Culture and SLA - Week 7 -  Culture Learning Outcomes

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 7 of the course Culture and Second Language Acquisition for the master's in English teaching at ULACIT term IIIC0 2023. This week we will identify culture learning outcomes, how they are achieved, and contexts in which they are appropriate.

Today's Goals:

• Discuss appropriate culture learning goals for different contexts.
• Articulate several core beliefs about how you see yourself as a cultural educator.
• Explore aspects of community life, organization, and identity in the assigned text.

Guiding Questions: 

• How can I articulate and classify the aims of culture learning?
• How do I view myself as a cultural educator?
• What role do institutions play in cultural identity formation?

Task 1: My Community Memberships

Read the two quotes below from Moran's chapter on Cultural Communities. Then click the group link and follow your teacher's instructions to explore some of your community memberships.

• Discourses:"Linguist James Gee calls these communities Discourses as a way of emphasizing the social practices they carry out: ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing. Gee contentds that individuals are members of many Discourses and that each one calls for a distinct set of practices for membership, what he calls an identity kit (p. 93)."

• Interpersonal Relationships: “Communities, therefore, in physical settings and social circumstances, form a basis for relationships in the culture. The kinds of relationships that members of the culture establish and maintain are connected to the kinds of communities in which members participate. Communities exist for a wide variety of purposes and they use certain practices to achieve their respective ends, which in turn affect the kinds of relationships that are possible or expected.”

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Theory Break: Cultural Persons - Our Identity(ies) as Cultural Beings

• "Culture resides in persons, in individuals. Each member of a culture, like a miniscule twist in a kaleidoscope, refracts and reflects the common colored lights of their culture in a unique display, recognizably similar yet unquestionably different (Moran, p. 98).”

• "When we enter another culture and participate in its practices, we do this through our interactions with individuals, with the people of the culture."

• "As outsiders, our initial tendency is to see similarities among personas and to assume that they are representative of their culture, that they are 'typically' Japanese, Chinese, or Spanish. Yet as we get to know these persons, we begin to discern the differences, the idiosynchracies, the quirks, the personalities, the special characteristics that set them off from others in their culture."

• “Like other aspects of culture, identity is both explicit and tacit. There are aspects of ourselves that we can describe or put into words and there are others that we cannot express, or that are simply outside of our awareness. Not until we find ourselves in situations where our sense of self – our values, beliefs, practices – is called into question do we perceive the tacit dimensions of our identity (Moran, p. 99).”

• Exploring our avowed and ascribed identities: CLICK HERE

•  “When students whose first language is not English first encounter the learning of English as an additional language, they cannot really avoid the issue of learner identity (be it imposed, assumed, and/or negotiated) because they must participate in a community different than what they are used to (Farrell, p. 33).”

• “Throughout their careers teachers construct and reconstruct (usually tacitly) a conceptual sense of who they are (their self-image), and this is manifested through what they do (their professional role identity) (Farrell, p. 34).”

Task 2: Reading Response Exploration - Culture Learning Outcomes

Let's take a moment to discuss some questions related to your assigned reading for this week.

• Reasons Why: Why do you think a course like this one, Culture and Second Language Acquisition, is a required component of your univeristy curriculum? What's the purpose? Is it just to fill in the plan de estudio? What connection does it have with the more general learning goals of the whole degree program? 

• Learning Contexts: In what circumstances in the real world is it important for people to consciously learn about another culture or to become aware of asepcts of their own culture? Try to list some specific examples.

• Learning Goals: Think about the following contexts. What kind of cultural knowledge would benefit the person? Why?

• A university student from Spain preparing for a 6 month study exchange program at a university in Texas.

• An adult immigrant from Afghanistan who recently relocated to Australia with a refugee visa who is starting a new life in a country he does not know.

• A German corporate executive of an international company who was sent to Costa Rica to mange the operations of a medical devices factory. The staff of the factory are mostly Costa Ricans.

• A Chistian missionary from Mexico is preparing to move to a rural area of Angola in Africa to help lead a church there.

• A Costa Rican tourist in Italy who signed up for a tour of different historical, artistic, and architectural sites of the counry for two weeks.

• A group of recent university graduates from different places in the United States are in Costa Rica receiving training and cultural education lessons in San José before being sent to work as volunteer English teaching assistants in public schools in rural areas of the country for two years as part of the US Peace Corps program.

• Culture Learning Outcomes: Read the chart below carefully. It lists six possible outcomes of the culture learning process. The chart is a little confusing because it is not sequential. It starts by stating the final result of the learning process. Then it lists the general focus of the learning process as well examples of the kind of content included in the learning process. 

Click to View Full Sized Image

• Turning it Around: Let's consider this information in a different order. Click the group link below and go to your section of the document. 

• Group Document: CLICK HERE

Theory Break: Culture Learning Outcomes

• “To generalize … across all these culture learning outcomes, I would say that all intend that learners confront, comprehend, accept, and overcome cultural differences. This process involves an interplay of mind, body, heart, and self - or, in technical terms, cognition, behavior, affect, and identity. As part of mastering the language, learners need to change the way they think, act, feel, and perceive themselves and their roles if they are to function effectively and appropriately in the other culture (p. 119).”

