Teaching British Culture

If you teach teenagers, some of them may be planning on going to Britain this year for a summer course. Especially if they stay with a host family, they’ll be learning far more than the language – they’ll also be experiencing, possibly for the first time, what it’s like to live in a different culture.

What can you do to help prepare them for what they’ll find? One way is through a quiz. Here’s one that’s based on mistakes and incomprehensions that my own previous students have reported. They were predominantly Italian. The quiz obviously needs to focus on the differences between British culture and that of the students who you are teaching, so if you want to use the quiz with another nationality you may find that some of these questions are irrelevant and others need to be added.

You’re in Cambridge for a summer course, and you’re staying with a British family. Do you know enough about British culture to cope?

1. You’ve just arrived. What do you say and do?

a) Say Hello to every one in the family.
b) Say Hello and shake hands with everyone.
c) Say Hello and shake hands with the mother and father of the family.

2. Your landlady asks you if you’re hungry and if you like Welsh Rabbit. What is it?

a) The animal in the picture, cooked in tomato sauce.
b) Grilled cheese on toast.
c) A type of cake.

3. The next morning you come down and see your landlady in the kitchen. What do you say?
a) Good morning
b) Good morning Mrs.
c) Good morning madam.

4. You have to catch a bus to the language school. You arrive at the bus stop and wait next to the stop. Suddenly you see that all the other people there are looking at you angrily. Why?
a) You’re listening to your walkman and walkmans are not allowed in the street in Britain.
b) British people queue at the bus stop. The first person to arrive stands next to the stop, the second person stands behind the first person, the third behind the second and so on. And they get on the bus in that order. You went straight to the front of the queue. In Britain this is called “pushing in” and is very impolite.
c) Your mobile phone is ringing. British people always turn their mobile phones off when they’re in public.

5. Your lessons are from 9.30-1.00 and the school organises sports from 2.30-5.00 every afternoon. You need to get to the shops. When is the best time to go?
a) Before lessons – British shops are open from 8-12.30 and 1.30-5.30.
b) In the evening – shops in Britain stay open till 8pm.
c) At lunchtime. Shops in Britain are usually open from about 9.30-5.30

6. You notice that a lot of people seem to call you “love”. Your landlady said it, a shop assistant said it, and a person you asked for directions in the street said it. Why?
a) It’s quite usual in Britain to call people who you don’t know “love”.
b) They like you a lot.
c) You didn’t understand correctly. They really said something different.

7. After school, some other students invite you to go for a walk. But you don’t want to be late for dinner with your host family. Do you have enough time?
a) Yes, for an hour or so. Dinner will probably be at about 7.
b) No problem. British people rarely eat before 8.30.
c) No. Dinner will probably be at about 6pm. You have to go straight home.

8. It’s Sunday lunchtime – the most important meal of the week. You're having roast lamb, potatoes and carrots, a mixed salad and strawberries. On the table there’s a little pot of mint sauce – vinegar containing chopped mint leaves. What do you do with it?
a) Put a small spoonful on the roast lamb.
b) Nothing - it's for a salad, which will be put on the table after the meat course
c) Nothing. You're having strawberries for dessert and you'll put it on the strawberries.


What are the uses and limitations of a quiz like this? It obviously can’t prepare the students for every difference they’re going to meet. But some are more important than others. The questions include areas where there is a real possibility of creating hostility or offence – like the example of queuing – and here the quiz does aim to give information.

With some of the other situations, the aim is different. Take the questions on food – they may never meet either Welsh rabbit or mint sauce while they’re in Britain. But it is quite likely that the food in general, and the way it is presented, will be different. The specific questions are important only as examples and as a springboard for discussion : What would happen if you got something like this wrong, and what could you do to make sure you don’t. If they poured the mint sauce on their strawberries, it would be unlikely to offend anyone – but a reaction of amusement on the part of the host family could be horribly embarrassing. So the question leads on to a discussion of : What would you do if you saw something on the table which you didn’t recognise? What would be best – to keep quiet, guess and pour the mint sauce on your salad (how do you think the family would react and how would you feel?) or to say immediately “We don’t have this in my country. What is it?”
The quiz also risks making generalisations that may not be true in specific instances. Maybe the student will stay with a family that doesn’t eat until 8.30 – not everyone is typical. And what’s the answer to (1) ? In some families it might be (a), in others (c). Again, awareness of the dangers of stereotyping can be raised by asking them to think about stereotypes of their own culture – for example,  Italians eat pasta every day. True for many but not for all.

