Monday, February 2, 2009
Reading Reflection
While I was reading, I was surprised with the content of the MCM. As, last night, my friend and me were discussing the role of culture in learning of the language. We were agreeing on some pointes but disagreed on others. For example, he was saying the Englishe should be taught with culture to every one. I was agreeing that it is important and very effective to teach english with culture; however, the needs of the learners can ditermin how much they need to go deep into English learning. For example, in MCM it says "Although attaining linguistic proficiency is essential for learners to be considered communicatively competent, particularly in the case of ESL learners, this is not sufficient." (p. 443). The point is there are millions of EFL learners who may never need to converse with native speakers or may never have the chance to go to an English speaking community. Thus, they niether may have interest to learn that culture nor they may need to. However as for those who learn English for professional purposes, they must learn English and be aquainted to its culture.
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4 comments:
I think the problem with "teaching culture to everyone" is also that different people need different instruction in terms of culture. A student going to do postgraduate study in an Ivy League university and a student going to England to work on a farm need very different information, although it all falls under a general heading of "English-language culture".
Hi, Mariya, I agree with you on the point of different needs. It's true that American culture differs from British cutlure in a way even though they're under the heading of English language.
I agree cutural learning has to be taylored to the needs and goals of the student just like language learning.
You make an excellent point, Adib. There are two aspects present here, I think. On the one hand, you're right, perhaps there is no need to explicitly teach culture to EFL students who may never interact with native English speakers. On the other hand, I suspect that it is impossible to teach a language without also indirectly teaching its culture because the culture is encoded in the language.
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