Culture in second language teaching

   On week 4 we were supposed to read the article called: Culture in second language teaching by Elizabeth Peterson and Bronwyn Coltrane (Center for applied linguistics).

   This article said that we cannot teach a language without culture. Why? Because language and culture it is basically just one thing or concept, I mean even when English is spoken in a lot of countries in each country the phrases, certain words will be unique because that is what culture brings to the language and that is why British English is different from United States and Canada English.

   I think, in order to teach a non-speaker a language (in this case English), We as teachers must choose an specific culture (probably American or the one that influence more the country) and start to integrate both, because you need and specific target culture in order to apply concepts, phrases, dates and more.

   Besides, this lecture mention different activities or ideas those teachers should consider in order incorporating culture into the lesson plan in a creative or more appealing way, those are:

• Authentic sources. Helps to engage students in authentic cultural experiences and in discussion of the cultural norms, teacher can suit the material according to the age and language proficiency of the students. Examples: films, news broadcasts, television shows, web sites, photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures...

• Proverbs. Provides a way to analyze the stereotypes about and misperceptions of the culture, as well to explore the values that are often represented in the proverbs of their native culture.

• Role plays. Help to practice what they saw in class.

• Culture capsules. Serve as a foundation from which teachers can go on to discuss larger cultural, historical, and linguistic factors that tie in with the objects

• Students. Exchange students, immigrant students, or students who speak the target language can share authentic insights into the home and cultural life of native speakers of the language.

• Literature. Helpful in allowing students to acquire insight into a culture.

• Films. Opportunity to witness behaviors that are not obvious in texts is a current and comprehensive ways to encapsulate the look, feel, and rhythm of a culture and connects students with language and cultural issues simultaneously.

Smart technolgy week

From Monday, May 24 to Friday, May 28 (2010) ULACIT celebrated the "Smart technology week" during this week a lot of activities and conferences took place in the university; We as students had to participate in those activities, some of them were:

• Educative Spaces. Expositor Silvia Castro
• Learn to Learn. Expositor Andrés Leiva, Manpower
• Home automation (Domótica). Expositor Jairo

In this entry I will focus on the first conference (Educative spaces), this activity took place on Wednesday, may 26 at the University Auditorium and the activity duration was 2 hours. The expositor Silvia Castro talked about different topics taking as base her experience. The main topics were how students learned and how a professor should teach by using neuroscience as a base?  

She talked about the different kinds of brain technologies, those are:

1. TEP. Tomography by positron emission
2. IRMF. Magnetic resonance
3. EEG. Electroencephalogram
4. Autopsies.
5. Hemifestomies. Is done with medic's population.

She said that learning are neuronal red connections that will last through your entire life, is also a process that satisfies our needs and interests, is physical process because it has to be significant changeable, updated, and practical to use.

An educational process must be enraged or something that student must do is:

• Experience it is something that comes before the theory
• Is not a lineal process but parallel
• Actions take place in different directions, this mean that it has to function through the senses (hearing, listening, seeing, touching...)
• Different activities should be a part of the process at all time, for example debates, tours, laboratories and more
• Interaction is a basic must, because through practice the student obtain: problem solving
• In order to be a good student you must believe that what you are seeing is very important otherwise your teacher input will not make that much
• Teacher cannot use just one method
• Making questions it is the best way to understand a subject

Something that calls my attention a lot was when she showed us a percentage table that said how much our brain is able to remember.

 

Education must seek:

• A real and a social environment, incorporate videos, music, searchers, differences to classes
• To encourage motivation, respect...
• To avoid stress
• An effective learning experience (how, when, where, amount of time)
• Students to do things due to respect and not because the grade they might get
• Teachers must care about the results and not the used method
• Teacher who construct concepts with the students, not someone who transmit concepts