Icebergs, culture and learning a second language

Today we worked with culture. At first we read aloud some of the text "Cultural Awareness" by Barry Tomalin & Susan Stempleski. Then our teacher explained some theory, especially "The Iceberg Concept". Then we worked with some tasks about culture, which we could use as teachers in the Danish Folk School. After that, we worked in pairs with a bit of text from our book "How Languages are Learned" by Patsy M. Lightbrown & Nina Spada. We had to present to the class what we worked with.

Cultural Awareness

"Big C"

Achievement culture

"Small c"

Behavior culture

 This is a figure showing the "small c".

Seven goals of cultural instruction

1. To help students develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors

2. To help students develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave

3. To help students to become more aware of conventional behavior in common situations in the target culture

4. To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language

5. To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence

6. To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture

7. To stimulate students' intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people

Practical teaching principles

1. Access the culture through the language being taught

2. Make the study of cultural behaviors an integral part of each lesson

3. Aim for students to achieve the socio-economic competence which they feel the need

4. Aim for all levels to achieve cross-cultural understanding - awareness of their own culture, as well as that of the target language

5. Recognize that not all teaching about culture implies behavior change, but merely an awareness and tolerance of the cultural influences affecting one's own and others' behavior

ELT = English Language Teaching

The Iceberg Concept

Like an iceberg, the majority of culture is below the surface.


Surface culture:
1. Food
2. Dress
3. Music
4. Visual arts
5. Drama
6. Crafts
7. Dance
8. Literature
9. Language
10. Celebrations
11. Games
    
    Below surface culture:
12. Courtesy
13. Personal space
14. Rules of conduct
15. Facial expressions
16. Nonverbal communication
17. Tempo of work
18. Tone of voice
19. Emotions
20. Tolerance
21. Attitudes (towards elders)
22. Nature
23. Ideals of childhood
24. Notions of modesty/adolescence
25. Body language
26. Eye contact
27. Touching
28. Problem solving
29. Sex
30. Concept of beauty
31. Relationships towards animals

How to work with culture in class

1. Explain to the class that there are many definitions of the word "culture", and that they are going to carry out an activity to find out what the members of the class think of when the word "culture" is mentioned.


2. Ask the class to name as many cultural groups as they can. As the students call them out, write them up on the board.


Immigrants
Students
Footballers
Teenagers
Musicians
Gays
Celebrities
"Beliebers"
Gypsies
Alcoholics
Politicians
Punks
Homeless people


3. When you have 15-20 names of cultural groups, divide the class into groups of three or four. Explain that each group is to work together to draw up a list of characteristics that make each of the cultural groups different from all the others. Allow ten minutes for the groups to make up their lists. Here is a sample of the kind of list they might produce:

Immigrants	Students
Language Attitude - not well behaved Beliefs - religion National origin Music Food Social Life Family Boats - Sea -Danger Boarders	Young Poor Hungry - weird food habits Drunk Social Life Friends Family - living at home to save money Party Home-work Sleep-deprived



4. Ask a volunteer from each group to read out their list, while you write up the characteristics.


5. When the students have reached the end of their lists, ask them which characteristics apply to all of the cultural groups they mentioned. For example, can all groups be identified by different languages or by different religions? The students will realize that very few, if any, of the characteristics apply to all the groups.


6. Conduct a whole-class discussion on the basus of the following questions:
• Why is it difficult to define the word "culture"?
• Why do people identify with cultures and cultural groups?
 

We had to work in pair with some pages from "How languages are learned", and present it in class. I worked with pp. 29-34 (chapter 2),concerning Learning a second language.

Very different to learn first language or second language, and why.

Context for language learning

Different context for why you learn a second language

1. Language class in own country
2. Move to new country
3. A child growing up learning 2 languages

There's a list you have to think about when teaching a foreign language.

1. Do they know a first language
2. How old are they?
3. How are the mental state?
4. Do they know the grammar of another language?
5. How are their personalities? (Self-consciousness?)
6. Do they need the language now or "later"?
7. Do they receive corrective feedback from the environment ? (Both grammar and the basic meaning)

Learner characteristics

Cognitive maturity - "erkendelsesmæssig modenhed".

Metalinguistic awareness - awareness of what lies beyond the language - for instance describing the grammar. Can look at the language with "analyzing eyes". How to describe language.

