Incorporating english cultural elements into english training with the comparing - Contrasting approach: a case of tourism students at haiphong community college

Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study. 1.1. Rationale English has gained its great popularity in Vietnam, a country attempting to develop her technological capacity and to increase her participation in the global processes. For many people in Vietnam, English is seen as one of very necessary means to get a good job. Thus, there is a growing demand to learn this language for communication. We have been concentrating on structures and forms and producing materials that may help our students to have perfect diphthongs or a flawless command of the third conditional while leaving out anything approaching real, valid, meaningful contents. If our students have any hope of using their language skills to communicate in the global village, cultural awareness is crucial. Therefore, language teachers should realize that knowledge of the world’s language and culture is increasingly important. In order to use the language effectively, language learners need to have mastery of not only the language itself but also the culture in which the language is used. Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviours and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived different by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior. In short, culture becomes an indispensable part in any foreign language curriculum. Tourism students at HCC are fully aware of this. When being asked why culture is very important, they believe that understanding culture helps them become more confident and successful in communicating and that cultural information is one kind of their motivation in learning English. On the contrary, many of them do not realize the importance of culture in ELL because they say that learning English is a hard work for them to master it as a language, and English cultural knowledge is one of their problem. Teaching English culture is considered important by most teachers but it has remained “insubstantial and sporadic in most language classroom” (Omaggio, 1993:357). Omaggio gives several reasons for this including lack of time, uncertainty about which aspects of culture to teach, and lack of practical techniques. Although language teachers realize the importance of teaching English culture in EFL classes and the potential of improving the teaching of English culture is tremendous, the outstanding problems to be solved are still improving. Among many others, I found that the biggest headache for language teachers, especially the teacher of EFL, is how to integrate English culture teaching into our language programs. This is the matter I want to raise in my thesis. It is an attempt to look into the matter of how to incorporate cultural elements into English training at HCC. 1.2. Aims of the study With the hope to contribute a small part in working out the effective ways of incorporating English cultural elements into English training at HCC, that is to get insight into sociocultural problems facing Tourism students, this thesis is aimed at: - Emphasizing the importance of cultural knowledge in foreign language teaching and learning. - Investigating conditions of Tourism students in learning English culture and their expectation on English culture. - Finding out the effective ways of incorporating English cultural elements into the English training with the Comparing- Contrasting approach. Hopefully, with a deep insight into the situations, in terms of both theory and practice, the study will improve current situation of English culture learning of Tourism students at HCC. 1.3. Scope of the study The focus of the study is on the corporation of English cultural elements into English training in the light of the communicative approach. The specific purpose of the research is confined to English cultural elements as the culture of the target language. The textbook HIGH SEASON (Keith Harding & Paul Henderson, Oxford University Press, 1999) is selected as a basis for the performance of the study. The participants of the study are Tourism students of HCC. The study focuses on working out a general profile of English cultural corporation into English training at HCC so as to try out methodological activities that could improve the current situation of English culture learning of Tourism students. 1.4. Research questions of the study My study is intended to answer two following questions: 1. What are Tourism students’ attitudes towards English cultural learning? 2. How does students’ cultural understanding change through the incorporating English cultural elements into the lessons? 1.5. Methods of the study In this research, the theoretical background mainly bases on books written by a variety of scholars on foreign language teaching and cultural teaching issues. The thesis author employs action research to analyze the data collected. Comments, remarks, comparisons and conclusions are based on factual research: observation, survey questionnaires, interviews, discussion, and experience. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, survey questionnaires are utilized to survey the situation of learning culture being developed and administered at the beginning of a semester. Tests in culture for the participants after applying the culture- teaching activities, interviews and other survey questionnaires on the focused group are conducted in the end to gain quantitative and qualitative data of how these teaching methods take effect on students’ English culture learning and achievement. Observations and informal discussion are effectively combined with them, too. 1.6. Design of the study The study is divided into four chapters: Chapter one presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study. Chapter two reviews the related literature that helps to give the theoretical foundation for this study. This review consists of the literature on the place of culture knowledge in foreign language learning, goals for incorporating culture into the foreign language class, and Comparing and Contrasting as activities of raising students’ culture awareness. Chapter three contains the study that includes three sections. The first summarizes the situation analysis. The second describes the data collecting instruments. The third provides the data analysis. Chapter four focuses on conclusion, which includes the summary of the study, limitations of the study, and recommendations for the further study. