Culture and SLA - Week 4 -  Cultural Practices & Perspectives

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 4 of the course Culture and Second Language Acquisition for the master's in English teaching at ULACIT term IIC0 2023. This week we explore the topic of cultural practices (cultural behaviors) and begin our study of cultural perspectives.

Today's Goals:

• Compare cultural products, practices, and perspectives regarding traditional remedies.
• Describe the linguistic and extralinguistic features of a cultural act.
• Explore cultural values of the United States and compare them with values of your own culture.

Guiding Questions: 

• How is my culture represented in the actions people perform?
• What are the linguistic and extralinguistic features of a cultural act?
• What perspecitves give meaning to the products and practices of my culture?

Warm Up: Folk Remedies

Many cultures have a rich and detailed repertoire of products and practices related to traditional folk remedies for common physical ailments. These products and practices are informed by cultural perspectives about the causes of illness and what keeps a person healthy. In this activty you will explore some of the folk remedies of your own local and family culture. 

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

I was curious to learn if there were similar perspectives and practices in other countries. I asked friends from Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Finland and here is what they told me. As you listen, identify similarities and differences between the products, practices, persons, and perspectives. 

• CLICK HERE and contribute to the Jamboard. 

What about US traditional remedies? Well, there's nothing special except for the importance of chicken soup! CLICK HERE to see an image. It's so associated with comfort, care, and feeling better that there was a famous series of self-help / motivational books with that name (CLICK HERE).

Task 1: Exploring Cultural Practices

For homework this week you read Chapter 6 Cultural Practices in the Moran book and completed a study guide. Open your study guide and respond to the following prompts with your partners. 

• What is a cultural practice?

• What are the characteristics of the four types of practices?

• Operations
• Acts
• Scenarios
• Lives

• Share the scenario you described in your study guide and say how it fits within some of the following categories:

• Time-Based
• Event-Based
• Group-Based
• Institution-Based
• Life-Cycle Based

• What are some examples of operations and acts within your chosen scenario?

• In the chapter you also learned some new terminology for linguistic and extralinguistic features of practices. What were some of the new terms you learned?

• Describe a practice you are familiar with. How can the terms be used to describe what happens (or not) during the practice?

Theory Break: Cultural Practices

• “Practices are organized and implemented in preordained ways according to the expectations of members of the culture. They involve a linguistic dimension (written or spoken language), and extralinguistic dimension (paralanguage and nonverbal language), manipulation of products, and specific social circumstances, and often occur in particular physical settings or places (p. 59).”

• “Operations describe practices that involve manipulation of cultural artifacts. Acts are specific communicative functions with both linguistic and extralinguistic features. Scenarios are practices enacted in specific social situations, involving operations, acts and other sets of specific practices. Lives are sets of practices organized by individuals through the ways they live their lives in the culture (p. 59).”

Tasks 2 and 3: Exploring Cultural Acts

Click your group link below and complete Task 2 to explore the different meanings common expressions can have and the different acts and scenarios in which they can be used. CLICK HERE to see your teacher's example.

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

Now, let's think more deeply about the features of communicative acts. Go back to your document and complete Task 3. CLICK HERE to see your teacher's example first. 

• Mark your calendar. My birthday party is on Friday!

Theory Break: Perspectives

• “Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture, manifested in products and practices. These meanings reflect members’ perceptions of the world, the beliefs and values that they hold, and the norms, expectations, and attitudes that they bring to practices. To name the perspectives that underlie practices is to answer the question, “Why do the people of this culture do things in the way they do (p. 74)?”

• Perceptions: What we perceive, what we ignore; what we notice or disregard
• Beliefs: What we hold to be true or untrue
• Values: What we hold to be right/wrong, good/evil, desirable/undesireable, proper/improper, normal/abnormal, appropriate
• Attitudes: Our mental and affective dispositions - our frame of mind, our outlook - charged with feeling or emotion

• “Understanding perspectives, in my opinion, represents the most challenging aspect of teaching culture. The task, simply put, is to identify the perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the culture. However, culture consists of numerous communities, all coexisting under the same umbrella of national culture…some of them are in opposition – sometimes in open conflict… Given shifting points of view, how can language teachers hope to offer accurate explanations of cultural perspectives (p. 83).”

• It boils down to this: Culture perspectives depend on your point of view. Given shifting points of view, how can langauge teachers hope to offer accurate descriptions of cultural perspectives (Moran, p. 83)?"

• "The working solution I propose is to present alternative vewpoints as part of knowing why, or discovering interpretations. In simple terms, these can be defined respectively as culture as a unified whole culture as distinct communities, and culture as competing communities (p 84)."

• Functionalist: Takes the broad view of culture, most often at the national level, using the nation as the focal point.

• Interpretive: Does not address the notion of a national culture community. All culture, in the interpretive view, is local.

• Conflict: Accepts that each community has its own perspectives but does not assume harmonious relationships among them, rather, they are in competition, struggling for influence, power, or control over the core institutions of society.

Task 4: Values in US Culture

I created this activity to synthesize the main arguments in the chapter "Traditional American Values and Beliefs" from the book American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture 3rd. Ed (Kearny, Crandall, & Kearny, 2005). Click the link below and follow your teacher's instructions.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

References:

Kearny, M., Crandall, J., & Kearny, E. (2005). American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture (3rd ed.) Pearson Education, Inc.

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