TEACHING STUDENTS TO SHARE THEIR CULTURE

TESOL SUBJECT

MARIA L.SUPARTI

P0600112027

“ TEACHING STUDENTS TO SHARE THEIR CULTURE”

“One of the primary function of English as is the case with any international language, is to enable speakers to share their ideas and cultures”(Sandra Lee Mckay,page81,2nd paragraph)”

INTRODUCTION

I would like to choose this statement(above) because it is relate to the duty of a teacher  to teach the  students about culture and it has corelation to my experience. As we know, that learning language can be  meant  learning the culture itself  because language is important part of a culture .Then learning culture is “very important” to do, either  formal or informal way.It is a social process. In learning culture,there are two items related to the culture.They are target culture & resouce culture. *What are they?

Based on Sandra Lee Mckay(above),there is  a question *”how to teach/help students(speakers) to have communicative & knowledge competence in sharing their culture”........THE TWO QUESTIONS(*) WILL  BE DISCUSSED BELOW.

DISCUSSION

Talking English,it  can’t be separated to the culture of where English is spoken,as mother tongue & as lingua franca. It can be UK(europe) or USA  as standart.So in using English as international language has involved cross culture understanding between interlocutor. The culture of UK  and the culture of America are target cultures because the two countries are the owners of the language, then the culture of(here) teacher  &  the culture of student are resoure cultures, in this case the teacher and the students have different  background culture.

In teaching English as foreing language,it’s always commenced by using the tradition of where English is spoken, such as  how  introducing  ourselves will be done,how to respond someone when they  greet us and so on. There are two iteims that shall be used to help the students in sharing their culture:

The first  “how to get the students speak up”:

a. If the main aim of the course is oral fluency,we have to organize lesson so that the students speak ‘English as much as possible’.

b. Speaking time can be be vastly increased by chorus work and pair work,but there are other possibilities from the moment the student enter the class:

-talk to the students as they come in. Don’t let  five minutes go by, waiting for whole class to arrive.

-provide interesting things for them to talk about, for exmple, a colourful picture/poster, a bunch of keys.

-insist that they talk to each other in English and not in their native language(s).

-encourage them to help and correct each other, rather than always asking you, the teacher, to help.

 c. Students will be more willing to speak if:

                -they have something interesting to talk about.

                -they feel that  you are genuinely interested in them as people.

- the aim of speaking is real communication, in other words,the students will be more interested in replying to a question to which they think you do not know the answer.For example, “where is your friend today,Maria?” is better  than a mechanical  question like “ what is on the desk?”.

d. Correcting your students’speech

There are no hard and fast rules but, generally:

- correct them when they make a mistake over some specific language point which they are currently learning, or are supposed to know.

- do not  correct them if they are engaged in general conversation,as long as what they are trying to communicate is clear. We should make a note of their errors and bring in the necessary revision as soon as possible.

Then, we need to make seating arrangements,chorus work and pair work ,asking and answering question,and dialogues course appropriately.(TEFL. A Practical Guide by COLIN DAWSON,p 9-14).

The second “how to teach vocabulary well”

In general prosedure, there are some steps for teaching vocabulary,as follow:

                -select the new word/phrase(relate to the topic-culture)

                -explain it  carefully by clear demonstration/pronunciation

                -ask the student to repeat it for sound

                -dictate it in context

                -use it in another context and another sentence

                -give the student meaning  and ask them for the word/phrase

                -set exercises, home work, and some sentences using the vocabulary

                -ask the student to write  it down in their notebook

It is clear enough of how to teach vocabulary.

In talking  about how to get the student speak up and  how to teach vocabulary,the aim is to make student enable to share their culture.We make the students/learners to reflect on their own culture in relation  to use English as media.

