Teaching Culture in Context:
Experiences from the
Tajiki Language Classroom
Presenters:
Christopher W. Lemelin
Foreign Service Institute/School of Language Studies
Karim Khodjibaev
Foreign Service Institute/School of Language Studies
Teaching Culture in Context:
Some Background
from Different Pond, Different Fish, no. 10 (March 2004)
What do we
(at FSI/SLS)
mean when we say culture?
Big-C Culture
vs.
little-c culture
• Objective culture
• MLA culture (Music,
Literature, Arts)
• “Products” (Standard 2.2 of
Standards for FL Learning)
• Subjective culture
• BBV culture (Behaviors,
Beliefs, Values)
• “Practices” (Standard 2.1 of
Standards for FL Learning)
Foreign Service Institute /
School of Professional and
Area Studies
Foreign Service Institute /
School of Language Studies
Seelye’s Seven Goals of Cultural Instruction
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The Sense of Culturally Conditioned Behavior
The Interaction of Language and Social Variables
Conventional Behavior in Common Situations
Cultural Connotations of Words and Phrases
Evaluating Statements about a Society
Researching Another Culture
Attitudes toward Other Cultures
H. Ned Seelye, Teaching Culture (Chicago, IL: National Textbook Company, 1984)
Galloway’s Convention Clusters
Function-determined conventions vs. Context-determined conventions
Stages of a Student’s Cultural Proficiency
(adapted from Bennett, Durocher)
Methods suggested by Omaggio Hadley
• Mini-lecture
• Native Informants
• Audio materials
– interviews, dialogs
• Video materials
– dialogs, staged encounters, film, YouTube
• Role play
Alice Omaggio Hadley, Teaching Language in Context (Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle, 1993)
Integration strategies suggested by Lafayette
(some things to keep in mind)
• Plan cultural activities and integrate them into lesson
(don’t teach culture “on-the-fly”)
• Use target language for cultural learning
(don’t separate culture learning from language learning)
• Use grammar content with cultural context
(use appropriate cultural topic as basis for language practice)
• Teach vocabulary around a cultural context
(use cultural clusters of words, teach connotative meanings)
• Use experiential learning (not “facts only”)
(encourage student curiosity, don’t just say—do it this way)
Robert Lafayette, “Integrating the Teaching of Culture into the FL Classroom” (NECTFL, 1988)