Intercultural Language Teaching

I'm totally agree that culture issues should be added into classroom. However, cultural issues often excluded from language teaching. I think that's because teacher don't want to teach wrong thing so avoid mentioning it is the easiest way to do so. From my own opinion, when I learn English at school, teacher just follow textbooks an didn't mention anything about western culture. Most of English teacher in Taiwan, they got they education in Taiwan as well so they didn't have experience regarding western culture. Thus, staying in only teach things in textbook in safer for them. For me, I have the advantage in teaching Chinese as I'm the native speaker and I live in NZ. Both side's culture I'm familiar with so it is easy for me to do cultural comparison. Ofter, students find it is really interesting and it becomes a motivation for them to keep learning. Besides, compare different culture will let students form a new idea for their own culture or even for themselves. They might recognize something is valuable but they haven't noticed before.

Critical Language Teaching

This approach is very straightforward to me as I didn't have that much teaching theories before. So, what I can do is find out the problem I meet in the class and find a solution to solve it. As I didn't follow a particular way when teaching, it didn't trap myself in it. I think it is hard for experienced teachers or teachers who had lots of theoretical training as they thought they've accepted that much training so they shouldn't critique themselves.

I quite agree that teachers should consider all aspects as they all affect our teaching process. Also, I think it is really important to reflect our teaching all the time as we learn when we teach. We must get something new from the teaching. It can be new sources for next teaching.

There's an issue I'm interested in is teaching second language in student's first language. Chinese is my first language but I teach it in a English-speaking country. Most of my students speak English as their first language. I found that it is very useful at the beginning stage as this will help students get into the new area quickly and efficiently. Besides, immersive teaching might be useful but I think students should be immersed in the social situations rather than classroom. If students don't have enough knowledge about second language, no matter how much you say, they still cannot understand. Moreover, they will feel anxious and refuse to learn anymore.

Systemic Functional Linguistics

This week's topic is very new for me as there's not much grammar issues in Chinese. However, I still agree that we cannot teach grammar rules only. We need to provide real examples and contexts for students to let them know how people use it and when we use it. On the other hand, if we only teach students grammar rules, they might make perfect sentence without grammar errors but we've never used in our real life.

There's not much to talk about my Chinese teaching. I think that's because I'm a native speaker and most of Chinese textbooks do not really emphasize grammar part especially the textbooks for second language. However, when I think back to my English learning, I refused to use grammar rules which I am not familiar with. I often decided to use the grammar that I've encountered many times.

Genre and Language Teaching

This approach is really useful for me for sure as I teach business Chinese for some business people. They need to read and write lots of contracts, invoices, quotations and receipts at their work. There's some particular format for this kind of documents. I have to say it is a very efficient way when you have a clear need for a specific topic.

Using materials in the real world is very important for genre approach otherwise students will create their own work which will be very hard to understand. Some people stated that genre approach will lead fossilization, however, I think if you even don't know what people usually say and write in a special area, how can you create a creative piece?

Wk6 Intercultural Language Teaching

This is something I feel should be an integral part of learning language, and as a teacher would strive to implement it wherever possible in my classrooms.  It feels comforting that the shift in language teaching has gone towards culturally contexted meaning making (Liddicoat, 2008) and away from the traditional methods, as culture quite often goes hand in hand with language. 

As Liddicoat (2008) suggests, communication is not limited to vocabulary and language, culture also plays a significant part.  Problems can arise when contrasting cultural elements arise during communication, and furthermore some complex differences are generally undetected by the learner until they make a mistake.  To use a personal experience as an example, upon seen a cat basking in the sunlight with it’s legs stretched out, I used a familiar grammar construct in Japanese to say to a native speaker [hahaあのなまけものな猫を見て。。], lit: “haha, look at that lazy cat..”.  Seeing the confused look on my friend’s face I explained, but it was soon made clear to me that while in English culture we may use this term in a jokey, affectionate way to describe the cat, or there may be a sense of “I wish I had that cat’s life..” motivating the joke, in Japanese the use of an adjective such as lazy has deeply negative connotations, and wouldn’t be used in any cute or affectionate context.  Additionally under no circumstances would one “strive” to live the life of a sloth, or if one hypothetically had enough free time (as does a cat) one certainly would never joke about wasting it on such pursuits as “lying around”.  There are obviously some complex cultural things at play, rather than simple direct translation.  I know Japanese people are considered “hardworking” but isn’t that just a stereotype and something we should avoid in culture learning?  To what extent are they hardworking and how does work ethic and one’s contribution to society affect the day to day decision-making of people collectively or individually?  Most of the vocabulary I learned was raw and committed to memory for exam purposes, as Liddicoat (2008) rightly pointed out, the textbook we worked from often ignored cultural information or it was in the form of a “culture notes” page at the end of each chapter. 