This  is the example of Torajanesse student talks about  RAMBU SOLO’ :

“Rambu Solo”  is the funeral  ceremony of Tana Toraja.Rambu  means smoke of fire, and solo’ means go down.It is deals with the sun which begins to go down after noon. The funeral ceremony is called Rambu Solo’ because all activities,including making fire for cooking and baking slaugtered animals,can only be held after twelve o’clock. The ceremony takes place for more than one day.It depends on the social status of the dead.The higher social status,the longer the time will be and more pigs and buffaloes are slaughtered.During the ceremony,many mourners come and go.They come in groups and are welcomed by the relatives of the dead. The mourners are entertained with mourning dances and music played from  bamboo instruments.The common dancers perfomed are”ma’badong”,mostly played by men,and “ma’katia” played only by women. The traditional coffin of the dead is not made of wool. It is made of layers of cloth.The body is wrapped with these thick layers and it looks like a bolster. Then it is decorated with golden and red cloth.When the ceremony at home is over,the dead is carried by about 10 men to family grave.In the past,most graves carved in the rock but nowdays most graves are built from brick and cement and they look like small houses.The Toraja people believe that although the dead has been buried,her/his soul is still around her/his home.So,her/his relatives often take some food,tobacco,cigarette and the dead’s passession to the grave.(Corneliss Tato, Seminary-SMA Katolik Cenderawasih Makassar, May 5th ,2012. 09.30AM)

CONCLUSSION.  At last,make sure that the learners can speak up and have much more vocabularies to talk about their ideas.Then they need to be given  time as much as possible to talk.

Teaching culture is important because of common use of English as international language,culture is an intereting topic to be talked, and the ability to speak about culture is achiving in a variety of communicative goals.In the discuss above, the two questions are answered clearly. 

               

Etymology of Phrases

The origins and histories of idioms, sadinys, phrases, and other expressions are often even more fascinating than the etymologies of the individual words themselves. Here is a selection of well-known expressions and how they came into being.

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To break the ice

(1) to relax a tense or formal atmosphere or social situation; (2) to make a start on some endeavor.

This came into general use, in sense (1), in English through Lord Byron's "Don Juan" (1823) in the lines:

And your cold people [the British] are beyond all price,
When once you've broken their confounded ice.

The ice in question is metaphorically that on a river or lake in early spring. To break the ice would be to allow boats to pass, marking the beginning of the season's activity after the winter freeze. In this way, this expression has been connected to the start of enterprise for abour 400 years.

To make hay while the sun shines

to take advantage of favorable circumstances; they may not last.

This old expression refers to the production of hay, or dried grass. The warmth of the sun is required to dry the grass and turn it into hay. As the sun is notoriously unpredictable (it may be cloudy later) the message of this aphorism is clear. The expression dates back many centuries, and has changed little in form. John Heywood included the following in his "All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue" (1546):

Whan the sunne shinth make hay.

To throw the book at someone

to punish someone severely.

This figurative book is presumably a book of rules or laws. Originally, and still in its normal usage, this expression meant to impose the maximum penalty. For criminals this is likely to mean life imprisonment. Nowadays, the expression may be used more generally, often where the punishment or reprimand is far less extreme.

It's raining cats and dogs

It is raining torrentially.

The first known record of this phrase is in Dean Jonathan Swift's "Polite Conversation" (1873). But it is questionably whether he originated this peculiar hyperbole. More than two centuries previously, Richard Brome write a play entitled "The City Witt" (c.1652) in which one of the characters, Sarpego, says:

From henceforth...
The world shall flow with dunces...
And it shall rain...
Dogs and Polecats, and so forth.

As mad as a hatter

utterly insane

There is a number of theories about the root of this similie. Perhaps the most intriguing, and also plausible, was offered in "The Journal of the American Medical Association" (vol. 155, no. 3). Mercury used to be used in the manufacture of felt hats, so hatters, or hat makers, would come into contact with this poisonous metal a lot. Unfortunately, the effect of such exposure may lead to mercury poisoning, one of the symptoms of which is insanity.

Famously, Lewis Carroll wrote about the Mad Hatter in "Alice in Wonderland" (1865), but there is at least one earlier reference to the expression: in "The Clockmaker" (1817) by Thomas Haliburton.

These days speakers of American English, who use "mad" to mean "angry" as well as "crazy", may be heard to misuse the expression in the former sense.

Without rhyme or reason

lacking in sense or justification

Rhyme and reason are synonymous, so this expression means "without reason". English usage dates back to the sixteenth century, when the phrase was borrowed from the French na Ryme ne Raison. It lives on in modern day French, too, as ni rime ni raison.

