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10.02.21. ЗАБОНШИНОСИИ АМАЛӢ ВА РИЁЗӢ
10.02.21. ПРИКЛАДНАЯ И МАТЕМАТИЧЕСКАЯ ЛИНЕВИСТИКА
10.02.21. APPLIED AND MATHEMATICAL LINGUISTICS
UDA 4И (анг) LBC 81,2 (анг)
R. G. SARGSYAN P.N.ISLOMOVA
S.S.KHOLOV
THE IMPORTANCE OF INCLUDING CULTURE IN EFL TEACHING
Introduction
Often, in second language classrooms, little or no attention is given by a teacher or curriculum (including the Educational system) towards the identity of a student. The student enters the classroom with his own identity and culture. In order for the student to learn the second language he must feel that he is comfortable in the classroom and can express himself freely. However, the students tend to become confused when they are faced with the new culture of the second language. They now have to understand and accommodate this into their sense of identity and their culture, and this often leads to uncertainty. Furthermore, it results in the student feeling unsure as to where they belong in the community, as they will feel ‘out of place’.
Currently, we can bring for example English Language. English Language is the second language of many countries in the whole world. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Due to its spread, starting with the colonization period and continuing with the economic and political power of the U.S.A., it has been used for different purposes around the world such as education, commerce, tourism, and science. People all around the world continue to learn English to reach their different aims. A critical question arises in terms of English language teaching at this point, that is, whether to teach ‘culture’ along with English or not. The question of teaching ‘culture’ along with English has been discussed by some scholars from the fields of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics for nearly two decades.
As language is part of a culture as religion, language and culture are two inseparable entities. Therefore, language learning is at once a cultural learning. One’s mastery of the linguistic elements alone does not guarantee he/she will be able to communicate through a language. Mastering the cultural element is a must. This paper discusses various research findings and opinions on the integration of culture into the teaching of foreign language teaching. It aims to highlight the foundation, the existence, impact, and technical integration of cultural elements into the teaching of English as a foreign language. Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. One should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. Thus, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted... Culture...is the foundation of communication.
The Development of Cultural Teaching in SL/FL Teaching
Although the presence of cultural issues are relatively recent in the writings, researches, and forums of SL/FL education, a review of the SL/FL literature shows that cultural elements have practically been included even from the early phase of SL/FL teaching. "As language teachers we must be interested in the study of culture not because we necessarily want to teach the culture of the other country, but because we have to teach it”. In a more detailed way, the paper summarizes several reasons why language and culture are from the start inseparably connected:
(1) language acquisition does not follow a universal sequence, but differs across cultures;
(2) the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations;
(3) every society orchestrates the ways in which children participate in particular situations, and this, in turn, affects the form, the function, and the content of children's utterances;
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(4) caregivers' primary concern is not with grammatical input, but with the transmission of socio-cultural knowledge;
(5) the native learner, in addition to language, acquires also the paralinguistic patterns and the kinesics of his/her culture;
Finally, cultural learning is very effective to increase learners’ motivation which greatly affects every learning process. Culture classes do have a great role in achieving high motivation because most learners like culturally based activities such as singing, dancing, role playing, or doing research on other countries and peoples. This is reinforced by Hammerly (1982) that teaching about the target culture when teaching the target language piques the interest of students and acts as a motivator.
What is Culture?
The word culture has many different meanings. For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food. Language without culture is unthinkable, so is human culture without language. A particular language is a mirror of a particular culture. Defining culture into a single definition is very complicated, particularly in an increasingly international world. Nonetheless, the development of culture teaching in SL/FL education has led to a current understanding of culture, which will be briefly summarized here. According to Moran (2001), culture is “the great achievement of people as reflected in their history, social institutions, works of art, architecture, music and literature.”
Traditional methods of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom have been focused on formal culture and passive learning. Students do need both a geographical and historical perspective in order to understand contemporary behavior patterns but this can be done with “hands on” activities. In order to communicate effectively in the target language, foreign language students should be facilitated to feel and see foreign peoples and not just hear their language. To achieve that goal, cultural activities and objectives should be carefully organized and incorporated into lesson plans to enrich and inform the teaching content. The use of following materials and techniques for presenting culture in the classroom is widely recommended.
