Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's overview
- Prologue
- Reflections
- Part I Learner variables
- 1 Motivation and good language learners
- 2 Age and good language learners
- 3 Learning style and good laguage learners
- 4 Personality and good language learners
- 5 Gender and good language learners
- 6 Strategies and good language learners
- 7 Metacognition and good language learners
- 8 Autonomy and good language learners
- 9 Beliefs and good language learners
- 10 Culture and good language learners
- 11 Aptitude and good language learners
- Part II Learning variables
- The learners' landscape and journey: a summary
- Index
10 - Culture and good language learners
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's overview
- Prologue
- Reflections
- Part I Learner variables
- 1 Motivation and good language learners
- 2 Age and good language learners
- 3 Learning style and good laguage learners
- 4 Personality and good language learners
- 5 Gender and good language learners
- 6 Strategies and good language learners
- 7 Metacognition and good language learners
- 8 Autonomy and good language learners
- 9 Beliefs and good language learners
- 10 Culture and good language learners
- 11 Aptitude and good language learners
- Part II Learning variables
- The learners' landscape and journey: a summary
- Index
Summary
This chapter will discuss the role of culture and language learning in the classroom. Variations in cultural, ethnic, and national characteristics within and among individual students affect classroom dynamics and therefore influence the decisions which teachers need to make in order to provide an optimal learning environment for all learners. Culture is not an easy concept to define, and is especially difficult to disentangle from concepts such as ethnicity and nationality. Individuals define and interpret these terms differently depending on the sociocultural context they are situated in (Lantolf, 2000). There may be differences of the perceptions of self and others within a given sociocultural context (Finkbeiner, 2006; Kramsch, 1993, 1998), while surface phenomena (such as skin color) are often mistakenly related to categories such as ethnic, national, or cultural belonging. Very frequently these categories are outdated and neither reflect “current racial/ethnic realities” (Kramsch, 1998, p. 44) nor linguistic and cultural truths. In our globalizing world we cannot just glance at the surface and assume we understand others. We need to dive deep not only to understand others but also ourselves (Schmidt and Finkbeiner, 2006a, 2006b).
Many different metaphors have been used to describe culture: for example, culture has been referred to as an iceberg, where only about one-seventh is visible, while the rest is under water and non-observable (Weaver, 1993).
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- Chapter
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- Lessons from Good Language Learners , pp. 131 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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