Week 6 Reading: Cultural issues in Second language teaching

Among the 12 principles that are put forth in the HB book, the one which focuses on the connection between language and culture in second language teaching really inspires me.

Learning a language is not merely learning about its lexical or grammatical systems, it also means learning about a new culture in the most comprehensive meaning of the word. Many linguists and culturalists have stated that and hardly anyone has ever challenged the idea. In my process of learning foreign languages, i have very different experiences with the connection of language and culture. In my English classes, because of both objective and subjective reasons, most of my teachers were more concerned with giving students language instructions than exposing us to the cultural issues that lie underneath the language cover. The textbook once in a while mentioned some typical cultural features of Britain and the US, but most of the time the knowledge flipped very quickly out of our mind due to the lack of emphasis and reinforcement. In contrast, the story is completely different with my Japanese learning experience. In my Japanese class, my teacher constantly reminded us of the cultural factors that are represented in the language and how understanding Japanese culture can help us use the language more appropriately. The teacher also gave us some very interesting cultural facts about Japansese customs and traditions, which very much aroused my curiosity and increased my interest in learning the language. Clearly, cultural interests and awareness can be a factor that motivate students to learn a language.

As a result, in my future teaching, i am determined to convey cultural traits that are typical of British and American society to my students, so that they can build up adequate knowledge and ideas of the countries where their target language is spoken.


Also, last year my friends and I carried out a research which focuses on the implementation of cultural games about traditional holidays in British and American culture such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas into the teaching of English in high schools. We did some in-class experiments and what we noticed was that whenever there was the involvement of cultural activities, the language classroom was much more lively and fun and the students were more excited and motivated. Now that i have acquired more knowledge of this issue, my wish is to continue with the research after i graduate and expand it to other features of British and American cultures.