Pedagogica: Teaching Language & Culture

The teaching of languages, whether English as a second language (ESL) or languages for U.S. managers and workers going abroad, has surged with the growing awareness of the global and diverse nature of workplaces and markets.

Language textbooks and teachers have always had something to say about the culture and language. In the past the focus was often on art, history, literature, and everyday mores and transactions. This might be enough for the casual tourist, but not enough for a learner to really become effective in another culture. Consequently, many language schools today are adding courses in cultural diversity to their curricula. Such courses, however specialized they become, must answer three basic questions:

·     What is culture and how does it work?

·     Who has a culture?

·     How is learning a language affected by culture?

WHAT IS CULTURE AND HOW DOES IT WORK? Culture is a form of internal programing that we can best describe as: A set of mental formulae for survival and success, developed by a specific group of people, stored as unconscious instructions in the mind, and sometimes heard as conversations with oneself in the conscious mind. In other words, our culture is always at work to help us interpret reality and to how to act. It's us talking to ourselves. Much of this takes place in the background of our minds. We usually don't notice it, though on occasion we hear echoes of voices from our past.

WHO HAS A CULTURE? Any group of people who must succeed and survive in a given environment creates culture. We develop protocols from common experiences of reality and our successes and failures in dealing with it. Then we hand these on to others, sometimes explicitly, sometimes just by living them out. Nature writer Barry Lopez puts it this way in one of his children's books: “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves.” (Crow and Weasel, North Point Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990)

Whoever has a culture also develops language that reflects and expresses that culture. Here are some common groups we belong to that develop their own ways of thinking (internal talking) and speaking about things:  

?      Nations, racial and regional groups, families

?      Men and women

?      Age, class and educational groups

?      Public and private organizations

?      Professions, trades, work teams

?      Social, sports, or hobby groups

The average person lives and works in several or even many cultures and usually has some cross-cultural skills to draw on. Moving from one to the other she or he already speaks several "languages" even if all of them are in the same native tongue.

HOW IS LEARNING A LANGUAGE AFFECTED BY CULTURE? Culture and language are survival tools. They are shortcuts to getting things done. They are always working together. When we listen to others, for example, they create interpretations or expectations in our minds at lightning speed. While others speak, we are guessing what will come next and then checking the accuracy of our guesses against what they actually say. This is why:

• We often "listen" but don't get the message, because we choose interpretations that fit our own cultural expectations.
• Speaking a second language is hard work when we first start to do it. We can't anticipate what others will say as well as a native speaker, so we try to listen to every word first, and then form an interpretation.
• Many jokes are funny–what comes next is not what we expected. We laugh at the incongruity. Conversely, thigh-slappers in another culture may not strike us as funny at all, because the punch line had nothing to do with our expectations as listeners.

Thus, learning a language is not just mastering new words, accents, and grammar. It demands internalizing a set of expectations about how life is or should be for the group with which one wishes to communicate. Social interaction with the imagination, feelings, and beliefs of native speakers becomes essential if one is to gain more than a technicolor literary competence in a language.

Learning a language without learning a culture, we know words and phrases but do not know what to say, when, how, or to whom. Cultural diversity taught to language learners must impart culturally specific answers to the questions below, or, at least, arm them with the questions as investigative tools:

?      What am I allowed to speak about, or ask about? What is impolite or polite? How intimate may I become? What may I reveal about myself, my feelings, my wishes? May I ask about your family, your work, etc.? What feelings may I show, e.g., as a man or woman?

?      Whom may I ask about certain things?  E.g., may I dispute with the professor? May I ask the boss for a favor or must I send a friend?

?      When may I speak? When is it my turn? When may I interrupt, or may I at all?  May I speak while others are speaking, or must I wait my turn? What is the signal that I can speak, interrupt, start a new topic?

?      How directly or indirectly must I speak? How loudly or how softly? How formally or informally?

In reality, the questions are interrelated and often being asked at the same time.  Language students, even before immersion in their target culture, need to explore and practice answering the questions in role  plays, games, and exercises that deal with  explicit cultural differences while the new  language is being spoken.

When it comes to designing a language curriculum, an overview of cultural diversity may be useful as a separate introductory course, but diversity must be an integral and daily part of teaching language skills. Language competence and cultural competence are in fact one and the same. The most thorough cultural diversity trainer may turn out to be the truly competent language teacher. It is also hard to imagine an effective teacher or trainer of diversity, even outside the realm of language teaching, who has not mastered a second language. Fluency in another language should be one criterion used in the selection of competent diversity consultants and trainers, even where intervention itself may not require its use.