Culture is crucial when learning a language

As I read Fernandez 1998, I realised that I totally agree with the fact that teacher have been assigned the role of educating the children who consequently teach the community or society, becoming a very self-sufficient circle. It is indeed powerful what teachers have in their hands hence it becomes a huge responsibility.

“The context of our understanding is our culture” (Fernandez 1998:374) somehow summarises why culture is important and should be a must topic to be taught in the classroom. Not only we teach someone else’s culture and language, but we also make connections and reflect upon our own. It enriches our education and values as citizens of this world and big community we live in. Therefore, tolerance and respect are crucial attributes each person in the world should have in their personality. That is why it is so important that teachers and parents show them how to be intercultural in a world that is multicultural (Byram 2009).

Whenever we teach a new language teachers must fight against the preconceived judgements that person has on that particular culture (traditions, personalities, religion, food, and so on). Our job is to teach language to show them how these speakers see the world – our language is our way of expressing how we see, interpret and understand what surround us-. However, we sometimes forget that culture is also part of the language and if we do not demystify those untrue stereotypes that people have, the cultural barrier they have will impede them from learning and understanding anything we explain. 

Self-reflection paper (skype project)

From the video of Tim Doner until our skype projects we have been learning and analysing language learning strategies. Although it is not an easy task, I must say that I now I am much more aware of strategies that I did not pay attention to before, and that I try to deduce what kind of strategy that might be. Strategies are around us, not only when learning new language rules or vocabulary, but also in our daily lives. In fashion, for instance, wearing black trousers is a strategy if you want to look slimmer; but for a teenager saving 5€ per week from the pocket money they receive can also be a strategy to save some.

Nevertheless, strategies seem to be impossible to learn at school these days. They teach one (favourite of the teacher) at the most, when they should be teaching a whole range of varieties so as to fill and reach everybody’s needs in the classroom. Children are not the same among themselves, some are quite shy, some are very energetic, some others need constant coaching, etc. Then, how are we supposed to learn (as students and teachers) strategies and how to teach them all right?

According to many of the readings we have been looking at in class, educators must attempt to introduce new strategies each time so each student has its opportunity to see, do and apply them to their lives. We should not forget that we are lifelong learners and strategies will be part of our stages in life.

Through the skype project we had the opportunity to precisely do that: see, do and apply, strategies, but most important to be conscious of using them. Getting to know better our way of learning things or how our mind operates can give us a much clearer idea of what type of “lifelong” learner we are, and so apply that to other aspects.  By being aware of the way we operate we are able to improve our weaker skills in any areas of our lives. For example, the student in the skype project realised that she needed to improve her colloquial/spoken English because she spoke in a very academic way.

It is quite odd because precisely this evening I was having class with one of my adult students. He has been taking private classes with me since February or so. He is quite shy and because he is the only in the classroom, one can imagine how the interactions go. Quite boring and slow. However, he is really interested and makes an effort every day to keep track of what we are doing. All of a sudden, in the middle of the class he tells me he has thought of buying himself an audio book to listen to it while he commutes by car. I instantly thought “great! He found himself a strategy to improve the listening skills and to improve the pronunciation”. So I definitely recommended him to do as much as he could, and in class he could keep me informed each chapter. I immediately thought that having him explain the chapters to me each week would also be a communicative strategy, which was precisely what we needed. So, we will see how it all goes.

As I said before, being aware of our weaknesses and establish an internal analysis can benefit us in many ways. Last but not least, it is a must to teach all possible strategies to the children of the future.

Case Studies Reflection

All the strategies shown in the videos seem to work effectively. Each stage in learning, the students’ needs, the pace of each student, and the like are very important factors to bear in mind when preparing a lesson. The tasks and the strategies we use in the class will make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful lesson.

On one hand, the most useful strategies I found were those which were meaningful for the students, those with which they could identify or make connections to. This way they automatically became more engaged and active in the class. They are willing to explain their experiences on this or that topic. I really enjoyed watching video 5 and 6, because they created this sense of community and ownership inside the class. By giving them the role of mini-teachers or assistants we give them some power, which is always a good strategy to make them to be willing to participate. Social and affective strategies are essential to get our students involved in the task. I also liked those social strategies incorporated into collaborative tasks, such as groups of mindmaps or communicative games. With young learners it is quite effective to use kinaesthetic strategies so that they can relate the new vocabulary to what they already know in their mother tongue. Techniques like gestures, songs, visual aid and some “touching” work just perfect for them.

