Culture of English Speaking Countries - Week 14 - Teaching Culture

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 14 of the course Culture of English Speaking Countries for the bachelor's in English teaching at ULACIT. This is our final regular class of the course. This week you will participate in a culture lesson to explore the practice of tipping in US culture and you will share your reactions to the learning journal article about perspectives in Costa Rica. 

Today's Goals:

• Participate in a culture lesson about the practice of tipping in US culture.
• Describe and react to etic descriptions of cultural perspectives in Costa Rica.

Guiding Questions: 

• How can I plan a culture lesson for an EFL class?
• How would I describe my culture to an outsider?

Warm Up: 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 1: 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 2: 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 3: 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

Emily's Thoughts on Tipping

Josh's Thoughts on Tipping

Jeff's Thoughts on Tipping

Max's Thoughts on Tipping

Task 4: How to Tip

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

Task 5: 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. It was organized following the four cultureal knowings: knowing how (participation/experience), knowing about (description/information), knowing why (interpretation/perspectives), knowing oneself (response/self-awareness). 

Theory Break: The Culture Learning Process

• Culture Learning Models: They highlight the adjustment process as learners learn about and change to meet the requirements of the culture, while they are immersed in it. If they progress, learners pass through stages, phases, or passages, gradually accumulating knowledge about the culture, appropriate cultural behaviors, fluency in the language, and ultimately changing their attitudes toward the target culture, their own culture, themselves, and cultures in general (Moran, 2001, p. 123)."

• Culture Teaching: "The key to teaching this unique experience is self-awareness, knowing one's self. At some point in this process, learners need conscious awareness of themselves. They need to recognize what they are going through and to purposefully take action. As teachers, we can help learners bring their experiences to the surface, to expression and articulation, so that they can decide how to respond to the culture. When learners do name their experiences - what they perceive, think, or feel - we need to be ready to help them situate this within a larger framework (Moran, 2001, p. 123)."

• Moran's Framework: The process of culture learning consists of an ongoing series of encounters with cultural differences presented through structured participation in the language and culture curriculum (products, practices, perspectives, communities, persons). these differences can trigger emotional reactions. Guided by the teacher, the learners engage in description, interpretation, and response, consistent with the states of the experiential learning cycle and cultural knowings. Over time, through repeated encounters and explicit reference to models of culture learning, learners acquire more knowledge of the target culture, develop more appropriate linguistic and cultural behaviors, attain greater understanding, and enhance their awareness of their own culture, their intentions, and their competence as culture learners (Moran, 2001, p. 124)."

• This model is based on the following assumptions:

• Culture learning can be a conscious, purposeful process.
• Culture learning requires managing emotions.
• Culture learning depends on cultural comparisons.
• Culture learning requires making the tacit explicit.
• Learner characteristics affect culture learning.
• The relationship between the learner's culture and the target culture affect culture learning.
• The instructional context affects culture learning.
• The teacher-student relationship affects culture learning.

Task 9: Reflecting on Cultural Perspectives in Costa Rica

Click the group link below and follow the instructions in the document. 

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

References:

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