Response paper #4: Culture in Second Language Teaching

According to the article "Culture in Second Language Teaching", the National Center for Cultural Competence defines culture as "an integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manner of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviours of a racial, ethic, religious or social group, and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations."

This article was very interesting because in many institutions when professors have to teach about culture of other country, they only teach about customs, celebrations, or songs. So, if we are realistic people, students cannot learn correctly how to understand another culture with a brief explanation. Also, the cultural classes are usually teached in few lessons. So we can make us the following question how a Second Language Speaker can communicate correctly with a native speaker, if he does not know how to do it.

Therefore, as future professors we need to find an effective way to teach our students about culture. We can use many different kind of authentic material as films, websites, play role, research, and literature. All these are going to give the student a broader view of culture. Also, all of these material will help the students to understand better and easier the other culture.

In conlusion, culture is a very important topic for students to learn about because it will help them to have a successsful comunication with native speakers. So, professor we need to implement new techniques to help our students because it will be our responsibility.