By Prof. Jonathan
Acuña Solano
Thursday, September
4, 2014
Twitter: @jonacuso
Post 141
The teaching of culture in second
language acquisition is indeed an important, crucial task that needs to be
effectively achieved by both the instructor as well the learner since it can
have a quite fruitful ending for the students. It is then imperative that “the
teacher has to help students develop whatever skills are necessary to make
sense out of few facts” (Seelye, 1993) s/he is confronted with while learning a
foreign or second language or even living in a foreign social context. And
based on this simple life fact that thousands of individual experience on a
daily basis, language teachers are oftentimes questioning themselves when to
start teaching culture. There should not be any sort of questioning regarding
this issue; there ought to be only one simple answer.
When should culture be taught then?
“Culture should be taught when we have students to teach” (Seelye, 1993), and
there should not be any argument against this fact pointed out by H. Ned Seelye.
And though many language instructors complain that they lack time to teach
culture in their classrooms, that their pupils will eventually catch up with
the target culture, and that language is not extrinsically connected to
culture, all these are just merely lame excuses not to bridge the gap between
meaningful language learning and the target cultures that uses the language
that is being studied. When these two elements are not taught together,
language and culture, students are simply bound to make a lot of mistakes due
to misunderstandings and wrong value judgments mostly connected to one’s way of
seeing and experiencing the world.
Language instructors need to
comprehend their vital role in culture assimilation and understanding because
through language teaching, students can learn how to better deal with situation
beyond their cultural understanding of the target culture. We humans are not
isolated beings who lack contact with others and their views of life. We cannot
forget that cultural life started out in the ancient tribal groups and their
contact with other groups (Samovar, L., Porter, R., & McDaniel, E. 2010),
and from that moment on we deal with our neighboring cultures by means of
trade, exchanges, and the like. And at those pre-historical times, our
ancestors comprehended the need to understand their neighbors to make business
efficiently and coexist peacefully with them. And these lack of comprehension
gave birth to a great deal of known and unknown wars. So, what could have
changed all these centuries in terms of cultural understanding? Nothing, I
would suggest as a simplistic answer. Because as Confucius once pointed out,
“by nature men are nearly alike; by practice they get to be wide apart,”
humankind needs to learn how to bridge the gap that separates them.
Based on Samovar, L., Porter, R.,
& McDaniel, E. (2010), we are exposed to cultural exchanges every single
day. For this basic fact, intercultural contact is pervasive nowadays, and it
is something we cannot avoid. And since these cultural contacts cannot be
avoided at all, it is the language instructors’ duty to help individuals try to
understand each other in a more congruent way by keeping in mind that “culture
is seen to include everything people learn to do” (Seelye, 1993). When this is
fully comprehended, there will not be “unsuccessful attempts to coordinate the
teaching of language and culture” as Bishop (1960, quoted by Seelye, 1993) drew
our attention to.
Samovar, L., Porter, R., & McDaniel, E. (2010).
Communication between Cultures. Boston: Wadsworth
Cengage Learning
Seelye, H. (1993). Teaching Culture:
Strategies for Intercultural Communication. National Textbook
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