Poems and plays can also be included in foreign classroom. Both cultural content and meaning can be approached in them. Poems should be read aloud and explained holistically while teacher’s task is to “attempt to overcome students prejudice and lead students to consider all sides of an issue.”
Cultural Influence on Foreign Language Teaching
To understand the importance of culture we need to know to what extent cultural background knowledge influences language learning and teaching, and how can we take advantage of that influence. To account for the roles culture plays in language learning and teaching, it is necessary to demonstrate the functions it may perform in the components of language learning and teaching, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating.
Cultural influence on vocabulary
In foreign language learning particularly in training listening ability to understand better, learners often complain that although they spend lots of time in learning and practicing their ability of listening comprehension, their progress is not satisfactory. To achieve this end, they do everything what they can. Some, for example, buy tape recorders to facilitate their learning process in an attempt to improve their listening ability, and spend several hours in it every day. But when they meet new listening materials, they still can’t understand them. The
reason for this may be various, but some of them have been identified. Among them are their small vocabulary, weak grammar, and vague pronunciation. But a relatively more important reason is that they lack the necessary cultural background knowledge of the language they have learned. Listening is closely related to the culture, politics and economy of the target language.
In judging one’s listening ability, we are in fact considering his/her comprehensive ability, including the English level, intellectual range, analytical and imaginative ability, etc. We may have this kind of experience: when we are listening to something where the events involved are familiar to us, no matter what they are, e.g., news, reports, stories, lectures; or art, science, sports or economy, it is relatively easier for us to understand. Even if there are some new words in it, we
can guess the meaning in the light of the context. On the contrary, it will be difficult for us to understand, if the materials we are listening to are closely related to the cultural background knowledge we are not familiar with. Sometimes the materials may be easy and we can get the pronunciation of each word from the tape, but the lack of necessary cultural background knowledge may hinder our thorough understanding.
Teaching Materials for cultural awareness
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Various materials can be used in teaching culture in foreign language classes. Alan Durant lists nine sources of materials which he considers to be of great efficiency. The sources vary from interaction with members of the target culture, recorded testimony of members of the target culture, visits to the country, the country’s media, data from ethnographic fieldwork, historical and political data, surveys and statistics, heuristic contrasts and oppositions to fashions and styles from the target country. Literature, a very effective source of culture material, is missing here although this list is considered to be quite comprehensive. It is a common issue that materials used in language teaching convey cultural biases. It means that they implicitly express attitudes towards the target and learner’s own culture.
The teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing them:
V To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviours.
V To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, gender, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave.
V To help students to become more aware of conventional behaviour in common situations in the target culture.
V To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language.
V To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence.
V To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture.
V To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people.
Conclusion
On a practical note, culture teaching should allow learners to increase their knowledge of the target culture in terms of people’s way of life, values, attitudes, and beliefs, and how these manifest themselves or are couched in linguistic categories and forms. More specifically, the teaching of culture should make learners aware of speech acts, connotations, etiquette, that is, appropriate or inappropriate behavior, as well as provide them with the opportunity to act out being a member of the target culture. It’s very clear from the above discussion that culture and language are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture'. If any one of them is separated the other remains incomplete. In EFL or ESL class room the students should be taught English with the culture associated with it so that the students can acquire the target language with cultural background and correspond in real life situations. It is observed that many students, who have excellent academic performance in English subject, sometimes find it very difficult to correspond with native speakers or in real life situations. This might be the result of learning English without proper awareness of its culture. Therefore, the role of culture that it plays in teaching and learning of English as a foreign/ second language can’t be avoided while designing course for EFL/ ESL students and in the class room situations. The teachers should keep in mind the importance of culture and must have a prior knowledge of the cultural knowledge of the chapter or lesson he is going to teach the students. By way of conclusion, we should reiterate the main premise of the present study: the teaching of culture should become an integral part of foreign language instruction.
REFERENCES:
1. TESOL Symposium on Dual Language Education: Teaching and Learning Two Languages in the EFL Setting. September 23, 2005. Bogazi?i University, Istanbul,Turkey.
