Lecture 1: General problems of Foreign Language teaching

LECTURE 21: Language culture interaction
Plan:
1. Culture as a component of language teaching
2. The use of Culture in learning language
3. Aspects of language culture interaction

Language and culture intricately interwined. Any time you successfully learn a language, you will also learn something of the culture of the speakers of that language. This principle focuses on the complex interconnection of language and culture: Whenever you team a language, you also learn a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling and acting.

A second aspect of the language-culture connections is the extent to which that students will themselves be affected by the process of acculturations, which will vary with the context and the goals of learning. In students are faced with the Full-blown realities of adapting to life any second-language-learning contexts, such as ESL in the United States students are faced with the full-blown realities of adopting to life in a foreign country, complete with various emotions accompanying stages of acculturation. In such cases, acculturations, social distance, and psychological adjustment are factors to be dealt with. This aspect of the principle may be summed up in this way.
Especially in second (as opposed to foreign) language-teaching context, the successes with which learners adapt to a new cultural milieu affect their language acquisition success, and vice versa, in some possible significant ways.
From the perspective or the classroom teacher, this principle is similar to the Principles of Language Ego and Willingness to communicate, and all the concomitant classroom implications apply here as well. An added dimension, however, lies in the interactions between culture learning and language learning. An opportunity is given to teachers to enhance, if not speed up, both developmental processes. Once students become aware that some of their discouragement may stem from cultural sources, they can more squarely address their state of mind and emotion and do something about it.
Age and proficiency are two major contextual variables that will affect every aspect of your lesson or curriculum. They may, in fact, be the most important variables. But another cluster of factors also emerges for the language teacher: sociocultural, political, and institutional contexts, without considerations of which your classroom lesson may miss their mark. There domains intertwine in such a way that it is sometime impossible to disentangle them and examine one without considering the other. Culture underlies every human being Emotion and cognition; governments, politics, and policies are equally powerful influences on our behavior; And finally, our educational institutions are products of culture and policy, and indeed are often microcosms of ones sociopolitical milieu.
Culture is a way of life. It is the context within which we want, think, feel, and relate to other. It is the glue that binds a group of people together. Its our collective identity, our “blueprint” (Larson &Smalley, 1972, p.39) that guides our behavior in a community. It makes us sensitive to matters of status, and helps us know what others expect of us and what will happen if we do not live up to their expectations. Its also dynamic, changing, situational, and at the same time, relatively stable (Matsumoto, 2000).
Culture also establishes for each person a context of cognitive and affective behavior, a template for personal and social existence. Although the opportunities for world travel in the last several decades have increased markedly, there is still a tendency for us to believe that our own reality is the correct perception. Misunderstandings are therefore likely to occur between members of different cultures.
It should be obvious, then that culture is highly important in the learning of a second language. A language is a part of culture, and a culture is a part of a language. The two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate them without losing the significance of either language or culture. The acquisition of a second language expect for specialized instrumental acquisitions (as may be the case, say, in a acquiring a reading knowledge of a language for examining scientific texts), is also the acquisitions of a second culture.
How does ad understanding of the relationship of language to culture affect your own teaching? The possibilities are almost endless. Whether you’re teaching ESL (in an inner circle country where English is the dominant language) or EFL (in an outer or expanding circle country).Cultural factors affect you. In ESL contexts, your student are usually guests from other countries learning both a new language and a new culture simultaneously; in EFL contexts your students are in their home culture attempting to bear a language imbued with foreign cultural connotations.