Second Culture Teaching and Learning: An Introduction

✍ Scribed by Thomas Szende

• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 464
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This monograph offers an incisive analysis of how the second language learner can achieve cultural proficiency, which is more than a set of rules and facts to be memorized by rote. How can the cultural dimension be taken into account, among the many choices of instructional material and language assessment tools? Is it possible to distinguish levels of cultural competence? How can the degree of cultural proximity between the source language and the target language influence the acquisition process? What strategies should be implemented in order to decode any cultural pitfalls? This handy guide addresses these and many other frequently asked questions underpinning language teaching methodology.
Illustrated with a broad range of classroom-based examples, this book presents language as inextricably intertwined with social relations. The variety of languages involved (Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Hungarian, French and English) makes the volume especially attractive for language educators seeking effective teaching strategies in specific local contexts around the globe.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents 7
List of Tables 13
Foreword 15
1. Introduction 21
1.1 Learning a Modern Culture 21
1.1.1 It Goes Without Saying 21
1.1.2 What the Natural Conceals 24
1.1.3 Distorting Lenses 26
1.2 Languages and Cultures in a Non-Natural Context 29
1.2.1 A Complex Mediation Field 29
1.2.2 An Integrative Discipline 30
1.2.3 Multilingual and Multicultural Situations 33
1.2.4 What Construction Procedures? 35
1.2.5 A Gateway to Culture 38
1.3 The Tables 42
1.3.1 The Translinguistic Scale 42
1.3.2 Observable Places 43
1.3.3 Communities of Meaning 46
1.3.4 Elementary Dichotomies 47
2. Languages – Cultures – Globalization 51
2.1 A Conceptual Ambiguity 51
2.2 The Territory of Culture 54
2.3 The Noble and the Trivial 57
2.4 Rooting and Memberships 59
2.5 Cultural Mixes and Identities 62
2.6 Lingua Franca – Cultura Franca 64
2.7 Languages Other than English 67
3. Mother Culture – Foreign Culture 69
3.1 A Unique Process 69
3.2 The Infinitely Small 70
3.3 Perception, Appreciation, Action 72
3.4 Unavoidable Experiences 75
3.4.1 Benchmarks and Universals 75
3.4.2 Space 76
3.4.3 Time 77
3.5 Places of Inculcation 79
3.5.1 When? What? with Whom? and How? 79
3.5.2 Knowledge Deemed Fundamental 81
3.5.3 The Real Curriculum of Individuals 83
3.6 The Second Occupant of the Land 86
3.7 The Illusive Finishing Line 88
4. Words and Ways of Saying Things 93
4.1 The Lexicon 93
4.1.1 Dissymmetrical Inventories 93
4.1.2 Identity Traces 94
4.1.3 The Linguistic and the Extra-Linguistic 97
4.1.4 Denotation and Connotation 98
4.1.5 Nuances and Values 101
4.1.6 Eat Your Soup! 103
4.1.7 The Cultural Markers 105
4.1.8 The Troublemakers 107
4.1.9 Involuntary Alliances 110
4.1.10 The Filament of Life Experience 112
4.1.11 The Specialized Term 113
4.1.12 Solidarities and Series 115
4.1.13 Norm and Variations 118
4.1.14 Discomfort and Collective Anxiety 123
4.1.15 Units of Social Functioning 126
4.1.16 Firewalls 131
4.1.17 The Word and the Soundscape 133
4.2 Frozenness 136
4.2.1 Combinatorics 136
4.2.2 Pre-Constructed Sequences 139
4.2.2.1 Idiomatic Expressions 142
4.2.2.2 Collocations 147
4.2.2.3 Discursive Routines 152
4.3 Defrosting 158
5. Discourse and Interaction 163
5.1 Transphrastic Organization 163
5.1.1 Text – Discourse 163
