Let’s Think Back Again: Whose Culture to Teach?

Ayşe Tan, Turkey

Ayşe Tan holds a BA in English Language Teaching from Istanbul University and is doing her master’s at the same university. Her current interest area is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). She is an instructor of English at Bahçeşehir University at present. She has been teaching English for two years.
E-mail: ayse.tan@bahcesehir.edu.tr

In today’s highly globalized world, people’s purposes and motives to learn English vary significantly ranging from studying abroad either in a country of which official language is English or in a country where the official language is totally different from English to maintaining business relations and from having command in it just to survive in any tourist trips to establishing rapport with foreigners or exchanging academic as well as scientific knowledge. So as to serve for one or more of these purposes, people around the world today communicate with each other by means of a common language which is English. A Chinese businessman does business with a German one in English. Teenagers communicate with other teenagers from different countries and nationalities all around the world by means of English. As the examples suggest, nowadays English is used mostly between people who are non-native speakers of it and that is termed as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).

In ELF context, neither party owns English as a native tongue. In other words, English is only a vehicle to communicate for people who do not share a common mother tongue. When this is the case, it can be surely said that most of the interactions today taking place in English do not necessarily involve native speakers of English. The question arising from this situation is whether there is a necessity for native speakers, their norms and their cultures in English learning and teaching settings.

In his statement that is ‘Native speakers bring with them cultural baggage in which learners wanting to use English primarily as an international language are not interested’, Graddol (2006) suggests that learners are not interested in native speakers’ cultures since their prospective interaction will take place in an international context in which the participants will not be principally native speakers of English, on the contrary they will be mostly non-native speakers of it.

Exchange students can be taken as an example. Each year a great number of Turkish students go to different European countries by means of some exchange programs such as Erasmus. According to the agreement between the countries, students can have education in Spain, Poland, Holland, Germany, Czech Republic and many other European countries. Students planning to take part in such programs have a motive to learn English in order to be able to survive in a European country of which official language is not English. Imagine that those students attend to an English course where most of the teachers are native speakers from England or America and during the course those teachers embellish their lessons with the cultural baggage they bring with them. However, for a Turkish exchange student, knowledge of British or American culture is of no practical use in any of those mentioned European countries. The students who are aware of this reality may not be attracted with this information and they may even find it irrelevant and unnecessary. In their case, if they are to be informed about a culture, it should be mostly the cultures of the countries they are going with the purpose of studying for a certain period of time.

There is no doubt that learning about different cultures broadens one’s perspective. However, in my opinion if there is an overemphasis on a single culture and if this culture is not the one the students will experience predominantly in most of the international interactions, any expectation for motivation, interest or enthusiasm is in vain. There is a need for the recognition of the existence of different cultures beyond British or American in course syllabuses. English today is spoken anywhere, anytime and by anybody. Today English is owned by anyone who speaks it. People use English to inform others about their own local cultures. They use it to learn about cultures other than English. That’s why culture teaching in English language courses cannot be restricted only to Great Britain or the USA.

The growing focus on ELF brings the need to rethink the differences between native speaker and non-native speaker teachers of English. In the book titled ‘The Non-native Teacher’, Medgyes mentions some of those perceived differences. According to Medgyes, native speaker teachers of English supply students with more cultural information and focus more on colloquial expressions, idioms as well as phrasal verbs. In addition, their pronunciation is a model for learners to imitate. Each of these qualifications can be reflected as a must by some courses or they may seem very important for some learners. However, if a Chinese learner attends a course to learn English with the purpose of establishing links with international companies or trading with firms in various countries, colloquial expressions and idioms of native speakers can be perceived as a hinder rather than an advantage. Since idioms are special expressions of societies, they are highly cultural. For instance ‘keep the wolf at bay’ is an English idiom which means making enough money to avoid going hungry or falling heavily into debt. In an international context in which a Chinese speaker of English communicating with a Polish speaker of English on daily matters the use of this specific idiom might hinder the communication. There can be at least two reasons for it. Firstly, the interlocutor may not know this idiom. Secondly, as the direct translation doesn’t work well to give the exact meaning of the expression, the interlocutor may find it hard to interpret what is meant with it. Either reason is at variance with a notion of intelligibility brought about by ELF. In ELF interactions, instead of native-like pronunciation or native-like use of certain expressions, intelligibility is becoming the norm day by day which means as long as you are understood by the other party, awkward sounding expressions, grammar mistakes and even different pronunciation of words can be tolerated. So those highly culture-dependent idioms and colloquial expressions may not find their way in ELF interactions. For learners who have the purpose of using English primarily as an international language, allocating too much time to teach/learn this stuff can be beside the point.

In conclusion, with the globalization of English, speaking of a ‘target culture’ of English language such as British or American makes little sense. Most of the individuals need English to maintain relationships not with Anglo-American native speakers, but with other non-native speakers from other countries and other cultures. While most of the interactions in an international context take place between non-native speakers of English by means of English, it is not surprising to see that syllabi loaded merely with American and British culture are not of great value for the learners since the content that cannot meet the learning goal of the students has no attraction at all for the learners. Communication in an international setting requires a great diversity in terms of culture, life-style, accent and pronunciation as well as beliefs and values. In today’s world, any syllabus ignoring to incorporate this diversity may ultimately face the threat of devaluation of the learners.

References

Arva, V. & Medgyes, P. (2000) ‘Native and non-native teachers in the classroom’ System 28. Pp: 355-372.

Nault, D. (2006) ‘Going Global: Rethinking Culture Teaching in ELT Contexts.‘ Language, Culture and Curriculum.

Graddol, D. (2006) ‘English Next.’ British Council

Please check the British Life, Language and Culture course at Pilgrims website.