Final paper entry: How teachers can incorporate cultural aspects into the language classroom/ and/ or how teachers can account for cultural differences in the language classroom.
Teaching culture in class and promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence
Another easy way we can teach about different cultures is through vocabulary. Vocabulary is one of our best allies when it comes to sharing cultures. We can talk about food, holidays, housing, traditions, and more, without deviating from the curriculum. When teaching these topics, we can always ask students to:
- present food from their come country, or investigate some typical dish from other countries that they enjoy or want to try (and we can even have them follow a recipe with the help of parents and try them at the school to share and have a taste of different cultural food)
- present or research about a country they have visited: what did they do, what food they ate, if they enjoyed it, what did they find interesting and different from their own culture, etc.
- investigate different types of housing such as Pueblo Houses (USA), Rumah Gadang (Indonesia), Yurts (Asia), Igloos (North America), Trulli (Italy), Minkas (Japan) or Hanoks (South Korea).
- present some typical clothing items from other countries: Kimono (Japan), Hanbok (Korea), Dirndl or Trachts (Germany and Austia), Sari (India), Cheongsam (China)
- Countries have different traditions, customs, and festivities. Have students present them; some examples can be found on different web pages, such as 20 Fascinating Cultural Traditions Around the World.
Another interesting activity is to greet the class in a different language every day: say hello and goodbye in different languages. Learners will still learn the target language, but at the same time, they can learn more useful and interesting words from other cultures. Moreover, not all countries greet the same way: Europeans, for instance, usually greet each other with kisses on the cheek, Americans by shaking hands, Asians by bowing, etc. Likewise, role-play is always a must or a great choice to promote diversity in our class. These activities are suited for all ages, but we might need to modify the information and objectives we want our learners to acquire: what they have to present, the vocabulary they have learned in class and have to put into practice, grammar structures, etc. Depending on the age, students' interest, and the country’s or school’s curriculum, some activities might be a better fit than others, but integrating culture into our lectures is easier than one might think.
Last but not least, another interesting way we could integrate culture into a class is by following Bryam’s ICC teaching model which consists of 5 interlinked steps: developing knowledge, critical cultural awareness, attitudes, skills of interpreting and relating, and, finally, skills of discovery and interaction. Knowledge consists of learning, rather than one specific culture, how different social groups and identities function. We could help learners develop ICC knowledge through films, movies, shows, TED talks, introducing stereotypes, and more. Critical cultural awareness is related to critically evaluating one’s culture, as well as others. We could teach this by asking students to compare different cultures and debate about them. A wonderful way to teach attitude is by using songs, visual aids, exchanges, and more, as attitude is the values or beliefs one holds because they are part of a social group. Exchanges of emails, postcards, or anything similar, can be very helpful to develop intercultural competencies. Helping students develop skills of interpreting and relating is all about being able to interpret anything (documents, events, pictures, etc.) from other cultures and learn to relate to them. This can be taught through different in-class activities, such as literary texts. Last but not least, skills of discovery and interaction connects with the idea of, after gaining knowledge about a culture, being able to use what we have learned in real-life situations. Just like for attitudes, some useful activities for this development area are an exchange of information, songs, and even role-play.
All these steps and activities (which some might allow us to work on two different steps at the same time), will help our students' ICC. Sharing cultural awareness and traditions, as well as customs from other cultures, is very important in order to not forget or lose identity and to show respect when visiting different countries. ICC helps us become more knowledgeable, thoughtful and allows us to become respectful and empathetic individuals.
In brief, culture can easily be adapted to our curriculum and needs in many different ways because culture is everywhere. Not only we are surrounded by it, but individuals are culture themselves. Even though we are teaching a language, we can also promote different cultures. It is always important that learners learn beyond their own culture, that they become intercultural individuals who see beyond ‘themselves’ and can, eventually, move to the last stage of Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS): integration. This will help them develop different competencies and individual characteristics that will definitely help them grow and become not only rich in intellectual but as previously stated, more empathic and knowledgeable.
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