Mtra. Elizabeth Rodríguez Toachee 

 

Culture is a set of beliefs, moral values, traditions, language and laws (rules of behavior) held in common by a nation, a community, or other defined group of people. There are many factors that make influence over each group of people, some of them are related to the religion, art, politics, language, economy, customs, society and geography. 

 

Education, as a part of culture, has the function of conservation and modification of the culture; it is conceived as a systematic effort to maintain a culture, and at the same time, culture has a high impact in learning. Both, education and culture, do influence each other. 

 

So, what are the current goals of teachers to keep that relation? That is a difficult question but not impossible. The first thing to consider is the cultural gaps between students and teachers and take them in a positive way. It can be considered as something negative due to the cultural differences between teachers and students (age, living places, religion, etc..) but it should be taken as an opportunity to know, share and increase cultural awareness. 

 

As teachers we can include cultural aspects in every lesson taught, from different ways of greeting people to the specific traditions each community has. Make the students know how important their culture is by being interested in their customs, reflecting them in their reading and writing topics, using them as a base to celebrate important dates, investigating the background of those traditions, etc. In the other hand, teachers can also show their own culture and compare it with the students´ culture and with other countries all over the world. 

 

English teachers have the responsibility of using the language as a tool of interaction to communicate and explore the real life, which includes not only grammar and phonetics, but also life in society, food, history, traditions, how to act and react in real situations. We must be aware that cultural factors affect English language learning, this is because we are teaching something alive and in constant change. We teach English as a bridge to join people, and people must know the differences, learn about them and accept them. 

 

Nevertheless, there are some socio-cultural components that influence the Education system and the teaching practice. Social skills, emotions, and behavior influence teaching and learning. Social influences include student relationships with teachers and peers, school climate, and parental engagement. When those elements are not in harmony, teaching and learning are affected. 

 

That is way personally I try to include Cultural elements in teaching, so students can learn about it and try to improve the socio-cultural components that make influence in education. Once a year we celebrate the Christmas Carols Festival, where students learn about different Christmas songs around the world. We also organize an event called Games Party, where students create games and then they play them all together as a festival to celebrate Anglophony´s Day. In a different school we have a project call “Culture Cuts”, where higher level students present the culture and traditions of different English speaking countries. 

Culture is a dynamic human process that includes ideas, believes, behaviors, traditions shared by a group of people. 

Education and culture has a narrow relationship, because people behave, think, act and create their own perception of the world according to the culture. 

Teachers can include cultural elements through readings, videos, role plays, projects to introduce other countries.

Cultural awareness can be promoted by means of knowing history and developing activities to make reflect students who they are, and why they behave in the way they do. 

Nowadays English language is a lingua franca, beside this there are factors such as stereotypes, ideas traditions and behaviors that can affect learning, because every country is different.

The most important socio-cultural element that has influence in education is language, because is the vehicle used to communicate ideas to other people, and more deeply traditions, attitudes, knowledge.

Last year at school, English teachers organized  multi grade English clubs, in which we have learned about the main characteristics and features of countries in where English is spoken like mother tongue, we made some crafts and prepare some food, we talked about the most important places, traditions, music, sport that makes unique these countries.

Fátima López López 

Culture is all that involves the ideas, the traditions, believes and the lifestyle of a society living in a specific place. When knowing a new language besides knowing the new vocabulary and the grammatical structures is important to know how speakers of the native language behaves, how they think, and the use they give to the words also.  It is important to take into account some cultural factors as the food eat, the family context, the education, and the customs they have as a society for that reason culture and education are linked closely. 

Being exposed to the culture will help the understanding of the language because it creates a learning environment and that will be meaningful for the students. It is important that students be aware of the culture that involves the language for a better and significant learning. We as teachers can include cultural elements on our teaching by reading some literature, singing some famous songs, trying to reply some art pieces and let them know how life is in some other countries and what they used to watch, read, like and do. 

To start promoting these cultural factors in our classes the first thing we have to do is to start by ourselves as teachers and reflect on our own preconceptions of culture. We have to become close to this information so we can transmit it to our students. Then, it is important to include culturally meaningful instructions and materials for the class activities that we can integrate in the current syllabus. 

However there are some cultural factors that might affect the English language learning such as the multiple cultures that exist form many English Speaking countries that could be variable from each one to another and the non-native English teachers that do not share cultural assumptions of native speakers. 

The sociocultural components that influence the teaching practice is to contextualize the knowledge the students are acquiring so they can have a meaningful learning of the language involving the environment in which it is used. 

Last year, my students and I worked in a project based in comparing cultural factors between The United States and Mexico. I invited a native speaker to the classroom so the student could make some questions about how is life in US and they compare it with Mexico´s lifestyle. 

I consider that relationship between culture and education has to do with the interaction between people who establish beliefs, models and codes of behavior as well as networks of conscience and coexistence with each other. Culture is a social structure that rules an specific group of individuals who relate through a common code. If we understand the learning process involves people who establish a code of coexistence and communication, the language that want´s to learn, it is important to reflect and understand that it is transmitted in the teaching-learning process are codes to communicate with a culture. 

One of the most important tasks of the teacher is to provide experiences and meaningful content and interest to students so that they can appropriate the skills and knowledge of the language being studied and therefore could include cultural elements enrich the curiosity, significance and comparison of the items. 

As a teacher i include some cultural elements from the comparison of the most important festivities that exist in the United States, this being the first reference of the students of an english-speaking country, and with those festivities we talk about representative food or some different traditions among our countries in the same way, i tell stories aloud where i mention some particular time of the year and the variations of the climate and the natural elements that distinguish us. I think that some of the cultural components that affect the teaching of a second language is the ignorance of the culture itself, that is, when making a comparison between the reasons for the same holiday and how it is celebrated differently in both countries, if Mexican traditions and reasons are unknown, it is difficult to understand the comparison between both cultures because the baggage is limited. 

One of the projects i do with my students is to sing a Christmas carol. During the assembly of the song i explain some verses that speak of the ornaments of the houses, the food and the animals present in the song in addition to the origin of the Christmas tree. 

 One cultural element I had included is the Halloween celebration, where the student can understand the difference between two cultures (Mexican – American) also how people celebrate the day of death in Mexico and Halloween in the USA and identify the main objective of both celebrations. 

Some factors that can affect the learning process through culture activities is that people has a close mind, and they express that we mustn’t celebrate holidays from different countries because we  lose our identity. Fortunately I have the support of my colleagues to make the students understand that they can celebrate those holidays in order they acquire the English language in an attractive way. In my particular experience through Halloween, the students learn some historical aspect, vocabulary and they start expressing their own ideas. 
William Pérez Pérez