2. B. B. (Ed.), The Other Tongue: English across Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
3. G.L. Brooks. (1964). Varieties of English. London: Macmillan: 45.
4. Byram, M. & Flemming, M. (Eds.) 1998. Language Learning from an Intercultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Durant, Alan and Shepherd, Ifan D. H. 'Culture' and 'communication' in intercultural communication. European Journal of English Studies, 13 (2). pp. 147-162. ISSN 1382-5577, Essex, UK. 2009.
6. Jenkins J. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7. Jenkins, J. 2002. ‘A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language’. Applied Linguistics 23/1: 83-103
8. Kachru, B. B. 1986. The Alchemy of English. USA: University of Illinois Press.
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9. N. H. Homberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp.71-102). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Llurda, E. 2004. ‘Native teachers and English as an International language’. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14/3: 314-23.
11. McKay, S. 2003. ‘Teaching English as an international language: The Chilean context’. ELT Journal 57/2: 13948.
12. Modiano, M. 2001. ‘Linguistic imperialism, cultural integrity, and EIL’. ELT Journal 55/4.
13. Hector Hammerly 1982, 1986: Synthesis in (Second) Language Teaching: An Introduction to Linguistics, Volume 1 of the Series in Languistics (latest printing doesn't have the word "Second" in the title), 693 pp. (Blaine, Washington: Second Language Publications).
14. Patrick R. Moran (2001) Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, June 2002 — Volume 6, Number 1.
Эффективность использования элементов культуры в преподавании английскогоязыка как иностранного (EFL)
Ключевые слова: Культура и коммуникация, обучение второго языка/иностранного языка (SL / FL), овладение языком, прикладная лингвистика, социолингвистика, занятия английского языка как иностранный язык (EFL) или занятия английского языка как второй язык (ESL).
Статья рассматривает разные научные выводы и точки зрения по интеграции культуры в процесс обучения и преподавания иностранных языков. Она выявляет основы, существование, влияние и техническую интеграцию элементов культуры в обучении английскомуязыку как иностранному. Лингвисты и антропологи давно признали, что формы и виды использования данного языка отражают культурные ценности общества, в котором говорят на этом языке. Надо знать, что поведение и интонационные модели, которые естественны в обществе родного языка могут быть восприняты по-разному членами языкового общества изучаемого языка. Таким образом, для того, чтобы общение было успешным, использование языка должно быть связано с культурной средой.
The Importance of Including Culture in EFL Teaching
Keywords: Culture and communication, SL/FL education, language acquisition, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, EFL or ESL classroom.
This paper discusses various research findings and opinions on the integration of culture into the teaching of foreign language teaching. It aims to highlight the foundation, the existence, impact, and technical integration of cultural elements into the teaching of English as a foreign language. Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. They should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. Thus, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
Сведения об авторах:
Рузан Галстян Саргсян, доцент Политехнического университета Валенсии (Испания, Валенсия), E-mail: [email protected]
Исломова Парвина Наимовна, магистр лингвистики кафедры иностранных языков Института экономики и торговли Таджикского государственного университета коммерции (Республика Таджикистан, г. Худжанд), E-mail: [email protected]
Холов Саидмухиддин Саидмуродович, старший преподаватель кафедры перевода и грамматики английского языка факультета иностранных языков Худжандского государственного университета имени академика Б.Е.Еафурова (Республика Таджикистан, Худжанд), E-mail:
saidmuhiddin@yahoo. com Information about the authors:
Ruzan Galstyan Sargsyan, Associate Teacher, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. (Spain, Valencia). Email: [email protected]
Islomova Parvina Naimovna, MA in Linguistics, Foreign Languages Department, the Institute of Economy and Trade, Tajik State University of Commerce (Republic of Tajikistan, Khujand), E-mail: parvina2011 @gmail. com
Kholov Saidmuhiddin Saidmurodovich, Senior Lecturer at Translation and English Grammar Department, the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Khujand State University named after B.Gafurov (Republic of Tajikistan, Khujand), E-mail: [email protected]
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