Language and Culture

As it has been perceived culture is everywhere, but principally in a second or foreign language classroom because language and culture cannot be separated. Each one reflects the other and according to Moran; “language is a product of culture” (47). Therefore, we as teachers of a foreign or second language must teach the language as a reflexion of culture. Students need to have a wide world view, so they can recognize the differences and similarities that exist among cultures. Of course, that recognition must be done without creating biases. It is appealing how teachers do not know their students’ perceptions about cultures and principally that one about the target culture of the language they are learning. I say this because that is what happened to me. I was totally sure that all my students accept and like the target culture based on what I observe in my classroom. However, once I asked them some questions about the target culture they made me be aware of how wrong I was and of how much I failed as a teacher. To illustrate, in my English classes, my students have demonstrated a high interested in learning English. They have tried to develop their skills by having a great attitude and disposition to learn. Therefore, from those observations I thought my students to be open-minded and tolerant toward the target culture. However, in a questionnaire related to American culture, they certainly agreed with loving the language and being interested in living in the United States in order to improve their language abilities. Nevertheless, most of them have agreed with stereotyping Americans as dirty people. They also perceive Americans as people who only eat junk food and consider other as inferiors. That means that as their teacher I must teach them not to generalize people and to be more tolerant and open-minded by developing activities in which they can learn from other cultures. I failed because I did not integrate culture when teaching English. Most classes were principally focused on developing the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) and culture was almost totally apart. Consequently, I encourage teachers not to forget about teaching culture while teaching a language because ,on the contrary, we are denying students to have a better perception of the world and making them unaware of what is happening in all around it. It is our challenge and we can keep students go through an better acculturation process which as stated by William R. Acton and Judith Walker de Felix is “the gradual adaptation to the target culture without necessarily forsaking one’s native language identity” (20).