Crocodile tears

hypocritical grief

It is proverbial that crocodiles cry like a person in distress to lure men close enough to snatch and devour them, then shed tears over the fate of their victim. References to this proverbial belief are found in ancient Greek and Latin literature.

In a book entitled "Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville" (c.1400) it was written that:

Cokadrilles... Theise serpentes slen men, and thei eten hem wepynge.

The fable is found in the works of many early English writers, including those of Shakespeare.

To make no bones about a matter

to speak frankly and directly

A form of this expression was used as early as 1459, to mean to have no difficulty. It seems evident that the allusion is to the actual occurrence of bones in stews or soup. Soup without bones would offer no difficulty, and accordingly one would have no hesitation in swallowing soup with no bones.

To throw in the towel / sponge

to surrender; admit defeat In its original form, to throw up the sponge, this appears in "The Slang Dictionary" (1860). The reference is to the sponges used to cleanse combatants' faces at prize fights. One contestant's manager throwing in the sponge would signal that as that side had had enough the sponge was no longer required. In recent years, towels have been substituted for sponges at fights, and consequently in the expression too

http://www.fun-with-words.com/etym_phrases.html

The Cultural Basis of Teaching English as an International Language

TESOL Matters Vol. 13 No. 4     (September/October/November 2003)
by Sandra Lee McKay
One of the most complex problems in English teaching today is determining the cultural basis of teaching an international language such as English. In order to examine this problem, it is necessary to consider the characteristics of an international language.

The Characteristics of an International Language

Clearly, one feature of an international language is that it must be widely spoken. Today, however, English is not the most widely spoken language in the world because it is only spoken by one third the number of native speakers of Mandarin. What makes English distinct at the present time is not the number of native speakers, but the growing number of L2 speakers of English. In fact, Graddol (1999) maintains that, in the not-too-distant future, the number of L2 speakers of English will surpass the number of native speakers. This development supports Brutt-Griffler's (2002) contention that one of the central features of an international language is that it tends to establish itself alongside other local languages in a multilingual context, resulting in many bilingual speakers of the language. Presently, many of the bilingual speakers of English have no desire to acquire the culture of native speakers of English because, unlike immigrants to English-speaking countries, they will not be living and interacting in a native-English-speaking context.
For the purposes of clarifying the cultural basis of teaching English as an international language (EIL), perhaps the most significant features of an international language are those described by Smith (1976), who argues that, in reference to an international language,

• there is no necessity for L2 speakers to internalize the cultural norms of native speakers of that language
• an international language becomes de-nationalized
• the purpose of teaching an international language is to facilitate the communication of learners' ideas and culture in an English medium

If one accepts these features of an international language, then the entire notion that learners of EIL need to learn the culture of native speakers of English must be challenged. The question is how does culture interact with language teaching?

The Role of Culture in Language Teaching

Culture plays a role in language teaching in two important ways. First, culture is significant in the linguistic dimension of the language itself, affecting the semantic, pragmatic, and discourse levels of the language.
Second, culture is operative in a pedagogical sense in that choices need to be made regarding the cultural content of language materials and the cultural basis of the teaching methodology. Let us first look at the linguistic dimension of culture in language teaching.

Linguistic Dimension of Culture

On a semantic level, culture is embedded in many of the lexical phrases of English, for example, in well-known U.S. English phrases such as big stick diplomacy, yellow journalism, and Uncle Tom. In terms of teaching EIL, if there is no need for L2 speakers to internalize the cultural norms of native speakers, as Smith contends, then the teaching of such phrases in an English class needs to be questioned. Thus, one important choice that teachers of EIL need to make is what lexical phrases should be included in an EIL curriculum.
In reference to the pragmatic level, many current English textbooks devote attention to teaching appropriateness in language use. Some texts, for example, point out that, when receiving a compliment, learners of English should acknowledge and accept the compliment with a simple response, such as "thank you." However, research in cross-cultural pragmatics has clearly demonstrated that there are vast differences in how various cultures enact a particular speech act so that, in some cultures, it is typical to downplay a compliment, leading one to react with responses such as, "I could have done better." If learners of an international language do not need to internalize the cultural norms of native speakers, then there is no reason why L2 speakers of EIL need to conform to the pragmatic rules of native speakers of English.
A similar situation occurs at the discourse level of language teaching. Research in contrastive rhetoric has demonstrated that there are differences in how various cultures develop particular genres, such as that used in a business letter or an argumentative essay. Again, the question arises as to what extent learners of EIL need to internalize the discourse rules of native speakers of English. In this instance, the rhetorical goals of the L2 speaker of English, as well as the intended audience of the text, need to be considered when making curriculum choices in EIL teaching.

