Teaching the L2 Culture

In my view, culture is the very broad concept that encompasses the things that people do and the things that people learn, along with why those people do and learn those things.  I think it’s very important to teach L2 culture because it’s extremely important for people to develop cultural understanding and for people to value and respect cultural diversity. If done properly, I definitely think it’s possible to teach L2 culture in a classroom setting. Since we cannot expect everyone to go live in/immerse themselves in the L2 culture that they are studying, we need to make sure that L2 culture is taught well in the classroom setting. The limitations to teaching L2 culture in the classroom would be that often, the teacher who is teaching the L2 culture is not a native of that culture and may not feel prepared to teach it. I think the biggest limitation, however, would be the most obvious, and that is the fact that while in a classroom setting, students are often not immersed in the target culture and therefore are not learning to see the culture from an insider’s point of view. But again, we cannot expect every student to be able to go live in the L2 culture, so classroom culture instruction needs to be of high quality in order to get students as close to an insider’s perspective as possible.

            I think culture should be learned and taught in many different ways using many different methods and materials. We saw the four common approaches to teaching culture in our book, the “Frankenstein Approach,” the “4-F Approach,” the “Tour Guide Approach,” and the “By-The-Way Approach” and I think that all of these methods could be beneficial to students if used well and used together. I don’t think that a teacher should teach a semester-long class and only use one approach, let’s say the “4-F Approach,” because then all the students will have learned about would be folk dances, festivals, fairs and food! However, if the teacher combines these four approaches and uses one approach one week for a certain set of topics and another approach the next week for a different set of topics, I think students would get a lot out of this. I think teachers should use many different materials and types of lessons for teaching culture. For example, if the only thing you do to “teach culture” is make burritos and salsa one day to teach about “Hispanic food,” I don’t think that will really enhance the students’ knowledge on Hispanic culture. A teacher could show clips of TV shows and/or movies from the target culture, they could bring in native-speakers as guests, they could cook authentic, non-stereotypical food with the class, they could have students role play certain situations, and the list goes on. I also think students tend to be very interested in the “survival skills” of a culture which are represented by the Four Categories for Cultural Understanding in our book on pages 354-355. I feel like students are interested in the conventions and connotations of the L2 culture because they like to compare them with the conventions and connotations of their own culture. For example, when my brother studied in Russia, he was told upon his arrival that it is normal for people to stand very close to each other while speaking, and he was told not to back away from someone even if he felt uncomfortable because backing away would insult the other person. He was also told the phrase that was considered to be the worst swear in the culture so that he would know never to say it, even if joking. I recently heard another example of cultural conventions from my grandparents who lived in Senegal, Africa for a few years. My grandmother worked as an office secretary while there and she told me that her work day was supposed to start at 9am. She said that the first few weeks of work, she was the only person in the office for about two hours, and then around 11am all the other workers would arrive. At first she had no idea why they were all late all the time, but when she realized that they all had very different concepts of time than she did, it made a lot more sense. People would leave for work at 9am, and they would walk there. While walking to work, people would stop and have long conversations with friends, pick up a few groceries, etc. and that was completely normal for them. My grandmother said that when she learned this and got to know more people, she too would stop and talk for 30 minutes to an hour on her way to work! Maybe this is just from my experiences, but I feel like many students find the 4 Categories for Cultural Understanding to be interesting. I think it’s important for teachers to teach to the interests of their students, so if everyone seems really interested in learning about different verbal connotations, spend some time on that. If everyone seems really interested in learning about the major rivers and monuments of a country and how they affect the culture, spend some time on that. I know that just because certain aspects of different cultures don’t seem to interest all students is not a reason not to teach them, but I definitely think it’s important for teachers to gauge students’ interest levels on certain aspects so that they can try to tie those things in to other aspects.