Culture and SLA - Week 8 - Reading Group Workshop

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 8 of the course Culture and Second Language Acquisition for the master's in English teaching at ULACIT term IIIC0 2022. This week we will participate in the reading group workshop to explore some practical strategies for teaching culture in the language classroom by sythesizing and analyzing the ideas found in your assigned readings.

Today's Goals:

• Compare the cultural differences you explored in your film analysis podcast.
• Present a brief workshop on an assigned reading that synthesizes the author's ideas and explores their classroom implications.

Guiding Questions: 

• What cultural practices and perspectives were in conflict in the film The Gods Must be Crazy?
• What does the professional literature say about teaching culutre in the language classroom?

Warm Up: Film Analysis

Take some time to share the ideas you explored in your film analysis paper. If you want, you can use the following prompts to guide your discussion.

• Reactions: Film and Assignment
• What did you think of the film? Why?
• Do you have a favorite character or scene from the film?
• How did you feel completing the analysis in the format of a podcast? 
• What was easy? What was challenging? Why?

• Cultural Communities: Cultures in Conflict
• What distinct cultural groups were represented in the film?
• What are some of the primary differences between the groups in terms of their products, practices, and perspectives?
• A lot of the film's humor is based on misunderstandings between the different cultural groups. What examples of misunderstandings can you identify?
• Which dimensions from the Hofstede framework did you analyze?

• Going Deeper: Thinking More about the Assignment
• In this task you were asked to compare products, practices, and perspectives and describing two of Hofestede's dimensions, If you were the professor of this course, what additional or alternative ways of cultural analysis could you have added to this assignment?
• Imagine you could propose an alternative film to watch for the cultural analysis podcast assignment. What films would you recommend and why? How are they rich in cultural content?

Task 1: Reading Group Workshop

Now it's time for your reading group workshop. Before we participate in your presentations, let's quickly review the learning objective and justification.

• Learning Objective: Demonstrate your ability to read an academic article and accurately identify and synthesize key concepts presented in the text in order to lead a group discussion exploring the implications of the theory to your teaching practice.

• Justification: A key skill of a professional educator is the ability to draw upon relevant theory from academic literature from the field in order to inform his or her teaching practice. Although academic texts can be challenging, it is essential to develop the ability to read, interpret, and synthesize the core ideas of academic articles when pursuing a degree in a graduate level program.

• Group 1: Natalia and Sandra - Cultural Codes for Calls: The use of commercial television in teaching culture in the classroom

• Group 2: Francisco, Peter, & Stephanie - Cultural Mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL classroom

• Group 3: David, Jessica, & Arianna - Materials for Cultural Awareness

Peer Feedback Framework

Task 2: Instructions for Pending Assignments

You have two more major assignments in this course, the Culture Lesson Plan and Textbook Analysis Paper and Presentation. Let's take a look at the instructions for each of them now.

• Culture Lesson Plan: CLICK HERE
• Textbook Analysis: CLICK HERE

References:

Cortazzi, M. & Jin, L. (1999). Cultural Mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning (pp. 196- 219). Cambridge University Press.

Pulverness, A. & Tomlinson, B. (2013). Materials for Cultural Awareness. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (2nd ed., pp. 443-459). Bloomsbury Academic.

Scollon, R. (1999). Cultural Codes for Calls: The use of commercial television in teaching culture in the classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning (pp. 181- 195). Cambridge University Press.