The aim of the quiz is therefore firstly to make the students aware that there will be cultural differences, secondly to forewarn them about some of the major areas where there is the danger of causing offence, and thirdly to lead into a discussion of how they can avoid misunderstandings and what to do if they arise.


Quiz Answers
1 c (or possibly a); 2 b; 3b; 4 b; 5 c (b on some days in large towns); 6 a, 7 c (possibly a); 8 a.

Notes

For a great discussion of the British use of the address form love, see this article from The Guardian

Teaching Intensive Courses : The Role of On-Line Materials

For some students, learning a language gradually over an extended period is not an option. They need the language now – or even better, yesterday. This may be the case for instance with a student who has just changed jobs and needs a far higher language competence for the new job than s/he currently has. Or then there is the student who knows s/he needs to improve in English, but can’t or doesn’t want to commit to an extended period of regular lessons. These are the types of student who often end up on an intensive course. This type of course however presents two specific problems :

Overload : “Intensive” has different definitions, but may mean anything up to six contact hours a day – or even more on courses which include lunch and dinner with the teacher. Unless the course includes constant changes of activity and approach, such intensity can often lead to overload and fatigue - especially if students are at a low level and or perhaps in a one-to-one situation. The morning sessions may go well, but if the course then continues with yet more new material, and the same approach the “after-lunch dip” and late afternoon tiredness may make the intensity ultimately counter-productive.

Lack of Follow-Up : Another problem of these courses is the potential lack of follow-up. The students may end the course feeling that they’ve progressed a lot, but what has been learnt is then just as quickly forgotten. This is again especially crucial for lower level students, who may obtain no long-term benefit at all from the course if they do not have some way of consolidating what has been learnt. If they are not later going to follow an on-going course, they need to develop the ability to study autonomously as part of the intensive programme –so that they can then go on doing so afterwards.

One way of dealing with both these problems is to use an on-line course as part of the intensive programme – I usually use them in the hour immediately after lunch. On-line courses have the advantages that :

• They provide a variety of approach and a completely different focus from the morning session.


• They allow the student to work on material that recycles what s/he has been doing previously on the course, helping to reduce overload and ensuring immediate consolidation.


• If it is a group course, they insert at least one personalised element into the programme – each student can work on activities which correspond to his/her individual linguistic or communicative needs.


• They allow the students to work at their own pace for at least one section of the course.


• They allow the students to continue studying after the intensive programme finishes, using an approach which they are familiar with and have already learnt how to use. The Netlanguages courses for example, which we use on intensive courses, allow the students access for at least six months after the initial enrolment. They can therefore continue working through the activities, completing those which they didn’t have time for on the course and taking advantage of the opportunity for contact with an on-line tutor for spoken tutorials (via Skype) and written work (corrected by E-mail).

I wrote about the problems of intensive courses previously, in Parts One and Two of the article Community Language Learning, where I suggested that two ways to inject variety into the course were to devote the afternoon firstly to self-access work and secondly to a session using a completely different methodological approach, such as CLL. The on-line work described here is of course just one way of organising the self-access period – but with the advantage that it does not have to end with the course.

Deciding What and When to Correct

I live here for five years.

On hearing an incorrect form like this, you have to decide what to do about it. Should it be corrected immediately? Left to form the basis of a remedial lesson? Offered to the student for self-correction? Corrected “surreptitiously”? Or ignored completely?

What you decide to do may depend on any one or more of a number of factors :

• First of all, what do you believe to be the nature of the language learning process? Will the incorrect form be reinforced if it is not corrected, with the risk that it becomes “fossilised” – that is, irremediably fixed in the learner’s interlanguage – his or her personal version of the language. Or is there a “natural order” of language acquisition for language items which cannot be changed or hurried along by correction or any other form of formal teaching (1)?


• Secondly, what is the objective of the activity and what’s the relationship of the incorrect form to that objective? If the form above occurred during a controlled practice activity on the present perfect, it would be counterproductive not to correct it immediately. The objective of the activity is to ensure students understand the form and use of the structure, and can produce it accurately.


• On the other hand, in a fluency activity instant correction would distract the students and might well work against the objective – communicating effectively with whatever language students have at their disposal, regardless of how imperfect it is. There may still be a place for correction at the end of the activity, but unless communication has broken down entirely, you probably won’t want to interrupt.
  