Pedagogical Dimension of Culture

Culture also plays an important role in teaching materials and methods. Cortazzi and Jin (1999) distinguish three types of cultural information that can be used in language textbooks and materials:

1. source culture materials, which draw on the learners' own culture as content
2. target culture materials, which use the culture of a country where English is spoken as an L1
3. international target culture materials, which use a great variety of cultures in English- and non-English-speaking countries around the world

Many existing English textbooks place a heavy emphasis on target culture materials, including native-English-speaker names and places. However, if one of the main purposes of teaching an international language is to facilitate the communication of learners' ideas and culture in an English medium, then there are many reasons why source culture materials should be used in the teaching of EIL. Presently, many countries are beginning to do this. In Chile, for example, the required texts used in junior and senior high schools, entitled Go for Chile, Books 1 and 2 (Mugglestone, Elsworth, & Rose, 1999, 2000), include Chilean topics and places (see also McKay, in press).
Teaching methodology is another area of language teaching that reflects a particular cultural perspective. One of the most popular methods in English language teaching today is communicative language teaching (CLT), with its emphasis on oral skills and group work. Although the method developed largely in English-speaking countries for use with immigrants, it has spread to many non-English-speaking countries, often promoted by so-called teaching experts from native-English-speaking countries. However, in many countries, such as Chile, China, Japan, and Korea, the appropriateness of this method in light of the local context and learners' needs has been challenged. In Chile, for example, an earlier emphasis on developing students' oral skills that occurred with the adoption of CLT has been replaced by a policy approved by the Ministry of Education that requires 80% of the high school curriculum to be devoted to developing students' reading and writing skills. It is therefore important when selecting a methodology for a particular context for teachers to consider the local needs of the students rather than assume that a method that is effective in one context is effective in all contexts. (For a more comprehensive discussion of methods in EIL teaching, see McKay, 2002.)

The Cultural Basis of EIL Teaching

Whereas, traditionally, the cultural basis of English teaching has been closely linked to the culture of native-English-speaking countries, the fact that English has become an international language offers a serious challenge to this approach. In dealing with the linguistic and pedagogical aspect of culture in language teaching, what is needed is a full recognition that English today has become denationalized. Hence, it is local educators who need to determine what linguistic information, cultural content, and teaching methodology are most appropriate for the local context so that learners will be able to use English to tell others about their own culture.

References

Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002). World Englishes: A study of its development. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Cortazzi, M., & Jin, L. (1999). Cultural mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching (pp. 196-219). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Graddol, D. (1999). The decline of the native speaker. AILA Review, 13, pp. 57-68.
McKay, S. L. (2002). Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McKay, S. L. (in press). Teaching English as an international language: The Chilean context. ELT Journal.
Mugglestone, P., Elsworth, S., & Rose, J. (1999). Go for Chile, Book 1. Santiago, Chile: Addison Wesley Longman.
Mugglestone, P., Elsworth, S., & Rose, J. (2000). Go for Chile, Book 2. Santiago, Chile: Addison Wesley Longman.
Smith, L. (1976). English as an international auxiliary language. RELC Journal, 7(2), 38-43.

Sandra Lee McKay (smckay@sfsu.edu) teaches at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, in the United States.

Definition of Language

Language
Any means of conveying or communicating ideas; specifically, human speech; the expression of ideas by the voice; sounds, expressive of thought, articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth.

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The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality.

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The forms of speech, or the methods of expressing ideas, peculiar to a particular nation.

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The characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; manner of expression; style.

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The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to man express their feelings or their wants.

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The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers.

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The vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or department of knowledge; as, medical language; the language of chemistry or theology.

