WHY IS IMPORTANT THE TEACHING CULTURE IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM?
When a person decide to study a foreign language, it is very common that he or she learns the grammatical and linguistic components of the language, how to write and speak in the foreign language, but there is an important factor that is not included in this learning process, that is the teaching of culture connected to the language that a person is studying.
To understand why the culture is important in this learning process, it is necessary to know what the meaning of this word is. According with the National Center for Cultural Competence, culture is an “integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations”. This means that language is not only part of how people define culture, it also reflects culture.
When a person decide to study a foreign language, it is very common that he or she learns the grammatical and linguistic components of the language, how to write and speak in the foreign language, but there is an important factor that is not included in this learning process, that is the teaching of culture connected to the language that a person is studying.
To understand why the culture is important in this learning process, it is necessary to know what the meaning of this word is. According with the National Center for Cultural Competence, culture is an “integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations”. This means that language is not only part of how people define culture, it also reflects culture.
Besides, acquire a new idiom requires to know everything about it, that include how people express some thing whit it, how they use it to communicate in an oral or writing way, and the best manner to achieve this, it is knowing the culture, the customs, the history, and the behaviour of the people who live and are natives in the country or countries when English is spoken.
For this reason, the language learners need to know about the culture of the language they are studying in order to have a good communication and be preparing culturally to express in an appropriate way. Also, it is necessary they know what behaviors and intonation patterns are appropriate in the foreign community to express something. The student needs to understand that language use is associated with a cultural behavior.
Moreover, the studying of culture not only allows the students know in a depth way the context and society in where the target language is used but also it allows the students feel more identify with it and the most important, it makes them feel part of that society, in other words, to learn a foreign language it is necessary the learner adopt the culture of the language is object of study.
But for what reason it is important to adopt the culture? According with kramsch “People who identify themselves as members of a social group (family, neighborhood, professional or ethnic affiliation, nation) acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members of the same group. These views are reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace, the church, the government, and other sites of socialization through their lives. Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way members of the group use language-for example, what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it”
Another good reason to integrate the culture in the teaching learning process is given by Elizabeth Peterson and Bronwyn Coltrane, in the article, “Culture in Second Language Teaching”. In this article they discussed the importance of incorporating culture into second language teaching, according with them “Using authentic sources from the native speech community helps to engage students in authentic cultural experiences. Sources can include films, news broadcast and television shows, web sites, photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurants menus, travel brochures and other printed materials. Teachers can adapt their use of authentic material to suit the age and language proficiency level of the students”.
As is say in the last paragraph, teaching culture allows the teacher use different materials that involve real cultural experiences as readings, videos, songs and so on related with the culture and his language; this is an advantage for the teacher because all these material can be work in the way that he wants, in other words, the teacher must be creative to develop the class, he can choose the activities and the place in where he does the class inside the classroom or out of it, also he can create new teaching strategies which involve the target culture and its aspects.
On the other hand, to incorporate the foreign culture in the learning of a second language does not mean the learner forgives his own culture, on the contrary it helps to know and appropriate more of the own culture, to value it, to respect it and be more conscious of his beliefs, costumes, religious and so on, and also it helps to improve the use of his own language.
To conclude, I can say that culture is a good element in the teaching of a second language because it enables the teacher and the student acquires new knowledge about different cultures, to improve their grammatical and linguistic skills, to create spaces that enable the students have new experiences and change from the traditional methodologies.
