The relationship between language and culture and culture

Task 1 Initial activity: Essay

Culture and language have been bonded through all humankind history and today, they cannot be separated one form the other. They have a better meaning and work, when working together.

This can be easily accepted by mostly anyone who is interested in language but defining each of these terms is a task that is not faced by anybody. One must read tons of academic literature and even doing this, one cannot find a single concept or well defined idea, the provided articles you can find on the net, demonstrate bunches of lists and lists made by diverse authors that hardly can agree in one or two same ideas. A sieve must be done with the amount of definitions you can find about these concepts, so you build up a sum of well-defined ideas in mind.

Let’s cite the beginning of the reference article “Culture in Language Learning: Background, Issues and Implications”, with the first definition of culture given by Kramsch (1993): “culture refers to ‘membership in a discourse community that shares a common system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and action’”.

This means that people with similar ideas and beliefs system can be called culturized. They share a common culture. Now, check the concept of language.

Kramsch (1993) defines language as “the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways (p.3).”

Standardized ways of communication in the same community can be called or named as a “language”.

It is time to face the big question, do we teach language through culture or, do we teach culture through language?

It is good to try answering this question through an analysis of school systems and how humankind have transmitted the knowledge to children, from parents. School system as we know t today, took a long way to be developed and have had a large amount of criticism from every aspect of its functioning. Nonetheless, is one of the main and biggest budget needs when politicians and governors of many places round the world, defines how much is going to be spent on education, this includes not only teachers but maintenance of buildings and other personnel.

But culture and language are not only taught through school, it is also taught by our parents and in an indirect way while we grow up in the environment. People learn the dos and don’ts through interaction with people and sharing experiences during the life.

So, can we separate the two terms pointed above? Maybe no and must not be done. Culture is a big load of knowledge and the to be transferred is only through language. Language, as said, includes not only speech and spelling, it also includes other ways of communication such as corporal “language”, visual conveys and a compelling set of other indirect rules learnt through growing up.

An example of this can be seen on Colombian costumes such as pointing with lips to things. This has been demonstrated to be very particular and only doing in this context, when a Colombian tries to point a thing to a foreigner, he/she may not understand the gesture and instead would think that the person is trying to offer a kiss. Examples of this kind can be found in different cultures and the point of this is to show that culture and language cannot be separated.

Even with all of this said, serious bibliography such Swiderski (1993), points that language learning has the aim of teaching the culture.

In a personal context, English has opened door to a wider variety of knowledge that could not be achieved in any other way. So, learning another language is good for learning in general, but, the best way to do this, must be done through culture, with small bits of culture you can get more content than the one you could get from a single reading of a dictionary. Of course a good dictionary is a great tool to have at hand, but, culture can only be learnt through itself, watching programs or movies with heavy load of target culture, so the answer, the big answer is that none of the components can be separated (language and culture), and always remember that a second or third language is better learnt with culture.

Task 2 Collaborative activity

Step 2: Powtoon link

https://www.powtoon.com/s/dgidG0WwajB/1/m

Step 3: Link to the video interview

https://youtu.be/qgSkQPiunrU

Step 4 Video transcript

Topic of the interview

The role of the culture in the process of learning English

Date and time, it was performed

Saturday 27^th, 2020 at 8:20 a.m.

Place where it was performed

We did the interview through zoom platform; my interviewed was at home because of the lockdown.

Interviewed name

Cesar Augusto Miranda Morales

Profession

English professional teacher and professor. Graduated from Santiago de Cali University as Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages: English and French. He also speaks Portuguese.

Courses in charge:

He teaches to 6^th and 7^th grades at the same institution I work, Central School, here in El Cerrito – Valle. He also works for “Modern English Classes”, English institute. Works at Academic School in Buga – Valle.

Summary of the answers and comments

·         What do you think is the relationship between language and culture?

The teacher says than both things can exist separately, even though, one needs language in order to transmit and communicate culture. This includes traditions, customs, ways of thinking and manners also. This includes of course music, habits, etc. In our case, our mother tongue is Spanish, and we have different topic to express and ideas.

·         What is the influence of culture in the process of a foreign language process?

As an English teacher he has to use both, language and culture to give the ideas, the knowledge that is necessary to transmit and teach the ideas of the target culture. Making understand different people the wide variety of cultures is pretty difficult to do. The moment and the case are tied with the appropriate use of culture process. If you want to teach the language you need to teach how the people behaves and thinks in the target language to get a better understanding of context and culture itself.

·         Which cultural expressions do you know countries have through language?

Teacher said he is not the kind of person that would sit down and search for tons of idioms and phrases or any other punctual cultural expression such these, he would convey in searching or learning or using the appropriate language and expressions that are necessary to be understood, instead of a lot of different weird phrases and regional expressions. He talked about the traditional English teachers’ methods of memorizing and verb list to get a proficient level of vocabulary.

·         Why do you think is it important to have an oral tradition in a country?

It is one of the ways we can share the knowledge to different people from different country or places. If we want to know the customs of another department or country, one has to appeal to oral tradition to have access to things the are not written down in anywhere. To know properly a different culture or even the own culture, oral tradition is necessary.

·         What do you think, do we teach language using culture or do we teach culture using language?

Teacher thinks that this process is mostly personal, every teacher has its own way of teaching, and as English teachers, language teachers, our job is to teach culture, so we have to use the culture too. We understand better a language if we know that culture too. And explanation of this is necessary, such in the case of teaching the seasons for example.

·         Do you take into account culture in the strategies you use in your English classes? Can you give me some examples?

Teacher says that this question has been already answered by discussing the previous questions. He discusses about the use of seasons and puts and example of a friend of him that were talking about seasons in Colombia and how likely expressions have different meanings according to culture and context.

 

REFLECTION ABOUT THE ANSWERS OF THE INTERVIEWED

The previous speech with the teacher we did our initial discussing was really nurturing, since teacher Cesar has already a lot of experience teaching in a wide variety of contexts and populations. He had talked with foreigners and native speakers, discussed with them topics related to culture and language, so he was the best choose for this exercise. Learning is a very complex process, when it comes to language and culture acquisition, the complexity is even deeper because of all the nuances in the diversity of topics, ideas, customs, food, ways of expressions, manners, recipes, and so on. Discussing this with a more experience teacher is rewarding to know what to expect in the future development of the profession, the teacher profession. It is still difficult to define both terms, language and culture, but every day we discover new things related to those topics.

REFERENCES

Chan, W. M., Bhatt, S. K., Nagami, M., & Walker, I. (2015). Culture and Foreign Language Education: Insights from Research and Implications for the Practice. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. (pp. 1-19). Retrieved from http://bibliotecavirtual.unad.edu.co/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1045353&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site

Lantolf, J., Thorne, S. L., & Poehner, M. (2015). Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Development. In B. van Patten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 207-226). New York: Routledge. Retrieved form: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313795407_Lantolf_J_Thorne_S_L_Poehner_M_2015_Sociocultural_Theory_and_Second_Language_Development_In_B_van_Patten_J_Williams_Eds_Theories_in_Second_Language_Acquisition_pp_207-226_New_York_Routledge

Conclusion about Unit 1

As future language teacher, I have not reflected upon my duty of teaching culture attatched with my mission of forming competent people in a second language (even a third one if II learn another one), I have not reflected on the fact that I have to teach the language through its culture, and once you are on the path to learn another languange, you learn the whole cosmovision of its people, their costumes, their food, their way of life, everything is melted down in the concepto of the language itself.