This document discusses issues related to incorporating culture into the L2 classroom. It defines the key terms of Culture (literature, art, music) and culture (people's attitudes and beliefs that identify groups) and discusses how cultural descriptions can be essentialist and reductive by oversimplifying culture. The document also addresses representations of culture in textbooks and online, interactions with individuals, online cultures and communities, and developing activities to help learners understand target cultures from a non-essentialist perspective using online materials and computer-mediated communication.

1. Culture in the
L2 Classroom

2. Issues
 Marianna: Lyricstraining
 Defining culture
 Representations of culture
 Activities/technologies
 Online cultures

3. Lyricstraining

4. Discussion
 Please login to the Google group, and
find the appropriate discussion thread (by
name).
 Respondto the prompt, read your
classmates’ responses, and discuss.
 goo.gl/9jhy9

5. Key terms
 Culture (capital C): literature, art, music
 culture (lower-case c) people’s attitudes,
beliefs, values. Identifies groups. (groups
are permeable – we belong to many
groups….)

6. Culture in LL
 Cultural descriptions can fall into being
essentialist and reductive (Holliday, Hyde
& Kullman, 2010).
 Reductive – reduced culture to simple
causes.
 Essentialist – see handout

7. Discussion
 Thinkof a time you have learned about
another language or culture. What were
some of the elements of essentialist
descriptions of the culture?
 How did your views of the
language/culture change as you
became more familiar with the
community?

8. Cultural
representations

9. Cultural representations
 Whatcan we see in textbooks/teaching
materials?
 Whatcan we get through online
materials?
 What do we gain through interacting with
individuals?

10. Online cultures
 Online communities not the same as an
in-person community or cultural group.
 Learners may (or may not) feel
comfortable using social tools (e.g.,
forums, CMC, etc.)
 Teachers create artificial approximation
of inter-cultural exchange or allow
learners to explore?

11. Activity
 Develop (in pairs) a teaching activity that
can help learners understand an area of
the target culture(s) from a non-
essentialist point of view.
 Use either online materials or CMC or a
combination to help facilitate the activity.
 Post on your blog.