Culture in Second Language Teaching            Elizabeth Peterson and Bronwyn Coltrane.CAL Digest Dec. 2003
see article   http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0309peterson.html
 

Positive Criticism           
In their article, "Culture in Second Language Teaching", Peterson and Coltrane present some reasonable arguments on why culture needs to be taught alongside the teaching of language. This key point may seem obvious as many teachers probably already adopt this practice in their language teaching. However, they may only teach it implicitly in that customs effecting appropriate use of language may be a necessary component of the linguistic forms. "The forms and uses of the language reflect the cultural values of society", the authors state. The authors suggest that culture be taught explicitly as a separate and essential component of language as it gives student  a clearer focus of the necessity of cultural conventions when using language and adds a important and motivational dimension to their language learning. This is important because the very learning of culture may spark learners interest and a greater understanding of  the forms and conventions of the language.  More importantly , Coltrane and Peterson  add that no prejudgements should be made  when teaching culture, so as not to imply any value differences between  the target culture  and and that of the students. This is a particularly crucial point made by the authors, as it is important that no sense of cultural imperialism is being forced, implicitly or explicitly, on the learners. This could interfere with the learners willingness to maintain an interest in the target culture or give them a feeling of cultural inferiority.

 

  Negative Criticism
On the other hand, Some of the authors claims lack sufficient evidence and elaboration. When talking about the importance of teaching culture in language teaching, the authors claim that "learners need to be aware of culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests etc. "More specifically, teachers must teach these sociolinguistic forms explicitly, rather than implicitly. Peterson and Coltrane cite the example of the two forms of "you", in French - tu (informal) and vous (formal) and a request - "hey you come here" to show how different forms are used depending upon the context or relationship of the the two people talking. These examples however are to me, only an implicit part of teaching language, since you must obviously explain the "context" when teaching these forms. No further explicit elaboration is needed when teaching such forms. Explicit cultural-linguistic norms are in fact quite complicated and are based on detailed knowledge of history, common usage related to situation, attitude, the underlying meaning of the message the speaker wants to convey and many other factors. These are not something you can teach or learn in a few easy lessons, but take years of study and immersion in the target language culture. Hence the authors explanation of how to teach "explicit" culture, seems lacking in sufficient elaboration to show the true complexity of "sociolinguistic" understanding of another's language. A more detailed  example(s) of explicit culture is/are needed to help the reader make  practical use of such ideas in language teaching- learning.


In addition, the authors often take a rather simplistic or one sided view of some "strategies for teaching language and culture". In this section the authors state that literature of the target language can be used to teach culture because " they are replete with with cultural information and evoke memorable reactions for readers". They cite an example of using a poem to make students remember cultural information about the country Cote D'Ivoire. This, however, may not always be a suitable way for many  learners. Firstly, many learners are not interested in poetry even in their own language, let alone the target language, so as a teaching tool for culture, literature may be fairly useless. Also, the authors don't seem to consider the complexity of language forms, not to mention the implicit hidden meaning in much  literature, which require not only a high level  of language, but a high level of  cultural norms and customs. Hence, the use of literature, though seemingly ideal as a "cultural tool", may have limited practical use in language teaching. I had tried to use a poem myself in a high level Englsh class, but we became bogged down in explanation, both connotative and denotative , of vocabulary and phrases, before we could even think of examining cultural meanings and explanations.