Module Conclusion

Culture in second language learning

As future English teachers to be, it will become our job to introduce a wide range of texts and genres, so that our pupils will not only learn the language, but furthermore be given an insight in the different cultures values and beliefs. To do so, it is important that we exploit historical facts alongside the events that are happening today. This can be introduced in a variety of different ways: through films, books, newspapers, the internet and so forth.

But like everything else that we want to excel at in life, the golden rule of learning a second language is, and will always be: to practice.

Therefore it is quite important to first help the students to trust themselves, so that they won’t be too self-conscious when they make mistakes. We have to teach them that no one excels at anything in the beginning, but that we learn from our mistakes. Furthermore the second most important thing is to let the pupils talk. Let them speak as much as possible through different assignments, songs, games, group work and presentations.

Working with culture awareness in class, will provide the pupils with some degree of intercultural competence. This is quite important and will help the pupils to interact easier, when meeting people with other beliefs and religions in the future. Respect is the keyword here!

If we look at the Iceberg concept by Gary Weaver he points out that the majority of culture is below the surface. This means that to learn another culture we need to look deeper and not only learn what food, music and crafts they like, but to learn how they courtesy, what their rules of conduct are, their ideals of childhood, body language and so forth.

According to Michael Byram it is important that the pupils become aware of and are able to analyze the cultural differences of their own society as much as those of other societies. But it is not the teacher’s job to provide this information, but to encourage the pupils to interact with other societies and cultures and thereby getting an understanding of the otherness that surrounds us all. This might even help the students understand themselves and were they come from better as well.

This can be achieved by collecting data either by interacting in real life or by using the internet.

The conclusion is therefore to open up towards the pupils own culture, by knowing other cultures and comparing. This will make the pupils intercultural speakers and teach them to accept other perspectives and perceptions of the world!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

We chose the first Harry Potter book, and movie: “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. We chose this because it is a great example of British literature, and culture, as the book includes details of the British culture, namely the education system, some of the British customs and more. Furthermore, this genre of books has become very popular in our generation, some arguing it started with Harry Potter himself. The 21^st century has become a century of fantasy, science fiction and all things supernatural, and people all ages and all around the world are reading and/or watching fiction. The genres have exploded and everybody knows who “The Boy Who Lived” is, if not by title, by name (Harry Potter). Books of fiction have always been part of the culture, but especially books written in England, or USA, have a tendency to become worldwide famous, and the authors have become very good at including culture in the books, so that the readers not only read for fun, but get to learn something about the culture of the author’s homeland. Also, young people have a tendency to be very interested in this genre, thus wanting to read or watch it, and therefore you can use it in class. It is always easier to read a book in a foreign language (here: English as second language) when you already know of the story.

John Shoeman says: “when you've read a book in your own language, and then read it in your second language you can relate“

Of course we cannot count on all of the students to have read this book, or watched the movie, but as mentioned before, I daresay every one of them have heard of the story. This is the reason for our choosing of Harry Potter as material in a second language learning class.

We made a plan for the use of the book and the movie, as shown below. We assumed it would be a ninth grade, and that we would first read the whole book, and later on watch the movie. The book would be read both in class and as homework, so both vocabulary and pronunciation is practiced. Additionally we would use different warming-up activities, like jeopardy with questions to the book, criss-cross puzzles with Harry Potter themes, “The hot chair” where a pupil have to pretend to be a character from the book, and the other pupils ask questions to the character, “filling out the blanks” where the pupils will get a random page from the book, where some of the words have been removed, and they have to fill them in, and more. Also, we would do a drama, after reading the book, where the pupils should act out some scenes. We would also analyze the chapters, with questions as "who do we meet in this chapter?", “How does he look?”, “What personal characteristics do you see in her?” and so on. This we would do because the pupils have to learn how to analyze different literary forms (texts, movies and so on), and they should be able to do a person characterization.

When you read the lesson plan below, it only shows lessons for a week. We would repeat it for two months, but change the activities. It is just the basic plan.

 

	Læringsforudsætninger	Mål	Rammefaktorer	Indhold	Læreprocesser	Vurdering
Emne	Harry Potter	Vocabulary Pronunciation Reading Confidence (presentation/acting) Analyzing	"Harry Potter and the philosophers stone" both book and movie	Reading out loud, Analyzing, Writing a story in the universe	Individual work Group work Pronounciation Vocabulary	Did the pupils learn the intended material? What did they think about it?

Lesson Plan - 2 months

	Warm-up	Main Content	Evaluation	Homework
Lesson 1 + 2	"The hot chair"	Reading aloud a chapter	Asking the students after every class if they liked the way it was taught.
Lesson 3 + 4	Criss cross puzzle with Harry Potter questions	Analyzing, answer questions (groups or pairs)	Asking the students after every class if they liked the way it was taught.	Read next chaper