For ESL teachers at all levels, an increase in the diversity of their students has problematized the notion of what is expected, as well as what is possible to teach students about culture. The frequently overlooked value in this situation is that increasing numbers of classrooms can benefit from the varied ideas, experiences, and perspectives now present in any given class. This diversity can enhance students’ learning development due to the creative avenue it opens up for teachers and students to explore. Creating a sense of a shared global community by focusing on the diversity found within an ESL classroom can enhance student motivation and lead to better language skills through increased interaction. Mckay’s (2003) concept of incorporating students’ unique experiences and culture into daily lesson plans to cultivate more meaningful interaction among students is a model that teachers in both ESL and foreign language instruction are exploring. Before looking at specific activities useful for calling on and examining student expertise and cultural knowledge, an exploration of the evolving perceptions of the role of culture in Western classrooms will provide the framework from which the practical activities arise.

Models of Culture

An important first step in implementing lessons and developing a classroom milieu based on the cultures present in the room is to consider what a classroom would look like without an explicit focus on student cultural contributions. An acculturation model of classroom culture instruction as described by Kubota (1999) specifically describes this scenario. In this model, students are seen as having a cultural deficit, that is, they lack knowledge of the target culture, and any previously learned knowledge and skills interfere with their ability to learn the new target culture. The teacher is the source of target culture knowledge and therefore responsible for disseminating all information in the class; in short, teachers must fill a void because students are perceived as not having the right kind of cultural knowledge.

The pluralist model, on the other hand, requires an acceptance of all cultures present in the classroom without question (Kubota, 1999). This approach sees teachers accepting rhetorical structures that do not match that of the host institution in an effort to respect student culture. This model, too, fails to adequately address all of the aspects necessary in an ESL classroom as teachers are tasked with preparing students to perform in an environment that is different from their own. Placing the students’ culture on a pedestal and never pointing out how the target culture differs from that of students’ means students will not understand the expectations placed on them in a mainstream or university classroom.

The space in which target culture and student culture interact ideally is glimpsed in Mckay (2003), where the purpose of English instruction is not a process of helping students understand a language and culture, but one of giving students the ability to express their own ideas through English. The approaches below seek to offer teachers a practical method of valuing each student’s culture as part of a larger whole so that all students benefit from the collected wisdom and diversity of the class and understand how the aspects of the target culture they encounter fit into this broad perspective.

Application and Activities

Culture can and should be incorporated into every classroom no matter the proficiency level or targeted skill. The following techniques, tasks, and activities can be modified to fit any class or any level depending on the classroom and instructor.

Spelling: Investigating Cultural Impact Through Etymology

An approach that integrates culture into a spelling class or a module of a writing or reading class can be found in focusing on words that the English language has borrowed from other languages. Introducing the history and meaning behind the use and spelling of words provides students with a deeper understanding of the word and can help students make inferences about words they may not know how to spell. Teaching the origin of a word and its spelling is not only important in order to deduce the spelling of an unknown word, it is also important to the students whose first languages may have influenced English. The following list of words could be useful for this kind of cultural/linguistic lesson:

Dutch: blink, booze, dope (“drugs” or “cool”), leak, snack, wink

Japanese: edamame, emoji, futon, haiku, honcho, karaoke manga, sushi, tofu

Chinese: feng shui, ketchup, soy, tea, zen

Arabic: alcohol, algebra, average, candy, caravan, cotton, crimson, garbage, giraffe, guitar, hazard, hookah, hummus, jar, lemon, magazine, Mecca, orange

When students are aware of the effects their first language may have had on English, it motivates them to attend and participate in class. Centering units on borrowed English words can be an effective tool in lowering students’ affective filters and stimulating class engagement.

Cultural Observation Projects

Cultural observation projects are effective tools for fostering student interaction and critical thinking by requiring students to go beyond the usual “food, holiday, dress” paradigm to examine culture more thoroughly than is normally done. Instead of focusing on high-visibility aspects of culture such as food or clothing, students investigate phenomenon they personally observe in the target culture.

For example, a student may survey fellow classmates on the etiquette surrounding sneezes in their culture. Students design and implement a survey finding out which cultures require saying a word or phrase to a person who has just sneezed, which cultures have no such custom, and those that fall in between. The survey is followed up by an interview in which members of a culture familiar with the phenomenon provide more detail about the rules surrounding the practice. The students report the findings of their survey and interviews as a presentation or discussion for the whole class, leading to better understanding of the phenomena themselves and the cultures in which they arise.

Broadening the Scope: A Context for General Knowledge

One final activity, in this case valuable for conversation and writing practice, requires neither a diverse classroom nor reflection on one’s own culture. A map of the world that contains clocks representing different time zones in different parts of the world is used to create a rich context in which students must utilize their knowledge of various societies and negotiate meaning. Each student is assigned a different nation in secret. The students describe their location by referring to the known characteristics of the region, as in the case of a student assigned to Egypt utilizing the target grammar of future tense when saying, “I am going to the pyramids today and afterwards I will visit the City of the Dead.”

The initial ambiguity of this exercise enhances negotiation skills and inference strategies while encouraging the use of knowledge about diverse cultures. This activity works well for beginner to intermediate students, but can be as complicated as desired depending on the target grammar assigned. For instance, a more advanced class may be required to use conditional or passive voice statements. (“I would have gone to the Taj Mahal, but I was so impressed by Agra Fort that all of my time was spent there.”)

Conclusion

Utilizing the students’ linguistic and cultural prior knowledge to build the content of a classroom is an effective tool for classroom instruction due its unique ability to produce professionally and academically prepared, culturally competent students whose understanding of the future interactions they will participate in has been developed through a critical approach of awareness raising, scrutiny, and reflection on the knowledge and norms of varying cultures. Finding a balance between representing the cultures of the classroom and maintaining a focus on necessary language features adds a particularly challenging element for the teacher, but one which results in a far richer experience for both the teacher and the students.

While the techniques described here focus on analyzing the cultures brought into the classroom by each student, this multicultural focus should not exclude the instructor’s culture or that of a perceived dominant culture. Instructors should find the balance between incorporating each student’s unique background and culture as well as their own and that of the community in which the students study. The axiom put forth by Mckay (2003) that “English as a Foreign Language is regarded as English as an International Language” makes it clear that English-speaking culture can neither be limited to nor understood as one target culture in particular; rather, the English-speaking culture is inclusive of all contexts in which the language is used. English classrooms must reflect this, inviting students into a tapestry of perspectives requiring critical examination to be understood and used effectively.

References

McKay, S. L. (2003). The cultural basis of teaching English as an international language. TESOL Matters, 13(4),1–4.

Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 9–35.

Kurtis Grothoff is a graduate teaching assistant at the English Language Institute of Missouri State University and is currently studying his master’s degree in English with an emphasis in TESOL. He has taught English for a total of 4 years both in the United States and in Colombia. He also teaches beginning Spanish at St. Agnes Elementary School.

Kurtis Foster is an international educator at Missouri State University in partnership with the Sister Cities Association, Isesaki, Japan, and has previously taught at Kyungnam University, Republic of Korea. He enjoys seeking out the intersections of student experience, where the community meets the classroom and interest becomes engagement.