Teaching Culture

The Importance of Including Culture in EFL Teaching

http://jetuki.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/4-the-importance-of-including-culture-in-efl-teaching-pp-44-56.pdf

Hemat Purba
Christian University of Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia
hematpbiuki@gmail.com

Abstract

Language and culture are two inseparable entities. Therefore, language learning is at once a cultural learning. One‟s mastery of the linguistic elements alone does not guarantee he will be able to communicate through a language. 

Mastering the cultural element is a must. This paper discusses various research findings and opinions on the integration of culture into the teaching of foreign language teaching. The discussion aimed to highlight the foundation, the existence, impact, and technical integration of cultural elements into the  teaching of English as a foreign language.

Keywords:  culture, incorporating, values, blue print, culture capsules

What is Culture?

Defining culture into a single definition is very complicated, particularly in an increasingly international world. Even anthropology, the field that concerns itself with the study of different cultures, cannot yet properly define what culture is. Trifonovitch‟s (as cited in Croft, 1980) survey reveals over 450 different definitions of the word or concept of culture available in literature (p. 

550). To a certain extent, this finding underlines the difficulty and scope of the issues involved in communicating and teaching about culture. Nonetheless, the development of culture teaching in SL/FL education has led to a current understanding of culture, which will be briefly summarized here. 

Tylor (as cited in Croft, 1980) regards culture as: … that complex whole which includes knowledge, believe, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (p. 531). According to Moran (2001), culture is “the great achievement of people as reflected in their history, social institutions, works of art, architecture, music and literature (p. 4)” These three definitions denote that language is an aspect of culture because language is basically „learned and shared by man as a member of society‟. And, in relation to foreign language learning, strictly speaking, these definitions imply that when somebody learns a foreign language, he 

participates to some extent in the culture of the native speaker of the language 

being learned.

Adaskou, Britten & Fahsi (1990) help us define culture on a more specific level by outlining four meanings of culture. Their aesthetic sense includes cinema, literature, music, and media, while their sociological one refers to the organization and nature of family, interpersonal relations, customs, 

material conditions, and so on. Their semantic sense encompasses the whole conceptualization system which conditions perceptions and thought processes, and their pragmatic or sociolinguistic sense refers to the background knowledge, social and paralinguistic skills, and language code which are necessary for successful communication. While not necessarily all-inclusive or mutually exclusive, these aspects of culture provide more substance to the general definition above and reflect culture's many dimensions. These four senses of culture outline the substance of our culture teaching as we discuss, model, and teach the SL or FL culture in our classes. ..........

The Culture to teach

What type of culture should be taught in the SL/FL classroom? Relating the essential ideas provided by the aforesaid definitions and the reasons for the inevitability of incorporating cultural matters into the SL/FL classroom, it is apparent that the major forms of culture we need to deal with in a foreign language program should be the one that views culture as a “blue print” or integrated patterns of abstraction derived from observable behavior of a group of people. In other words, the major cultural contents to include in a language classroom should be what Tomalin and Stempleski (1993) call with the little „c‟ of culture, i.e. “culturally influenced beliefs and perceptions, especially as expressed through language, but also through cultural behaviors that affect acceptability in the host community” (p. 6). In relation to this, Brooks (1983) suggests that the cultural elements to be emphasized in the classroom are patterns of living which refers to;“the individual‟s role in the unending kaleidoscope of life situations of every kind and the rules and models for attitude and conduct in them.

By reference to these models, every human being, from infancy onward, justifies the world to himself as best he can, associates with those around him, and relates to the social order to which he is attached” (p. 210)......

Activity

Felipe Bedoya, Oscar Osorio and me prepared a class to show something about British food in order to teach English and culture. It consisted in a short presentation and a game on-line:

http://www.english-online.org.uk/games/restaurantgame.htm