• The particular culture learning outcomes you seek for your students will inform the focus you give your lessons and the model of culture teaching you develop. Moran says, “the key distinction among [culture teaching]... models lies with differing notions of ‘overcoming’ cultural differences. These range from simply changing one’s mind or feelings about a given culture (culture-specific understanding) through recognizing how one’s own culture affects acceptance of other cultures (culture-general understanding), learning to communicate appropriately in a second language/culture (competence), integrating oneself into another language and culture (adaptation), developing a distinct sense of self (identity), to taking action to transform a culture based on one’s own beliefs (social change). Ultimately, the individual learner decides how to respond and develops skills as a culture learner (personal competence) (p. 119)."
  

Task 3: Culture Learning Outcomes

Your reading this week focuses on the topic of culture learning outcomes; the different possible results of the culture learning process. Moran provides us with a useful way of classifying these outcomes which can help us choose a particular way of focusing our teaching efforts depending on our context. Click the group link below to explore the what, how, and why of the six culture learning outcomes.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

• Answer Key: CLICK HERE

• Which of these outcomes resonate with you and the way you view yourself as a cultural educator?

• What beliefs about culture form part of your learning philosophy that guides your approach to teaching? CLICK HERE to add to the culture teaching manifesto!

Task 4: Community Life and Organization in Limón 1915-1948

The Cultural Analysis assignment for this week asked you to read a chapter from What Happen: A Folk-History of Costa Rica's Talamanca Coast by Paula Palmer. This chapter highlights some of the unique cultural practices of the Afro-Costa Rica Community of the southern Atlantic coast at a time of transition when the region was experiencing an increased presence of government institutions from the broader national culture. Read the information below and respond to the prompts in blue.

• Background Information: English speaking black communities formed on the Carribean coast of the country beginning in the early and mid-1800's The first settlers were fishermen, turtle hunters, and farmers from other Anglophone communities in the regions of Bocas del Toro, Panamá; San Andrés, Colombia; and Bluefields, Nicaragua. These initial settlers were followed by a large wave of immigrants in the late 1800's from Jamaica and other Carribbean countries during the construction of the railroad and transnational banana plantations. Because the area was so far from the Central Valley, the government of Costa Rica had very little presence in the region for many decades and the Afrocaribbean community lived in relative isolation from mainstream Costa Rican culture which allowed their culture, language, and traditions as well as their own community organizations to become well established. 

• Schools - English and Spanish: The author describes both the privately financed English schools organized by the local community and government run Spanish schools established by the state. Both kinds of schools faced logistical and financial challenges. What did you write about this section of the text? How do you think the interplay of English and Spanish schools influenced the sense of community and cultural identity? 

• The Universal Negro Improvement Association: UNIA was an international organization started by Jamaican Marcus Garvey that spread his Pan-Africanist and Black Nationalist philosophy (referred to as Garveyism in the text), the idea that all black people in the Americas, dispite their country or language are one people and the that improvement of their economic and social situation would come as a result of transnational cooperation and self-determinism through the establishment of their own country in Africa. UNIA established branches throughout the continent including ones in Limón, Cahuita, and Puerto Viejo. What did you write about this section? What role did UNIA play in the local communities? How do you think this organization contributed to sense of community membership and cultural identity?

• The Problem of Citizenship: The chapter also contained a rather long section that looked at the problems that black residents of Limón had in becoming recognized as Costa Rican citizens. 

• Judges: The text said that the government begain sending "judges" to the region in the 1920's. One of their jobs was to record the births of children. What were some of the problems the local community faced when interacting with the judges? What did the author say about the practice of naming babies? How did this make the locals feel?

• Citizenship: The text says that it wasn't until the 1940's that black children born in Limón were granted citizenship by birth. Before that, babies of foreign parents would keep the citizenship of their parents. That means that it took three generations of of living in Costa Rican territory before the first black Limonenses were recognized as citizens "por nacimiento". When the "by birth" law came into effect, that did not automatically include all of the people born before that. Anyone born in Costa Rica before that law had to go through a complicated and expensive legal process of applying for citizenship "por opción". How do you think these facts impacted the community's sense of identity?

• Employment Descrimination: The author also discusses some of the legal descrimination against black residents that occured in the early 1900's. What were some of the examples mentioned in the text?

• Final Quote: "It would not be until after the 1948 Revolution that the color ban on employment in the Pacific would be lifted, and blacks would be fully integrated into the political life of the nation. By that time, three generations of Afrocaribbean families had been born and raised on the Talamanca Coast, most of them retaining the nationality of their pioneer ancestors. The prevailing attitude among them was expressed by Albert Guthrie, of Old Harbour: 'I know where I was born, so why I want to worry with lawyers and papers? They only take your money. Stay away from those problems, because it's only problems, you know. Just live good and don't worry with it (p. 190)."

• Other Cultural Aspects: The other sections of the chapter describe holidays and celebrations, sports, music, literature, folk medicine, and other cultural practices and perspectives. Did you read any of these sections? If so, what stood out to you?

References:

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

Palmer, P. (1993). What Happen: A Folk-History of Costa Rica's Talamanca Coast. Publications in English S.A.