culture teaching emerges in esl/efl
TRANSCRIPT
Book Reviews 117
For experienced intercultural hands, there may be few surprises in this book. Instead, Althen confirms and simplifies what we already knew. His writing is clear, concise, and well organized. He analyzes an over-familiar situation, sorts out its essential elements, eliminates the chaff, and presents us with the polished grain. I won’t reveal the point Gary Althen makes in his conclusion, in the belief that too much of the plot should not be given in describing a good movie to a friend who hasn’t seen it yet. But it is an excellent point with which to end a thoroughly delightful and extremely useful book.
L. Robert Kohls San Francisco State University
San Francisco, California
CULTURE TEACHING EMERGES IN ESL/EFL
Culture Bound: Bridging the Culture Gap in Language Teaching. Joyce Merril Valdes (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press,
1986, 222 pp., $10.95 (paper)
Teaching Across Culture in the University ESL Program. Patricia Byrd (Ed.). Washington, DC: NAFSA, 1986, 149 pp.
A TESOL Professional Anthology: Culture. Carol Cargill (Ed.). Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co., 1987,
120 pp., $14.95 (paper)
The field of English as a second and foreign language in the U.S. has traditionally had a strong linguistic focus. Until recently, culture teaching in ESL/EFL has,not been especially prominent in the mainstream of its literature although its importance has never been denied. Now, literatures on culture teaching methodology and the psychology of acculturation are expanding, both with impetus from the fields of foreign service, interna- tional business, and immigration. Many ESL textbooks now directly teach cultural content and train cross-cultural awareness and coping be- havior. Teacher training programs frequently include sociolinguistics and intercultural communication courses. ESL programs have incorporated cultural components and “culture” has been added to many ESL program titles. Three anthologies on the teaching of culture have recently appeared on the scene and are reviewed in this essay.
Valdes’ anthology, Culture Bound: Bridging the Culture Gap in Lm-
118 Book Reviews
guage Teaching (1986), is a comprehensive collection of articles (several previously published) on the theoretical and practical literature from the last decade or two. The book begins with a selection of papers on culture and the mind, and the nature of acculturation. A highlight of this section is Kaplan’s discussion of the sociopolitical impact of written literacy on culture. The second part of the book presents issues confronting teachers of non-natives. Lado gives an insightful presentation of patterns by which cultures can be contrastively analyzed. Writings on kinesics, text and argumentation, and compliments across cultures are included here. Descriptions of cross-cultural encounters with specific nationalities round out this section.
The third part of this book deals extensively with classroom applica- tions. Brooks list of culture topics in daily activity provides a useful foundation. Blatchford offers a practical inventory of culture teaching activities using newspaper articles. Valdes gives a thoughtful, in-depth discussion on the teaching of culture through literature, including specific and useful advice on selecting and using texts. A wide-ranging article by Dunnet, Dubin, and Lezberg gives a substantive description of teaching techniques and materials, evaluation of texts, in-service teacher training, and related issues. Also included are writings advocating experiential training, analyzing cross-cultural conflicts in the classroom, and illustrat- ing a comprehensive range of culture test items.
A second volume on this subject, Teaching Across Cultures in the University ESL Program, is edited by Byrd and published by the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors. An introductory article by Nay- ar perceptively describes how sojourning Third World students and Americans are seen by each other. He then discusses approaches to the resulting “clashes of reality.” Furey offers a framework for analyzing cross-cultural teaching methods and classroom practices. This framework distinguishes general differences in culture from their specific manifesta- tions in the classroom. Other articles address cross-cultural differences and conflicts, as well as approaches to foreign student orientation.
Teachers and administrators who work with cross-cultural orientation programs and course syllabi will find Byrd’s section on institutional ap- proaches of immediate interest. The programs vary in length of alotted time (six weeks to a semester), structure (lectures, field trips, discussion groups), approaches (informational vs. psychological), and in content. Readers will wish to compare notes on their own teaching situations, problems, solutions, and outcomes with those described here.
