Culture and culture learning

Since the role of culture in foreign language instruction over the past decades has been
realized, the topic of teaching and learning culture has been emerged as a considerable
interest to educators and an important focus of modern language education.
Culture is an extremely complex phenomenon. Kramsch (1998) defines culture as
membership in a discourse community that share a common social space and history,
and common imaginings. Moreover, Liddicoat, Papademetre, Scarino, & Kohler (2003)
regard culture as
A complex system of concepts, attitudes, values, beliefs, conventions, behaviors,
practices, rituals, and lifestyle of people who make up a cultural group as well as
the artefacts they produce and the institution they create. (p.45)
With respect to views of culures, there are two different models. The earlier sees culture
as a static entity constituted of accumulated, classifiable, observable thus teachable and
learnable facts. In this view, the connection between language and culture is not
recognized (Liddicoat A. J., 2002). Additionally, cultural elements are merely transmitted
to learners and the constantly growing nature of culture seems to be ignored. In constrast,
the recent modern models view culture as a dynamic and variable one. It implies that
culure never remains constantly, but its meaing is continuously being constructed via
human interaction and communication. Language in this perspective might serve both
complicated functions: a medium for culure and a shaper of it. Language and culture are
integral to one another. The structure of language and the ways it is used reflect the
norms and values that members of a culture share. However, they also determine how
those norms and values shared because language is the means through which culure is
transmitted.
Many writers assume the inextricable and inseparable relationship between culture and
language. Mitchell and Myles (2004) claim that language and culure are not separate,
but are acquired together, with each providing support for the development of the other.
Liddicoat et al (2003) also asserts that culture and language interact with each other in a
way culture connects to all levels of language use and structures. The independent bond
between culture and language probably fosters the importance of culture learning, which
is defined as
the process of acquiring culture-specific and culture-general knowledge, skills,
attitudes required for effective communication and interaction with individuals
from other cultures. It is a dynamic, developmental, and on-going process which
engages the learner cognitively, behaviorally and affectively (Paige, Jorstad, Siaya,
Klein, & Colby, 2003, p. 177).

Therefore, in this newer trend, learners are required to get involved actively in culture
learning instead of only learning cultural information of the target language passively.
They have to have knowledge of their own culture and an understanding of their own
culturally shaped behavior.

Settings of culture learning
Naturalistic settings
It happens in the context of learners studying abroad where they have abundant
opportunities to be exposed to that environment. To come up with the impacts of
studying abroad on language and culture learning, there have been a lot of studies. Carroll,
(1967) conducts a study on 2782 college seniors from different campuses around the U.S
and found that two vital elements of language listening skills were the amount of time
studying abroad and the age of student. In the study of Meara (1994), during their study
abroad, their reading and writing skills did not seem to be improved, but a half of them
felt their oral-aural skills had enhanced. Findings of Amstrong (1984) indicated that a
study abroad experience positively affects language study later, promotes favorable
attitude toward other cultures and increase cultural awareness. A strong relationship
between successful intercultural communication and personal traits such as cultural
empathy, flexibility, organization skill,s and superior linguistic skills is shown (Hannigan,
1990) but his study failed to demonstrate a causal relationship between intercultural
experience and development of these qualities.
Besides significant influences of pverseas learning experience on culure learning like
greater self-confidence, global awareness, cultural self-awareness, and so on, the research
of Freed (1991) displayed another side that studying abroad experience can also
negatively dominate the persons viewpoint on the new culture, impede language
acquisition and culure learning.
Structured settings
This formal structured setting is culture learning in the classroom, which has had a lot of
theories about language and culture learning, yet a few empirical dealing with it. There
are totally different points of view on classroom culture learning. Krashen (1982) says
that classroom setting does not lead to language or culture acquisition, but only learning
of rules. According to Ellis (1992), discourse in the classroom is strictly controlled by the
teacher, who determines who speaks, how long they speak, when they start and stop.
Since everything is done by the teacher, even error correction, students might have little
opportunities to learn how to intergrate into communication process.
An opposing view by people who are in favor of classroom setting argues that there may
be little difference between learning in the classroom versus learning in a natural setting
because introductory level students can not be competent enough to communicate well to
take advantage of naturalistic environment (Van Lier, 1988). Whats more, Mitchell
(1988) also hypothesizes that classroom is a non-threatening environment where students
feel free to make mistakes without any lasting influences. On the contrary, if a student
studying overseas makes a mistake, it can have enduring consequences. These advantages
they benefit from coassroom can stimulate them to make sense of the language and
culture.
References
Amstrong, G. K. (1984). Life after study abroad: A survey of undergraduate academic
and career choices. The Modern Language Journal , 1-6.
Carroll, J. B. (1967). Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors
near graduation from college. Foreign Language Annals , 1, 131-151.
Ellis, R. (1992). The classroom context: An acquisition-rich or an acquisition-poor
environment? In C. Kramsch & S. McConnell-Ginet (Eds.), Text and context (pp.
171-186). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company.
Freed, B. F. (Ed.). (1991). Foreign language acquisition research and the classroom.
Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company.
Hannigan, T. P. (1990). Traits, attitudes and skills that are related to intercultural
effectiveness and their implications for cross-cultural training: A review of the
literature. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 89-111.
Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford:
Pergamon.
Liddicoat, A. J. (2002). Static and dynamic views of culture and intercultural language
acquisition. Babel , 4-11.
Liddicoat, A. J., Papademetre, L., Scarino, A., & Kohler, M. (2003). Report on
intercultural language learning. Commonwealth of Australia .
Meara, P. (1994). The year abroad and its effects. Language Learning Journal , 32-38.
Mitchell, R. (1988). Communicative language teaching in practice. London: Centre for
Information on Language Teaching.
Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (2004). Second language learning theories. London: Arnold.
Paige, R.M., Jorstad, H.L., Siaya, L., Klein, F., & Colby, J. (2003). Culture learning in
language education: A review of the literature. In D.L. Lange & R.M. Paige (Eds.),
Culture as the core: Perspectives on culture in second language learning (pp.
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Van Lier, L. (1988). The classroom and the language learner. London: Longman.


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