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Sunday, May 11, 2014

Culture Learning Dimensions

Last week you read the article "Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Language Classroom" by Jerrold Frank where he describes 5 culture learning dimensions. You also went over seven culture learning models created by different authors. Please post your reflection on this. These questions are a guide for that.
What did you learn last week? What caught your attention? Was was interesting?

14 comments:

  1. Hello professor Last week we can read about "Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Language Classroom" by Jerrold Frank where he describes 5 culture learning dimensions.
    I can learn the following
    The self as cultural
    When all people are members of at least one culture. Whether or not we realize it, the culture we belong to affects how we think, interact, communicate, and transmit knowledge from one generation to another
    The elements of culture
    Elements of culture refer to things like the beliefs, values, customs, products, and the
    Communication styles of a given culture or society. Examples of surface culture, sub-surface culture and deep culture.
    Intercultural phenomena (culture-general learning)
    Intercultural phenomena include culture shock, cultural adaptation, cultural adjustment, and the fact that people from other cultures may interpret similar situations differently.
    Particular cultures (culture-specific learning)
    When we define specific cultural communities, we focus on the elements of a particular culture. These elements can include history, geography, and political systems, but more importantly, an understanding of the particular characteristics of a society
    Acquiring strategies for culture learning
    In this dimension we were visited by Sarah, where we can ask some question about her religion, family, profession, culture and others where we can appreciate that she does not have a religion and she visited many countries and know different cultures. For this reason the strategies include having students learn about a culture from native informants, develop their cultural observation skills, and learn about the culture through authentic materials associated with that culture.
    Finally the most interesting for me was where I can learn about Brown’s “Stages of Acculturation”
    Acculturation is the process of becoming adapted to a new culture. It is a reorientation of thinking and feeling is necessary. Therefore, a person's worldview, self-identity, systems of thinking, acting, feeling and communicating can be disrupted by a change from one culture to another and is more easy learn language of a similar cultures than different cultures.
    That’s all

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  3. Hello profesor
    Reading “Raising cultural awareness in the English language classroom”, the most interesting for me and what calls my attention was The Process of Adapting to a new culture that is called Acculturation and his four stages: excitement, culture shock, recovery and adaptation. I could notice that this process can be applied for any context, such as teaching, traveling, learning and so on. Because in any case when try something new, at first we tend to overlook the negative and see only the new, positive, fresh and exciting. Then we start to make unfair comparisons between the old within the new. After that we feel more comfortable with what is new. Finally we will adapt and accept the new thing (culture, language, university, etc). in this way I could notice the importance of this process and how it could help us to improve in some way when we have to face these types of situations.
    Also I could learn that to take account that cultures are so different and we have to be careful with our behavior with one each other. Besides we have to be a part of chance and not to be hidden in our bubble. Because as we are human beings are essential to know different cultures, it does not matter if it is not too far away from home. Because that is acculturation; the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct.

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  4. Comment about Sara´s coming
    I would love visiting Sara because I could learn a lot from American culture. I could also dispel many doubts, as the stereotype of Homer Simpson. Sara`s fraternity showed in class was perfect to not feel embarrassed in her presence. I would love to repeat his visit as it was very beneficial for us, in particular for me! ""

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  5. hello professor,

    1.- What did learn fron the culture?
    I learnt about theculture it is very diferent all have beliefs, traditions, attitudes, thought and others.
    All people can share ideas and thought the most important there is the communication that people have a same language they will understand about the culture to meet someone of a different culture is difficult, I would have to know to the person that he thinks or does, then I would have to communicate with that person so also I would share my experience beliefs and traditions, about my own culture.
    2.- What did you learn from Sara?
    I learnt about her many things, her experience in Bolivia was surprising first she shared a Little about her culture.
    I can see the expresión that she had. She said Bolivian people are good and she knew to one person here in Bolivia, also she likes the bolivian food, moreover her language was very fluent and perfect.
    I think about it I should live in other country to know about the culture first I believe the language is the most important in the communication with other people so I should learn a lot about the language as English.
    Now I talk about a model. This model is from Gochenour and Janeway :Cross- Culture Interaction.
    This model is very interesting there are seven steps
    The first four stages are essential survival elements people should establish contact and essential communication, be accepted, observe and sort out meanings and the “bridge” is a critical juncture, where most culture learners to stop and not continue then they can accept or not the role of the host society, while the latter three stages derive from a conscious decisión to change oneself where learners are who take the decisión to know meaningful relationships within the host culture.

