Culture and Foreign Language: Teaching and Learning Essay

One last preliminary question: What is a culture? What do we mean when we talk about a given people's culture? James Axtell has provided a definition of culture that, in many ways, illustrates the problems of grappling with this slippery concept:

I am the youngest of five sisters and two brothers. My family is Mexican- American, both of my older brothers were born in Mexico and were brought by my parents at a very young age. My parents were also born in Mexico and like every immigrant migrated from their home countries to pursue what is called the American dream. I very much enjoy being from Mexican roots, because my traditions, foods, dances, culture and kindness makes me who I am today. I have three nieces and one nephew from the ages six on down. We are all Mexican American ancestry.

Culture is transmitted from one generation to another. Language is the main car of culture. Language in different form makes it easy for the present generation to understand the realization of earlier generations.

What is the definition of “culture” from lecture ? First, define; then elaborate using other course concepts.

The students have a difficult time understanding cultural behaviorisms, especially when they cannot have it explained to them on a personal level. Learning language involves cognitive and academic development, and their first languages must be involved when learning a new one. Finding the appropriate level of challenging material for students who are trying to understand new concepts in a foreign language is also very difficult, since they must incorporate both the child’s first language, and the new one. (Ludhra 2008).

One of the culturally-based communication practices in our schools is media. We use the Internet for the children to get on Odyssey. (a program based on the child’s learning level) We also use projectors that hook up to the computer to display information and teaching techniques to the students. The second form of communication is verbal communication from the teacher to the students. The teachers speak English to all students and teach from textbooks that are all written in English. The multimedia we use is our schools is mainly based on the American culture and what we have learn or understand based on our view of a situation. So, when someone from a different culture is in our classroom and might have heard a different version or lived a different way than was is being taught; this is a huge issue. We need to understand when using multimedia and other resource to also include information from both sides of the topic, and even add some information in another language or let the student take about what they have experienced.

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition defines Culture as the “shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition)

Explain with definitions and examples the concept of culture and elaborate on the barriers to becoming culturally competent communicators.

Bennett (2008) affirms that when teachers misunderstand their student’s cultural behavior styles, they may underestimate their intellectual potential and unknowingly misplace, mislabel, and mistreat them. Thus, when a student is not making progress in the classroom (especially when we can attribute it to a language barrier) it is the teacher’s responsibility to figure out how to establish meaningful practices that will engage the culture experiences of the student in order to gain effective language acquisition of L2. One such practice is to connect diverse learners with culturally relevant texts. Children hold background knowledge of their experiences and using culturally relevant texts with students enables them to make predictions and conclusions about the text (Freeman 2004).

In addition to differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical structures among cultural groups, variations also exist in the rules for general discourse in oral communication, covering such specific acts as narratives and conversation. In communicating with one another, teachers and students naturally will follow the assumptions and rules governing discourse within their respective cultures. Discourse rules govern such aspects of communication as: opening or closing conversations; taking turns during conversations; interrupting; using silence as a communicative device; interjecting humor at appropriate times and using nonverbal behavior. Once again, an American student studying in the middle east, who would constantly interrupt the teacher in order to clarify the professor’s opinion, would be considered to be

Does taking foreign language courses in Middle School advance a students future? In the past there wasn't any foreign language classes and if you wanted to travel or talk to a foreigner you couldn’t. You can’t help them and you were forced to ignore them. But, now that we have foreign language classes we can talk to them and help them. Teachers usually teach us a different language in high school, but we want it to be taught to us early on. Taking Foreign language courses earlier on will better the students later in life because It”ll be easier applying for jobs and college applications for being bilingual.

United States was built on immigrants and some of the immigrants were pushed from their homeland because of some reasons while other reasons such as America dream pulled them to the United States. Most of these immigrants came from China in 1949, when the communist party took over. These immigrants came with their cultures and languages which are significant in everyone's lives because they play a major role in the development of individual’s characteristics. Many observers

I believe that schools have hidden cultural agendas, stemming from their policy makers collective cultural backgrounds, which controls what curricula is used, and how knowledge is taught within the system. I further believe that not all students fit the cultural mold defined by our schools, and that those students that find themselves outside the established "norm" cannot fully benefit from their school experiences.

Teaching is a very rewarding career if you learn and understand how to work with the diversity of the classrooms we teach in. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant of where are students come from. Before we can teach we need to know who we are teaching and what background, knowledge, and customs they bring with them to the classroom. We must also be aware of the factors that are relevant to the academic achievement of the students we currently teach. There are many of these factors, but I want to focus on two; teacher quality and low teacher expectations.

In this section, we will briefly examine the relationship between language and culture and see why the teaching of culture should constitute an integral part of the English language curriculum. To begin with, language is a social institution, both shaping and shaped by society at large, or in particular the ‘cultural niches’ (Eleanor Armour-Thomas & Sharon-ann Gopaul-McNicol, 1998) in which it plays an important role. Thus, if our premise is that language is, or should be, understood as