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A race, as distinguished by its speech.

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To communicate by language; to express in language.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/words/la/language183528.html#BsSECH4r3hFzIG6p.99

Language and Expression

Language and Expression

http://www.kortexplores.com/node/69

By: 

Kort E Patterson

Year Written: 

1999

Language is the way the brain attempts to symbolically express and explain its abstract thoughts to itself and to the outside world. As someone who regularly attempts to communicate abstract ideas to both humans and machines through the use of English and various computer languages, I've always been aware to some degree of the limitations of language. But recent efforts to express the same abstract concept in two very different computer languages made the degree to which my thought processes are influenced by language especially clear. While the observations to follow resulted from working with computer programming languages, I believe that they also apply to the effects of more conventional languages on human thought processes.

Consider that a literary work is typically composed of two very different aspects - the plot and the prose. The prose constitutes the entire tangible expression of the work - the words that assembled in a specific order and taken together accomplish the purpose of the work. The words that make up the tangible expression of the work are available to anyone with a dictionary, and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, but only become this work when assembled in the specific way that is unique to this particular work.

The real essence and purpose of the work is defined by the plot, and yet the plot is an entirely abstract entity that doesn't exist within the tangible expression of the work. In spite of not existing within the tangible aspects of the work, in many ways the abstract plot is more important to accomplishing the purpose of the work than the prose that implements it. It could be said that the plot is the right brain's abstract idea and the prose is the left brain's attempt to define that abstraction within the constraints of whatever language tools it has available. The degree to which the work is successful is the measure of the ability of the prose to convey the intangible abstract plot from the writer to the reader.

The same division between abstraction and implementation that exists within all well written literary works also exists within all well written computer software. The abstract concepts and logical structures of a program are implemented within its tangible source code. The better the programmer is able to conceive of an abstract logical solution to a given problem, and then implement that solution in a coherent and effective way using commonly available computer language tools, the better the finished product.

In the past, while I worked in both PDC Prolog and Pascal, I used these different languages on very different projects - selecting the one which best fit the abstract idea I was attempting to express in computer code. Since each project was written almost entirely in a single language, for most of my programming career I've been able to work for long periods in just one language, minimizing the trauma of shifting back and forth. I was aware of a certain amount of "transition trauma" when switching between projects written in different languages, but dismissed much of it as just the effort required to adjust to the often very different abstract logic structures of those projects. It seemed that I experienced much of the same mental adjustment when shifting between writing projects while pretending to be an author.

One of my latest projects has been to write software to allow my customers to use Windows CE based handheld computers for entering inspections on-site. Unlike my previous projects where I could choose the language that best fit the concept I was trying to express, this time I was forced to use the C++ programming language solely because it was the only one available at the time for the target hardware platform. I would never have selected C++ for this project on its merits as a programming language. To the contrary, I consider C++ exceptionally inappropriate for such a complex and mission critical application, and have avoided using it in the past. But since no one other than Microsoft was willing to offer a software development system for WinCE, I had to use the tools that were available - and that meant the CE variant of C++.

As a fully compatible extension of an existing system, from the outside the new WinCE software written in C++ must by definition be an attempt to express the same abstract concept as the desktop software written in Prolog. However, even though I began with the express intention of implementing an already established abstract concept that I'd already implemented in another language, the nature of the different language in which I was now attempting to implement that same abstract concept greatly influenced the results.

After finishing the first version of the WinCE software, I returned to working on software written in Prolog. It was over a month before I had reason to return to the C++ source code for the WinCE project. To my now Prolog configured brain, on first glance the C++ code that seemed so clear and obvious just a short time ago appeared to be just so much unintelligible gibberish. It took a while for my brain to ratchet itself around sufficiently to where the strange symbols started to suggest meanings. After sufficient additional review to get my brain back thinking in C++, it all came back and started to make sense - at least as much sense as is possible with anything written in C++.

As I had to switch back and forth between Prolog and C++ in rapid succession over the next couple weeks, I was increasingly struck by just how different the internals of the programs had become. On the most basic and obvious level it's probably no surprise how necessary it was for my brain to be thinking in the appropriate language in order to extract the intended meaning from the symbols and syntax of source code written in that language. But the nature of language had a more profound impact on my thought processes than simply defining the symbols and syntax rules in which I was working.

