Adding Culture to the "Mix"

Unfortunately, I did not teach at all last week. My class was cancelled upon students’ request due to their school recess. Our class will resume from this coming Sunday.

As a result, I would like to take this opportunity to blog about a class activity I have planned. For the first time, I will officially be introducing cultural content into my classroom. The reason why I say “officially” is because we have briefly talked about some cultural things when came up naturally in class. We had talked very briefly about “Big C” elements such as food, clothing and customs. We have been discussing at length about the importance of culture in language teaching in ICC. Therefore, I thought that it was time to really introduce cultural content in a very “mild” and fun (I hope) way. I will be using the activity I have outlined below in two weeks.

In my classroom, I would say that target culture is US culture. I wanted to design an activity which would incorporate an international target culture as well. I had already decided that I would work with food as this is an area I am very passionate about as a consumer as well as due to my background. Therefore, my enthusiasm naturally comes through when I am talking about food. Next I had to think about which international target culture I would want to feature. It did not take me long to settle on Italy. I have noticed during my time here that Koreans have a strong liking for Italian food. Voila!! I had it!! I had titled my activity “Restaurant Norms in Italy vs. USA.”

As this is my first time to bring cultural content into my classroom, I believe that it will be easier for my students to work with a “Big C” element (food). As we have learned in ICC, “Big C” elements are those which belong to the objective culture; they are visible. Some other examples, besides food, would be clothing, festivals, artifacts, etc. On the other hand, “small c” elements are the values, beliefs and attitudes that define a group of people.   

For the preview stage, I will write these three words on the whiteboard: spaghetti, pizza and garlic bread. I will next ask students what these words remind them of. Once a student utters the phrase “Italian food,” I will ask them to brainstorm and tell me all they can think of about Italian food. I will then write all these contributions on the whiteboard. I am quite confident that it will be rather easy to get one of them to produce this phrase. We have a branch of Sorrento Italian Restaurant in town and being the only Italian restaurant within 20-minute drive, it is very popular, especially among high school students and young couples.

I am in the midst of trying to find authentic reading texts for this activity. I have done some online browsing. I will also be looking into some food magazines I have at home. Besides authenticity, I have other criteria, which need to be satisfied. First and foremost, there should be no stereotypes (gender, race, social class, religion, etc.) and no misrepresentations of any cultures. Texts should also be free from any overgeneralizations. They should not present facts in a way to make the target culture look better than other cultures. The point of having students read about Italy and USA is to let them simply see that there is a difference and provide them with an opportunity to compare and contrast two cultures, and later on go one step further to consider the case in Korea to build their awareness of cultural differences/similarities. Once I have selected the texts, I will go through and determine which words they are bound to be unfamiliar with. I will pick three or four of these words and pre-teach them before the presentation stage. As we have read this week in Harmer, I do not want them to linger on a long list of unknown words and not be able to get a general understanding of the texts. I will be picking key words to serve this purpose then. The rest of the vocabulary will be discussed later on. I will hence be encouraging them not to worry about the rest of the unfamiliar words and read for the general understanding.

Students will be divided in 1/2 pairs. “1”s will read about “restaurant norms in Italy” and “2”s will read “restaurant norms in USA.” This will be my TD processing task. Next, without looking at the text, they will tell their partners what they can remember from their reading. This will give them a chance to practice their speaking skills.

They will then exchange and read their partner’s text to check the facts and share with the class which facts they find interesting or unusual. This will serve as my TD/BU processing task.

We will next discuss about the remaining unknown words/phrases. I will ask them to circle all unknown words in pairs and I will write down all contributions on the whiteboard for ease of discussion. To check their comprehension, I will nominate students randomly to create a sentence with a particular word/phrase.

They will then take a look at both texts again. They will be asked to do a cross-cultural comparison with the target and international target cultures by determining which points presented in either text are true for Korea. They will further be asked to contribute other points they wish to add for the case of Korea. This will be my BU processing task.

They will next go ahead and compare their ideas with their partner...  

This will bring us to the production stage where students will get to prepare a similar information sheet on restaurant norms in Korea (writing down their ideas as bullet points) in pairs. They will be told that this information sheet will be used by foreign visitors to Korea. This part will be a heterogeneous activity in that students will be able to complete it at different levels. High-level students will have a chance to produce more/more complex utterances whereas low-level students will still be able to produce in L2 and will not end up discouraged (referred to as “success orientation” in our Harmer reading).

As the last part of this activity, students will present what they have prepared in pairs to the rest of the class in a gallery walk manner. Within each pair, one student will be a "walker" and the other a "talker". “Walkers” will walk around listening to other groups’ presentations while the “talkers” will stay by their information sheet and explain to the "walkers". Students will then switch roles. To finish off, everyone will get to vote on their favorite information sheet.

We have discussed in ICC at length about how the use of cultural materials in EFL classrooms is likely to increase our students’ interest towards what is presented in class and improve their motivation for learning English. Moreover, through comparing and contrasting with other cultures, they are bound to learn more about their own culture as well as the language needed to explain their culture to others starting with their language teachers (us). Yes… I am looking forward to doing this activity in class in two weeks and adding culture to the “mix.” :)