Guillermo Lopez's Public Library

extendió

nderstanding

thunders

makes

sends

brings

Everyone is senseless and without knowledge;

He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these,
       for he is the Maker of all things,
       including Israel, the tribe of his inheritance—
       the LORD Almighty is his name.

I know, O LORD, that a man's life is not his own;
       it is not for man to direct his steps.

 ²⁴ Correct me, LORD, but only with justice—
       not in your anger,
       lest you reduce me to nothing.

 ²⁵ Pour out your wrath on the nations
       that do not acknowledge you,
       on the peoples who do not call on your name.
       For they have devoured Jacob;
       they have devoured him completely
       and destroyed his homeland.

teaching without a coursebook and without most of the usual supplementary materials)

Engelbert Thaler

neolithic revolution

Mesopotamia and beyond

Fertile Crescent

Sumerian civilization
arose near the end of the fourth
millennium b.c.

Mesopotamia,

original Garden of Eden might have
been located in or near this area.

Persian Gulf Region

the Garden of
Eden lay near the head of the
Persian Gulf

Arabian Peninsula

A second
possibility for the location of the Garden of
Eden,

claims to have
located the Garden of Eden in Iran,

Tabriz

Egypt

that the Garden of Eden was
located in Egypt

Africa

that the Garden
of Eden was actually located at
Heliopolis, on the banks of the Nile
River in Egypt, where Egyptian tradition
places the Tree of Life

Isle of
Flames”

Creation myths

Turkey

Primeval History

the Patriarchal Tales

The Primeval History

mythic

Primeval
History

remote age

historical
and cultural records.”

the Garden of Eden was obviously a
geographic reality

Mesopotamia was home to the Fertile
Crescent,

from the Persian Gulf to southern
Turkey

10,000 b.c.

So where is, or was, the Garden of
Eden?

Querna in Iraq,

the right track

Querna

Even if the
garden once was a real place, and even
if we know the general location for
where it might have been, how would we
know its physical parameters,
since there were no ancient signs or
inscriptions at the entrance to the
garden (for writing hadn’t been
invented yet)?

values, events, and people that a culture holds dear.

what role can educators play in teaching children about role models they may never have considered

Bilingual educators hold a special key to being in the forefront of multi-cultural education.

Our world has changed, but in many ways our schools have not

3Fs" (Facts, Faces and Fiestas) ap
proach.

culture is stereotyped by replacing people with events
and concepts with terms

'high civilization' view of culture

knowledge
of the best of Western Civilization

Social scientists and especially anthropologists have been redefining the concept of culture

Should they develop a sensitivity and tolerance to other cultures?

Should students in bilingual programs develop an awareness and understanding of their own
culture and the target culture?

Bilingual educators are therefore facing a great
challenge.

complex phenomenon as teaching culture requires us to examine its
social and psychological aspects.

Often, North Americans view their culture and cultural patterns as superior to those of oth
ers.

ethnocentric

acceptance
and tolerance of other cultures.

associated with stigmatized
and sometimes subordinate status of socio-economically or culturally defined minority groups

The
combination of ethnocentrism with marked cultures further exacerbates the problem.

cultural identity

dominant culture.

cultural understanding

individual languages and cultures

young beginners or intermediate students should be given the opportunity to enjoy certain activities that are part of their own tradition, such as national sports, social festivities, or songs, before setting about exploring those of the target culture.

feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language

cultural island’

cultural awareness

cultural experience

From the first day, teachers are expected to bring in the class posters, pictures, maps, and other realia in order to help students develop ‘a mental image’ of the target culture

cultural errands

to supermarkets and department stores

imported goods

guest speakers,

to divide the class into groups of three or four and have them draw up a list of those characteristics and traits that supposedly distinguish the home and target cultures

music
race national origin              
geography
architecture customs arts and
crafts
clothing physical features food

stereotypical lapses

key words

death

marriage

homosexuality,

English culture,

In Hispanic culture, however, the distinction between humans and animals is great, and bullfighting is highly unlikely to be seen as a waste of time, as many
western spectators are apt to say.

