AoCULTUREAo AS A SKILL IN UNDERGRADUATE EFL
CLASSROOMS: THE BANGLADESHI REALITIES
Faheem Hasan Shahed .
aheemshaheed_dhaka@yahoo.
American International University.
Bangladesh Kemal Ataturk Avenue.
Banani.
Dhaka.
Bangladesh 1213 Abstract: As regards the status of English in todayAos globalization era.
AocultureAo has turned out to be an essential component in the teaching and learning of English.
Some Applied Linguists have even described it as the fifth skillAiafter listening, speaking, reading and writingAiwhich must be handled adequately in EFL classrooms.
By appreciating and acquiring the cultural knowledge, values and skills associated with the different varieties of English.
EFL students could develop their cultural sensitivities using English as the medium of instruction despite their resentment motivation.
Eventually, students would be able to identify and respond to both culturally significant and inappropriate information and think positively about being a part of international environment.
Given the growing importance of EFL teaching in Bangladesh, this study investigated the roles of AocultureAo in the undergraduate EFL classrooms.
That is, the study carefully evaluated the effort and capabilities of the teachers in dealing with culturally sensitive issues in their materials, and the influences of cultural items of English on studentsAo The study made constructive recommendations for English teachers to have successful implementation of cultural skills in their ELT activities regarding Bangladeshi socio-cultural realities which would make students become effective workforce in this challenging era.
Keywords: cultural sensitivity, resentment motivation, globalization, target culture.
EFL classrooms Right from primary to tertiary levels, the teaching and learning of English in Bangladesh has whirled round the four skills, i.
listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Given the reality the Bangladesh does not have any pragmatic lan97 TEFLIN Journal.
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One of the misconceptions that has permeated the teaching of English at the primary and secondary levels of Bangladesh is the conviction that language is merely a code and, once masteredAi predominantly by memorizing its grammatical rules and some aspects of the social context in which it is embeddedAithe Aolanguage is essentially translatable into anotherAo (Kramsch, 1993, p.
This is one of the prime reasons why English, despite its dominant official existence in the curricula, has still been a language of fear and resentment for the masses (Shahed, 2.
In such a context several ELT professionals have argued that since English cannot be deemed as isolated entity and consequently presented in classrooms like a culture-less code.
the need for imparting the cultural knowledge associated with English is a necessity.
More precisely, teachers should deal with it as the Aofifth skillAo inside classrooms.
If we keep in mind McKayAos view .
EnglishAiin its process of achieving the status of global lingua francaAi has changed in terms of how it relates to culture.
Therefore, the issue of studentsAo developing cultural awareness and sensitivity, and eventually cultural competence, has attained crucial importance.
According to McKay, culture plays a significant role in language pedagogy in two ways: .
cultural knowledge often acts as the basis for the content and topics used in language materials and classroom discussions.
pragmatic standards are frequently based on particular cultural models.
Subsequently, she went on to highlight that the selection of the AocultureAo to use in both these areas of teaching depends on careful consideration with regard to the teaching of the particular target language.
Unfortunately, this issue has yet been properly addressed in the Bangladeshi ELT arena.
AoLanguage does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our livesAo (Sapir, 1970, p.
In a sense, it is Aoa key to the cultural past of a societyAo (Salzmann, 1998, p.
Aoa guide to Ausocial realityAyAo (Sapir, 1929, p.
209, cited in Salzmann, 1998, p.
Ethnographers such as Buttjes .
Ochs & Schieffelin .
Poyatos, .
, and Peters & Boggs, .
have attempted to show that Aolanguage and culture are from the start inseparably connectedAo (Buttjes, 1990, p.
55, cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1.
The process of becoming a competent member of society is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations.
Thus, language acquisition does not follow a universal sequence, but differs across cultures.
And so, language Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 99 teachersAo primary concern must not be with grammatical input, but with the transmission of socio-cultural knowledge of the language as well as the paralinguistic patterns and the kinesics of the culture of that language.
Language teaching is culture teaching and teachers do their students a great disservice in placing emphasis on the former, to the detriment of the latter.
Buttjes .
0, p.
55 in Lessard-Clouston, 1.
Aolanguage teachers need to go beyond monitoring linguistic production in the classroom and become aware of the complex and numerous processes of intercultural mediation that any foreign language learner undergoes.
Ao Hence, to describe the relationship between language and culture.
Samovar.
Porter, & Jain .
1, p.
Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted.
Culture.
is the foundation of Sapir .
