4.2. Teachers’ utility of culture input to develop students’ intercultural competence
4.2.2. Teachers’ use of supplementary culture input
As discussed above, through class observations, the two teachers in charge of English major classes used other resources of culture input, including supplementary materials from the internet, and three of them (two from English major class and one from Literature major class) used their own accumulated cultural knowledge from authentic environment, and books.
a. Teachers’ use of supplementary sources
For the two teachers in charge of English major classes, in all their 4 class hours of the two English major teachers that I observed, they exploited the internet for images, videos, culture quiz to use in different stages of the lessons. For example, in Unit 6 – Endangered species, Linh had retrieved a cultural quiz about wild animals from a website and used it as supplementary culture input to introduce to her students
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how certain animals are on the verge of extinction. With the same topic, Trang chose a video about how rhinos, sea turtle, gorillas, and other wild animals were being under threat. This video was used as a lead-in to the topic and as observed, both the teachers and students were interested in seeing then discussing it.
In the post-observational interviews, both teachers freely shared that when they were to teach a new topic in the textbook, they searched for information and gained cultural knowledge from websites for the purpose of either enriching their own cultural knowledge or using it as a source of culture input for their students.
Linh: I often use the internet to search for materials and information related to the topic. For example, if we are going to learn about “Urbanization in Bangkok, Thailand”, I type “articles on Bangkok urbanization” or
“Bangkok urbanization video” and can find a variety of articles and videos available to use.
Like Linh, Trang relied on the internet for its rich sources of information for her lecture on culture. However, Trang also expressed her concern about the reliability of information gained from websites. She admitted that finding a suitable source of material took time but checking the correctness of the information was even more time consuming because the internet now was overwhelmed with all sorts of information.
In these cases, she tended to consult a number of culture books that she had had since she studied in Canada for her master’s degree. She said:
Trang: I used to have a passion for culture when I was a student; I loved travelling here and there and collecting books on different regions’
culture. Since I had 2 kids, I hadn’t had time for my hobbies and those books kept lying on the shelves. But when I started teaching English at Ha Long school for gifted students, I had opportunities to use them more often. Normally, to save time, I search on the internet for the information related to the culture topic, but if there is something I’m not sure about, I’ll double check with the books I have…
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In addition to the abundant sources of culture input from websites and books, I was impressed by the teacher’s own knowledge about certain topics. One example is Mai’s understanding of Sherlock Holmes and his creator. To introduce the culture section of Unit 1: Life stories, Mai showed a picture of Sherlock Holmes for the whole class to guess the name and typical features. Without any reference to any sources, she introduced all key details about that fictional private detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, including his biography, personality and habits, knowledge and skills, legacy, adaptations and derived works. Later in the interview, when I asked her about this experience, she said that Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were her favorite and she had learnt by heart almost everything about them.
For Lan, her own cultural knowledge and intercultural experience seemed to be the primary culture input that she provided the students with. In terms of intercultural experience, she mentioned encounters with their former foreign teachers of English and their foreign colleagues working in their schools. These foreigners, according to Lan, were typically from English-speaking countries and acted as a “cultural hub”.
Concerning the resources of further culture input, Trang shared the same experience.
Trang The culture input is from what I have learned and accumulated during my education. I transmit it to my students, from my own cultural experience and knowledge, but I do not state from what specific source I have got it, as it is not very important.
In summary, it can be seen that two out of five participants who were asked about how they perceived the sufficiency of cultural content presented in their main teaching materials held a common idea that, in their own EFL teaching context, such content was sufficient, and thus there was no need to provide supplementary culture input.
Meanwhile, other participants saw that the cultural content in their set teaching materials was insufficient and they needed to and did provide their students with further culture input. The main resources of culture input, for these participants, were their own cultural knowledge and cultural information or documents they gained from websites on the internet.
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These teachers’ use of supplementary sources from the internet and books is in line with the strategies that Peterson and Coltrane (2003) suggested. From their viewpoint, authentic materials such as films, news broadcasts, television shows, websites, photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials would help engage the students in discussion of cultural issues.
b. Teacher’s exploitation of culture from supplementary sources
The supplementary sources mentioned in the previous part enabled teachers to support their students’ target language acquisition in one or all of the following ways.
Lead-in to the topic.
One of the sections in which supplementary materials was used most often in observed classes was as a lead in activity to warm the students up – to generate interest and get them thinking about the topic. In this stage, two of the three teachers resorted to authentic videos to introduce the topic. One of them was about endangered giant panda, which were losing their natural habitats, imprisoned in tense areas and dying.
Another one described the development of Bangkok in the past decades to elicit the topic “urbanization”. After watching the videos, there were follow-up questions for students like guessing the name, the place, the reasons, the problems, the solutions, etc.
Those videos somehow enhanced the interest of the students in the topic and made them eager to discover the culture later in the lesson.
Providing background knowledge
It was interesting in the lesson with Trang, the students had a great chance to listen to her sharing her own knowledge of the topic “Choosing a career”. Lan had two years of studying abroad in Canada and several times travelling to different Western countries. From her experience, the perspectives as well as practice of Vietnamese students and overseas ones were worlds apart. It was strange that her students listened so attentively that no one said a word until she finished her story and asked the class if they had comments on or questions for her. Not until that time, they became noisy and excited again. One of the students even eagerly shared the argument between his parents and his brother in deciding the brother’s career after university graduation
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(although sometimes he switched to Vietnamese due to a lack of English vocabulary and expressions).
Providing tasks and input for students to practice the target language skills:
The cultural content provided by the teachers through videos, book information and personal knowledge, together with the textbook not only introduced language units for the students to learn, but also provided them with language tasks such as discussion, presentation, reflection, and comparison and input like cultural topic, cultural practices and behavior for them to practice the target language skills. These tasks offered a variety of opportunities for the students to develop their target language skills.
Speaking skills: discussion (in urbanization topic), and presentation (in choosing a career topic)
Writing skills: writing about a famous person (in Life stories topic)
Listening skills: listening while watching the videos
In brief, it is a fact that supplementary culture input is a supportive means in providing and enhancing students’ understanding and practice of both cultural and intercultural aspects. The teachers, in the interviews expressed their hope that the syllabus would not be so tense so that they could have more chances to integrate their extra materials and knowledge in the teaching of culture.