Culture and SLA - Week 2 -  The Cultural Experience

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 2 of the course Culture and Second Language Acquisition for the master's in English teaching at ULACIT term IIIC0 2022. This week we will attempt to define culture and its elements and we will consider a model for understanding how culture is learned.

Today's Goals:

• Contribute to a group definition of culture.
• Describe the four cultural knowings that make up the culture learning experience.
• Use Moran's Dimensions of Culture model to explore an aspect of everyday Costa Rican culture.

Guiding Questions:

• How can culture be defined?
• What are the four cultural knowings and how can they help me better understand the cultural experience?
• How can the Dimensions of Culture model help me analyze a cultural phenomenon in a systematic way?

Warm Up: Metaphors for Understanding Culture

Click the link below and go to your group's section of the document.

• Presentation: CLICK HERE

Task 1: Defining Culture

Now work with your partners to discuss some of the ideas from the chapter you read in Moran (2001) called "Defining Culture". 

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

Theory Break: The Iceberg of Culture

• "Seen in broad terms, culture consists of artifacts, actions, and meanings. The three components of culture - products, practices, perspectives - reflect a triangular concept. This view of culture is understandable and relatively easy to apply, with two important exceptions. Cultural artifacts, actions, and meanings do not exist apart from the people of the culture. People - alone and with others - make and use artifacts, carry out actions, and hold meanings. To capture the active role of people in their culture, I have added two dimensions to this definition: communities and persons (Moran, p. 23-24)."

Task 2: The 5 Dimensions of Culture

Let's explore the 5 Dimensions of Culture by using them to describe an aspect of Costa Rican culture.
Click the group link and follow your teacher's instructions.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Task 3: The Culture Learning Experience

Think about the language courses you have participated in as a student. 

• Were aspects of culture ever taught in your courses? If so, which ones? 
• Were they taught explicitly by the teacher or were they taught more indirectly? 
• Are there any really important cultural elements that were never mentioned in your courses but you think would be important for students to know?

Let's read two quotes from our assigned reading for today:

• “As language teachers, our challenge is to bring some order to the apparent randomness of culture, both for ourselves and for the students in our classes, as a first step in making culture accessible”.

• “Regardless of variables, language learners are engaged in an experiential cycle of gathering cultural information, developing cultural behaviors, discovering cultural explanations, and developing self-awareness. These are the keys to the cultural experience."

Click your group link below to explore what you understood about the culture learning experience. Feel free to refer to you study guide if you need help to complete any of these tasks.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

Theory Break: The Cultural Experience

• "As teachers, we have little difficulty listing cultural topics, but organizing them is another matter entirely. For good reasons. Culture is multifaceted and complex, and there is no consensus on what culture is (Moran, p. 13)."

• "Culture has many definitions... For the most part, these definitions present culture as an abstract entity that can be separated from the experience of participating in it. While they do help us understand the nature of culture, these definitions remain abstract, disconnected from the people who live in that culture, and more importantly, from the experience of participating in that culture (Moran, p. 13)."  

Theory Break: The Cultural Knowings

• "The cultural knowings framework offers a means for describing culture in terms of what students need to do in order to learn it - their encounters with another way of life. Once these interactions are specified, the learning objectives follow, as do the choice of teaching and learning activities and the appropriate means of evaluation (Moran, p. 15)."

• Reflection: Moran gives the example of a female college student from the US studying abroad in the Dominican Republic. What were some of her initial confusing experiences? How did she interpret them? How did she come to greater levels of self-awareness as she also learned the other knowings (about, how, and why)? 

• "The cultural experience is highly personal, and therefore idiosynchratic. Individual learners need to understand themselves and their own culture as a means to comprehending, adapting to, or integrating into the [target] culture (Moran, p. 17)."

• "In the end, individual learners set the limits of knowing about, how, and why. They decide. For this reason, knowing oneself is the organizing dimension of the cultural knowings. Learners' abilities to make such decisions depend on their awareness of themselves, their situation, and their intentions. The more aware they are, the more focused their work becomes in the acquisition of cultural information, skills, and understanding (Moran, p. 17)."

Learn the Rules of Trash Collection in Vermont

• Knowing How: The landlord told us to be careful and pointed us to a sign with rules. We tried and failed. And tried again and failed again.

• Knowing About: We read the rules. We discussed it with our neighbors and professors and even with our landlord again.

• Knowing Why: We understood the importance of helping the environment for the people of Brattleboro.

• Knowing Myself: We rejected this cultural practice after several attempts to participate.

• Task: Describe a time when you had an experience with another culture. Use the language of the experiential learning cycle and the Cultural Knowings framework to illustrate your learning process and your own reactions to it.

References:

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