5.1.2 Cotext – Context 165
5.1.3 Cohesion – Coherence 166
5.1.4 Fluency and Discursive Realization 169
5.2 Social Space: Space of Tension 172
5.3 Discourse and Ideology 175
5.4 Discourse Genres 177
5.5 Discursive Memories 183
5.6 The Media 184
5.6.1 The Event 184
5.6.2 Sorting Operation 187
5.6.3 The Expectations of the Moment 191
5.7 Literature 193
5.7.1 Artistic and Linguistic Models 193
5.7.2 Essential Figures and Texts 196
5.7.3 Literary Options for L2 199
5.8 Interactional Stories 202
5.8.1 Participating in Social Practices 202
5.8.2 Acting on Others 204
5.8.3 The Implicit 206
5.8.4 Allusions and Citations 208
5.8.5 That’s So Funny! 212
5.9 Interactional Rules 215
5.9.1 Cooperation – Competition 215
5.9.2 Speech Acts – Social Usages 218
5.9.3 The Most Appropriate Formulation 219
5.9.4 Prefabricated Scripts 221
5.9.5 Framing Sequences 227
5.9.6 The Common Mental Context 228
5.9.7 Exploring the Customary 230
5.10 The Non-Verbal and the Paraverbal 232
5.10.1 The Speaking Body 232
5.10.2 Socially Organized Silence 236
5.11 Modalities of Propriety 239
5.11.1 Mutual Contentment 239
5.11.2 Forms of Address 241
5.11.3 The Ritual Equilibrium 244
5.11.4 Semantically Empty Language 248
5.11.5 Status Politeness – Instantaneous Politeness 251
5.11.6 Culturally Situated Hospitality 253
6. Alterity and Imagination 257
6.1 Representations 257
6.2 The Intelligence of Exchanges 259
6.3 The Almighty Image 261
6.4 Categorization Patterns 263
6.5 Auto-Stereotypes and Hetero-Stereotypes 266
6.6 “Such an Ugly Language!” 270
6.7 Cultural Attraction 273
6.8 Ethnocentrism 275
6.9 Some Languages are More Foreign than Others 278
7. Culture: Pedagogical Challenges 283
7.1 The Classroom 283
7.1.1 A Strange Meeting Indeed! 283
7.1.2 Context Switching 284
7.1.3 The Real, the Simulated and the Fake 287
7.1.4 The Hyper-Availability of Information 289
7.2 The Instructor 292
7.2.1 A Cultural Intermediary 292
7.2.2 A Particular Sociological Profile 293
7.2.3 Native or Non-Native? 294
7.2.4 Traditions – Originality 298
7.3 The Textbook 299
7.3.1 Linguistic Content – Cultural Content 299
7.3.2 Glamorous View – Conflictual View 303
7.3.3 An Intermediary World 304
7.3.4 The Authentic and the Fabricated 307
7.4 The Learner 311
7.4.1 Motivation 311
7.4.1.1 External and Internal Factors 311
7.4.1.2 Towards the Ideal Self 312
7.4.2 Baggage and Trajectories 314
7.4.3 On the Subject of Error 316
7.5 Making Progress 319
7.6 Capacities 321
7.6.1 Communicative Competence 321
7.6.2 Skills and Learning Areas 322
7.6.3 The Cultural Component and the CEFR 324
7.6.4 Adjustment Aptitudes 326
7.6.5 Understanding Global Times 327
7.6.6 Cultural Sensitivity 329
7.6.7 Cultural Descriptors 332
7.7 The Strategies 332
7.7.1 Experiences and the Whole 332
7.7.2 A Reunion With Oneself 333
7.7.3 Learning to Decenter 334
7.7.4 Looking at the World Through Foreign Eyes 337
7.7.5 Intercomprehension 338
7.7.6 Intense Encounters 340
7.7.7 Stimulating Social Conscience 341
7.7.8 Panic Attacks 342
7.7.9 Masking Methods 344
7.7.10 The Real in the Absence of the Real 346
7.7.11 Translation 349
7.7.11.1 Translating with the Aim of Learning 349
7.7.11.2 Learning to Translate 351
7.7.11.3 Brioche and Raisins 354
7.7.11.4 The referents 356
7.7.12 Towards Authentic Social Acts 358
7.7.12.1 Real Life Tasks 358
7.7.12.2 From Communication to Co-Action 361
7.7.12.3 Language and Finality 364
7.7.12.4 Professional Reality 366
7.7.12.5 The Academic Environment 369
7.7.12.6 School Time Experienced in a Foreign Language 374
7.7.12.7 Urban space 375
Afterword 381
Index 395
References 403