1, p.
asserts that Aolanguage, race, and culture are not necessarily correlatedAo, only to admit later on that Aolanguage and our thought-grooves are inextricably interrelated, are, in a sense, one and the sameAo (Sapir, 1921, pp.
According to his lights.
Aoculture may be defined as what a society does and thinks.
Language is a particular how of thoughtAo In addition.
Hall .
1, p.
aligns himself with Humboldt and Bourdieu in dubbing language Aoone of the dominant threads in all culturesAo.
In a similar vein.
Bruner .
6, p.
says that Aoalthough meanings are Auin the mind,Ay they have their origins and their significance in the culture in which they are createdAo.
And he adds.
Aohuman beings do not terminate at their own skins.
they are expressions of a cultureAo (Bruner, 1990, p.
Furthermore, we could envision the possibility of Aocertain linguistic features making certain modes of perception more prevalent or more probableAo (Henle, 1970, p.
Lexical and grammatical categories of a language have been assumed to determine how its speakers conceptualize the world around them.
Brutt-GrifCerAos .
propagation of the term AomacroacquisitionAo should be interesting in this regard.
It refers to the spread of any international language through acquisition by lots of individuals in speech 100 TEFLIN Journal.
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nstead of through speaker migratio.
, hence, the connectivity of culture with language appears to be a natural phenomenon.
The question that may arise now is: if language and culture are so intricately intertwined, why should we overtly focus on culture when there are other aspects of the language curriculum which need more attention? To answer the questions, there are some factors need to be considered, they are: .
that learning English, the cultural knowledge and its skills are identical even though culture is inherent in what EFL teachers teach.
including culture in the EFL curriculum helps avoid the stereotypes.
teaching culture in the English classroom is to enable students to take control of their own learning as well as to achieve autonomy by evaluating and questioning the wider context within which the learning of English is embedded.
Tomalin & Stempleski .
3, p.
modifying SeelyeAos .
Aoseven goals of cultural instructionAo, may provide an answer pertinent to the question posed.
According to them, the teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing A To help students develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors.
A To help students develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave.
A To help students become more aware of conventional behavior in common situations in the target culture.
A To help students increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language.
A To help students develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting A To help students develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture, and A To stimulate studentsAo intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards people.
The issue of Aocultural awareness raisingAo can give us a wider understanding of these points.
A Aogood morningAo means nothing to a foreign user of English other than that it is a form of greeting.
But the moment s/he understands Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 101 that there is a lot more to itAilike the vagaries of the European weather and an EnglishmanAos sense of relief in finding a sunny morningAiit can bring in a new level of meaning to the language.
To the foreign learner, the greeting would suddenly become personalAinot just a routine complimentary stuff.
In short, the Aoknowledge of the grammatical system of a language .
rammatical competenc.
has to be complemented by the understanding of culturespecific meanings .
ommunicative or rather cultural competenc.
Ao (Byram.
Morgan et al.
, 1994, p.
Culture in language learning challenges the studentsAo ability to make sense of the world around them (Kramsch, 1993, p.
Therefore, the present study was intended to find out the status of AocultureAo as a skill in Bangladeshi EFL classrooms.
METHOD
In this study, the researcher focused on the EFL courses at the undergraduate levels of the private universities.
The reasons behind such focus are twofold.
First.
Bangladeshi private universities, on an average, have three functional EFL courses in the curricula of the popular programs they offer .
Business Administration.
Computer Science & Engineering.
Electrical & Electronics Engineering.
Law.
English.
Economics et.
these functional courses cover all the four skills required for studentsAo future professional careers.
Second, students come to study in this level after completing ten years of Secondary education and two years of Higher Secondary education .
here English has a dominant stature in the curricul.
and they are expected to be quite conversant at least in English reading and writing skills.
Therefore, it was realistic and interesting to find out from this level how teachers have been dealing with this AocultureAo issue regardless the skills they A questionnaire comprising 14 close-ended and 4 open-ended questions was distributed among fifty-four .
teachers teaching at four topranking private universities.
The items directly centered round the issues like how the printed and electronic classroom materials address culture.
whether or not those are adequate.
what kind of AoEnglishAo the teachers normally emphasize in their materials.
what or how the efforts of the teachers in dealing with culturally sensitive issues in their materials are.
what sort of positive or negative attitude influence the cultural items of English -have on studentsAo learning.
addition, face to face interview with five teachers were conducted concerning the issues and elaborately discussed from various perspectives.
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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Findings Teachers and Cultural Sensitivity An overwhelming majority of 51 teachers .
ut of .
agreed that they were aware of the need of cultural sensitization of their students as that would make the students become flexible and quick learners.