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  6. Hello professor.
    Reading “Raising cultural awareness in the English language classroom” was quite interesting for me. Even though, we have shared some information before. It is a never-ending topic; right? The most interesting fact for me was The Process of Adapting to a new culture. Because it includes the benefits, and disadvantages a person deals with throughout his life in the process of adapting into a new culture. Of course, the four stages that are related to this part of the topic, such as: excitement, culture shock, recovery and adaptation are all important during the process. The same process that can be adapted these contexts: teaching, traveling, and learning. Since we know what happens when we begin at something new, at first we tend to overlook the negative facts and see only the new, positive, fresh and exciting. Then we start to make unjust comparisons between the old within the new. After that we feel more comfortable with what is new. Finally we can adapt and accept the new thing culture, language or university. So, noticing about these caught my attention. Well to conclude, what was interesting for me was, how helpful can be, knowing about the acculturation process. Since one person as a new member of a cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviors of this new culture. I think, acculturation can be reciprocal that is to say…the dominant group also adopts patterns typical of the minority group or in this case the new person who shares things in common with the rest of social groups and institutions.
    This is all I can say about the topic. I hope you get better soon!!!

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  7. About Sara`s visit last week. Truly I was…kind of nervous. At the beginning I did not know what to ask. For me it was surprising how she explained herself about the impressions our country and culture caused to her. The stories she told us. How she start her carrier, the decisions she took at the moment of arriving to a new country. I could understand very well her speech. She really tried to answer our questions. It was a nice visit!!!

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  8. María Eugenia Quispe Hello profesor
    I think than the use of cultural informants strategy in the class is very interesting and important. Thank the vitisit of Sara we could learning more about different characteristic of other culture. We could ask many doubts about her culture. This activity helped to encourage the knowledge about culture.
    About models of culture learning about different authors I learnt many aspects, characteristic of it. The increasing awareness, it refers felt, understanding of learning. In that the participation must be reinforced by rewards that matter to the participant. In this the ability to learn and change is crucial. In other words the understanding differents characteristic of the other culture is important. also the process of the culture learning depends on the attitudes and intentions of the learners. The intercultural learning process is the process features shifts in understanding and attitudes toward the other culture and adds the importance of behaviors as learners approch the decisión about four options for adjustment: assimilation, adaptation, biculturalism and multiculturalism. The acculturation is the process of becoming adapted to another culture, it based on the culture shock experience and the process of recovering from adapt to the new culture. Another important aspect is intercultual sensitivity it process refers movement from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativity; the ethnocentrism refers the center of the universe is only own culture (my culture is the best). But the ethnorelativity is the undertanding that there are many views of the universe imply there are different culture diferents way to think in the world.for engaged these the learner needs to develop self awareness and consciously invole the attitude required to change. The reflecting about these models of culture learning is important to improve the knowledge about culture.

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  9. Corina Susana Quispe Kantuta
    Something that really shocked to me, was learning about Aculturation, which is a process by which people adapt to a new different culture.
    About the seven models of culture learning, the one that I like the most was "Intercultural Sensitivity" by Milton Bennet which is a process iunn which the learner goes from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativity. It means that the learner stops seeing his own culture as the center of the universe and starts to recognize that there are other cultures with different points of view.

