Stories From A Culture Without Borders

STORIES FROM A CULTURE WITHOUT BORDERS Lic. Mariana Porta The teaching of foreign languages must be made relevant to social life, where people need to communicate with each other in order to set the stage for possible mutual understanding. Claire Kramsh,1993

Why is it relevant?

The English Language on the Internet. English: 31.25% Chinese. 15.7% Spanish. 8.7% Millions of users

It focuses on the way a social group represents itself and others through its material productions, be they works of art, literature, social institutions, or artifacts of everyday life, and the mechanisms for their reproduction and preservation through history.
Throughout the years … Language and Culture

The attitudes and beliefs, ways of thinking, behaving and remembering shared by members of that community (Nostrand, 1989: 51).

Culture
Social construction of culture through language has been researched by sociolinguists and by scholars in the general field of cultural studies.
However, it is not a view that is familiar to language teachers, who tend to consider culture as composed of attitudes and ideas existing somewhere out there independent of language.
(Claire Kramsch, 1996)
through Language

Culture through language
LANGUAGE
THE CONTEXT
THE MEDIUM
THE VEHICLE
THE MATERIAL
THE ENVIRONMENT
TEXT
LINGUISTIC
VISUAL
AUDIOVISUAL: VIDEO
HYPERTEXT
To create
To transmit
To reproduce culture

Hypertext
Text, pictures, video, database, image.
The text and the ideas within the text
Nonsequential
Text, windows, links
Multiple points of access
Multiple potential paths.
Internet
Within reach
Social contact without social presence
Cyber-communities
Endless resources
An environment for interaction

Are New Technologies “New”? In 1993, Claire Kramsch wrote:
Multimedia technology affords the learner the following ways of learning a language from real-life material. Students are given multiple points of access to the same material and mutiple potential paths through the material
Through a system of windows on the computer screen and the user’s control of speed, direction, tracks, and scripts, learners can get as much lexical, grammatical and informational help as they need. … it is … ‘query-driven’

Lucia, Paysandú Raúl, Asunción Abril, Solymar Marcelo, Solymar Mariana. Solymar. Gladys, BA Alejo, Sol. Samit, Bangalore, India Salvador, Andalucía Jennifer, BA Analía. Lagomar Silvia, Mdeo Richard, Massachusetts Marian, Dallas Alicia, Paysandú Nicolás, BA Martín, Mdeo

Informality
Flexibility
Emoticons, visual language
Language use: dynamic

http://www.doosesyndrome.com/index.html

http://www.maxine.net/index.html Marian Henley: comic creator Richard Stallman, the guru http://www.stallman.org/

Ex Boyfriends List From: Richard Stallman To: mkhenley@prodigy.net Subject: Application for membership in Ex Boyfriends List After reading what you've said about your Ex Boyfriends List, I wonder if you could tell me how to apply for a place in it? My motivation is not that I would like the cachet of being on the list. Rather I hope that the application process, of being judged for a place on the list, could be exciting or even joyous. If it takes you some time to decide whether I belong on the list, I won't mind waiting. I'm aware of the theoretical possibility that the process might not reach a conclusion, that I might remain permanently in limbo pending a decision about whether I am to become "ex". I know this is unlikely, and I'm willing to take the risk. For information about me, see my personal site, stallman.org. My work is described in www.gnu.org.

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 10:56:14 -0800 (PST) Well, Richard, you are a real piece of work (as we Texas yokels are wont to say). The density of information on your personal website overwhelmed my brain circuits. I like your "power" tie. How did you find out about me? Marian

Thank you! I wore that power tie on a cruise ship, where I was being paid to give speeches and teaching classes for techies. (I would not have gone to such a place otherwise.) One evening they said people were supposed to wear formal dress. As a matter of principle, I don't own a real tie, so the "power" tie was the closest thing I had! The organizers agreed to pay me because a trip on a cruise ship would not in itself be a reward, not for me. I expected to be there alone. However, amazingly, I then found a sweetheart. So she went there with me--and she hated the experience. Sad to say, she is now in my ex-girlfriends list, which means I can now apply for a place in your ex-boyfriends list.

I read an interview with you in the Funny Times. You sound like fun. Aside from that, I like your cartoons. My favorite was the one where the couple get married with eyes closed, then say, "Who are you?" So, how do I go about applying?

Well, I'm currently involved with a surgeon in Nashville. In the event of a romantic catastrophe, would you consider a spot on the Emergency Reserve Boyfriend list?

I am honored! And experience suggests that starting a relationship in Emergency Mode is likely to speed the processing of my application--I might end up on the Ex Boyfriends List very soon, once the slot opens up. If you decide to maintain standards by waiting a little longer before considering my application, I'll understand. I'm also curious--how long have you been going out with him, and how did you meet him?