animals and humans have feelings, get sick, and are buried in cemeteries

For Spanish people, a bull is not equal to the man who kills it—a belief that has the effect of exonerating, so to speak, the bullfighter from all responsibility; a bull can be strong but not intelligent or skilful; these are qualities attributed to human beings. In this light, notions such as “cruel,” “slaughter,” or “being defenceless” carry vastly different undertones in the two cultures

language varies according to social variables, such as sex, age, social class, location

certain words used more by women than by men, and vice versa,

Cultural capsules

comparisons between the home and target culture

foreign civilisation

culturgrams

isolated items about the target culture

cultural information

cultural clusters

books and other visual aids

culture capsules

how to eat, learn how, and to what extent, the members of the target culture appreciate a meal with friends, and so forth. A word of caveat is called for, though. Students must not lose sight of the fact that not all members of the target community
think and behave in the same way

comprise short descriptions of various situations where one person from the target culture interacts with persons from the home culture.

two interesting methods: culture
assimilators and cultoons.

Culture assimilators

Henrichsen

four possible interpretations of the meaning of the behaviour and speech of the interactants, especially those from the target culture.

they choose one of the four options they think is the correct interpretation of the situation. When every single student has made his choice, they discuss why some options are correct or incorrect. The main thrust of culture assimilators is that they ‘are good methods of giving students understanding about cultural information and…may even promote emotional empathy or affect if students have strong feelings about one or more of the options’ (ibid.)

cultoons

are visual culture assimilators. Students are provided with a series of four pictures highlighting points of misunderstanding or culture shock experienced by persons in contact with the target culture. Here, students are asked to evaluate the characters’ reactions in terms of appropriateness (within the target culture). Once misunderstandings are dissipated, learners read short texts explaining what was happening in the cultoons and why there was misunderstanding. Nevertheless, much as cultoons ‘generally promote understanding of cultural facts….they do not usually give real understanding of emotions involved in cultural misunderstandings’ (ib

cultural information

Cultural problem solving

on the horns of a dilemma

TV conversation or reading a narrative on marriage ceremonies, they are expected to assess manners and customs, or appropriate or inappropriate behaviour, and to employ various
problem-solving techniques—in short, to develop a kind of “cultural strategic competence” (my term). Singhal (1998) sets the scene: students are in a restaurant and are expected to order a meal. In this way, learners are given the opportunity to step into the shoes of a member of the target culture.

conventional behaviour

uncommon for a student who is late for class to knock on the door and apologize to the teacher.

common behaviour in the culture many students come from.

across cultures regarding the ways in which the teacher is addressed;

linguistic knowledge

gesture and facial expressions,

non-verbal communication,

gestures and facial expressions

target culture

cultural phenomena

emotions

furnishes some examples of appropriate gestures in Spanish culture

Which gestures are different from those in the home culture?

Which of the gestures shown would be used in different situations or even avoided in the home culture?

Another activity would be to invite learners to role-play emotions

a list of several words indicating emotions (happiness, fear, anger, joy, pain, guilt, sadness

facial expressions and gestures to express these emotions

different cultures express emotions as well as interpret gestures as “indices” to emotions

how cultures and subcultures or co-cultures use these signs to communicate

colors, gestures, facial expressions, and the physical distance people unconsciously put between each other’

Rather
than being a fifth adjunct to the four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), culture can best find its expression through the medium of literature.

literature is a viable component of second language programs at the appropriate level and…one of [its] major functions …is to serve as a medium to transmit the culture of the people who speak the language in which it is written.

values, assumptions, and beliefs infusing the literary texts of the target culture is instrumental in defining and redefining those obtaining in the home
culture

The literature on culture teaching methodology

cultural references

should open windows on the target culture as well as on the world at large

speaking English or Chinese should give the learner the opportunity to see the world through “English or Chinese eyes,”

relinquish his own grip of reality, his personal identity,

cultural knowledge

evaluate both home and target cultures.

observers and participants at the same time

monocultural global village

every culture and trying to find ‘third places’ (Kramsch, 1993), a third niche, from which to divine pernicious dichotomies and bridge cultural gaps.

