Base Your Teaching On Students' Local Culture

By Author: Jack
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Culture has always been treated as an indispensable part of any language teaching/learning situation and in fact it has been used as a source of content for many language teaching coursebooks. Most cultural content, however, has been from the target language, since the justification has been that those who want to learn a new language want to communicate with the users of that language, and successful communication would be impossible without familiarity with the cultural norms of the society with whose speakers the learner is trying to forge bonds. This assumption, of course, holds true for those groups of learners who want to migrate to Merrell Shoes countries such as the US or UK for work or study. The reality in which many other language learners find themselves, nevertheless, is different (McKay 2003).

English has now turned into an international language and due to the scope of its application both geographically and communicatively, it has developed certain features which are not part of any specific national character. In other words, English has become de-nationalized ...
... and re-nationalized as a result of its spread as the world lingua franca (Sridhar and Sridhar 1994; Seidlhofer 2001). In this international situation, most of the communication carried out in English is between people who are themselves the so-called non-native speakers of English and with a distinct cultural identity of their own. There is little need in this context for the Anglo-American culture since neither party is a native with whom the other interlocutor is going to identify.

In addition, in most communicative settings, people try to communicate their own cultural values and conceptualizations, not those of the target language. Typically, people involved in communication want to express who they are and what kind of cultural background they represent, and as a result, an emphasis on target language is misplaced; what is needed more is for the learners to be able to develop the competence to talk about their own culture and cultural identity. From a critical perspective, reliance on one's own local culture has the added value of enabling learners to think about the different aspects of the culture in which they live and find ways to bring about changes in the society where change is needed. If students are going to transform Merrell Boots the lives of themselves and those of others, they cannot do so unless due attention is paid to their own culture in the curriculum and opportunities are provided for critical reflection on its features. It is here that both the negative and positive features of their culture can be addressed and local cultural sore points (such as the spread of AID S, honour killings, etc.) brought to the attention of learners.

In addition, reliance on learners' culture as the point of departure for language teaching will make them critically aware and respectful of their own culture and prevent the development of a sense of inferiority which might result from a total reliance on the target language culture where only the praiseworthy features of the culture are presented.