Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 5; September 03

How I map my country

Level: elementary to advanced
Cultural aim: to help students find out how they internally map their home country territory and the space the target culture moves in.
Preparation: bring in two sheets of A3 per student
bring a large map of the students' country/ies, a map of
the target culture country and a map of Italy.

In class:

• Give out the A3 paper and tell the students they will have 45 seconds to do a quick drawing.

  Tell them to draw a map of their country using the whole of their sheet – 45 seconds!

• Let the students see the cartographic map/s and give them five minutes to note down differences between their map and the professional ones. Ask them if they can see any reasons for the things they have left out, put in, or distorted. Show them the map of Italy and tell them that these are things that Italians often do:

  they forget the Northern borders they draw a vertical "leg" instead of a diagonal one Northern Italians sometimes leave Sicily and/or Sardina out etc….

• When the five minutes are up bring the students, if you can, into a circle. Each person shows their map to the group and comments on deletions, distortions and additions.

• Repeat the above three steps, but this time they draw a map of the target country.

Note: subjective map making can reveal interesting things about how a person visualises territory. When a person from the South East of UK draws Scotland as a vague triangle, they are making a cultural statement. When the same person omits Wales, there is a similar statement. Very few British people will put in the Channel Islands or the Shetlands though 50 percent will put in the Hebrides, the Isle of Mann, and the Isle of Wight.

It is worth noting that no flat map is accurate. In transferring a map from a curved surface, the reality, to a flat one, the fiction, it is impossible to get the distance between points correct, if the surface area is rightly represented.

Variation: If you are teaching in an English speaking place and if the students are in homestay, suggest they do the map drawing exercise with members of their host family. They bring the maps to the next class and report on what the natives said about them.