Culture & SLA - Week 8 - Planning a Culture Lesson

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 8 of the course Culture and Second Language Aquisition. In this class we participate in a lesson about a cultural practice in the US as a way of demonstrating how the Four Cultural Knowings and the Experiential Learning Cycle can be used to design a culture lesson. We will also discuss topics related to language necessary to participate, describe, interpret, and reflect on a cultural experience.  

Today's Goals:

• Participate in a demo lesson sequence to experience how the theory from the course can inform your lesson planning.
• Share an aspect of Costa Rican culture and the language students need to participate, describe, interpret, and reflect on a cultural experience.

Guiding Questions:

• How can theory influence my approach to lesson planning?
• What language is useful for teaching culture in the L2 classroom?

Task 1: What's a Fair Price?

Today we're going to talk about food and prices. Click the Jamboard link below and use the Sticky Note function to add what you would consider to be a fair price for the different items in a restaurant. 

• Group Jamboard: CLICK HERE

Goals for Today's Lesson

• Learn the situations in the US in which tipping is expected or considered to be a polite gesture.

• Listen to interviews with US citizens to hear their personal strategies for tipping in restaurants.

• Discuss the pros and cons of the practice of tipping in the US and the possible consequences of eliminating it.

• Use the quick tip method to mentally calculate the amount to tip depending on the price of the meal.

Task 2: Video Analysis

Watch this short video clip from the 90's sitcom "Third Rock from the Sun". It is about a family of aliens who move to Earth in order to study and live among humans. Their lack of understanding of human culture leads to humorous situations.

• What happened in the first scene?
• What did the man misunderstand?
• What happened in the final scene?
• How did the waitress probably feel? How did his partner feel?
• The man says that he is making the process honest. Does he have a point?
• What happened to the woman's drink? Why? How might this reflect a cultural perspective about tipping?

Task 3: Class Survey

Click the link below to take a brief survey to decide in which situations it is customary to tip somone in the US.

• Class Survey: CLICK HERE

Task 4: Learn from the Locals

Now you will listen to some audio interviews from cultural insiders who will explain the practice of tipping and their own personal strategies for determining how much to tip. Click your group link below and complete your graphic organizer by watching the corresponding videos. Remember to use the subtitles and you can also slow the play speed to .75 if any part is difficult to understand.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE
• Group 4: CLICK HERE
• Group 5: CLICK HERE
• Group 6: CLICK HERE

Emily's Thoughts on Tipping

Josh's Thoughts on Tipping

Jeff's Thoughts on Tipping

Max's Thoughts on Tipping

Task 5: How to Tip

Pay attention to your teacher's presentation about the process of tipping in restaurants. 

Task 6: Vocabulary Builder

In a moment you will read an article about an incident that occured in a restaurant where a waitress was not tipped but first, let's lean some important vocabulary.

Task 6: React to an Article

Take a moment to read the article as a group.

• Article: CLICK HERE

• What happened to the waitress?
• Why was she upset?
• Are customers obligated to leave a tip?

Task 7: Teacher's Anecdotes

• Dining with Costa Ricans in North Carolina

• Anthony's Big Tip

Why tip? Cultural Perspectives

Alternate Perspectives

Not everyone in the US is in favor of the tipping system. Read this quote from former restaurant owner Jay Porter who abolished tipping at his restaurant and raised his servers' wages.

"Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work. Consider also the power imbalance between tippers, who are typically male, and servers, 70 percent of whom are female, and consider that the restaurant industry generates five times the average number of sexual harassment claims per worker. And that in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference."

Source Article: CLICK HERE

Your Thoughts

So now that you have learned about the tipping culture in the US, take a moment to express your reflections and reactions.

• What did you learn about the practice of tipping in the US that you did not know before?
• What is your personal reaction to this practice?
• As a Costa Rican, how do perspectives differ about money, abundance, and status?
• How do you feel about the underlying wage difference for employees in the service industry?
• Do you think that the practice should remain or should it be abolished?
• How do you plan to handle this situation if you go to a restaurant in the US?

Task 8: A Quick Tip

You can use the following method to quickly estimate a 20% tip in your head. 

1. Take the total amount of the bill and round up to the nearest whole number.
2. Double it.
3. Then move the decimal point one number to the left.

Example: Your bill is $9.60

1. Round to the nearest whole number. ($10.00)
2. Double it. ($20.00)
3. Move the decimal point one number to the left. ($2.00)
4. Your tip or a $9.60 meal is $2.00 so you pay a total of $11.60.

Lesson Plan: CLICK HERE to view the lesson plan for this class. Later this course you will create your own lesson plan using this template to teach a cultural aspect. 

Task 9: Language-and-Culture

Take the last minutes of class to share the useful language you identified to teach an aspect of Costa Rican culture in your Study Guide last week.

References:

Moran, P. (2001). Teaching Culture: Perspectices in Practice. Heinle, Cengage Learning.