[w]e cannot teach an understanding of the foreign as long as the familiar has not become foreign to us in many respects’

the teaching of culture should become an integral part of foreign language instruction. ‘Culture should be our message to students and language our medium’

Frontiers have opened and never before have nations come closer to one another—in theory, at least. As a result, people from different cultures weave their lives into an international fabric that is beginning to fray at the edges by virtue of miscommunication
and propaganda.

In order to avoid this ignominious cultural and political disintegration, and foster empathy and understanding, teachers should ‘present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language

And this will be achieved only if cultural awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalised subject within the foreign language curriculum; that is, when culture
“inhabits” the classroom and undergirds every language activity. According to Singhal (1998), language teachers ought to receive both experiential and academic training, with the aim of becoming ‘mediators in culture teaching’ (ibid.). At any rate, culture teaching should aim to foster ‘empathy with the cultural norms of the target language community’ and ‘an increased awareness of one’s own ‘cultural logic’ in relation to others’ (Willems,
1992, cited in Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 67). This cultural logic, though, is achieved through ‘a recognition of ‘otherness’, and of the limitations of one’s own cultural identity’ (Killick & Poveda, 1997).

culture teaching should allow learners to increase
their knowledge of the target culture in terms of people’s way of life, values, attitudes, and beliefs, and how these manifest themselves or are couched in linguistic categories and forms

the teaching of culture should make learners aware of speech acts, connotations, etiquette, that is, appropriate or inappropriate behaviour, as well as provide them with the opportunity to act out being a member of the target culture.

superior” or “inferior” cultures are nothing but sweeping generalisations

lack of knowledge and disrespect to other human beings with different worldviews

not only to communicate in the country where it is spoken but also to give a second (or third) voice to their thoughts, thus flying in the face of
cultural conventions and stereotypes.

language educators should ‘not only work to dispel stereotypes [and] pockets of ignorance…but…contribute to learners’ understanding that begins with awareness of self and leads to awareness of others’

What cultural patterns do foreign language students need to learn first and at what levels?

is there such a thing as a ‘natural order’ in L2/FL culture acquisition?

are these patterns best learnt by means of immersion in the target culture, or are there any techniques
obviating this need?

are these acquired patterns maintained over the long haul, or is there some kind of regression at work?

content and materials design for cultural syllabuses

foreign language teachers should be foreign culture teachers, having the ability to experience and analyse both the home and target cultures

cultural meaning and introduce students to a kind of learning ‘which challenges and modifies their perspective on the world and their cultural identity as members of a given social and national group

Unfortunately, by teaching about other cultures, foreign language educators do not necessarily nip prejudice in the bud, so to speak; cultural bias can still plague the very aspects of the target culture which teachers ‘choose to indict or advocate’, as Cormeraie (1997) insightfully remarks.

It is hoped that the present paper has contrived to clarify most of the issues it set out to investigate, and has helped contribute to a better understanding of culture and its importance in the foreign language classroom.

clues or background

their own worldview

An example might be a cooking utensil

target culture

cultures
are not monolithic

cultural interactions

should be carefully organized
and incorporated into lesson plans to enrich and inform the teaching
content. Some useful ideas for presenting culture in the classroom
are described in this section.

Cultural activities and objectives

Using authentic sources from the native speech community helps
to engage students in authentic cultural experiences.

films, news broadcasts, and television shows

newspapers

Web sites

restaurant menus

travel
brochures,

photographs

magazines

printed materials. Teachers can adapt their
use of authentic materials to suit the a

viewed
the relevant segments, the teacher can engage the students in discussion
of the cultural norms represented in the segments and what these
norms might say about the values of the culture. Discussion topics
might include nonverbal behaviors (e.g., the

tie in with the objects. Such contextualization
is, in fact, important to the success of using culture ca

teaching cultur

as a vital component of language
learning. Second language teachers should identify key cultural
items i

Students
can be successful in speaking a second language only if cultural
issues are an inherent part of the curriculum.

ccplanner

The effectiveness of video-based curriculum in teaching culture.

The role of culture in language teaching.

Teaching culture and improving language
skills through a cinematic lens: A course on Spanish film in the
undergraduate Spanish curriculum.