Engaging Students with Embedded Cultural Content
This webinar is designed to provide a comfortable environment for exploring the challenges of teaching culture in our world language classrooms at all levels of instruction. The focus will be on finding and using authentic materials to engage students and motivate them to use the target language, especially at lower levels of instruction. We will also draw on Common Core and the ACTFL 21st Century Skills Map. Our outstanding presenters, Bill Heller of SUNY Geneseo and Cherice Montgomery of Brigham Young University, both of whom have also taught in public school districts, will share their insights, provide sample activities and answer your questions and concerns. Take advantage of this perk of your NECTFL membership by joining us for a distinctively NECTFL webinar: informal, informative, and responsive to your needs and questions!
• Locate high quality, culturally authentic materials
• Create emotionally engaging activities using the Common Core Standards & the ACTFL 21st
Century Skills Map
• Motivate meaningful, target language communication
I can:
Image source: Microsoft
“And when I began to write at about the age of 7 . . . I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather—how lovely it was that the sun had come out. Now this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather because there was no need to.”
- Chimamanda Adichie
Source: http://www.splicd.com/D9Ihs241zeg/13/85
• Language and culture are inseparable• Advanced linguistic proficiency requires cultural fluency• Culture cannot be an add on or afterthought
Embed culture into every activity
• Culture is layered and multifaceted--there is no single “target culture”
• Culture is not a static body of “content” to be taught• Students need to be immersed in cultural products, practices, and
perspectives
Provide “comprehensible
cultural input”
• Students need substantive access and exposure to TL cultures• Students need to explore diverse aspects of TL cultures from
multiple perspectives
Prepare students to engage with TL culture
on its own terms
Key Principles for “Teaching” Culture
Cherice Montgomery, Ph.D.
Image: Jason Aaberg
There is no magic
bullet!
“The world in which you were born is just one
model of reality. Other cultures are not failed
attempts at being you: they are unique
manifestations of the human spirit.”
- Wade Davis
CreditsAdichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. (2009, October). Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story. TED Talks. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html Splice available from: http://www.splicd.com/D9Ihs241zeg/13/85
Aaberg, Jason. (2006, March 25). Bullet. Stock Xchng. Retrieved May 18, 2012, from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/495767 Used under a standard, royalty-free Stock Xchng license.
Davis, Wade. (n.d.). Syracuse Cultural Workers. http://www.syrculturalworkers.com 315.474.1132
Microsoft. (n.d.). Three friends sitting in a row. Microsoft Clipart.
Northeast Conference. (n.d.). Logo. Retrieved from: http://www.nectfl.org/