We met seven years ago at a Brave Combo show in Austin (at a great old dive called Liberty Lunch, now bulldozed to make way for a nearly vacant "office park" - am I crazy, or is office park an oxymoron?) We danced a little. He was quite nice, but I assumed he wasn't my type: thirteen years younger, clean-cut and pretty innocent. I still suspect he isn't my type, but perhaps that IS my type... M.

Have you been going out with him for seven years now? If so, that sounds like my emergency services are not likely to be needed soon. I am in Saigon, eating some aged Beemster cheese which I got a week ago in Amsterdam. It is midnight. I am supposed to go to sleep soon, since I have to wake up at 0730 to give a speech, but I don't feel sleepy yet. (I was awake till 3am!) This evening at dinner, eating some rice with chopped mussels, I had a cartoon idea for the first time in almost 2 years. I'm asking an artist who recently offered to draw for me if he wants to draw this. You might find it amusing.... [I'll publish the cartoon if it gets drawn]

It looks like you won't have room in the foreseeable future to consider any applicants for your ex-boyfriends list. (By now I should know better than to feel hope, but I can't quite learn this lesson.) However, it occurred to me that our discussion could serve another purpose. Would you mind if I post the whole conversation on my website? I could leave out any specific parts, if some of them give personal information you'd rather not publish. I think people might enjoy it. http://www.stallman.org/

Hi, Richard Good to hear from you. Last night I was thinking about your email from Saigon and wondering what high tech mission impossible took you there. I can't remember anything too personal in our "conversations," and my God, I just submitted a memoir to my agent that strips me to the core (hence the title: STRIP SEARCH). Please feel free to use whatever you like for your website if you think it might serve the higher entertainment good.

It's true that I seem to be slipping into a deeper commitment with my doc, although I'm having to control my claustrophobic reflex and keep my hand off the panic button. I'm just too old to keep repeating that tired pattern - although you seem like a remarkably intelligent, accomplished man and it's regrettable we can't get to know each other better at this point. Maybe we can meet on the coast of Portugal when we're eighty! Marian

Cultural contents of this story
Communication style : informality, colloquialism, proximity, humor.
Norms of interaction: netiquette, respect, privacy and public exposure.
Couples and dating : engagement and commitment; gender, age and dating; flirtatious behavior
“ cyber world”: techies, hackers, “cyber tribes,” open source software

Language
Genre : emails, web sites, cartoons. Identifying the structure and text format of different genre.
Functional language use : requesting, describing people, making plans for the future
Lexis , idiomatic expressions.
Narrating past events: Ex. how you met someone
Reading skills : understanding humorous language use, interpretations, reading between the lines

Alicia, free as a bird …
I’ve always been passionate about all the possibilities of the ever-growing human being. The first time I was in front of a computer was in IBM. My boyfriend at that time was a manager at the company and I thought it was kind of a scholarship for me. It was a huge machine that needed to be in an enclosed room at a certain temperature to work well. It was far too much neatness for my young age, and I said bye to both experiences, boyfriend and IBM.

Having retired I founded a consultancy firm with a friend and we bought a last generation -2MB- computer. I got trapped. I started keeping track of the different models, fascinated by that power at the tip of my fingers. So far, it was a technological challenge.
Some sad circumstance made me fall into a depression, and I found in the computer, my ideal partner. I would tell her my things and she wouldn’t give an opinion. One day I started with the Internet. It was like opening Pandora box. I communicated, I got answers ; I felt free to read whatever I wanted and arrived to a selective exchange of experiences and feelings.

Nowadays, at 67, it is the best means of communication that comprises radio, TV, music, reading, and above all, it has given me the chance to communicate with people from all over the world in what I call My Space. The cyber world is my world, and with it the people I love. I have them within reach. Maybe my Linux friend gets mad at me, but I started with windows 3.1. From then on I have enjoyed the privilege of being one more in a world of charm and horror.
The mind has its powers, sometimes for good, other times not even closer. It has taken my spirit into an international environment. I invite everybody to join. My old friends I used to dismantle to learn where the different cards and chips fit, forgive me for such pain, for I have learned the magic of communication is in the complementary communion: myself and the machine.

Culture
Cyber world: loneliness or companionship?
Cyber communities.
Technology throughout the years.
Age groups and technological change

Language
Narrative: narrating, sequencing events
Grammar: time and tense, past tenses
Reflective writing: expressing point of view and making a statement.