In most learning situations there is always going to be a question of time in an exam-driven learning environment, so what is a good way incorporate cultural learning and how much time can we as teachers allocate to it for the students?  As a guideline for reflecting on our teaching practices in the classroom, I am certainly drawn to the framework as set out by Richards, Conway, Roskvist & Harvey (2011) in which a linear progression is experienced through making connections with their own culture, comparing it to other cultures, making a link between language and culture, reflecting on their own culture through the eyes of others and interacting in the target language.   I like this because a logical progression forms for exploring the complexities and putting them into practice.  The framework was designed for observational purposes but can be used as a reference point for teachers to work with (Richards, Conway, Roskvist, Harvey, 2011).

References

Liddicoat, A.J. (2008). Pedagogical Practice for Integrating the Intercultural in Language Teaching and Learning, Japanese Studies, 28(3), p277-290.  From http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10371390802446844# 

Richards, H., Conway. C., Roskvist, A., &  Harvey, S. (2011).  A framework for analysing observation data: Language teacher provision of opportunities for learners to develop intercultural competency.  In A. Witte & T. Harden (Eds.), Intercultural Competence : Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations (pp. 239-252).  Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.

Evey-Week 6 Intercultural language teaching

Evey—Week 6 ICLT

Why is intercultural language teaching important? What does ICLT involve?

With the backdrop of growing economic globalization and trade liberalization, Intercultural language teaching (ICLT) has been getting more attention. Liddicoat (2012) believes that simple language can involve complex culture and culture differences often arise communication problems. Therefore, language teaching is more than teaching vocabulary and grammar. Culture should be integrated into language learning as well. ICLT not only involves understanding the culture in the target language and the cultural differences between the learners’ own culture, but also ‘provides opportunities for learners to reflect on their own culture through the eyes of others’ (Heather, Clare 2015), which is usually ignored by most language teachers. Through reflection, learners can establish their own identity instead of following the other cultures blindly. It is a good way to help students become aware of the culture differences between L1 and L2.

What are the problems of teaching culture to foreign language learners?

Problem 1: some learners feel threatened in their L1 identity by too much emphasis on culture. (Claire, 2013)

Problem 2: many of non-native language teachers feel inadequate when teaching culture they are not really familiar with. (Claire, 2013)

Problem 3: the feeling that culture is somehow an optional extra, which is marginal and dispensable.(Alan)

How to solve these problems?

As far as I am concerned, teachers should apply different approaches in foreign language teaching and second language teaching. For immigrants and people who have already been in the other country, they need to adapt themselves to the new environment as quickly as possible, so they have the need and motivation to learn another culture. On the other hand, the foreign language learns are not strongly motivated in learning other cultures, unless they are going to go abroad in the future. Therefore, the focus of cultural teaching to foreign language learners can be on their own cultural first. Then the teacher can integrate L2 cultural.

For example

Background: teacher & students—Chinese; L2—English; culture—Christmas

Step1: use English to talk about the most important festival—Spring Festival in China. Talk about: Why do people celebrate Spring Festival? What activities do people do? What food do people eat? The history of Spring Festival.

Design idea: arise students’ interests in talking about festival, and make them familiar with how to talk about their own culture in L2

Step2: ask students which festival is the most significant in western countries. The answer is Christmas. Then the teacher can give students some reading materials about Christmas, or play the videos related to Christmas. After that, teacher can go on talking about Christmas by asking these questions: Why do people celebrate Christmas? What activities do people do at Christmas? What food do people eat? The history of Christmas and so on. (make sure students can find answers in the reading materials or videos)

Design idea: students have already talked about their own culture in these aspects (food; activity; history; reason), so they are familiar with the sentence patterns they are going to use, which will make the discussion easier.