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  10. Reading “RAISING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM”
    The most interesting for me was: Acculturation that is the process of adapting to a new culture and it´s stages_ *Excitement, *Culture shock, *Recovery and *Adaptation.
    Making a comparisson with other situations I realize that these stages can be also found in other experiences like starting the university, a new subject, a new job, etc.
    Following the four stages when we start a new activity:
    At the beginning we are excited about starting or trying something new and we just take into account the positive aspects (*Excitement) then we realize that there are negative aspects too, comparing with our prior knowledge and thinking that it (the previous experiences) was better afterward we start accepting the new experience and finally we accept or adapt the new situation.
    About “MODELS OF CULTURAL LEARNING”
    I like the one proposed by Milton Bennett, “Intercultural Sensitivity”
    Intercultural sensitivity is a process that entails learners movement from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativity in which the student goes from seeing his or her own culture as the center of the universe (an egocentric way of thinking) to seeing that there are many views of the universe. This model is represented by six stages divided in two groups *Ethnocentric Stages (Denial_Defense_Minimization) and *Ethnorelative Stages (Acceptance_Adaptation_Integration). Each of these stages is represented by a particular attitude or outlook toward cultural differences of the learner.

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  11. Hello professor,
    Well. How we know the foreign language has a direct relation with culture, so when we will be teachers we’ll have different doubts about what kind of approach to take to teach our students. Nowadays there different models every model with different views, of course, but the model of Michael Paiges seems the most actual and this has more similarities with other models such as the Iceberg model (Patrick Moran) that we learned in the classroom. For me this model is easy to explain and easy to understand.
    • First the self as cultural means activate the culture antenna in other words to be aware of different elements of their culture like “what people think, make, and do”. The role like a teacher should be guide to the students think about their own culture and make connections across cultures while studying English.
    • The elements of culture refer to provide a framework to integrate the philosophical perspectives, the behavioral practices, and the products into the student and through this tool try to help students to conceptualize elements of culture.
    • Intercultural phenomena refer to the main goal Adaptation, adapt ting to a new culture called “acculturation”.
    • Particular culture, Hall’s theory of high and low context cultures helps us understand how characteristics of a given culture affect communication, how high and low context can create differences into the communication.
    • Acquiring strategies, these strategies refer to be aware, curious, to be cultural collections, quest web, journals and informants to have a complete understanding about foreign culture.
    • To conclude I would like to finish with a brief part from the text “Raising Cultural Awareness…”, that says “People from different cultures might not only communicate in different ways but also experience a situation differently”, I could understand through this that not all is speaking to know about different culture fate living as well.

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  12. First of all, in the context of cultural awareness i would like to say that we have to understand what culture refers to.
    Language is culture, it is what you can see, hear, and touch: its artifacts, products, and rituals based on certain beliefs, norms, and attitudes. the most basic values of any culture.
    Besides, in a classroom where the teacher has the toughest role of leading and helping students connect to the target culture, raise their awareness of cultural difference and improve their communicative competence, based on elementos of culture i mean the five perspectives, however, there are other aspects such as cultural lecarning whichever is completly diferent due to laguage competence in a foreign language is not enough to be considered competent.
    Every single minut i spend itime n the classroom im aware of the lack of practicing makes us no to be ready for the real life in which we do not how to survive be ause we do not know much about the language we acquire.

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  13. Well my opinion about the Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Language Classroom" by Jerrold I think the main concept is that It could be argued that an integral part of learning a foreign language is acquiring some familiarity with the culture associated with it. And the next part so important .
    The elements of culture Elements of culture refer to things like the beliefs, values, customs, products, and the communication styles of a given culture or society.
    I give them a Little summarize about most important elements Intercultural phenomena ; Intercultural phenomena include culture shock, cultural adaptation, cultural adjustment.
    Particular cultures ;¸when we define specific cultural communities
    Cultural collection ;to establish a collection of cultural information in a variety of formats
    Cultural “informants” it is Another strategy is to invite native speakers to note different definition about culture that is mention in that text by Jerrold Frank
    And another main idea is Cultural learning can be difficult to address in the English language classroom. Simple mastery of the linguistic forms of a language is not enough for learners to be considered competent in the target language.

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