Conceptualizing Culture:
Effectively Integrating Culture into the
Proficiency-Oriented Classroom
Danielle Asay & Bethany Daniel
Brigham Young University
What is culture?
Disclaimer!
“Culture is pervasive, all-encompassing, and inescapable.
The images and messages we receive and transmit are
profoundly shaped by our culture. It is the framework
through which we understand and interpret the world
around us, in that it provides the context for a group of
people to understand and interpret the world around them.”
Andrea DeCapua & Ann C. Wintergerst, 2004, p. 9
Why is it a challenge to teach culture?
Defining culture:
Providing a cultural framework
“In the study of language, nothing has been discussed more
and with less effect than the relationship between language
and culture.”
Walker and Noda, 2000, p. 187
Common Approaches to Teaching
Culture
1. The Frankenstein Approach
• A taco from here, a flamenco dancer from there, a gaucho
from here, a bullfight from there.
2. The 4-F Approach:
• Folk dances, festivals, fairs, and food.
3. The Tour Guide Approach
• The identification of monuments, rivers, and cities.
4. The “By-the-Way” Approach
• Sporadic lectures or bits of behavior selected indiscriminately
to emphasize sharp differences.
Galloway, 1985, as cited in Omaggio Hadley, 2001
Common Approaches to Teaching
Culture
5. Big C/little c
• Culture—great art, literature, music
• culture—daily life, popular culture
6. Products, Practices and Perspectives (SFLL, 1996)
A "New" (Old) Possibility
• Omaggio Hadley stresses the need for a balanced
approach to teaching culture (p. 353).
• Hammerly, 1982:
• Informational culture
• Facts that the educated native speaker knows about his
society (geography, history, heros, villains, etc.)
• Achievement culture
• The artistic and literary accomplishments of a society
• Behavioral culture
• The sum of everyday life
• Revealed
• Ignored
• Suppressed
Examples
What kind of culture are these examples an example of?
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7.
Napoleon
the Great Wall
les bises
la siesta
Wienerschnitzel
Spanish Civil War
Le Petit prince
Textbook Review
Proficiency and Performance
• ACTFL defines proficiency as “the ability to use language
to communicate meaningful information in a spontaneous
interaction, and in a manner acceptable and appropriate
to native speakers of the language” (Swender & Vicars,
2012).
• Focuses on the functional speaking ability—what students
are able to DO with the language.
• They need to be able to DO these things in culturally
appropriate ways.
Proficiency and Performance
“Knowing how, when, and why to say what to
whom”
• All the linguistic and social knowledge required for effective
human-to-human interaction is encompassed in those ten
words.
Standards, 1996
Proficiency and Performance
• “You cannot learn a foreign language, you can only learn
to do things in a foreign language. The more things we
learn to do, the more expert we are in that language.”
Walker and Noda, 2000, p. 25
Proficiency and
Performance
• Performed culture (Walker and Noda)
• Cultural memories
• Situating events:
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Place
Time
Script
Roles
Audience
Strategies for Integration
• Achievement
Strategies for Integration
• Informational
• Authentic, realistic images
• Cultural calendar/timeline
• important dates and events from target culture
• Culture-oriented writing
• write on a topic from the target culture point of view
Strategies for Integration
• Behavioral/Performed
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Performances
Role plays
Contextualization
Pragmatics
Examples
Questions?