Speaking of advantages of using different cultural materials - as we often make use of newspapers, magazines, films, recipes - I tend to think that Ss are really motivated having interest towards the unknown culture. It's made not just for the teaching purposes but for the cross-cultural ones as it teaches them to be understanding and tolerant in the "mix it up" society. I follow the principle not just to teach but to educate i.e. giving them information and reflect on it. The other point is to help Ss accept and respect "diversity within cultures" (Mckay, 2002).
Added to pluses of source culture material, I'd say that our coursebooks first present information on target culture then comes Link List as consolidation where we compare and share culture of different countries. The sample tasks are like these:
How different or similar schools in Britain and in your country?
Compare information about the life of children in Russia and other countries.
What have you learned about charities in Britain, in Russia and other countries?
Most books have a section "In Your Culture". I noticed a lot of times that children don't know their own culture not saying to explain it in English. When my learners lack some cultural knowledge I usually navigate them through our culture to lead them to critical thinking questions, then they finally make conclusions.
Then we explain what we know about the culture to the imaginary visitor from any country. In return this visitor (it might be a student) tells about his/her country.
Therefore, we cover a lot of topics, learning about source culture through target culture information as well as communicate aspects of one's own culture to others.
What kind of culture do you have in your coursebooks: source culture, target culture? When teaching culture, what aspects are you covering with your students?
- Victoria Kamchatka's blog
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A nice blog entry you have here, Victoria!
Understanding culture is really important nowadays. I just remember those Soviet textbooks with stories about the Ivanovs and the Petrovs, how they liked Lenin and so on and so forth. And then there was Bonk (much better, I'm still using it sometimes). And gradually authentical materials were introduced.
As for me, I've been learning English using different materials, I've been teaching it using dif.mat-s. On the whole, I should say that I like authentic materials more. These books are more multicultural, multitopical..
Taking into consideration the cultural awareness is very important for teaching. I remember reading Kate Fox's Watching the English. It's a great book and I often try to use some facts from it in my practice.
Hi,very nice post.. Thanks! Ss are really motivated having interest towards the unknown culture. So, culture is smt different... Different every where.. Talking about new cultures give Ss positive energy and they have lots of questions in their mind;) Thanks for your post;) Cool!
I remember these topics too! What about the collective farms stories? Never used Bonk! completely artifical texts, GTM-driven, no creativity.
I think using and exploiting target culture, source culture and international culture materials in the classroom is to facilitate inquiry into other countries' ideology thus fostering cross-cultural communication, critical thinking and cultural awareness, and learning language in an intersting and motivating context.
Thanks for the book! I'll try it!
Thanks, Miss Leman! It reminded me of Kramsch (1993) who emphasized the idea of teaching culture as difference.
While İ believe that real communication with a new culture such as traveling, meeting people, museums, movies... is way more useful (making 'reading about culture' almost pointless and often boring), İ realize there should be motivating ways to teach culture.
İ regularly find ss very bored and even annoyed with culture material in textbooks (music sections are often outdated as well as movie reviews, people profiles are a bit plastic and repetitive..) İ tend to use authentic culture in classroom even with lower level students. Movies, series, museum websites, online lectures, tv extracts…
While İ believe that real communication with a new culture such as traveling, meeting people, museums, movies... is way more useful (making 'reading about culture' almost pointless and often boring), İ realize there should be motivating ways to teach culture.
İ regularly find ss very bored and even annoyed with culture material in textbooks (music sections are often outdated as well as movie reviews, people profiles are a bit plastic and repetitive..) İ tend to use authentic culture in classroom even with lower level students. Movies, series, museum websites, online lectures, tv extracts…
Sure Galina! I agree about supplemental motivating cultural materials, a teacher may resort to different techniques even reading cultural texts from the coursebooks. These texts can be abridged, adapted or modified acording to Ss' level and interests. I haven't met a text yet that was 100% of what I wanted to teach.
Here's something more about dealing with the culture and the sphere of inculturality:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/victoria-kamchatka/dealing-culture
It's almost impossible to predict what issues will be still interesting and timely when a textbook is finally published (and it may take quite a while!).
If I were a publisher, I'd limit cultural imput to smth highly universal and unlikely to date and develop a rich online support plafrom for extra lessons based on uptodate news, music, movies, art..
Galina, you gave me a good idea for the new activity. If some cultural info is outdated already, I may ask Ss to find the updated info and do some online research. Thanks!