How to Bring Target Culture into Foreign Language Teaching

    Students are interested in role plays. They welcome the teachers holding plays in the class. So teachers can grasp this to bring target culture to the class.

    Role play is the best way to show misunderstandings those occur between people of different cultures. Teachers can prepare a small play before class together with some of the students. Later in the class, the teacher should ask these students to performance the small play in the classroom while others watching it carefully. After that ask the students to discuss in small groups to say something about the play, or performance the same play again. For example, there might be such a situation: An Englishman visited a Japanese family for the first time and stayed overnight there. After dinner, they talked with each other in the living room. As the night wore on, the hosts politely and repeatedly asked if she wanted to take her bath. The guest replied that she was in no hurry and could wait until later. She didn't know at that time the hosts were hinting it was bedtime and that she-as the guest-should take her bath first, so that the family members could then take theirs and retire.

    When the students discussing about this incident, they would easily find out that the guest failed to realize the hosts' hint. Through doing such exercises, the students would become aware of the cross-cultural incidents. It will help them to increase their experience of the target cultural behavior.

    [3]  Mini-surveys.

    Teachers could hold mini-surveys in the class too. It will increase the students' awareness of social behavior and customs in the target culture. In this part, preparations are very important. Teachers should prepare a questionnaire including series of questions on varies kinds of situations before the class. Such as getting to know people, attitudes to time and space, introductions, personal relationships, etc.

Example: Questionnaire

            ATTITUDES TO TIME AND SPACE

    a. When you are invited to someone's house for dinner, how much earlier or later than the scheduled time do you try to arrive?

    b. How long does a dinner party usually last?

    c. If you were planning a surprise birthday for a close friend, how many days or weeks in advance would you invite the guests?

    d. If you were a guest at a party or at a social occasion in someone's home, how would you indicate to your host that it was time for you to leave?

    e. If you had an appointment to meet a friend at 12:00 and arrive at 12:45, how would you expect your friend to react?

    Teachers should give one question to each student in the class. And then divide them into small groups of five or six, asking them to interview several native speakers to find out their answers to the above questions. The students are required to note down the answers when they doing the survey. After two or three days, the teacher could ask the students to discuss about their notes and get a summary, and then to answer the questions by themselves according to their own customs.

Next, a comparison between the answers made by native speakers and themselves should be done.

    Using this method in the class can not only spread some target cultures but also train the students' skills of interviewing. These are the three main methods to examine cultural behaviors. There are also some other methods, such as answering real questions, cultural commentary, news photo search, etc. All of the above are effective ways.

    What we have talked about above are some teaching methods. To the students of elementary or intermidiate level, those methods are useful and interesting. But to some students of high level, it seems a little easy. How to meet the needs of those students? Of course, these methods are still useful. But after the students are familiar with the classroom activities, the teacher can lead them further to the target culture. Every student may have some special experience about the customs in their own country or even in foreign countries. So the teacher could help them to find out a topic which they are interested in. Then let them discuss freely. At this time, the teacher should demand the students to find out the different behaviors between two different cultures by themselves and encourage them taking in such discussions. At last, the teacher should lead the discussion finishing fluently and successfully.

    5 .  Communication

    Communication, language and culture can not be separated. In order to communicate effectively in English, students need more than just competence in English grammar and vocabulary. They must also have an awareness of the culturally-determined patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication which speakers of English follow.

    Culturally different pattern of communication is a common cause of misunderstanding action which should be dealt with carefully. Patterns of communication can be divided into two points: verbal communication and non-verbal communication.

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