Often, when you learn a second language, you compare it to your first language, and will make a lot of mistakes.

When you're older you will be better at understanding the grammatical differences in languages, and you know how to solve problems with the grammar rules.

When a younger child learns a second language, it's easier because they don't find it stressful to make mistakes. If you're afraid of making mistakes, you talk less, thus making less mistakes and won't learn from them.

Learning conditions

Younger children can "blend in" - songs, games and are allowed to be silent if they want.

Students have to speak some, but often the teacher talks in the first language for instance when disciplining, thus depriving the students the experience of the second language used in communication.

They will only be limited to talk the second language in class, therefore won't get much practice.

Its easier to correct the meaning (what do you mean?), but correcting the grammar, for instance at workplaces, is considered impolite. Therefore, grammar will often not be corrected by adults.

One condition is common to all learners: "Foreigner talk/Teacher talk" => exposure to modified or adapted input.

How the teacher talk - adjustments they need to make to help learners understand.

BUT it doesn't help learning if you just talk louder! :)

I think our presentation went quite well, and we did get credit from our teacher. :)
The other pairs did well too, I think it was a very good way to do it, and everybody had a chance to get something out of the chapters, without having to read it really well and making a ton of notes. Instead we worked in pairs in perhaps ½ an hour with some paragraphs, and then everybody would hear about it in details. That means, every page has been read and thought about and everybody got to hear the points, and also, it's always nice to discuss the homework, because we, as humans, are different, and we all get something different out of the homework.

Culture and language learning

Today we started the day by clearifiring how we're going to have our exam in a couple of modules, and how we have to end every module with some kind of test.
Then we proceeded working with culture, and the teacher talked about what we're going to work with in this subjekt.
Later on we worked in groups with the book "How languages are learned", and my group worked with pp- 20-27 (with some problems, since we had 3 different versions of the book).

We had a new student in our class today, so we spent some time presentating our names and getting to know him.

The group work persisted of us reading aloud from one book (so we had the same basic knowledge to work with) and then we talked about it, and presented it to class. Our paragraph was about Vygotsky and Piaget, and language disorders and delays, which I found very interesting. Especially the last paragraph (about bilingual children, which we sadly didn't have time for) was quite interesting to me, especially given my background with the half year I worked in the nursery and kindergarden, with almost only bi- or trilingual children.

Connectionism is when the child connects a word qith something they see or hear - like a cat. If he hears "meow meow" he may know it's a cat, because his parents taught him. But then when he sees a cat, he doesn't know what it is, because it didn't say the sound. Maybe he thinks the cat and the dog is the same because they both have fur or something else, and then you have to teach him otherwise.

In our group we also worked a bit with Vygotsky, who talked about the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which is about learning.

The other groups had to present their work as well.

Auxiliary is a "hjælpeverbum" like "Anne is reading" the auxiliary is the "is".
You "conjucate" the verbs instead of "bending" them. :)

Behaviourism

 B. F. skinner

Habit of formation
Automatization

Repetition, drills/drilling - the jazz chants

NO mistakes!

Learning from listening to others.

• Incouragement
• Imitation
• Practise
• Consistency

Until forming habits of correct language use.

Primary processes in language development

• Imitation - word-for-word repetition of all or part of someones else´s utterance
• Practise - repetitive manipulation of form

Stimuli/respons paradigm.



Innatism

Noam Chomsky - argues against behaviorism.

• All human language are based on some innate universal principle.
• Children are biologically programmed for language and language develops in the child in just the same way that other biological functions develop
• The environment makes only a basic contribution - the availability of people who speak to the child. The child, rather, the child´s biological endowment, will do the rest.
• Children´s minds are not blank slates to be filled by imitating language they hear in the environment. Instead children are born with a specific innate ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system on the basis of the samples of a natural language they are exposed to.
• The universal grammar would prevent the child from pursuing all sorts of wrong hypotheses about how language system might work. Complex grammar could never be learned purely on the basis of imitating and practising sentences available in the input.
• Almost every children succesfully acquire their native language

The Critical Perios Hypothesis.

• The hypothesis that animals, including humans, are genetically programmed to acquire certain kinds of knowledge and skills at specific times in life.