The same number of teachers also AoagreedAo to the fact that an English teacher should develop the awareness and skills to recognize culturally significant information and help students explore them with sensitivity and tolerance.
In response to another relevant query as to what approach teachers usually take while dealing with culturally sensitive items in their ELT materials, 49 teachers said that they Aotry to make their students understand the meanings and contexts of those items in terms of the target culture.
Ao Five teachers said that they Aoexplain those items briefly to their students but give them the impression that those are not important issues at all.
Ao However, it was interesting to find out the teachersAo feeling about their studentsAo attitude.
Forty teachers AoagreedAo and 14 teachers Aopartially agreedAo that students as a whole are not interested to achieve cultural sensitivity.
are more interested in attending the English class to Aolearn some EnglishAo.
StudentsAo Difficulty in Culturally Diversified Items of English Thirty eight .
teachers expressed the view that students faced difficulty in dealing with culturally diversified items in all the four skills.
Nine and seven teachers categorically mentioned Aoreading skillsAo and AolisteningAo skills respectively as the problem areas.
The term Aoculturally diversified itemsAo referred to any kind of English words, phrases or sentences that seem alien or different or unmatchable in terms of Bangladeshi cultural orientations.
The following are the reasons narrated by the teachers.
Firstly, as regards reading activities, sizable numbers of undergraduate students are either slow readers or pretentious readers.
In such circumstance, students often become reluctant to read the text if the topic itself is culturally If the topic is okay, they read, but that is also Aoresentment readingAo as they read just because their teacher is forcing them to read.
Also, whenever Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 103 they encounter culturally different words, either they skip those words without trying to understand the meaning, or ask for clarifications awkwardly .
articularly in case of taboo item.
which cause embarrassments in mixed-gender Secondly, in listening activities, students listen with very poor understanding or interpretation.
in most cases, they consciously overhear the culturally different items and focus on the words or sentences they understand.
Thirdly, in case of speaking and writing activities, students more or less show thorough reluctance to take over any topic which is culturally alien to them.
Finally, students on the whole display a sort of avoidance tendency in dealing with culturally diversified items.
Of course, a number of students do attempt to work sincerely, but the problem is: they cannot relate those items to the local environments spontaneously.
Those are exactly the reasons why an overwhelming number of 28 teachers Aopartially agreedAo that they found it problematic to handle culturally sensitive issues in the materials.
AoBalancing actAo by Teachers with Cultural Items It should be interesting to note the responses of two related questions concerning the items in the reading texts used by teachers.
On the one hand, teachers did explain their students the words or phrases that conveyed different meanings in different cultures, even having different meanings in UK and USA Forty three teachers said they AoalwaysAo did that while 11 teachers said they explained the meanings of the words or phrases if there was adequate On the other hand, in case of items that were related to the socio-cultural values of the target language only, but totally unknown to local students, 29 teachers said that they replaced them with identical items from Bangladeshi socio-cultural domainsAionly in case of urgent necessities, otherwise not.
In the same line, 32 teachers Aopartially agreedAo to the statement that since culture is an inseparable part of FL teaching, they Aodeliberately used cultural items in classroomsAo while 22 teachers were undecided about it.
However, teachers strongly felt that students Aoshould get habituated with the diversified cultural issues related to English language that appeared in the teaching materialsAo.
all 54 teachers AoagreedAo to it.
The Impact of Globalization Forty nine teachers have AoagreedAo that the current status of English as a global language has made the AocultureAo of English an important ingredient in 104 TEFLIN Journal.
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Probably for this reason, teachers do not think that Aowhat kind of English should be used and taught in classroomsAo is at all factor due to Thirty four teachers said that they used Aoall kinds of global versions of EnglishAo regardless the situational demands and 20 teachers answered that they used British or American or may be both kinds of English in accordance with the situational demands.
Nobody displayed any bias or inclination toward the native varieties only.
During interviews, teachers said that globalization has rather allowed English to become AoeverybodyAos languageAo and thus, different varieties of English have gained solid foundation vis-y-vis the native Some teachers also highlighted that the current global status of English has somewhat compelled the native English speaking circles to follow a uniform standard of English that is easily recognized and intelligible to the global audience.
AoCulturally SignificantAo vs.
AoCulturally PeripheralAo Issues Forty eight teachers felt that Bangladeshi students were not capable enough to discriminate between the Aoculturally significantAo and the Aoculturally peripheralAo issues in their classroom materials.
