Culture And Cultural Identities On A Lesson Plan

Culture and Cultural Identities on a Lesson Plan
Pedro Arriagada

The following is an essay explaining the theoretical background and practical implications of a lesson plan designed to teach English and culture. From the theoretical perspective, it will be explained the inclusion of several ideas in the lesson plan, such as the concept of English as an international language taken fromMackey’s articles “Culture in Teaching English as an International Language” and “Teaching English as an International Language: the Chilean context”. Furthermore, I will explain how I include the concept of Interculturality, the values required for developing it in the classroom and how to dissolve prejudices and stereotypes from students’ minds, ideas taken from Byram et all’s article “Developing theIntercultural Dimension in Language Teaching” and Menard-Warwick’s article “Co-constructing representations of culture in ESL and EFL classroom: Discursive faultlines in Chile and California”. Moreover, it will be included in the theoretical background of the lesson plan, the concepts of subjectivity and personal view, taken from Ros i Solé’s article: Culture for Beginners: A Subjective andRealistic Approach for Adult Language Learners”.
The lesson plan consists of an introduction showing and explaining greetings from different cultures, after a discussion and practice they will greet each other using the English language but the body language of a given foreign culture, and a follow-up discussion. I have chosen this lesson plan as appropriate because cultures are getting closer and closerevery day. We, as teachers, cannot continue to teach English as a distant language spoken far away from home in a country that only a handful of people will ever visit. The English language has become an active element in the world; it moves from culture to culture opening access to new information, job opportunities, entertainment, social interaction, etc. The English language, nowadays, belongsto the world and, more precisely, to people and not to countries. Since each person brings a cultural identity from each culture, it is highly necessary to teach students how to face a cross-cultural encounter.
The lesson plan was designed for a fourth grade class. A class of forty four students whose average age is nine years old. The identities they have are: They are children, playful andlaughing children. They enjoy physical games (ex, hide and seek), toys and videogames. They are closely connected to technology, many of them possess personal computers and cell phones, if not, they at least know how to use them. Cartoons are a strong part of their lives, as well as popular films such as “Avatar”, “Harry Potter”, etc. They see English to be closely related to entertainment, sincetheir favorite films and songs are in spoken and sung in this language. They are part of the “TV-culture”, since they talk, believe and act like everything they see on television. The majority of them come from a catholic family, therefore, they are being taught this religion, however, some of them are also descendent from Aymara ancestors so they still share some of their traditions or haveknowledge of the Aymara culture. They belong to their families where each of them plays several roles, such as son, daughter, only child, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew, grandson, granddaughter, etc. Soccer is another important factor of their identity, they express enthusiastic opinions when talking about the national team or local teams such as Universidad de Chile or Colo-colo (they can becalled chunchos or colocolinos accordingly), therefore, they are interested in competitions. They are students, which is another identity. They are Chilean and native of the Spanish language.
They tend to be motivated by activities that include pictorial material, image(s). They also show a high level of interest when mimicry or body language are included in the activities. It is also motivating...