this kind of activity as a prospective teacher as I've experienced and enjoyed it myself.