Page 281 - Beyond Methods

Raising cultural consciousness 269
of scholars such as Deborah Tannen (1992) in the United States, Ben Rampton (1995) in the United Kingdom, Robert Young (1996) in Australia, and Bonny Norton (2000) in Canada that cultural iden- tity is likely to diverge based not only on learners’ national and linguistic background but also on their ethnic heritage, religious beliefs, class, age, gender, and sexual orientation. Given such a per- spective, raising cultural consciousness becomes an issue not only in ESL classes where students from different nationalities come to- gether to learn a common second language, but also in EFL classes where students may share the same national and linguistic back- grounds.
Second, the traditional approach to the teaching of culture also ignores the rich diversity of world views that learners bring with them to the language classroom. That is, even if a group of learners, as in most educational contexts, appear to belong to a seemingly homo- geneous national or linguistic entity, their life values, life choices, life-styles, and, therefore, their world view may significantly vary. In that sense, most classes are not monocultural cocoons but rather are multicultural mosaics. With its exclusive emphasis on a homoge- nized target language community and its cultural way of life, the traditional approach to teaching culture has failed to capitalize on the rich linguistic and cultural resources that characterize most L2 classes.
Reflective task 12.1
What are the implications—positive as well as negative—of culture teach- ing that is centered on the native speaker’s perspective? To what extent do you think such an approach will help you to raise cultural consciousness in your L2 learners and to promote intercultural understanding?
Cultural Understanding
Recent explorations by L2 educationists such as Gail Robinson, Claire Kramsch, and Adrian Holliday seek to expand the horizon of culture learning and teaching in the L2 classroom by attempting to go beyond a preoccupation with native speaker perspectives. They emphasize how human beings interpret their cross-cultural experi-