Interactionalism 
 

• They hyphothesize that what children need to know is essentially available in the language they are exposed to as they hear it used in thousands of hours of interactions with the people and object around them.  
• They attribute more importance to the environment than the innatists do even though they also recognize a powerful learning mechanism in the human brain.
• They see language acquisition as similar to and influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge rather than as something that is different from and largely independent of the childs experience and cognitive development.

The innatist place to much emphasis on the "final state" and not enough on the development aspect of language acquisition.

The Circuit - a short story

Literature, Culture and Society:

Questions to Teaching Intercultural Commincative competence through Literature, Eva Burwitz-Melzer; pp. 29-43 in Byram, Michael et al.: Developing Intercultural Comptence in Practice, Clevedon: Mulitilingual Matters Ltd., 2001 with reference to the short story The Circuit by Fransisco Jiménez

1. For what reasons is, according to the text, literature good at developing an intercultural communicative competence in pupils? (p. 29)

Do you agree or disagree? Why?

A subjective view on a nation or an ethnic group by portraying specific values, prejudices and stereotypes.

The audience get a chance to exchange their culturally restricted points of view together with the hero or heroine of the narrative or with the narrator telling the story.

Interaction with the text - reader response.

Wider view on culture around the world. Identification with the characters.

2. Talk in your group about what the short story The Circuit is about? Which themes are treated in the short story?

The story is about a boy, from Mexico, who (with his family) has to move, because of a chance to get some work. When the grape season ends, the narrator gets to go to school, where he befriends the English teacher, who helps him with the new words. The teacher offers to teach him to play the trumpet, and as the boy gets home, excited to tell his family, he discovers they have to move again.

Themes: Immigration, work, school issues, language learning, different cultures, poorness.

3. What do you think is meant by the term ‘an intercultural speaker’ (p. 30)? And what do you think it means in comparison with the term near-native capacity? (p. 30)

That he has a wider knowledge of other cultures, instead of only knowledge about his own culture and heritage.

Main aim: non-native English speakers (for instance Danes) can learn English as well. We will never be native speakers, but intercultural.

4. Please comment on the comprehensive catalogue shown in Table 2.1 on pp. 32-33 concerning ‘Objectives and observed behaviour’. Could these two lists be useful for you in your professional job as a teacher?

Yes, the show some things to do, and to control if the pupils learns or have learned. It's like a "check list" and I think I can use it as a teacher. Gives ideas for tasks in class.

5. Try to consult Common Goals (Fælles Mål) on the Internet and find out whether or not this catalogue of intercultural objectives (pp. 32-33) is in line with what is demanded under the CKP of Kultur- og samfundsforhold relating to a chosen class from classes 3-10 in the Folkeskole?

6. Please comment on/discuss the four (Task-based Learning) lessons described on pp. 34-35

The first lesson (20 minutes): Warm-up, preparing them for the story, and then handing them the short-story but without the title and the ending. Also the page numbers were left out, so the pupils had to figure the order out by themselves.

The second lesson (videotaped, 90 minutes): The pupils should explain why they chose that order of the pages. The teacher has already asked for some key words in the text, to help them with their decisions.

The next task was to come up with an alternate ending - two or three sentences. These were discussed in class before the real ending was handed out. Then the pupils should come up with a title for the story, before the real title was revealed. They were all written down (inclusive the original title) and then discussed. As homework the pupils should write a new scene to finish the story.

Then they were given the job (in pairs) to complete a scene with approximately five sentences. There were two choices; one asking the pupils to put themselves into the roles of Panchito's mother and father, the other one to  imagine a discussion between Panchito and is older brother:

1. The family moves on to their next job. They sit in the car. Mother and father start quarrelling about Panchito. Work with a partner. Write down what they say to each other. Do you think they talk loudly?

2. The family moves on. They all sit in the car. Panchito is very sad and disappointed. His brother who has to work more tries to make him feel better. They start quarrelling. Work with a partner. Write down what they say to each other. Do you think they talk loudly?

The third lesson (45 minutes): The pupils should work on the scenes with their partners. By help from dictionaries they should correct mistakes and then prepare to perform the scenes in class.

The fourth lesson (videotaped, 90 minutes): The pupils should read aloud their scenes in class, if they didn't want to perform in front of the camera. The performances were discussed according to a list of criteria (tone, dramatic expression, content, probability/realism of the scene, etc.) agreed upon beforehand. It was all concluded by a discussion about the story and its interest for an English class in the country (here: Germany).