In spite of the fact that I wrote them with every intention of implementing exactly the same abstract concepts, the adjustments and accommodations required by the different languages in which each program had been written had required significant differences in the final results. Not only were there significant differences in the expression of those abstract concepts, but the original concepts had been altered as well. I'll try to describe the differences without getting too caught up in the sort of details that only a fellow programmer would appreciate.

The software handles data entry tasks as part of a larger real estate inspection system. Since every property is different, every inspection the system handles must also be different, requiring a high degree of flexibility. An inspection is composed of a variety of data types (multiple choice, numbers, narrative, etc.), with each data type requiring a different way of interacting with the user. These data types are intermingled within a given inspection as needed with little regard for the difficulties faced by the software. To compound the difficulties, the software allows the user to change the inspection format "on the fly" - setting up the logical equivalent of the cartoon character sawing off the tree limb on which he's sitting.

At the heart of the software written in Prolog is a central dispatcher that controls the logic flow of the program. In the abstract this dispatcher and the various logic paths available to it are shaped much like an octopus, with the dispatcher as the body and the various logic paths radiating out from the center. The dispatcher functions as an expert system, using a crude form of artificial intelligence to monitor the state of the system, compare it to the guidelines provided by the user defined inspection format, and decide on a keystroke by keystroke basis what to do next. The dispatcher sends the focus of the program down various logic paths, with the focus returning back to the dispatcher after resolving each logic path.

While I eventually managed to build a C++ program that adequately handles the data entry operation, the resulting program is far less flexible and powerful than the software written in Prolog. In Prolog each statement can have multiple alternative solutions that succeed or fail at the moment of execution, dynamically creating a wide variety of potential logic paths that appear or disappear based on the conditions the software encounters at run time. In C++ every possible alternative must be "hard wired" at the time the program is written.

The limitations of the C++ language made it difficult to replicate the "octopus" type abstract structure. Rather than a logic flow built to automatically return to the central dispatcher even if a given logic path fails, each possible logic path in the C++ program must itself determine what will happen next. Any logic path in C++ that doesn't accommodate any and all conditions it encounters could not only fail as a logic path, but also crash the entire program. There's no backtracking out of a failed logic path and trying a different one in C++ like there is in Prolog.

As a direct result of the object oriented nature of the language, the "intelligence" of the C++ program is dispersed and the central dispatcher ends up looking more like a centipede, with each semi-independent logic path determining which segment of the dispatcher next receives the focus. Due to the "OOP" (object oriented programming) aspects of C++, each segment of the dispatcher must operate as a semi-independent entity. The requirement to break the internal structure of the program into semi-independent objects makes it difficult to deal with situations involving the sort of dissimilar but interrelated objects that are so common in real life, restricting the complexity of processes that can be expressed in C++.

The crude artificial intelligence of the software written in Prolog provides the dispatcher a far greater level of internal flexibility, allowing it a wider range of ways to respond to the conditions it finds at the moment of execution. When faced with an unexpected situation, the software is far less likely to find itself caught up in the sorts of logical paradoxes and dead end logic paths that will cause the software to crash. This innate flexibility and ability to deal with unexpected situations, made possible by the nature of the language used to express it, becomes even more important in the more sophisticated parts of the inspection system.

The internal differences in the resulting programs graphically demonstrate that the effort to express abstract ideas within the constraints of language is a far more complex process than simply exporting ideas filtered through language. When faced with the need to express abstract ideas outside of the physical confines our the brains, those areas that handle abstract reasoning are quite capable of making significant adjustments to their original "pure" abstract concepts in order to accommodate the limitations of the brain's language processing areas. In essence, the limitations of our ability to express abstract ideas determine to some extent the nature of the abstract ideas we are capable of thinking.

I'm amazed that given the same abstract concepts and the same physical "wetware" to work with, my single brain can come up with such divergent results when operating from the different perspectives imposed by different languages. Small wonder humanity has achieved such diverse explanations for the world and our place in it considering the differences in the languages we've invented in our ongoing efforts to explain ourselves to ourselves.