Week 12 Reflection

For this weeks reflection I am going to write about teaching culture through CALL (since this is what the week was about). CALL can be used in many different ways to teach different cultures to students. It is also important to keep in consideration that the material you decide to use in the classroom does not give an essentialist view of culture, but that it gives a varied perspective and makes the students aware that not everyone from the target culture acts the same way just like in the culture they are from.
With those thoughts in mind one can use authentic materials form the internet, like news articles about or from the target culture, Youtube videos that describe some aspect of the target culture, online articles, etc. Another way the use CALL in order to expose the students to the target culture is through CMC. CMC like Skype, email, Google chat, etc. allows students to have direct contact with people from the target culture and allows them to ask questions and get a natives views from inside the culture in order to get a better all around view of the target culture and see how that culture differs and is similar to their own culture.
It is important that students are taught to think critically about the material they study and about the target culture that they have learned about so that they are able to realize that the culture is a fluid thing and is different for everyone in the target culture. One way to get this through to the students is to have them talk about their own culture as well and compare their own culture and their own views with that of the target culture and the views that they are exposed to through the class.
Culture is very important when learning a language because the language itself shows a lot about the culture that speaks it. It is impossible to separate culture and language completely so it is important that students learn both within a language classroom in order to learn how to function within that culture and to learn how to be proficient in the L2.