1. CULTURE AND LEARNING A SECOND LNGUAGE<br />Culture refers to the attitudes, values, customs, and behavior patterns that characterize a social group. Culturally responsive teaching acknowledges cultural diversity in classrooms and fits this diversity in instruction; this makes students feel welcomed and valued as human beings and as a result they end up acquiring a better knowledge of the foreign culture.<br />Globalization has caused cross-cultural interactions to occur more frequently nowadays than in the past. Professionals and students want to develop their knowledge and take it to higher levels of proficiency; to do so they demand access to better educational opportunities. The use of internet and its different applications has given them a whole new world of opportunities to improve in a very competitive world.<br />Instructors must be committed to provide the necessary tools to develop a culturally sensitive and easy to adapt instruction. It is required that instructors have a broader knowledge of their own culture to help foreign students in the adaptation process. According to Hofstede, there are some sources of thought and behavior that include three different levels: human nature, culture, and personality. He establishes that human nature is inherited, culture is learned, and personality is both learned and inherited.<br />To better understand the cultural differences between teaching and learning, some authors came up with the cultural dimensions of learning framework. In this questionnaire there are not right or wrong answers, it is just a tool for instructors to understand better their own cultural biases and to help them realize that their beliefs and behaviors embrace many differences that can result in a more flexible instructional approach. <br />The instructor´s big challenge is to determine if the student´s learning behaviors are based on cultural values or on more superficial practices. Part of this challenge is the ability to know which activities are more effective depending on the group of students and to decide how the strategies to be used have to be adapted for cross-cultural and multicultural situations. It is also important to understand and appreciate the cultural differences of the students to be able of planning a class that will contribute to their learning. Instructors have to be aware that their cultural preferences are not precisely the only ones and that they have to respect the student cultural backgrounds.<br />Awareness, communication, process, and accommodation are some factors that lead to an effective multicultural sensitive practice. Instructors have to be aware of the cultural differences among their students to plan and develop a successful and enjoyable learning experience. A good dialogue and communication between instructor and learner leads to a better understanding of how are the cultural factors used in the instruction; the learners’ points of view are essential and an excellent feedback for the instructor. During the process it is important to consider the cultural differences and the interaction among students. There has to be an accommodation process too, in which the instruction has to be designed for culturally diverse students and which offers different approaches to learning so that the learner can adapt better to the new culture.<br />Multicultural education´s major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse cultural groups. Its goal must be to help all students to acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively within the society, and to interact and communicate with people from diverse groups. Instructors must be prepared to effectively facilitate learning for every individual student, no matter how culturally similar or different from her or himself.<br />