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter the researcher will provide a discussion of findings from previous researchers on the topic of cultural knowledge’s roles to Tourism students at HCC. This chapter is divided into three sections: 1. The place of culture knowledge in foreign language learning, 2. Goals for incorporating culture into the foreign language class, 3. Comparing and Contrasting as activities of raising students’ culture awareness. 2.1. The place of culture knowledge in foreign language learning 2.1.1. Definition of Culture Culture may mean different things to different people. Therefore, it can be defined in many ways. Some depict it as the art, literature, and music of people, their architecture, history, religion, and their traditions. The others focus more on the customs and specific behaviours of the people. Anthropologists define culture as “ the whole way of life of a people or group. In this context, culture includes all the social practices that bond a group of people together and distinguish them from others” (Montgomery and Reid- Thomas, 1994: 5). Based on this definition, it is my opinion that culture is all the accepted and patterned ways of behaviour of a person. The ways of thinking, feeling and acting are the reminder of a certain community. Besides, this concept of culture also includes the physical manifestations of a group as exhibited in their achievements and contributions to civilization. Culture has a certain influence on our lives at every moment. Nowadays, some researchers claim that cultural learning positively affects students’ linguistic success in foreign learning. Others state that culture can be used as an instrument in the processes of communication when culturally- determined behavioural conventions are taught (Byram et al. 1994). These two conceptions are far too narrow for our purposes here, however. We believe that culture should not be seen as a support to language teaching but that it should be placed on an equal footing with foreign language teaching. “Culture” may be explained “the ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools which characterize a given group of people in a given period of time ” (Brown, 1987 :122). Besides, “ what is important in culture is what one is expected is think, believe, say, do, eat, wear, pay, ensure, recent, honor, laugh at, fight for, and worship, in typical life situation” (Brooks, 1968: 218, cited in Oxford, 1996: ix). The concept of culture, therefore, involves the way people from a particular cultural background think, make friends, worship and behave in a society. No single individual can live without sharing a culture with others. Put in other words, culture is derived from a community and a community, in turn, reflects its culture. In this paper, I takes Nguyen Quang’s view of culture (2006: 24) as the working definition: “ Culture is the whole complex of tangible and intangible expressions that are created and adapted by a society or a social group as well as the ways it functions and reacts in given situations”. Based on this definition, in my point of view, culture helps distinguish one society or social group from another not only o terms of the availability of those expressions and behaviour, but also in terms of their proportionality and manifest ability” In short, these above opinion of culture show that culture is a deeply ingrained part of people’s life. However, language- the means for communication among members of a culture- is the most visible and available expression of that culture. And so a person’s world view, self- identity, and system of thinking, acting, feeling, and communicating can be disrupted by a change from one culture to another. Therefore, when we learn a language we can not separate it from culture. Culture should be taught with the language until advanced level, and teachers should make students aware of the cultural features in relation to the language which will be presented in the next part. 2.1.2. Culture knowledge and foreign language learning In the field of foreign language teaching, one aspect that occasionally emerges as a topic of discussion is the relationship between knowledge of a foreign language and knowledge of the culture. It is likely that the question of “culture” is often regulated to the end of a language teaching plan. It seems as if it is always something of a bonus if the teacher manages to find time to introduce a bit of the culture of the foreign language into the classroom- some music perhaps, or a traditional dance, in the final lesson of the course. In learning a second language, culture becomes highly important because it is “an ingrained set of behavior modes of perception” (Brown, 2000: 118). As Vietnamese saying goes, “language and culture are two sides of a coin”, one cannot exist without the existence of the other. Since language is used to reflect culture, there is a close relationship between the two. According to Brown (1987: 123), a language is a part of a culture and a culture is part of language; the two are intricately interwove such that one can not separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture. Language, then, is the trace of the development process of civilization. The language is contained in the culture and the language itself contains almost everything that one says about the culture. Without the form- language, the culture can not be explicit. Obviously, language can not exist outside the social context, so the relationship between culture and language must be put into that social context. This relationship is expressed in the following diagram (Nguyen Van Do, 1999 : 9): LANGUAGE CULTURE SOCIETY It can not be denied that the words utter refer to common experience. They express facts, ideas or events that are communicable because they refer to a stock of knowledge about the world that other people share. Words also reflect their authors’ attitudes and beliefs, their points of view, which are also those of others. In both cases, language expresses cultural reality. In addition, Kramsch (1993: 93) points out: “If language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the core of language teaching. Cultural awareness must then be viewed as enabling language proficiency. Culture in language teaching is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing”. She explains that language is inextricably connected to culture. We can not be competed in the language if we do