Some teachers during interview said that even if they did, there was always this fear of Aolosing trackAo in the learning process, i.
they may wrongly accept a culturally sensitive or unacceptable issue in a positive light while overlooking another crucial issue that they should actually learned and apprehended the culturally significant and culturally peripheral issues in the classroom.
Getting Exposed to All Kinds of English Cultures Finally, teachers came up with a mixed set of responses to the query whether or not it is practically possible for Bangladeshi undergraduate students to learn or get exposed to all kinds of cultures associated with English.
Fifty two teachers answered in affirmative out of whom 43 mentioned Aoabilities and skills of the teachersAo and AostudentsAo enthusiasm and qualityAo as the two essential criteria.
Nine teachers mentioned Aofacilities of the teaching-learning environmentAo as the added criterion.
Two teachers deemed such an issue as impossibility.
Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 105 Discussion The issues of AoTeachers and cultural sensitivityAo prove the points that Bangladeshi EFL teachers are actually aware of the importance of incorporating AocultureAo as a skill in their classroom teaching, and accordingly they attempt to deal with it seriously.
it is rather the students who are least enthusiastic about the matter.
The reason would be evident from the reality that Bangladeshi students in their secondary level possess Aoresentment motivationAo .
they learn English simply because it is a subject in their curriculu.
more than Aoinstrumental motivationAo (Shahed, 1.
which they find difficult to overcome in the tertiary level.
Barring the learners from English medium backgrounds, most of the students in their schools are at the mercy of untrained English teachers who hardly know about the cultural bondage of English (Shahed.
The findings under the issue of AoStudentsAo difficulty in culturally diversified items of EnglishAo further support the reasons mentioned in the previous discussion that students have inabilities in getting out of the Aoresentment mindsetAo which they created during their secondary level education.
They have learned to view English as Aoa tool for materialistic enhancementAo where grammatical and sentential rules play dominant roles more than the contextualized interpretations (Shahed, 2.
It will be relevant to narrate Cortazzi and JinAos .
three types of cultural information used in language textbooks and materials: .
Aosource culture materialsAo that draw on the learnersAo own culture as content, .
Aotarget culture materialsAo that use the culture of a country where English is the first language, and .
Aointernational target culture materialsAo that use a great variety of cultures in English and non-English-speaking countries around the world.
The teachers point out that English language textbooks in non-native countries have been frequently using target culture topics as some ELT educators believe that these would motivate learners.
However, in reality, such content appears to be largely irrelevant, uninteresting, or confusing.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Bangladeshi students carry with them a sort of mechanical mindset regarding English when they come to undergrad The issue of AoBalancing act by teachers with cultural itemsAo match with the reality that students do have difficulties in cultural items, and subsequently, teachers exercise caution and a sort of balancing technique in dealing with While Aoexplaining foreign cultural itemsAo seems to be an easier task for 106 TEFLIN Journal.
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Aoreplacing those with identical local itemsAo and Aodeliberately using those in class materialsAo appears to be a hard or avoidable job.
McKay .
cites Cortazzi and JinAos .
propagation of using Aosource cultureAo material which implies that using localized items gives students an opportunity to learn more about their own culture as well as the language needed to explain these cultural elements in English.
Such a situation also places local bilingual teachers in a position in which they can explain particular cultural events or cultural behavior to students who are not familiar with that particular aspect of the culture.
McKay .
also provides the examples of textbook projects in Morocco and Chile to prove the efficacy of using localized items in ELT books.
In the early 1990, the Moroccan Education Ministry implemented a textbook project in which Moroccan culture formed the basis for textbook content rather than target culture information.
More recently.
Chile has developed an entire series of textbooks, entitled AoGo for ChileAo which incorporates a good deal of localized cultural content.
The findings under the issue of AoImpact of globalizationAo prove that due to the increase of international businesses in Bangladesh and consequently, the high frequency of foreign travels by local entrepreneurs, businessmen, corporate employees and workers.
English skills, added with cultural knowledge, have become a pivotal factor here.
Also the massive boom of global electronic English media has played its role in enhancing the need for culture in English Lots of people learn English because they want access to scientific and technological information, international organizations, global economic trade, and higher education, and knowledge of English makes such access In his book AoThe Alchemy of EnglishAo.
Kachru .
Aoknowing English is like possessing the fabled AladdinAos lamp, which permits one to open the linguistic gates to international business, technology, science and travel.
In short.
English provides linguistic power.
