Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Language Classroom - Jerold Frank

In this class, I have the opportunity to read Jerold Frank's journal entitled "Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Language Classroom". I will share to you his ideas that really bless me.

For teachers like us, sometimes there are questions which appear in our mind like; "how to introduce cultural elements into the lessons?" and "what approach to take?"

Paige groups culture learning into categories:

1. The self as culture
2. The elements of culture
3. Intercultural phenomena (Culture - general learning)
4. Particular cultures (culture-specific learning)
5. Acquiring strategies for culture learning.

We will observe each of them deeper.

1. The Self as Culture

"Culture is what people think, make, and do!"

Bodley (1994)

If we want to insert topic about culture, encourage students to construct their own notions of culture. However, make sure, we have define what culture is to students and how it has shaped them before they can engage in interactive discussions.

How I do it in my class:

For this, I usually use a picture or video about culture. For example like showing many traditional clothes from Indonesia, and ask students with questions that can arise their thought about what culture is. I ask one or two of them to share their opinion and then conclude everything so that each of us in class has the same perception about culture that we want to discuss.

360 × 270 - indonesia-indonesiacountry.blogspot.com

2. The Elements of Culture

This part refers to beliefs, values, customs, products, and communication styles of a given culture or society.

A tool to help EFL students to conceptualize elements of culture is "CULTURAL ICEBERG ANALOGY". This analogy is divided into three:

• Surface Culture includes food, national costumes, and specific holidays.
• Sub-surface Culture includes notions of courtesy, body language, gestures, touching, eye contact, personal space, facial expressions, conversational patterns, and concept of time.
• Deep Culture includes nature of friendship, concepts of food, nations of modesty, concept of cleanliness, gender roles, and so on.

How I do it in my class:
I will divide my students into group and give them some pictures. Then I will stick three papers on the wall marks Surface Culture, Sub-surface Culture. and Deep Culture. The next order is that I will ask students to stick the picture according to the right analogy. After that, I will discuss the results with students.

In this activity, EFL teacher plays an important role either as a cultural informant or language expert.

3. Intercultural Phenomena
EFL teacher in this part has to prepare students for challenges they may meet when they travel to English speaking country.

One of the way is to explain about acculturation and how it works. Acculturation is a process of adapting to a new culture. It has four stages (Brown, 1994).

1. Excitement (being in anew country). It is like in a honeymoon phase, where everything seem so wonderful, until they meet culture shock.
2. Culture shock (Frustration and Hostility). In this stage, they make unfair comparisons between their host culture and their own culture.
3. Recovery (Adjustment and Emergent comfort to new culture). In this part, they become familiar and feel comfortable.
4. Adaption (Bridging cultural barriers and accepting new culture). This is the final stage where they adapt and accept the new culture.

How I do it in my class:

I will group my students and give them some drama projects. They have to perform a situation where a student moves to a totally new place. They have to express what they see, what they feel, and how they overcome the problems they meet. After that, they have to perform in front of the class. At the end of the performance, they have to conclude and re explain the drama in a brief explanation.

4. Particular Cultures

This culture includes history, geography, political system, and an understanding of particular characters of a society. 

In this part, the culture is divided into two:

• High context cultures.These cultures emphasize on interpersonal relationships and prefer group harmony. For this kind of people, words are less important than a speaker's intent. These are typified by long-lasting social relationships, spoken agreement, and mutual trust. The interlocutors of this depend less in language (native of English speaking country).
• Low Context Cultures. These cultures are individualistic and goal oriented. They are value directness with discussions resulting actions. The interlocutors of this are straightforward & concise (Asian, middle Eastern, Latin American).

How I do it in my class:

In order to know whether students are high or low context, ask them to make a list of their own character that shows who they really are (at least 10 characters). Then ask them to exchange to their best friend in class and start sharing.

5. Acquiring Strategies for Culture Learning

These are few things, EFL teachers can note to themselves on how to implement culture in learning.

1. Having students learn about a culture from NATIVE informants.
2. Develop their cultural observation skills.
3. Learn about the culture through authentic materials.

Happy trying guys!

Reference
Frank, J. (2013). Raising cultural awareness in the English language classroom. English Teaching Forum, 2-35.