  And a third example, if it occurred as a passing comment during a reading activity – The text says x about this town but I live here for 5 years and didn’t know – there would be no relationship between the error and the aim of the activity, and your decision would likely be based on one of the other considerations listed here. For example …..


• What will be the effect on the student(s) of correcting or not correcting? If the student who made the comment in the reading lesson was a shy, weak person who rarely offered any contribution to the lesson, you might decide that correcting the error is less important than boosting the student’s confidence by reacting positively to the communicative value of the utterance. There is, however, always the possibility that by leaving the error you may confuse other students, who identified it as wrong but then, when you didn’t correct, weren’t sure. In this case, “surreptitious” correction can be useful – the teacher simply reacts to the student by parroting back the correct form . "Oh really? You’ve lived here for five years? I didn’t know that.” The student who used the incorrect form may not “notice” it, but those who are focusing on it, will.
  
  There are also students who want constant correction and others who don’t want it at all. Correct too much and you annoy the second group, don’t correct enough and you lose the confidence of the first, who feel that you are not “teaching” them.


• Is the incorrect form a “one-off” problem, or is it something you’ve heard recurring frequently – either from that individual or the group as a whole. If so, remedial work may be necessary.


• And finally, is it an error or a mistake. In ELT, these are not synonyms but have a precise technical meaning. If the incorrect form is due to a lack of knowledge on the student’s part – for example, if the student is a beginner who has never met the present perfect – it is an error. In this case, simple correction is unlikely to be helpful and is in fact more likely to confuse the student. The form needs to be taught, and until the students arrive at that point in the syllabus, it can generally be safely ignored. The same may be true if students are at intermediate level and the teacher assumes that they have met the form. If correction draws a response of blank looks, then even if it has been taught, it has not been learnt. It may have been misunderstood, or simply forgotten, and needs re-teaching. (2)
  
  On the other hand, an intermediate or advanced student might say the same thing but then, when the teacher indicated a problem, could self-correct. In this case, the correct form is a mistake – caused by the pressure of the communicative situation. A common example of this is the way students often understand a new form or use when it is first presented, use it accurately throughout the controlled and semi-controlled practice phases, but then become inaccurate in freer practice activities. In controlled and semi-controlled practice, students have little to do except concentrate on producing the form itself. In free practice (and fluency activities) this changes. They now have to understand what someone else has said, decide what they want to say in reply, and formulate their response in English – all in real time. This puts far greater stress on the brain, which responds by “simplifying” – and the result is a mistake.
  
  Mistakes then are a sign, not that the students do not “know” the form, but that they have not yet fully acquired or assimilated it - not at least enough for it to be produced in spontaneous communication. If your students expect correction, or if your view of language learning is that constant “noticing” will aid acquisition, then you might ask them to self-correct. If they don’t, or if you believe that only time and further “authentic” exposure to the form can lead to natural acquisition, you might let it go.

Your decision of what and when to correct will therefore depend on a number of variables, and your decisions may differ from group to group, or student to student. This is also true of how you correct – something that we’ll look at in detail in a future article.

NOTES

1. For a view of error based on the idea of a natural acquisition order see James Trotta's article Understanding Learner Errors

2. In their book Correction, Bartram and Walton suggest that it is often impossible to distinguish between an error and a mistake and that it is therefore not a useful distinction. This is one of the very few things in the book that I don’t agree with. If you define, as I do, a mistake as something which the students can produce accurately under controlled conditions and can therefore self-correct, I find the distinction between an error and a mistake to be a criterion which I frequently apply when I’m deciding what, when and how to correct. Their own definition, which is vaguer, does however lead to more grey areas and I understand why they feel it to be less useful.

Making ESL Learning Fun for Preschool Children

Preschoolers are cute and funny but they certainly have a minute attention span, and that can give pre-K teachers a headache if they do not have enough good ideas ready to hand. This article by Shelley Vernon will give you access to a wealth of great ideas, games and stories to make your preschool ESL classes more fun and effective.

