What Have We Learned about Teaching Culture in ELT?: Barry Tomalin Reflects on His Month as a Guest Blogger on the British Council BBC TeachingEnglish Website
submitted by British Council Teaching English Team
Barry Tomalin is based at International House, London where he is director of Cultural Training and Director of the Business Cultural Trainer’s Certificate. He is also Visiting Lecturer in Intercultural Communication at the University of Westminster. He has worked for the ODA (Overseas Development Administration) in West Africa, for International House in Algeria and Paris, and for the BBC World Service in London, where he was Editor of BBC English by Radio and Television. He has trained in 61 countries so far and is also acting as consultant on the ‘INTERACT’ project, exploring the needs for cross-cultural training for European managers.
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Preface
What have we learned about teaching culture in ELT?
What do we mean by culture in ELT?
Whose culture do we teach?
How much do we need to know about a place to teach its culture?
And finally…
Since April of 2008 the British Council’s TeachingEnglish Team has been redeveloping the TeachingEnglish website and attempting to integrate more of a ‘Web 2.0’ type approach to the development of the site. This has involved developing tools and functionality that enable the users of the site to play a much more active and interactive role in the development of the site content. As part of this approach British Council has been enabling users from all over the world to interact with some of the UK’s leading experts in the field of ELT. One such expert is Barry Tomalin and in the following article he reflects on the month that he spent blogging about the role of culture in ELT.
I’ve just finished a month’s residency as guest contributor on culture on the BBC | British Council’s www.teachingenglish.org.uk website and found it both interesting and reflective. I posted 17 culture lesson plans, some of my own and some from other teachers, particularly from International House Schools around Europe.
What I think I’ve learned is how teachers see culture in ELT and three main questions stood out:
What do we mean by culture in ELT?
Whose culture do we teach?
How much do we need to know about a place to teach its culture?
My central position is that culture in ELT involves teaching cultural awareness skills through language teaching. This is a separate skills set to cultural knowledge but is best accessed through language learning. That’s why I called my first article for the site ‘Culture: the fifth language skill’ and it promoted a fair degree of comment and discussion. Nick Dawson in the UK, made the common sense point that culture is doing and thinking what is ‘normal’ in your society and that cultural skills are all about discovering and adapting to each other’s ‘normalcies’. Angela Daniel in India, described it as ‘etiquette for the globe’. Astral, emphasised the importance of teaching cultural awareness in a globalising world although Giganick in Japan insisted that ‘cultural teaching should be restricted to what arises naturally in the lesson – an inductive approach.’ I agree with that but I also think that teachers should introduce concepts of how to spot culturally relevant information, how to develop critical awareness of cultural values and behaviour and above all how to encourage non-judgemental thinking into their classroom work.
Giganick also introduced an interesting theoretical point. ‘The four language skills are a two by two matrix, oral production, oral interpretation, written production and written interpretation. Surely, culture would have to be two skills,’ Cultural production (flexibility), and cultural interpretation (perception)’. [And he added, ‘Hopefully, not four: written cultural instruction, written cultural etc…’ Discuss!]
Whose or what culture we teach inspired a passionate plea from Neli, a teacher in Georgia. ‘How’ she asked, ‘Do you teach cultural tolerance, when the people you are trying to be tolerant of are at war with you?’ Louise Romaine in France came up with an interesting response from the world of non-violent communication, concepts developed by the US psychologist, Marshall Rosenberg. ‘Try to get your students to avoid making judgements but to communicate in terms what ‘I observe…’ ‘I feel …’ and ‘I need….’.
Some teachers argued that English should be a culture free zone. Hala Salih in the Sudan argued that teaching culture free English was the only way of avoiding the accusation that English could be used to promote an elite or give advantage to an English speaking country over yours. My response to that is that we are not promoting British or US culture but using language to introduce cultural skills which are applicable to any language and any community, including your own. Other writers queried the English language ownership issue. Whose English culture should we be teaching? US, UK, Australia, India? My answer was simple. Teach cultural skills related to the language you are learning. Divide skills into two parts. One, the skill of recognising relevant cultural information, analysing critically what that information tells you and making a non-judgemental observation of what you should or should not do or say in a particular situation. ‘That is all very well’, responded Giganick and others, but what happens if you don’t know the cultural background and have never visited or feel out of touch with the country in question? Cultural skills are life skills and need the experience of living abroad as much as anything else.
On the question of country cultural knowledge I think Yorick put it best. ‘There are no pat (easy) solutions but I think trainers need to have an idea of what their students should usefully become aware of in respect of culture and language and how they interlock.’
One of the things that struck me about my stay at ‘Teaching English’ was all the cultural discussion going on around me that I had nothing to do with. Teachers swapped Christmas video ideas and cultural teaching tips alongside all the other matters they were discussing, a symbol of a vibrant website – and the practical relevance of culture in ELT.
However, I’ll leave you with a couple of funny intercultural stories. Diana Metzner, drily and slightly curtly, informed a friend who had told her something in a way that upset her, ‘I got the message’. Only over the phone later could she explain that she wasn’t saying she had ‘received’ the message but that she was ‘upset’ by it!
Harsh from India trying to get hold of Dr Lucy stood at the university porter’s lodge trying in vain to reach Dr L Broadfoot, Head of the School of Education. Finally, one of the porters saw the light. ‘Oh, you mean Lucy!’ he said. Informality rules KO!
Please check the British Life, Language and Culture course at Pilgrims website.
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