Page 293 - Beyond Methods

Raising cultural consciousness 281
Exploratory Projects
Here are two exploratory research projects intended to prompt you to design your own microstrategies to raise your students’ critical cultural consciousness. Keep in mind that your primary objective is to help your students analyze and understand some aspects of their own culture, those of the target language community, and other cul- tures as much as possible. Try to help them accomplish this in a nonthreatening environment and without them or you making any value judgments of any of the cultures involved.
Project 12.1: Happy New Year
12.1.0 The following project focuses on New Year celebrations across cultures.
12.1.1 Study the chart in Figure 12.1 about how different cultural communities usher in their New Year.
12.1.2 Design a step-by-step microstrategy to help your learners un- derstand New Year festivities in different cultural communities. Make a list of possible questions and activities.
12.1.3 Think about possible items or pictures or artifacts that you can ask your learners to bring to class to help other students under- stand some of the culture-specific New Year festivities. If necessary, suggest to your students possible sources of information such as the li- brary, the Internet, and elders in the family.
12.1.4 Make a list of display and referential questions you may have to ask to help them understand the information in Figure 12.1.
12.1.5 Consider suitable individual or group activities to help your learners understand the similarities and differences between various cultural practices.
12.1.6 Think about specific questions that go beyond the superficial cultural information in the chart and reflect on reasons why cultural communities do what they do on New Year’s Day.
12.1.7 Think up homework (reading/writing) assignments that would be appropriate to help your learners synthesize the information and ideas generated during class discussion.
12.1.8 What would be an appropriate sequence to introduce your questions and activities in order to make the entire classroom activity logical and coherent?