On the other hand, although I found the rest of the strategies quite interesting, I might say that I did not share the type of lesson itself on video 2, I found it quite repetitive and boring. In my opinion, I do not think a group of young learners would be ready to “suffer” this class. However, I think all videos showed a great deal of varied strategies to start using in our classrooms. 

Case Studies Grid

Nr.	Video	Context	Strategies identified	Teaching approach and comments
1	Kindergarten ESL lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2tGtw1_W_E	Young learners of English, L1 Chinese	·         Memory: songs and gestures the children have to repeat. ·         Visual aid, such as the TV, short clips. ·         Routines (song has been learnt throughout the course)	It is a good strategy to teach expressions and vocabulary because since they are young learners, visual aid and gestures work effectively. They actually communicate with no problem when the teacher asks them question regarding the short story they saw.
2	Learning new words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fUlS_aGQ1I	Young learners, primary and pre-primary	·         Multi-sensory techniques: visual, kinaesthetic, auditory channel ·         Repetitions and drills (cognitive strategy) ·         Guessing (flashcards) ·         Affective strategy	Multi-sensory strategies activate young learners’ visual, kinaesthetic and auditory channel which helps them to remember better and for a much longer period the new vocabulary. It also increases their active participation in the class. Repetitions and drills help students to improve their pronunciation and stress, and also to associate a word and sound to a visual object. By making them touch the objects inside the bag, we help to develop their feelings and affective filter.
3	Anglès Teresianes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZAacGD0cME	Young learners – pre-primary, Catalan and Spanish as L1	·         Using “mini-teachers” in the class (mini-experts) ·         Students as assistants of the class (affective strategy) ·         Routines and repetitions (cognitive strategy) ·         Gestures (kinaesthetic) ·         Songs	By giving them the role of teachers or assistants we give them some power and an important role to play in front of the class which is always motivating and makes them participate actively. They use their body parts to learn vocabulary by making gestures.
4	Learning Strategies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEx8_Z_a0Cg	Teens, multilingual classroom	·         Mindmaps (cognitive strategy) ·         Sharing their lists of vocabulary (social strategy) ·         Translation to L1 ·         Creating posters (group work- social strategy) ·         Self-correcting mistakes and learning from them (metacognitive strategy)	By sharing lists of new vocabulary from their previous mindmaps they also communicate with others so it becomes a social task, too. Self-correction can help to understand and learn from our mistakes.
5	Building community in a multi-language classroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KduFyBohX4g	Primary, multilingual classroom	·         Community (social-affective strategy) ·         Drills and repetitions, also rules (cognitive strategy) ·         Translanguaging ·         Translations ·         Cross-linguistic connections (metacognitive strategy) ·         Use familiar content and make connections (metacognitive and social-affective strategy) ·         Teachable moment: learning from unexpected situations ·         Motivation (interesting activities or topics) ·         Playing by rules (metacognitive strategy)	She gives her students roles to play or responsibilities in the classroom. They have “ownership”, it’s their classroom. She uses every L1 of her students as a learning tool. Using familiar content helps them to make connections to what they already know to the unknown. Teachable moments in which they all are engaged to the task and motivated. By playing board games they have to do two things: read the rules and also interact with the members of the same group.
6	Model for teaching ESL learners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVGbz4EqyGs	Special needs students, Spanish speakers, native English speakers. Primary	·         Meaningful learning (affective strategy) ·         Appropriate pace of the lesson ·         Communicative tasks (social strategy) ·         Meaningful tasks: making connections to their real world	If we use meaningful tasks in the class it will create a good atmosphere, students will participate actively and they will be motivated. All this will benefit their learning process. Lessons must reach everybody’s capacity and pace, not too slow not too fast. This way, active engagement is likely to happen if the lesson’s pace is appropriate. Create social activities in which students must socialize and interact with other classmates.
7	CLIL lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SovzQchPeJU	Russian speakers, teens	·         Collaborative Mindmaps (cognitive and social strategy) ·         Collaborative tasks (social strategy)	Especially with teenagers, collaborative tasks are really useful, because they more or less have a sufficient command of the language so they can improve their performances whenever they have to communicate or interact.