Step3: compare the differences between the two festivals. (different origins; food; activities and so on) ask some related question such as: Has your view of Christmas changed after the discussion?

idea: comparing is another way to input and can be accepted by students.

Step4: talk about some in-depth questions about culture such as: Why does an increasing number of Chinese celebrate Christmas? (for example: religious reason; commercial reason; a chance to have fun and so on) How do you feel about it? What do you think about western people celebrate Spring Festival? What is one thing you think a westerner might like and not like about Spring Festival?

Design idea: to reflect on students’ own culture through eyes of others; to establish students’ cultural identity; let them know it is normal to celebrate a festival in their own way; understand the purpose of celebrating and respect others’ tradition.

Step5 (optional): task—talk about the most important festival in your country with your foreign friends on Internet. Give an oral report about ‘how my foreign friend celebrates Christmas’.

Design idea: integrate culture leaning with task to create a relationship between the culture knowledge and real world, which can help to motivate students and enhance what they learned.

   

In conclusion, a good way to teach culture is to arise students’ interests. In foreign language teaching, a teacher can involve more culture of L1, and compare with L2. We should also let students know there is no absolutely right or wrong when it comes to culture, and they should keep curious; sensitive; and tolerant towards a different culture. 

References:

Kramsch, C. (2013). Culture in foreign language teaching. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 1(1), 57-58

Liddicoat, A.J. (2008). Pedegogical practice for integrating the intercultural in language teaching and learning. Japanese Studies, 28(3), 277-290. doi: 10.1080/10371390802446844

Pulverness, A. (2004, January). Here and there: issues in materials development for intercultural learning. Paper presented at Culture in ELT Seminar- Intercultural Materials in the Classroom and on the Web, British Council, Krakow, Poland. Retrived from http://www. academia. edu/268758/

Clare Conway, Heather Ricards (2015). Intercultural language learning and teaching Focus on Teaching 167811 CAI 169206

 [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://autonline.aut.ac.nz/webapps/blackboard/content/

Evey-Week5 Critical Language Teaching

There is a sad truth that not many teachers would critically think about their teaching methods; exam systems; teaching materials; and some very influential teaching pedagogies in a certain time, such as PPP; CFL; even TBLT. As for me, I never doubt the importance of integrating English language class with real-life tasks and never had I thought there should be anything wrong to organize classroom activities until I had my first lesson in the third year of university.

In the third year of university, I got a chance to have an internship in a middle school, which is located at an outer suburb of a small city in China. I felt extremely nervous before the first class. In order to impress the students, I made teaching aids (pictures of animals) by myself. I prepared many classroom activities for students, and even wrote down every single word that I would say in the first lesson and recited very fluently(which is ridiculous ). I thought I had prepared my lesson very well, however, the result was not very satisfying. Many students stared at me with a confused look during the lesson, and failed to answer most of the questions I asked. They were reluctant to take part in those activities I designed.

I felt frustrated and asked the head teacher for help. After talking to the head teacher, I realized English was not a compulsory subject in the public primary schools in this area, and most of the students came from peasant family so they could not have a chance and extra money to learn English after school, so it was not surprised that they had little reaction towards those activities.

Looking back this failure now, I realize this failure could be prevented if I analyzed the context first. At that time, I forgot a very important thing that teachers should not always focus on applying ‘the best theory’ and follow the trends blindly. The theories of many famous scholars are indeed advanced, but might not be proper in our own teaching context. The theories are usually based on a visionary situation, in which students are always obedient, and can understand every command of a teacher. However, the real teaching situation can be like a jungle, teachers had better pray for not getting lost because with little theoretical support they are on their own. Thus, having awareness to think and teach language critically is of great importance. Critical language teaching should involve critique. During the process of critical thinking, the teaching ideas should be reasoned and well thought.

In conclusion, there is no answer of what the best teaching pedagogy is. The angles of viewing the world and education have always been changing along with the development of the world. The creation of new things never stops, therefore, being a teacher, we should think critically about the pedagogies we apply ; try our best to analyze students’ needs and teaching context. That is to say, we should: stay open-minded; have experimental spirit; never stop absorbing new knowledge; and reflect after teaching all the time.