Alejo’s drawings http://artealejo.blogspot.com/

Alejo and Salvador

ALEJO.-Este pequeño gran artista tiene una natural intuición para la plástica. Secuencias. Esa magia de las hojitas minuciosas, miniadas, misteriosas, nos llevan al Renacimiento. Explorando límites, recorriendo fronteras, para luego borrarlas. Alejo, espejo de Óscar Torres y Mantegna. Alejo, tus hojas me recuerdan el verano, o el verano me recuerda tus hojas ¡LARGA VIDA AL BLOG DE ALEJO¡ Venía el cielo con nubes humeantes las libretas que quien el canto suscribe tras coloquiar con poetas de ser mas joven quedara -cual mareado ovillejo, entre furioso y perplejo, tirado por la moqueta-. ¡Dios, cuántas curvadas recurvas, cuántas tangentes y rectas, cuánto mellado florete, cuántos dímes y diretes, cuanta inútil verbigracia entre el lamento y la ley del reglamento a la acracia tras la obviedad disputando…¡ Querido amigo, a tu dibujo respondo con el comienzo de una historia que me hace pensarla y pesarla y pasarla en visual. Ahí va. Al prinipio de todos los tiempos siempre era primavera en luz, siempre había claridad en la tierra, porque la noche la tenia un guarao escondida dentro de una caja o cabeza de toro tejida con fibra de tirite... Kuai-Mare RALMA ralmablogarte Sexo: Hombre País: ANDALUCIA : España Datos personales Ver todo el blog: creo que sabrás mas de mí que yo mismo. Y un deseo: simpatía y amistad. Savador’s texts

Culture
The importance of visual language in the internet: drawing, comics, painting, photography.
Cross-age communication.
Maps: locating places in a map,
Blogs cyber galleries, blogs as journals, blogs as meeting points

Language
Describing a picture.
Reacting to visual art through writing: poetry, artistic expression and criticism, writing comments
Writing for different audiences: writing for children and writing for adults.

Analía
For more than four years I’ve been hopping in and out of a parallel world which still remains unknown to many people. I’ve learned how to live, survive, share and enjoy my life having one foot on each side of this blurred border between here and there.
My personal life has been enriched in so many ways. I’ve made great friends, I’ve touched other’s lives, I’ve learned and understood that there’s so much still to discover. I’ve found a place where I can always BE just who I AM. I’ve found a place where no one will ever feel lonesome and where affections are not ruled for what you have or what you look like but for what you really are inside.

Analía
When it comes to my teaching experience, I do believe it’s been enhanced deeply by surfing the seas of this parallel world. Imagine a teacher’s lounge with four or five colleagues discussing about a topic; now close your eyes and imagine the same, but this time with thousands of teachers from all walks of lives, with new ideas and tons of new material to share!! Everything is there at the reach of your hand and you can take and provide, ask and answer, help and be helped;. And grow … always grow as human beings and as professionals. Analia

It focuses on the way a social group represents itself and others through its material productions, be they works of art, literature, social institutions, or artifacts of everyday life, and the mechanisms for their reproduction and preservation through history.

The attitudes and beliefs, ways of thinking, behaving and remembering shared by members of that community (Nostrand, 1989: 51).

Functional-notional Audiolingualism Grammar translation To meet the local needs of local speakers and hearers in locally situated contexts Access to a national literature with unique cultural value. Access to elite culture The “great works” and the knowledge of “universal culture” Words and actions of everyday speakers in everyday life “ language use” The acquisition of skills, of automatic verbal behavior exquisite attention to shades of textual meaning English, French, German English, French, German Latin, Greek and Hebrew 70’s A local culture 50’s 60’s A national culture A universal culture

TODAY Discourse analysis, CLT, critical thinking strat. ESL and The expanded curriculum Immersion programs the language teacher as the catalyst for an ever-widening critical cultural competence "expand the traditional curriculum by incorporating issues of race, class, and gender” learners should be sent abroad to experience the culture "on location" the ability to understand other cultures is itself mediated through language AUTHENTIC TEXTS AND HYPERTEXTS broaden and diversify traditional views of culture beyond nation states. acquisition of information about the customs, institutions and history of a society other than one's own USA European "critical cross-cultural literacy". multiculturalism interculturalism

If you are afraid of making technology available to kids and teens think of this …
“ Swimming pools can be dangerous for children. To protect them, one can install locks, put up fences, and deploy pool alarms. All these measures are helpful, but by far the most important thing that one can do for one’s children is to teach them to swim.”
(Claire Kramsch,1996)

All the pictures and texts used in the presentation are either publicly available on the Internet or have been used with the owner/author’s permission.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Gilda, Martin, Alicia, Analía, Alejo, Salvador, Abril, Lucia and Marcelo for their generous contributions to this presentation.

http://eflprofessionals.blogspot.com [email_address] [email_address] Lic. Mariana Porta

Stories From A Culture Without Borders

by Mariana Porta on Dec 21, 2007

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