Ao In case of students handling the Aoculturally significantAo and Aoculturally peripheralAo items, there are chances of additional hazards for Bangladeshi studentsAiparticularly for those who are unaware of foreign cultural orientations.
Some students may reject parts of their local culture without knowing or accepting comparable parts of the second culture.
They may also find themselves repeatedly facing cultural interference as the rules and values of one conflict with the other in a given situation.
When this happens, either one culture AowinsAo or students suffer from emotional and cognitive stress (Saville-Troike, 1.
Thus, teachersAo task would be to stimulate studentsAo interest in the target cul- Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 107 ture, and to help establish the English classroom Aonot so much as a place where the language is taught, but as one where opportunities for learning of various kinds are provided through the interactions that take place between the participantsAo (Ellis, 1992, p.
171, cited in Kramsch, 1993, p.
This participatory approach would greatly help students in this regard.
The responses regarding studentsAo AoGetting exposed to all kinds of English culturesAo overwhelmingly highlight the bright side of the entire issue.
Let us dwell on this one by one.
In relation to the teaching-learning facilities, private universities in Bangladesh stand on much favorable positionAiespecially the top-ranking onesAicompared to the public universities.
The classrooms are fully equipped with ultramodern multimedia gazettes suitable for audio-video activities.
Teachers are individually provided with necessary logistic support.
Thus, the issue depends jointly on teachersAo capabilities and studentsAo enthusiasm.
While teachersAo skill development is an ongoing process to which the leading private universities are attentive and careful for their own reputationAos sake, the studentsAo enthusiasm and quality is something that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
Making students exposed to the benefits of appreciating and acquiring the cultural knowledge, values and skills associated with the different varieties of English, teachers can develop their cultural sensitivities using English as the medium of instruction.
Cortazzi and Jin .
talk about several advantages of using what they call Aointernational target cultureAo materials.
By using such materials, teachers could easily exemplify the manner in which English is effectively being used by bilingual users of English to communicate with others for international purposes.
Students could directly get exposed to the lexical, grammatical, and phonological variation in the present-day use of English.
They could also illustrate cross-cultural pragmatics in which bilingual users of English create their own rules of appropriateness.
In this way, students could be helped to identify and respond to both culturally significant and inappropriate information and think positively about being a part of international environment.
Several teachers in interview sessions mentioned that it is possible because they are ready to impart the skills on their students.
in fact, there is little dearth of teachersAo enthusiasm and efforts.
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Admittedly, no teacher can teach culture any more than s/he can teach anyone how to breathe.
As Thanasoulas .
proposes, what teachers can do is 108 TEFLIN Journal.
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By bringing to the fore selective elements of the target culture, and focusing on those traits that are of importance to the members of the target community, teachers can make students aware that there are no such things as superior and inferior cultures and that there are differences among people within the target culture as well.
Teachers must learn to understand both the medium and the content of what they are teaching, and learn to be sensitive to the differences between what they are teaching and what their students bring to the classroom.
It should be almost trite to mention that by teaching culture in the EFL class.
Bangladeshi teachers would actually be helping the students respect other societies, and eventually become global in the genuine sense of the term.
As Tomalin .
rightly says, it is an attitudinal change that is expressed through the use of language.
Based on the findings of Bangladeshi EFL realities at the undergraduate level, this study comes up with the following categorical suggestions.
Firstly, teachers need to be prepared in order to talk or bring culture wherever it is relevantAiregardless the studentsAo extent of enthusiasm.
At the same time, teachers should unanimously decide the extent of cultural input in their EFL lessons and the ways to impart such knowledge.
Secondly, classroom lessons and multimedia presentations should include systematically organized culture-based items which would unconsciously drag students into global environment inside the classrooms.
This, despite being a conscious activity by the teachers, would be an unconscious natural act on studentsAo part.
Thirdly, teachers should use task-based learning and enjoyable discovery techniques to help students learn for themselves.
In other words, teachers would ask them to work on projects.
Teachers would take the role of a facilitator.
For instance, teachers can ask students to find some information from internet about different eating habits in different countries and ask them to give Finally, in order to raise the cultural awareness of students, meticulously prepared cultural items should be taught as a component under any or all of the four skills.
Tomalin .
terms it as Aoculture spotAo or Aoculture cornerAo that can be incorporated in specific lessons.
This would obviously be a conscious activity on both teachersAo and studentsAo parts.
Shahed.
AoCultureAo As a Skill in Undergraduate EFL Classrooms 109
These would, hopefully to a considerable extent, ensure the application of making culture the fifth skill inside the Bangladeshi undergraduate English
REFERENCES