The final section on teacher solutions and applications helps expand one’s curricular repertoire. It provides useful ideas for pairing foreign and native students for reciprocal ethnographic investigations, utilizing the community as a source of cross-cultural learning, and using family folk- lore as a vehicle for exercising composition skills, among others. Several
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of these papers have appendices with project outlines and instructions. A bonus in this volume is the classified and annotated bibliography which precedes the reference section.
Both collections reviewed so far provide productive reading. Beginning and experienced practitioners will find Valdes’ book a valuable introduc- tion to the literature. Teachers and administrators directly involved in developing culture components may be attracted first to Byrd’s volume for its immediate focus on the substance of curriculum and course design.
The third volume to be discussed is entitled A TESOL Professional Anthology: Culture. It is edited by Carol Cargill as the third volume in the TESOL Professional Series Anthology. It treats some of the same general topic areas found in the other volumes, such as Cargill’s chapter on cultural bias in testing and Lono’s on cultural components of reading comprehension.
Several of the articles in Cargill (1987), however, have unique topic focuses. Evans describes the state of the ESL art at the elementary level, with useful advice for the elementary teacher and a list of resource mate- rials. Articles by Lupo-Anderson and by McCauley address the sociopo- litical and philosophical complexities of education in the multicultural United States. Bailey argues for the effectiveness of the functional ap- proach to culture teaching. Experiences with culture teaching in special circumstances (such as with preliterates) are discussed by Roger W. Cole. Teaching English for business and engineering students are addressed as well by Sunderman.
Of the many issues the above three volumes raise for the field, two issues particularly stand out. The first has to do with professional prepa- ration for ESL or EFL culture teaching. Dunnett et al. in Valdes’ volume frankly state: “TEFL training programs are providing a good preparation in theoretical backgrounds to second language teaching, applied linguis- tics, and in-class practice teaching, but very little in the way of intercul- tural training (p. 158).” These authors, along with several others, recom- mend that teacher trainees acquire backgrounds in contrastive analysis of culture, cross-cultural communication, ethnographic methods, and relat- ed topics. In view of the sheer heterogeneity of North American culture and the high proportion of foreign students in teaching training pro- grams, and concerns expressed over diminishing cultural literacy in U.S. education, teacher training in the content of culture should perhaps be given equal time.
This raises the second issue, namely determining the content of culture learning in ESL and EFL. Unlike training or education for business or government sojourners, culture learning in ESL/EFL is intimately bound up with language learning. Although there are many fine lists of general cultural elements for the classroom offered in these volumes, such lists
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lack an empirically derived understanding of what cultural content corre- sponds to a particular corpus of language to be taught. A research-based cultural knowledge, pedagogically organized for various TESLITEFL applications, would help to identify, for example, how academic culture and its subspecialties are distinct from general culture. Such knowledge would further indicate what aspects of culture learning can be optimally integrated with listening comprehension or with speaking courses. This is less a problem of the anthologies reviewed than that of the current state of the field. Many important issues in culture teaching emerge in these three anthologies. Taken together, they reveal how far the field has come, and how far it has yet to go.
Christine Winskowski-Jackson Hawaii Loa College
Kaneohe, Hawaii
A HANDBOOK FOR DEVELOPING MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS
Paul Pedersen
Alexandria, VA: American Association for Counseling and Development (AACD), 1988, 216 pp., $20.95 (paper), AACD Members:
$24.95 (paper), Non-Members
The counseling profession in the United States has been harshly criti- cized as being culturally encapsulated (Wrenn, 1985) and ethnocentrically biased (Casas, Ponterotto, & Gutierrez, 1986). Critics argue that tradi- tionally trained counselors are not adequately responding to the diverse needs of an increasingly varied and multicultural population. As a re- sponse to these mounting criticisms, the Education and Training Com- mittee (Sue et al., 1982) of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division of Counseling Psychology developed a position paper outlining eleven basic counseling competencies for working with cultural- ly different clients. These competencies were divided into three basic areas: awareness of one’s own culturally-learned values and assumptions, knowledge of other cultures, and specific skills used in multicultural (or cross-cultural) counseling.
Although numerous writers since Sue et al. (1982) have continued to argue for multicultural counseling, few have specified how to achieve these training goals. Intended to be a practical guide on teaching multi-