Reflexion 1 - Response to a Question about English Teaching

Ask Judie !

EverythingESL.com is a website created by Judie Haynes. Here, we can find many resources to help ESL teachers in a wide variety of things. One of the sections that I visited was "Ask Judie"; here we can find several questions related to education and ESL classes.

I selected the next question: How are language and culture linked?


Answer: Language and Culture are two features that are closely related to each other. In the book "ESL/EFL Principles for Success" by Freeman and Freeman; we can find in chapter 8 and 9 : "Lessons should be support Student's First Language and Culture"; that these two concepts are related in several ways.
I see that you need to know your student's culture in order to make the class more meaningful to them. Besides, if you know the first language of your learners, you will be able to create connections between grammar, phonetic sounds, and any other aspect that can be similar or different from the first language.
The main idea of Bilingual education is not to set a part the culture of the student but put the things together so that we can build a whole new knowledge about language. That's why in the District of Pasco they use the system called "Shelter Education"; where the students are exposed in an 80% to their first language and a 20% to the second language. As soon as they improve they move to another level, and so on. In higher levels, students are 100% exposed to the target language.
You have to keep in mind who your students are. Besides, if you think about their culture itself, you will have more possibilities to engage your students in the new body of knowledge that they are learning.

I decided to answer that question because I think that it was the most relevant and meaningful issue that we talked and reflect about throughout the Bilingualism and Biliteracy class. We learn not only to appreciate who are students are, but also how important they are; since without students, we could not be teachers!

Since I have been in several schools, where we can see students from different nationalities, I believe student's culture is the most important thing that we have to consider at the moment of giving a lesson, especially if we are teaching a new language. I also believe, that students can feel that their own culture is been forgetting, and that can be a critical factor for students to refuse to learn the new language. So, we MUST keep in mind which cultures can be involved in our classrooms.