Awareness Of Culture And Language Teaching Cultural Studies Essay

Awareness Of shade And terminology Teaching Cultural Studies EssayThis project aims to outline the primary(prenominal) principles of pagan sentiency like also its potential advantages and disadvantages in the diction teach. There are many definitions of nuance, because destination means various things to disaccordent people. The well known definitions include one made by Hofstede, who give tongue to that culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human host from an different, like also stated by Wederspahn, culture is the set of dual-lane assumptions, values and beliefs of a group of people by which they organize their roughhewn life.Literature Re enamor and Principles of refinement AwarenessThis project exit commission on Cultural Awareness, although it is worth mentioning that Language Awareness is used for dustup command as well. In fact, according to Byram (1989), Cultural Awareness and Language Awareness have in common a dual enjoyment which aims at supporting words larn and extending general mind of the spirit of culture. Cultural and Language Awareness are both connected with item and general discipline. According to Hymes, address plays an important role in the sociable life of the community and lack of cultural understanding among members of most communities leads to hearty inequality that has been recognized. In nine to communicate well with the second actors line speakers, students need to establish a good connection with the tar take in wrangle and its culture.Cultural Awareness helps learners broaden the mind, increase tolerance and achieve cultural empathy and sensitivity. According to Tomalin and Stempleski (1993), Cultural Awareness contains three qualities, much(prenominal) as awareness of ones own culturally-induced behaviour, awareness of the culturally-induced behaviour of others, and ability to explain ones own cultural standpoint.Culture takes a crucial mat hematical function in teaching and reading foreign diction. E precise culture has its own cultural norms, for instance, when speaking to psyche the person can use formal or informal styles which differ from one culture to a nonher. Some of the norms might be completely different, such as in many countries when you nod it means yes and while you vex your head it means no while Bulgarians do it the opposite way. It is very important that the learner while learning a foreign language needs to rick aware of such norms within the target culture in exhibition to avoid the communication problems.Cultural awareness teaching should involve both points of view, from the learners point of view, like also from the point of view of the other culture. It should allow learners to gain a perspective through relation which is neither entirely one nor the other.(Byram, 1989).According to Hinkel(1999), developing cultural awareness means macrocosm aware of members of another cultural group. Fa ctors, such as their behaviour, expectations, values, beliefs and perspectives should have been taken into account. Help and encouragement from teachers is needed in order to realize how to learn about cultures. In order to achieve it learning skills might also include learning how to learn from one to another, oddly in multicultural groups (Nelson, 1995).Teaching a language can be seen as imposing elements of another culture into the students own life space. For example, in order to learn stopping point, students need to develop a Polish identity, in other words they need to learn to think Polish and although yet partially and temporarily be trace a bit like Polish person. As cited in Drnyei(2001) , according to Douglas (1989) every person is part of a culture and everyone uses a language to express that culture, in order to operate within that tradition. Therefore, in order to carry on some sort of communication with people who speak or write a target language, the person need s to understand the culture out of which the language emerges.According to Sapir (1920), a language and a culture of its speakers cannot be analyse in isolation. Barth(1969) as cited in Byram( 1989)stated that treating cultures as if they were isolated from each other is to miss a significant dimension. Kramch(1993) stated that second language learners become learners of the second culture because a language cannot be learned without an understanding of the cultural context in which it is used. These statements support the situations in which students for some reasons do not like the second language community and refuse to comprise elements of their culture into their own behavioural repertoire. For instance, when some Polish people were force to learn Russian in the time of communism and now they regular cannot recall the basic sentences. It leads to conclusion, that language belongs to a persons whole social being it is part of ones identity and it is used to convey this ident ity to other people. The learning of a second language involves apart from learning grammar and vocabulary the betrothal of new social and cultural behaviours and ways of being , and has an important violation on the social nature of the learner ( Williams, ( 1994) as cited in Drnyei, (2001).On the other hand, Byram and Morgan (1994) claimed that learners cannot easily forget their own culture and tincture into another, because their culture is part of their identities and created them as social beings. Learners are committed to their culture and to deny any part of it is to deny something within their own being.Culture Awareness in published materialsThere exist different criteria for standard evaluation. One of the lists of criteria belongs to Byram(1993), which focuses on the cultural context, such as social identity and social groups. Other involve social interaction and national account statement social interaction belief and behaviour social and political institutions ac culturation and the life cycle, stereotypes and national identity. Byram(1989) cites Huhns criteria (1978) for evaluating the treatment of cultural content of textbooks. These criteria involve avoiding stereotypes by raising awareness like also presenting a realistic get word presenting phenomena in context rather than as isolated facts. Unfortunately, very a couple of(prenominal) published materials include these criteria.Advantages and disadvantages of Culture Awareness in language teachingDeveloping Cultural Awareness in English language classes in not native countries of English may be influenced by a number of constraints, such as the teachers cultural knowledge. The second language learners will depend on teachers own cultural knowledge as the main source of learning about the target culture. The availability of native English speakers, and the system of education in a particular country could be other constraints.On the other hand, students are now able to get access to m any cultural resources and explore the target culture themselves. indigen English speakers are also available in many countries to come and teach English. There should have been made some changes to the educational system, for example, in Poland there is a strong emphasis on examinations, which should be changed so people would be more interested in gaining new experiences by speaking another language and perhaps not so much obsessed with the assessment of their language proficiency.Conclusion and Suggestions for further researchontogenesis of peoples cultural awareness leads them to more critical thinking. Teachers can try to evoke cross-cultural awareness by focusing on cross-cultural similarities and not just differences. Supplementing the course book with authentic materials and encouraging learners to discover arouse information about the countries where the second language is spoken on the profits and to tell them to prepare the presentation might be a outstanding idea as well. In the future research the assessment of students scholarship of cultural knowledge could be interesting. Potential ways of assessment may include interviews in other to measure the extent of effect of intercultural language learning on their second language learning.