References:

Lin, A.M.Y. (1999). Doing-English-lessons in the reproduction or transformation of social worlds? TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 393-412.

Pennycook, A. (1999). Introduction: Critical approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 329-348. 

Wk5 - Critical Language Teaching

First of all, I am interested in this conceptually – a philosophy that combines education with research and theory.  Pennycook (1999) suggests that critical language education as a whole is linked with social concepts such as class and race, and political orientation.   For me it brings forward an often unspoken side of language teaching and made me look at how we traditionally teach language for example the typical “nuclear” family is often seen in teaching materials, and relative to the social expectations of that geo-political region (eg. wholesome, married with children families).

Additionally I like the idea of Pennycook’s self-reflexive stance, making sure critical theory is never nailed down into a body of knowledge, and must too be constantly criticized.  Self-criticism being crucial in critical work, this makes sure the theory never becomes stale. It does appear very challenging as a language teacher to think outside the box in this way, but as Pennycook suggests, it may be fruitful to consider language teaching work not only as reductive meanings attached to simple labels such as teaching and English.

On aspect that interested me in Lin’s (1999) research was the four classrooms and the Form 1 remedial class that used L1 strategically linking to L2.  This was of particular interest to me as I have generally for a while now been sceptical of the total immersion language learning concept.  As the study showed, it may have worked for the more privileged students who had exposure to English in their daily lives, but not for the others.  I know in a lot of countries, particularly in Asia, there is a firm belief in the total immersion system for learning English.  I have a friend who speaks English as L2 and has lived in New Zealand for over 10 years but his English level does not reflect that.  I asked him about his education background and he said his only experience of English (pre-NZ) was at high school, total language immersion – and he wasn’t that interested in it.  Therefore I suspect he missed out on the fundamental aspects of grammar and such forth being explained to him in his own language.  At AUT, beginner level Japanese classes are taught in L1, slowly phasing into L2 at around the second year of study - and for this I’m thankful otherwise I probably would have lost interest early on.

References

Lin, A.M.Y. (1999).  Doing-English-Lessons in the Reproduction or Transformation of Social Worlds? TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No.3, Critical approaches to TESOL, pp. 393-412. 

Pennycook, A. (1999).  Introduction: Critical Approaches to TESOL.  TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No.3, Critical approaches to TESOL, pp. 329-348. 

Wk4 - Systemic Functional Linguistics and Language Teaching

In the reading by Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks., S., & Yallop., C. (2000), there is a focus towards noticing important features in the target language, and using exploring activities.  There are some insightful teaching samples too for which teachers can support or scaffold.  For students to become independent learners, Butt et al., 2000 stresses the importance of helping students learn how to explore the possible reasons why certain grammatical features used in different contexts.

In my opinion this can only be a good thing, as using complicated explanations for grammar context can be hard to grasp for L2 learners.  One particular experience springs to mind, while learing Japanese at university we were introduced to the “suffering passive” grammar form.  Only marginally different from a general media passive form, it is quite a difficult concept to grasp as I understand in all the languages of the world, this only exists in Japanese.  When we learned it, the grammar structure was drilled and the meaning explained “changing the verb form in this way shows the subject suffers or suffered in some way (even though you’re not actually saying it)”.  As Butt et al., 2000 stated, I was able to perfectly apply the grammar in carefully constructed sentences (which was required for the grammar exam), yet coming out the other end I am still not confident at a real world level how and when to use this form (and sadly, even an attitude may have developed of “oh well.. I’ll leave that to the native speakers..”).  So perhaps through some noticing / exploring activities it may have become clearer.

To tie in with this, Jones, R. H. & Lock, G. (2011) point out that the combination of context of culture and context of situation results in differences/similarities between languages.  As L1 speakers we usually recognise familiar situations in a culture context due to sharing the same cultural knowledge, whereas in an L2 situation, we often start out knowing the vocabulary, grammar rules etc but not so much appropriate context.  I agree that bridging this gap (or attempting to) should be a part of language teaching.

References

Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks., S., & Yallop., C. (2000). Using functional grammar: An explorer’s guide (2^nd ed). Sydney: NCELTR

  

Jones, R. H. & Lock, G. (2011). Functional grammar in the ESL classroom: noticing, exploring and practising. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian.