“This American English Class”: a New Model of Cultural Instruction

ELEANOR KASHMAR WOLF AND DAVID GASBARRO TASKER United States “This American English Class”: A New Model of Cultural Instruction Are unmarried couples given more freedom in the United States? How close are Americans to their co-workers? Do Americans trust the police? inding the right answers to these cultural questions is difficult for any teacher. In the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom, Fnonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) may feel unprepared to provide immediate and “true” answers to questions like these and thus may rely on limited experience, stereotypes, or uninformed generalizations of the target culture for information to share with inquiring students. Alternatively, these teachers may avoid such questions entirely and instead attempt to remove culture from the language classroom. This response ignores the cultural information that occurs naturally in many language materials and risks exposing students to cultural values without giving them the contextual information they need to process those values. This approach also deprives students of an opportunity to develop linguistically through critical engagement with materials in the target language. While one might easily imagine the English-speaking instructor can completely challenges facing NNESTs who are less represent the many pieces of his or her home familiar with the target culture, teachers culture. Attempts to authoritatively and who speak English natively also struggle unambiguously answer cultural questions when responding to questions like these in with evidence only from personal cultural the English language classroom. In fact, it experience are sure to oversimplify details is precisely the perceived familiarity and and erase diversity. comfort of native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) with the target culture that may lead Avoiding culture in the language classroom them to provide cultural representations that or providing instant answers to complicated are overly neat and definitive. Although there cultural questions both carry a further exist misguided beliefs that native speakers risk aside from the threat of the inaccurate are representatives of Western culture cultural representation noted above. These (Holliday 2005) and are highly competent approaches also fail to make use of the in all elements related to English (Creese, important learning opportunity offered by Blackledge, and Takhi 2014), no single native cultural questions, whether posed by the 2 ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM 201 8 americanenglish.state.gov/english-teaching-forum instructor or raised in the classroom by CHOOSING CULTURAL EVIDENCE students; closing down discussions of such questions ends the potential conversation In this model, cultural evidence refers to that the questions spark. Choosing instead a materials whose speakers or writers share deliberate and guided investigation of cultural a cultural framework or background with questions (1) facilitates students’ critical their intended audience; these same materials thinking and sense of cultural investigation become critical for cultural instruction with in the classroom, (2) provides a natural a non-intended audience (i.e., members of a opportunity for students to enhance speaking different culture). This would include, skills through discussion, and (3) relieves the for example, Armenian English-language pressure on teachers to act as comprehensive learners listening to a radio program cultural resources. produced in the United States with an American English-speaking audience in This article presents the Cultural Facilitation mind. When a language learner of a different Model as a means to guide the investigation culture engages with cultural evidence, of cultural questions with benefits for the learner has the opportunity to hear (or EFL instructors (NESTs and NNESTs) see) culture interacting with itself through and EFL students alike. It will describe a conversation in which both speaker and how instructors can act as cultural intended audience share the same general facilitators and empower students to cultural assumptions. In such conversations, answer cultural questions in the context shared cultural assumptions are treated as of an advanced listening course using normal and are unlikely to be explicitly authentic material, and it will also show described or elaborated upon. These how to adapt materials for other courses unspoken assumptions can offer a rich and student levels. resource of cultural content for language learners to explore, when they are THE CULTURAL FACILITATION MODEL scaffolded appropriately. Cultural instruction in the EFL classroom Scaffolding cultural analysis would benefit from a new model that leads Cultural evidence, having been created to sophisticated cultural awareness and within and for specific cultural environments, maximizes opportunities to use the target automatically carries cultural information in language. To replace the roles of NEST both what is said and what is unsaid. Because as cultural expert and NNEST as cultural these materials contain considerable amounts novice, we propose instead the Cultural of cultural content for student analysis, Facilitation Model, where all EFL instructors a teacher need not be a cultural expert, aim to be cultural facilitators who do the but rather can rely heavily on the cultural following: information embedded in the language to guide student learning. As Kramsch (1998, 1. thoughtfully choose and present cultural 31) puts it, “the responsibility of the language evidence—culturally embedded materials teacher is to teach culture as it is mediated produced by and for members of the through language, not as it is studied by social same cultural environment scientists and anthropologists.” This means that discussions of culture in the classroom 2. scaffold, but do not control, evidence- are to be governed by information, values, based cultural investigations of both or differences evident in the language of home and target cultures in-class materials. Both NESTs and NNESTs should aim to let the language of the materials 3. encourage students to act as cultural “do the talking” and resist the impulse to investigators by thinking about culture oversupplement available language with creatively and critically additional cultural explanation. americanenglish.state.gov/english-teaching-forum 2018 ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM 3 One way to improve critical thinking is through thoughtful analysis of target-language culture. Encouraging critical thinking to strengthen mutual understanding between The EFL classroom is a good place for the United States and Armenia. Our course activities designed to strengthen students’ was named “This American English Class,” critical-thinking abilities (Yang and Gamble after the popular podcast and radio show This 2013); in fact, development of critical- American Life, from whose episodes all in-class thinking skills is often an explicit objective materials were derived. of academic English-language programs. One way to improve critical thinking is through This American Life is broadcast weekly on thoughtful analysis of target-language culture. public radio stations in the United States to more than two million listeners. Episodes Understanding of foreign cultures is achieved are also available online and through a free by exploring the differences between one’s podcast, which is downloaded by 2.5 million own culture and another (see, for example, people each week. We chose to develop a Kramsch 1993). Investigation of the target course around This American Life because culture, then, must include explicit attention it is a useful source of spoken American to students’ home culture in order to create English intended for an American English opportunities for contrastive analysis. When audience (making it cultural evidence). A major students as cultural investigators examine component of most episodes is the inclusion of their own home cultures, they adopt the a series of stories told around a theme. role of “comparative ethnographers,” who seek and investigate differences between Twenty years’ worth of episodes of the show, home and target cultures and, as a result, along with written transcripts, are archived better understand both (Gilmore 2007, 106). online and free to access via the This American Instructors, too, need to prepare themselves Life website (www.thisamericanlife.org). for the Cultural Facilitation Model. Because Additionally, the latest episode is available this model by definition considers cultural for free personal download up to one week knowledge to be emergent, dynamic, and after it is released, making it possible for context-specific, NESTs and NNESTs alike instructors to use programs like Audacity or may be surprised by students’ questions and iTunes to adjust (i.e., slow down) the speed interpretations. of playback before sharing the episode with students. Due to the range of topics covered So far, we have argued the need for a new in a variety of registers and spoken accents model of cultural instruction. We now shift by different American speakers, the show to an exploration of the application of this is a fruitful resource for spoken English. model to a sample course. The length of This American Life episodes makes contextually driven interpretations THIS AMERICAN ENGLISH CLASS of content more likely; because students are exposed to longer audio selections rather than The particular lens to explore the Cultural decontextualized clips, they are more likely to Facilitation Model here

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