ADOLESCENT STUDENTS’ INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS WHEN USING CULTURE-BASED MATERIALS IN THE ENGLISH CLASS
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Mapa Mental sobre ADOLESCENT STUDENTS’ INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS WHEN USING CULTURE-BASED MATERIALS IN THE ENGLISH CLASS, criado por Jully Ruiz em 15-02-2016.
ADOLESCENT STUDENTS’
INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS WHEN
USING CULTURE-BASED MATERIALS IN
THE ENGLISH CLASS
RESEARCH DESIGN:
Type of research: Qualitative, exploratory, interpretative, case study City: Southeast of Bogotá
Setting: High school located in a marginal area of the city
Duration of the class: 10 months long, 2 classes a week, 1st class 110 minutes and 2nd class 55
minutes long
KEY WORDS:
Culture, Colombia, Bogotá, UK, London, USA
RESEARCH QUESTION:
Main questions: How does students’ interaction with culture-based materials inform us about
students’ intercultural awareness?
Subquestions: 1. How does students’ reflection upon culture based materials inform us about their
understanding of their own culture? 2. How does interaction with cultural based materials inform us
about students’ understanding of foreign cultures?
OBJECTIVES:
The main goal of the study is to have students make connections between their home culture and
foreign cultures.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
In this study, culture is defined as the way 8th graders interpret and understand what happens in
English classes because they expressed their perceptions of their native culture, and the foreign
cultures
INSTRUMENTS FOR DATA COLLECTION:
Survey, field notes, audio and video recordings, and students’ artifacts
Students’ artifacts: notebooks and the students’ production during the
English sessions.
PEDAGOGICAL DESIGN
First criteria: Reading about a real situation lived by a group of people in New York.
Second criterion: Educational video about London
Third criterion: Illustration the situation of mistreated at home that is lived by large numbers of
people to talk about belief and behavior.
Fourth criterion: Readings about Buckingham Palace.
Fifth criterion: Videos about socialization and the life cycle.
Sixth criterion: Readings and tasks related to historical events.
Seventh criterion: Readings about the founding of the states and some Colombian departments.
Eighth criterion: Readings about stereotypes and national identity.
MATERIALS
A TV program called: ‘Jerry’,
readings, a big map of the
USA, flashcards, coins and
bills, posters, a teenagers’
school party, CDs and lyrics.
.
DATA ANALYSIS:
1. Read and re-read the data to found commonalities
2. Read again to find patterns
3. Group the ideas into subcategories
4. Label the subcategories
5. Number each page
6. Design a chart where they indexed students
7. Transcribed the tapes and use color coding
8. Highlighted ideas with different colors
9. Wrote commentaries, questions, headings and thoughts.
10. Transcribed the semi-structures interviews
11. Underlined in color the ideas
12. Give a name to each category
13. Read the data again and establish the categories that emerge from the different instruments.
FINDINGS:
Appraising Home and Foreign cultures and responding to them:
CULTURE BASED MATERIALS:
Students not only read about the foreign and home cultures= they
respond to them critically.
Challenged home culture policies: E.G. “Our government does not
invest in public education
Acknowledged aspects of the foreign culture: E.G. “Our
schools are not in a good shape”
Expressed surprise: E.G. “Our politicians are responsible for
the bad situation of our country”
Changing an EFL Classroom culture
Culture can be changed: “Products of human activity and
thinking and, as such, are people-made”
Changing in terms of types of learning, the roles of the teacher and
students, and the classroom routine.
Students gave their advice on the materials.
Curiosity to learn about different cultures
-Students used their own knowledge of the world, their
experiences as a tool to read foreign cultures and make
links between the two cultures in contact.
E.G. a student make a connexion between the
formations of both Great Britain and Colombia,
concluding that both countries were invaded
They read the foreign culture in the light of their own reality.
Students talk about some differences between students
from the same age and grade, pointed that foreign
students looked older, also they had rooms much
bigger classes.
The researcher call this social self because the students
contrast their social selves (The self-concept, the
self-image, the self-esteem and the ideal self) with the
foreigners.
CONCLUSIONS:
1. Students read the foreign culture in light of their
own reality by:
(US invasion of Iraq = Colombian
forced resettlement = Formation
of Great Britain) (Buckingham
Palace = White House = Casa de
Nariño)
2. When students interacted with something new that did
not have any kind of equivalent in their home culture they
tended to look for a suitable and familiar referent to make
sense of it.
Using home culture
standards to assess
their own reality
3. Students found difficulty in accepting some
differences between their cultures.
(E..G. US institutions
were more organized
than ours)
PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
5. Foreign language teachers ought to be aware of their own beliefs about foreign and home cultures
4. Teachers’ practices, voices, feelings, and opinions revealed in classrooms shape students’ identities
3. Culture should be at the heart of education
2. Everyone should respect the other’s point of view
1. A variety of resources must motivate students’ curiosity to know about different worlds.