Monday, 30 April 2012

Bulgarian Culture Vultures


What makes a cultural group?
Does this mind map made at www.mind2map.com answer that question?



Should Culture (UK / US / Aus etc) be integrated into English lessons?

What do tweeters say?
 No!
  • English is an international language
  • Topics should be relevant to students
  • Cultural specific topics can confuse
  • Often leads to stereotyping
  • More interesting things than UK and US culture

Yes
  • Helps with motivation
  • Helps reflects on our own culture
  • Helps to contextualise language
  • Helps to provide ‘comprehensible input’
  • Popular culture based in UK / US culture.

I am sure you, like me, can pick some truths out of both camps. But as course books tend to have a lot of culture and we tend to use the course book in class then we need to include culture in our teaching and these are some ways how.

Cinema
Unique events
Lyrics
Traditions
Useful knowledge / language
Real people
Entertainment

These are some others that some Czech teachers came up with
Course book, comparison cinema. computers card, cds, cartoons customs, creativity, communication
Understanding. unabridged books
Listening, literature., learning., language
Tales, text. teacher, technology, traditions travelling tastes textbook
Universal unique information usage useful knowledge
Reading, riddles, radio role-play realia, rumour and gossip, religion
Entertainment, extracts, etiquette


This is a link to another session I did on culture to see more reasons why it should be integrated.

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