Mindmap on Strategies

OP#2: Video task

The goal of teaching strategies in the classroom is to create autonomous learners, who can learn by themselves in and outside school. To facilitate learning for students of all ages there are many language learning strategies to consider. Successful learners, in general, tend to select strategies that work for them depending on the requirements of the task. These learners can certainly tell what strategies they use and why they work so well for them instead of others. Nevertheless, what happens with those students who do not have the capacity to select strategies and apply those which are effective for them?

In this particular case the teacher must be the one offering and teaching different strategies for the different types of learners there might be in a classroom. In the video, the teacher offers a wide range of strategies for students to pick the one that best suits them. Undoubtedly, any type of strategy showed in class must be a reflection of the students’ needs, challenges and strengths. For this reason she uses language specific skills such as knowing how to use English in any area (speaking, reading, writing, and listening); then, cognition and meta-cognition is reflected in the schema-activation, the transfer of knowledge, self-reflection. Affective factors are surely a key factor since we are dealing with motivation, confidence and a trusting atmosphere which can encourage learners’ participation and risk-taking in the class.

If I had to transfer some of the strategies showed in the video to my groups of learners, I would say that all are very useful. In my case, I have all range of ages (from young learners to adults). Thus, if I had to select the most effective ones for some specific groups and ages, I think I would definitely use transfer of knowledge, teaching to others, schema-activation and self-reflection. For instance, teaching to others could be effective if those high-level students could teach the weak ones in the class, just by giving them a hand on certain aspects of grammar or structures in writing. This way both the strong and the weak student would improve some of the weakest aspects.

With young learners schema-activation is quite significant because going from what they already know to the unknown makes a great impact on their learning process, while being unnoticed sometimes. For adolescents and young adults self-reflection strategies are also great because they can develop their autonomous and reflective skills, which are meaningful for adult lives. By transferring part of their knowledge they can also see or identify patterns of grammar as well.

Needless to say, the teacher should always provide affective strategies as well. Motivation and giving them the confidence to keep working and improving should be always present in the class in any task. By doing this we create a trusting atmosphere which encourage them to takes risks and to participate actively and communicatively. 

Grid Concepts

Concept	Definition	Source
Translanguaging	The use of two languages in the classroom as “the linguistic resources of the child to maximise understanding and achievement. Both languages are used in a dynamic and integrated manner”. It is an intentional and planned two-language usage. It is flexible and enables learning through more than one language.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 655.
Diglossia	The different uses and functions that two languages receive by a bilingual speaker.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 656
Code-switching	It is a bilingual mode in which both L1 and L2 are used simultaneously. It is a creative strategy by the speaker and sometimes a scaffolding technique in bilingual classrooms. It has associations with language separation.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 657-658
Monolingual	Non-bilingual speaker	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 3
Lingua franca	English as such refers to the “common language of communication by bilingual and multilingual people for whom English is not a first language. The great majority of communication in English is between people who come from non-English backgrounds”.	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 7
Cross-linguistic	Term to describe the way two different language systems interact in the mind of a speaker or learner so as to understand better the patterns or rules by comparing and contrasting.	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 12
Strategy	Sometimes associated with the terms “techniques”, “tactics” or “learning behaviours”. It is basically the techniques or tools which a learner might use to acquire or understand new content. They can be classified into 6 categories: memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 1-4
Interlanguage	“The intermediate system created while the learner is trying to come to terms with the target language […] errors as evidence of positive efforts by the student to learn the new language.”	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 7
Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis	It is what Krashen coined for the conscious learning to develop a language (ineffectively).	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Natural Order Hypothesis	This idea states that learning stages or features of a language have a natural order for a student to acquire them.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
The Monitor Hypothesis	In plain words, it is what we call when the system learnt monitors or edits the output of the learner of the previously acquired system.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
The Input Hypothesis	“language is acquired by understanding input which is a little beyond the current level of competence or comprehensible input”.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Affective Filter Hypothesis	“a learner’s emotions and attitudes can act as a filter which slows down the acquisition of language. When the affective is high it can block language development”.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Communicative Competence	It is the ability or skill that a speaker has to use language in order to deliver and interpret messages and pieces of information.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 9