The right ESL pre-k teaching tools can make learning easier and more fun. Take, for example, the research work of Dr. Howard Gardner who came up with the theory of multiple intelligences. This essentially rules out the idea that the best way for children to learn is by sitting at a table doing "desk work". Instead, Gardner pinpoints different "intelligences" which are essentially learning styles. Everyone has a specific intelligence (or a few specific intelligences) that defines how he or she learns best. This means that in order to reach all the children in a classroom, different learning methods must be made available to them. The multiple intelligences are :

• Linguistic intelligence: Learning and using spoken and written language
• Logical-mathematical intelligence: Logically analysing problems, detecting patterns, reasoning.
• Musical intelligence: Performing, composing, and appreciating musical patterns.
• Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence: Using the whole body or parts of the body to solve problems.
• Spatial intelligence: Recognizing patterns of wide space and confined areas.
• Interpersonal intelligence: Effectively working with others.
• Intrapersonal intelligence: Understanding self and feelings.
  

By using games and other activities in your classroom, you'll be able to create a class period that explores various intelligences and reaches a variety of children instead of just the linguistic learners.

Additionally, it's important to remember that preschoolers simply learn best through play. Just think about how preschoolers learn to count. They may count how many cars they have lined up or how many blocks they've stacked.

Here is an example of how to transform a mundane activity into an exciting game that stimulates the children's imagination and encourages better retention of vocabulary. Imagine you are teaching colours. Tell your children they are pirates who have lost their treasure overboard and they must dive down and retrieve it. Spread coloured objects or cards around the floor. Demonstrate by taking in a big breath, hold your breath and dive down and pick up one of the coloured objects, then come up for air and ask the children to name the colour, or you name it, depending on whether you are doing a speaking or listening activity. Then tell the children which colours to dive down and collect. You could make it even more dramatic by dimming the lights when the children dive down and turning them up when they surface. The children can then sort the different coloured treasure by stowing it safely in treasure chests (boxes or bags - one for each colour).

Any paediatrician will tell you that the best way to encourage a large vocabulary in your children is to read to them everyday. For young children learning English you need super simple stories, and in an ideal world, stories that reinforce the language and vocabulary you are teaching in class. You can access a free ESL preschool story with games in the resource box below the article.

As well as using games and stories you'll need to take into consideration a few other things:

• Preschool children have small attention spans so change your activities every five minutes or so because if they go longer than that, they'll start getting restless and you'll spend more time trying to keep their attention than actually doing the activity.
  


• Teach a small amount of language in any given session. For this age group, try to introduce three words at a time and then add to the list as you see the children understand the meaning of the words you've already introduced.
  


• Engage the children on multiple levels. This includes using fine and large motor movement, singing, talking, listening and looking. For example, you could have a game where the children need to move around the room to stand next to a picture or object of the word they heard you say.
  


• Competition in the preschool classroom causes undo stress on the children. Avoid playing games or doing activities that have winners and losers. Either have the class work together to "win" as a group or do not distinguish between winning and losing. On the same note, be sure to be supportive and encouraging to all of the learners in your class.
  


• Preschool children can get very excitable so vary excitable games with quiet ones to balance out the energy level in the classroom.
  


• Preschoolers are very visual. Bring in real objects whenever possible. When it is not possible, find colourful and vivid pictures.
  


• Preschooler children usually are not yet reading and writing (at least not to large extent) in their own language, so don't expect them to do it in a second language. At this age, you can expect them to listen and understand first. After a while, they will begin speaking individual words and short phrases.
  


• Themes work well in the preschool classroom. Focus your vocabulary learning on groups of similar types of words such as foods, colours, numbers, animals, families and body parts. You can work in short phrases that are relevant to your theme.
  


• Be well prepared, plan more than you think you will use and move seamlessly from one game or activity to another. Use colouring or similar quiet activities when the children need some downtime.
  


• Repeat, review and revise. You need to frequently review the vocabulary that you've previously taught them or they will quickly forget it.
  


• If you have a particularly naughty or rough student in the class, keep him or her close to you. Ask him or her to be your special helper and be sure to give a lot of praise when you see him or her behaving appropriately.

Above all, just remember what you liked to do in school. If you were bored, you probably didn't get much out of the class and the same is true for preschool and pre-k children. For free games and an illustrated story written for ESL preschoolers, visit the link in the box below the article. Help them have fun and before they know it, they'll be learning!

Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an inspiration to their pupils Improve the effectiveness of your lessons and enjoy yourself more. Receive free preschool ESL games and stories now on http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm

Acknowledgements

• Article Source : Ezine Articles
  
• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Elton Lin via flickr

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