not understand the culture that has shaped, and how that culture relates to our own first language/ first culture. Thus, foreign language teaching and learning must equip students with the tools they need to be effective world citizens. Their increased ability to appreciate the complexities, similarities and differences that exits in our world will lead them toward careers and service related to activities based on this substantive knowledge and experience. Cultural understanding prepares the ability to acknowledge and respect cultural differences. As language teachers, we need to be interested in the study about culture in order to teach the culture of another country because we have to teach it. Robert Politzer (cited in Valdes, 1994: 123) remarks that if we teach a language without teaching, at the same time, the culture in which the students may attach wrong meanings, they will receive culture instructions. Besides, cultural learning has previously been seen as something for advanced learners, an extension exercise that can be taken on to an ordinary lesson. This is partly due to the frequent error of assuming that students with a low level of English also have a low intellect generally. Kramsch (1992: 125) states “intercultural awareness, as a fundamental feature of language and an integral part of language learning, is important at all level.” Briefly, regardless of different points of view, the study of culture takes an important place in language teaching and learning studies in order to facilitate the process of learning and avoid culture shocks. The process of foreign language learning  involves not only perceiving the similarities and differences in other cultures but also recognizing the native culture. Thus, the question “ What are the cultural topics in foreign language learning ? ” good for teachers’ thought 2.1.3. Cultural elements in foreign language learning This is the conclusion of Robert Politzer, who says in the Georgetown University Report of the Fifth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Teaching: “As language teachers we must be interested in the study of culture not because we necessarily want to teach culture of the other country but because we have to teach it.” This point of view make me consider one question : “ How much of the culture of a country should be taught along the language?”. It is the fact that many successful language teachers habitually begin their classes with a five- minute presentation in the foreign language of a subject that has not been previously announced. The content for this simple and effective device may often be a topic that brings out identity, similarity, or sharp differences in comparable patterns of culture. Some topics can be presented within the course are suggested by Ismail Cakir (2006: 155) below: Climate History Pets Clothing Holidays Population Crime Language Religion Eating Leisure activitiies Social occasions Education Meeting people Sports Family life Money Transportation Geography Nonverbal communication Vacation Besides, the following list of topics ( Roseanne Tavares and Ildney Cavalcanti, 1996: 19) may consider all properties that are included in the definition of the word “culture”: * Social identity: Groups characterized by social class; Ethnic minorities. * Social interaction at different levels of familiarity * Belief and Behaviour: Patterns of everyday life, usually taken for granted. * Socio- political institutions: Institutions of the state and of socialization such as ceremonies, local government. * National history and geography: Historical events; Geographical places. * Media: TV; Newspaper; Radio. * Arts: Literature; Cenima. * Language variation: Cockney ( Here the main focus is on how language is presented) To sum up, the above cultural elements to be used to teach the target language should be presented in the contexts accompanying the native ones with the aim of increasing students’ awareness and developing their curiosity towards the target culture, helping them to make comparisons among cultures. The comparisons are not meant to underestimate any of the cultures being analyzed, but to enrich students’ experience and to make the aware that although some culture elements are being globalized, there is still diversity among cultures. In order to do this, it is necessary for teachers to be aware of goals for incorporating culture into the foreign language class. 2.2. Goals for incorporating culture into the foreign language class According to Seelye (1994 : 154), the following goals should be achieved to teach culture for understanding: * Goal 1 = Interest- The student demonstrates curiosity about the target culture and empathy toward its people. * Goal 2 = Who- The student recognizes that role expectations and other social variables such as age, sex, social, class, ethnicity, and place of residence affect the way people speak and behave. * Goal 3 = What- The student realizes that effective communication requires discovering the culturally conditioned images that are evoked in the minds of people when they think, act, and react to the world around them. * Goal 4 = Where and When- The student finds that situational variables and convention shape behavior are important ways. (s/ he needs to know how people in the target culture act in common mundane and crisis situations) * Goal 5 = Why- The student understands that people generally act the way they do because they are using options society that allows for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs, and that cultural patterns are interrelated and tended mutually to support need satisfaction. * Goal 6 = Exploration- The student can evaluate a generalization about the target culture in terms of the amount of evidence substantiating it, and has the skills needed to locate and organize information about the target culture from the library, the mass media, people, and personal observation. Additionally, Nostrands (1976 : 175) listed nine objectives that students should have the ability to get: 1) React appropriately in a social situation 2) Describe a pattern in the culture 3) Recognize a pattern when it is illustrated 4) “Explain” a pattern 5) Predict how a pattern is likely to apply in a given situation 6) Describe or manifest an attitude important for making oneself acceptable in the foreign society 7) Evaluate the form of a statement concerning a culture pattern 8) Describe/ demonstrate defensible methods of analyzing a socio- cultural whole 9) Identify basic human pur