The TEACH Project

The interest of the academic publishing houses in the role of culture in SL teaching has yielded a huge amount of materials, using different pedagogical approaches. However, very little has been done about how to actually calibrate the kind of cultural contents needed to effectively accomplish the task of teaching culture while also teaching language in elementary and intermediate levels. Oftentimes the cultural contents appear in the book as an appendix at the end of each chapter, with few directions and little interest on the part of the publisher to adapt those contents to both the interest of the students and their actual command of the language. Instructors must, then, either avoid those sections or dramatically rework them in order to make them profitable. Besides the dynamics of culture teaching, I’d like that we all mull over the nature of those contents as well: it should be all about literary sources? perhaps films or audiovisual materials that have been deemed "canonical"? How about the so-called by-products like culinary experiences or popular music? And what should be rescued from the “art” world?

The topic I'd like to submit for debate here is the importance of presenting cultural artifacts to students in a way that it's both productive form a cognitive perspective, and, most importantly, that it's representative of the cultural diversity of the countries in which the target language is used. Most times the cultural component with which we have to deal in class is riddled with stereotypical assumptions that, for years, have negatively affected (infected) the content of those sections devoted to "Culture"(specifically at the elementary and intermediate levels).

To avoid the temptation of us all listing the kind of materials that do work or don't, I propose a different model: creating a course entirely devoted to culture. To that end I'll put together a series of questions that we should ask ourselves before creating that course. The ultimate goal would be the creation of a syllabus with resources and materials for an effective course on culture in any of the languages being part of this project:

1. What kind of cultural topics would we consider worth analyzing in class? Would those be somehow attractive to the kind of students we have? What kind or research should we do to avoid the perils of interdisciplinaryty (meaning, talking about some cultural feature we do not know much about). Those of us teaching in more than one school: how do you adapt culture-based materials to the diversity of your students? What are the constraints in doing so?

2. What kind of cultural artifacts should the course be focusing on? Does your institution have a specific art collection related to the cultural heritage of the language taught that you'd consider using? Are there relevant museums, cultural centers, film collections, music venues, theater houses, that you'd consider using as part of the course materials? And how about a course based on different cultural manifestations of any given livestrip language?

3. Since we're talking about elementary and intermediate levels, how are you going to integrate language development into the course?

4. Would you consider teaching the course in English and incorporating this cultural component into the materials to be graded at the end of the semester? Would the course be more effective that way?

5. How would you establish the "cultural" relevance of the materials you are planning on using? Do you think that offering a course about Hispanic Culture, French Culture, etc., to a pool of undergrad interested in learning the language through culture would help setting up certain academic standards? Would this prevent the use of the common places that we want to avoid? Would it generate interest in learning the language? If that were the case, do you think that a language curriculum, or course sequence, revolving around culture would be feasible?

Just some food thought… Once we’re done with brainstorming ideas we’ll get down to work on a potential syllabus and who knows if even on a course sequence…

Thanks in advance for your interest!!