Reading 3: Comments

Reading for day 4

Culture in L2

The article and the responses to it seem to be having a very interesting conversation about the place of culture in the ESL classroom. I think the discussion can very easily be broadened to the L2 classroom in general. I really believe that culture has a very important and valuable role in the L2 classroom. The language it influenced by the culture and the culture is influenced by the language, one cannot be without the other in my opinion. The purpose of a learning a new language is not pass a test in the end and forget what you learned but rather to be able to put what you learned into practice in the real world. Presumably when you get to the "real world" you will be inundated with the culture of that world. Having been exposed to some aspects of culture needs to be a part of the L2 classroom.

Using the "culture corner" sections in the text book is not adequate in my opinion, and due to the nature of text books most of the time the culture corner is a bit out of date.  Using video and music might be a great way to add culture into some lessons. It might also be an interesting year long project to connect students in the L2 classroom with other students in a corresponding L2 classroom in another culture. (pen pals between english speaking canadian kids learning french and french speaking canadian kids learning english) Another great way of having cultural connections in the L2 classroom would be to bring in guest speakers if possible. A guest speaker who is a native of a culture that speaks your target L2 classroom and who can bring in some artifacts.

Another question regarding culture in the classroom is what kind of culture do we include. There are many countries and regions that speak French for example. If we feel a certain connection to one culture we may be inclined to highlight it, but ideally it would be interesting to show many different regions' cultures in the classroom. In practice it might be hard to find good quality resources for all of the different cultures that speak your target language but making an effort to show that there are different cultures that speak the language is better than ignoring the idea of culture completely in the classroom because you can't do it all. To me it is not even a question of whether or not we should "teach" culture in the classroom, the only question is what the best way of doing it is and how can we make it more a part of the lessons and units and less a "culture corner".