In Reply to: continuing.... posted by Alexis on April 26, 1999 at 21:38:40:
: Since I'm not a native speaker of my second lanuage, I would try to bring in
: native speakers and expose the students to the language as spoken by natives. I
: agree with Kramsh that culture cannot be separated from anything, and that context
: and culture must be considered by the teacher and learned from the very beginning.
: And I would teach students that second language learning is important even if you
: won't use it to get a job, that it will expand your understanding of other cultures
: and give you more insight into the rest of the world and can help you understand
: English because so many of our words come from other languages. I would try to
: incorparate many of the methods described by Omaggio-Hadley (except perhaps the
: Silent Method, which seems like it would work but only if you had forever to
: learn the language and didn't have a strict curriculum to follow); my professors
: and teachers in high school and college have used a mix of reading comprehension,
: listening, visual, and writing excercises to promote proficiency. I would give
: students opportunities to explore a topic about the L2 culture that he/she is
: interested in, and have the student share the information with the class. I wouldn't
: force them to speak in class but have informal conversations in class, maybe
: comparing and contrasting aspects of the two cultures.
: And as always I would emphasize the benefits of study abroad for understanding of
: culture and exposure to native speakers (certainly when your French mother tells
: you that she is serving noodles with no sauce for dinner but offers you ketchup
: to pour on them because she thinks that Americans must eat ketchup with everything,
: you learn something about the culture). I couldn't stress this enough to my students.