Socio-Cultural Factors And The Way Of Working With Them

LEARNING JOURNAL

INTRODUCTION

There exist many factors that intervene in Second language acquisition and which a teacher must know adequately. Among the most relevant and analyzed topics, which I want to reflect upon, are the following: the influence of socio-cultural factors (acculturation, attitudes, cultural shock, motivation, and learning styles.

SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS

Learninga second language is a complex process which involves many variables. Whether internal, such as self-esteem, inhibition, empathy, etc or simply external, such as the level of interaction, amount and quality of input etc, the fact is that all of them play an active role in this process. It is also well known that when people learn a second language in a foreign context, they learn linguisticaspects of the language by direct instruction or just by making mental associations and deductions. But there are also other aspects that can only be learned through the direct contact with the target culture.

According to Brown (2,000), when learning a second language, it is also necessary to learn about the target culture because there are some things which cannot be learned in a classroom, oroutside the second language natural context. Learning a second language is not then only a matter of learning structures but also a matter of learning about customs, beliefs, skills, arts; all those things that identify the second culture.

Among the concepts we as second language teachers must understand how they function to be able to help our students overcome difficulties in their learningprocess are for example, the cultural differences, attitudes and acculturation etc.

In regards to cultural differences, we should make our students be aware that all people from a different country belong to a particular culture with distinct likes, ways of thinking, customs, and beliefs etc. It is very common for us to create a stereotype of the target culture due to the natural tendency tocompare the target cultural pattern with ours. The fact we make comparisons and obtain the final perception about the target culture is made because of the orientation of our attitudes towards the target culture. According to Gardner and Lamber (1972), learning a language implies the involvement of some positive attitudes they defined as group –specific and which helps the learners overcome some stagesof the acculturation.
“Extensive studies were systematic attempts to examine the effect of attitudes on language learning. After studying the interrelationships of a number of different attitudes, they defined motivation as a construct made up of certain attitudes. The most important of these is group-specific, the attitude the learners have towards the members of a cultural group whose languagethey are learning”.
(Gardner and Lamber, 1972)


Taking into account the prior finding, we should encourage our students to be open- minded, with positive attitudes to accept the new culture as having things that differ from the native culture but which also have many things in common that could be shared.

As I mentioned before, every culture is unique and has different likes,ways of thinking, customs, beliefs etc. All these particularities could be opposed to our system of beliefs and could interfere with their learning process. We should also warn them that they are going to face different situations which are going to cause some positive or negative psychological symptoms. They should know that at the beginning, they are going to experience a great sense ofexcitement or euphoria because they will see things they do not have in their own culture, but which, thereafter, will turn into a different sensation consisting on a feeling of great dissatisfaction because of the differences between the two cultures, also known as cultural shock. This stage is probably the most critical one, and students need to be conscious of it and be highlighted on how to...