7. Please discuss the four proposed endings (A-D) (p. 35)

The four proposed endings:

1. Panchito's father has a heart attack. Panchito and Roberto can't go to school anymore; they have to earvn money for the whole family now.

2. As Panchito gets off the bus, he tells his parents about school and his new teacher. At first he is afraid what his parents will say, but later he is really proud of himself.

3. Panchito's family stays in town so that he can go to school for a longer time. His father and Roberto look for better jobs. Panchito can go on learning to play the trumpet; he even joins the school orchestra.

4. When Panchito gets off the bus, his family has moved on without him. Panchito stays in town on his own. He tries to make a living with odd jobs and stays in school.

The four endings are really different, and all harsh in their own way:

A - the father dies, and Panchito can't go back to school.

B - we never know what happens, if they move on or Panchito can stay in school. Though, here he does something hard and is proud of himself - a good morale.

C - this ending is happy because Panchito can stay in school, but his older brother won't be able to go to school.

D - this one is very harsh, because Panchito's family leaves without him.

8. Please comment on the suggested titles (p. 36). Could you think of others?

1. The new school - good title, describes Panchito's relationship with the school and sounds quite positive.
2. The life of a migrant family in the USA - very describing, though kind of long.
3. The life of a Mexican family in the USA - again very describing, but long.
4. The new beginning - very positive, and describes the story, but still hides the ending.
5. A new life - the same as D.
6. From work to work - describes the family's life, as they have to move on every time they need new work.
7. The new friend - very positive, describes Panchito's relationship with the teacher.
8. Losing a friend - Kind of sad, describing that Panchito has to leave after befriending the teacher.
9. My new life in the USA - very positive, though kind of long. It also gives a hint, that the story has a first-person view.

9. Please comment on the three new scenes written by the pupils?

(pp. 37-42) What do you think of them? Why?

1. The parents

The language is quite good, I'm not sure that's how the parents would talk. But the pupils took everything into consideration and found some kind of solution "We will see what happens" -> status quo.

2. Panchito and Roberto

Also in this ending, the language is a but "off" how they would probably speak in the story, but here there are some mistakes. The ending is how the brother could react to hearing about Panchito's "new friend" - the brother doesn't think Panchito needs a teacher, because he has his brother.

3. Roberto and Panchito

Here the language is a bit more true to the story, and the ending is a bit more happy, as the brother tries to help Panchito, and encourages him.

10. What do you think about the fact that only spelling errors were corrected whereas idiomatic and grammatical mistakes remain uncorrected. Would you have worked with Language Focus (cf. the octagon chart on TBL) in a more detailed way?

Well, I'm positive about the fact that the spelling errors were corrected, at least, but I think it's important to correct any mistakes, so the pupils can see it, and learn from it, and then maybe next time, they will get it right. If they're not corrected, then how are the pupils supposed to learn?

11. Please comment on the quotation ‘By reading the fictional text written in a foreign language, . . . which is a challenge that can be met by many teachers in many countries with differing curricular backgrounds.’ (pp. 41-42) Especially the concept of Zwischenwelt – a kind of third or ‘inter-‘ culture should be discussed

Curricular = pensum, hvordan man skal undervise

I think the authors are right - it's good for the pupils to get this "free space" to discuss such subjects as immigration, without anyone looking "down" on them - this is a fictional story, thereby no immigrants can get hurt by anything the pupils will say. It's a great opportunity for the pupils to talk freely about any subject, and the only thing the teacher will correct is the mistakes and errors in the language.

12. Please discuss ch. 6 The peripatetic reader: Wolfgang Iser and the aesthetics of reception (pp. 134-148) in Freund, Elisabeth: The Return of the Reader. Reader-response criticism, London: Routledge, First Edition 1987, 2003

 13. Try to plan some English lessons in which your pupils are to work with the short story The Circuit bearing the CKP of Kultur- og samfundsforhold from Common Goals in mind (you decide which class and the amount of lessons). Present your detailed teaching plan showing us lesson by lesson, and teach your team mates. Your team mates will act as the class which you have chosen as your target group. You decide how many English lessons your class has in the week. Please, arrange your presentation in such a way that all group members approximately say equally much