Teaching Culture in Context: Experiences from the Tajiki Language Classroom

1. Teaching Culture in Context:Experiences from the Tajiki Language Classroom Presenters: Christopher W. Lemelin Foreign Service Institute/School of Language Studies Karim Khodjibaev Foreign Service Institute/School of Language Studies

2. Teaching Culture in Context:SomeBackground from Different Pond, Different Fish, no. 10 (March 2004)

3. What do we(at FSI/SLS)mean when we say culture? • Subjective culture • BBV culture (Behaviors, Beliefs, Values) • “Practices” (Standard 2.1 of Standards for FL Learning) Foreign Service Institute / School of Language Studies Big-C Culture vs. little-c culture • Objective culture • MLA culture (Music, Literature, Arts) • “Products” (Standard 2.2 of Standards for FL Learning) • Foreign Service Institute / • School of Professional and Area Studies

4. • The Sense of Culturally Conditioned Behavior • The Interaction of Language and Social Variables • Conventional Behavior in Common Situations • Cultural Connotations of Words and Phrases • Evaluating Statements about a Society • Researching Another Culture • Attitudes toward Other Cultures Seelye’s Seven Goals of Cultural Instruction H. Ned Seelye, Teaching Culture (Chicago, IL: National Textbook Company, 1984)

5. Galloway’s Convention Clusters Function-determined conventions vs. Context-determined conventions

6. Stages of a Student’s Cultural Proficiency (adapted from Bennett, Durocher)

7. Methods suggested by Omaggio Hadley • Mini-lecture • Native Informants • Audio materials • interviews, dialogs • Video materials • dialogs, staged encounters, film, YouTube • Role play Alice Omaggio Hadley, Teaching Language in Context (Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle, 1993)

8. Integration strategies suggested by Lafayette(some things to keep in mind) • Plan cultural activities and integrate them into lesson (don’t teach culture “on-the-fly”) • Use target language for cultural learning (don’t separate culture learning from language learning) • Use grammar content with cultural context (use appropriate cultural topic as basis for language practice) • Teach vocabulary around a cultural context (use cultural clusters of words, teach connotative meanings) • Use experiential learning (not “facts only”) (encourage student curiosity, don’t just say—do it this way) Robert Lafayette, “Integrating the Teaching of Culture into the FL Classroom” (NECTFL, 1988)