1. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. Effective activities for teaching culture in your classroom; 2. Materials to use when teaching culture. You will be able to: 1. Implement fun, meaningful and effective activities into your lessons to teach culture to your students.

2. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WHEN SHOULD YOU TEACH CULTURE? As soon as you start teaching language, you should start teaching culture. As Deborah Peck stated so bluntly “Without the study of culture, language instruction is inaccurate and incomplete.” You can integrate culture into your lessons in three different ways. The first way is remedial—you teach a cultural item when students ask about it or when they make a mistake with it. The second way is planned and integrated—the cultural target is integrated throughout the whole lesson. The third is planned and targeted—the culture target is conveyed in a short activity in the course of the lesson but is not related to the lesson language target.

3. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute RemedialA student burps loudly in class and does not say “Excuse me.” You stop the class and quickly remind everyone what they should say and do when they burp. The discussion can be expanded to other involuntary behaviours such as sneezing, coughing and sniffing. Planned and Integrated You plan an entire lesson on job interviews, including why they are used, the values behind them, the behaviours and the language used. Planned and targeted You plan a short, fun, high energy activity to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

4. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WHAT CULTURE SHOULD YOU TEACH? We tend to focus our culture teaching efforts on the products of the culture—the food, the festivals, the clothes, and the music. Take a look at any English language textbook and you will be able to verify this. There will be colourful pictures of English cultural products on almost every page. While the products of a culture are easy and fun to teach, we also need to take our teaching about culture deeper—into the behaviour and ideas. If we fail to teach our students the cultural behaviours and values that go with the language they are learning, we are doing them a grave disservice. We are setting them up for failure when they try to take the language they have learned into the real context in which the language is used. With all the culture you teach, therefore, you should be aware of whether you are teaching products, behaviours or values. And you should make sure you cover all three layers of culture.

5. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHING CULTURE As you read or try each activity, think about what layer of culture it targets—products, behaviours or values, or some combination of this.

6. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute MATERIALS TO USE WHEN TEACHING CULTURE USE OF VISUALS Use of pictures to present typical images of a culture, either the products or the behaviours that are unique to or representative of that culture.

7. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute MATERIALS TO USE WHEN TEACHING CULTURE CULTURAL ARTIFACTS Each class, one or two students bring in an artifact that they have found from the target culture. They present the artifact to the rest of the class. The artifact may be a utensil, a piece of clothing, or a tool. They may bring in the real object or a picture. In this activity students are acting like cultural anthropologists.

8. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute MATERIALS TO USE WHEN TEACHING CULTURE USE OF AUTHENTIC MATERIALS Authentic materials to use include TV shows, TV advertisements, movies, print advertisements, magazines, newspapers, menus, brochures, and so on. USE OF FILM There are an endless number of culture activities which can be based on film. They are all based on the idea of “noticing”, one of the steps to increasing cultural knowledge. Students watch the film and take note of any or all of: roles, relationships, paralinguistics, products, behaviours, and ideas. The teacher should create a “noticing” worksheet, that directs students to particular items to watch for.

9. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute MATERIALS TO USE WHEN TEACHING CULTURE USE OF LITERATURE The following examples of cultural information can be found in literature. Objects or products that exist in the culture. Proverbs, idioms, formulaic expressions of cultural values Social structures, roles and relationships Customs, rituals, traditions, festivals Beliefs, values, superstitions Political, historical and economic background Institutions Taboos Metaphorical and connotative meaning Humour Genre

10. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 2, ensuring that you are incorporating “culture” into your lesson plans. Task Journals can be submitted by Sunday, March 8 th via email to jennifer@llinstitute.com (preferred), or printed and handed in.jennifer@llinstitute.com