(upbeat music)
- Hello, TEFL students.
In this chapter, your book talks about
the importance of culture, and how culture
has implications for the classroom,
and how you manage your classroom.
I think this is a great topic.
It's worth reading, perhaps a couple of times.
In this little talk, I would move beyond
how culture has implications for classroom,
and talk about the teaching of culture
inside your classroom.
(upbeat music)
When you're teaching adults,
you wanna make sure that they are mystically
competent and reading, writing, listening
all the things your book will talk about.
But also culturally competent.
In order to successfully communicate,
you need to have both of those.
Ways to address that could be simply overtly
reading about deep culture.
And naturally, we want it to be level appropriate.
But, overtly reading about some of the things
your book talks about on deep culture.
Also, and perhaps even more successful
would be the idea of keeping it in the back
of your mind and drawing attention
to it as it comes up in your materials,
in your textbook.
For instance, if you have, an audio
that has people communicating,
perhaps you have a relationship,
a boss and an employee, or a daughter
and a father, and you draw your student's
attention to some of the cultural things
that are going on in the video.
Or you pay attention to the body language
in the video.
So just keeping culture in the back of your mind
and making sure that you address,
maybe not every day, but you making your students
more aware of some of the differences
that exist, so they can be culturally competent.
Now, it's very important that you teach culture
in a way that is neutral and professional,
and that you don't address it in a way
that is, some about agreement.
It's not about, you know, trying to make
any kinds of arguments this way
or that way, of course.
We wanna make sure that we tell
our adult students, because they are able
to understand that the reason we're having
this discussion about whatever cultural element,
is because you want them to be successful
in communication with people from that culture.
And that's why we're talking about the topic.
At least in my case, that is what has helped
me in dealing with sometimes
those little difficult topics that deal
with cultural differences.
It's exciting topic,
and your students will enjoy it.
And we wanna make sure that we address
it in a very professional, neutral way.
I wanna move on a little bit to those
of you who will be working with children.
Teaching children and the idea of culturing,
is going to be very different
than if you are teaching adults.
One of the main reasons
for that is, children are still developing
the idea of what their own culture is.
What is appropriate?
What are the different elements
that go into their own culture.
They are unlike my adult students
who already have a cultural identity,
already understand the social norms.
And so, now I'm making them more successful
by adding another set of cultures
so that they can be successful.
And that's my goal, right?
So they can decide and be culturally competent
in both of them.
For children however,
because they're still developing,
it's a little bit different, the way
that you teach culture.
In essence, you wanna be very careful
that what culture is wonderful,
and you can talk about it and so forth.
But you wanna make sure that you don't
do anything that may create cultural troubles
for them in their own culture.
So, the way that culture is addressed
for children, depending on their age,
is going to be different
because I'm gonna consider the fact
that I don't wanna create confusion
in their minds.
Because maybe they're not quite ready
yet to separate those two
into different cultures.
So, that's just something
I want you to think about.
Culture is a really wonderful thing
in the classroom when you talk about.
It's exciting, it's all of these great things.
I just wanna make sure that you maybe consider
a couple of extra things when teaching
in your classroom.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)