This document is a paper by Tienny Makrus about teaching culture in foreign language classrooms. It discusses how culture is an important part of foreign language learning. It provides definitions of culture and explains how teachers can incorporate culture into their lessons by reflecting on their own cultural backgrounds, presenting cultural topics to students, and building an inclusive classroom culture where all students feel valued. The paper concludes that teaching culture should be an integral part of foreign language instruction in order to foster cultural understanding between students.

1. MID TEST
CROSS CULTURE UNDERSTANDING
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom
Name : Tienny Makrus
Student ID : 0712150010
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA
JAKARTA – 2010

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction …………………………………………………………….………….. Page 1
II. Culture Matters for Teachers ……………………………………………….. Page 2
III. Present Culture in Foreign Language Classroom ……………...…... Page 3
IV. Build an Inclusive Culture ………………………………..……………....... Page 5
V. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….. Page 7
References …………………………………………………………………………….. Page 9

3. Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom
[Tienny Makrus]
I. Introduction
Foreign language learning is comprised of several components,
including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language
proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards one’s own or another
culture. L. Damen (1987) in Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the
Language Classroom defines culture as follows:
"Culture: learned and shared human patterns or models for living;
day- to-day living patterns. These patterns and models pervade all
aspects of human social interaction. Culture is mankind's primary
adaptive mechanism" (p. 367).
Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989) in their book
Multicultural Education defined culture as:
"Most social scientists today view culture as consisting primarily of
the symbolic, ideational, and intangible aspects of human societies.
The essence of a culture is not its artifacts, tools, or other tangible
cultural elements but how the members of the group interpret, use,
and perceive them. It is the values, symbols, interpretations, and
perspectives that distinguish one people from another in
modernized societies; it is not material objects and other tangible
aspects of human societies. People within a culture usually interpret
the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or in
similar ways."
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 1

4. Therefore, we defined culture as the behavior, patterns, beliefs,
and all other products of a particular group of people that are passed on
from generation to generation. The Products result from the interaction
between groups of people and their environment over many years.
In keeping with the convention within the field of Foreign Language
Education of referring to language abilities as separate skills (e.g.,
listening, speaking, reading, and writing), teachers often refer to culture
as the "fifth skill". Unlike vocabulary and grammar, which are concrete in
their content, culture is quite fluid and amorphous and therefore difficult
to define. In general, culture as the fifth skill emphasizes the learner's
ability to perceive, to understand, and ultimately, to accept cultural
relativity. Culture as a fifth skill refers to a set of abilities:
• The ability to perceive and recognize cultural differences.
• The ability to accept cultural differences.
• The ability to appreciate and value cultural differences.
II. Culture Matters for Teachers
How can teachers build awareness of their own culture, especially
values and beliefs? Understanding your own cultural background and
connecting that background to the foreign students in your classroom
creates a rich learning environment in which teacher value each other.
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 2

5. The following activities can deepen your understanding of the ways in
which your culture influences your practice as a teacher.
Learn about your own history, heritage, community, family, and
culture, as well as other groups to which you belong.
Talk to friends and family; share stories, and listen to the stories of
other’s life experiences and family histories.
Write about your celebrations, traditions, beliefs, and cultural
practices.
Reflect on the things you value in your life including significant
artifacts, customs, family events, and the ways in which you
celebrate them.
List some characteristics of your culture. Consider your
communication style and other cultural norms.
List the things that you do in your classroom that come from your
cultural perspective. Check your list with a teaching colleague. How
are your lists different and similar?
III. Present Culture in Foreign Language Classroom
Use reflection and inquiry as you explore and examine how your
own culture identity emerges and influences your professional practice.
From the list below, chose some topics that you would like to explore with
your foreign language students. Discipline yourself to journal your
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 3

6. observations; categorize some of the incidents that happen as you move
through your inquiry. Be sure to find someone with whom to share your
experience. Remember that learning is shaped through interaction with
others. Write about and reflect on the current culture in your classroom.
Use the questions as guidelines for reflecting on your own teaching
practice:
 BELONGING. How are students greeted in my classroom? Who is
silent and who participated? What kinds of adult / student
interaction patterns occur? What about student to student? To do
this over time, you might want to make a class list and begin to
make checks by students’ names as they enter your room. Review
this information at the end of the week, and record your
observations in a journal. Collect three or four of these weekly
observations and share them with a colleague. Invite a colleague to
observe your classroom, and share notes. Are you observing
psychological or cultural differences?
 CONDUCT. What are the rules of conduct in the classroom? Who
knows what they are? How is following them recognized? How are
errors corrected? What kinds of conduct are allowed, and what
kinds are not acceptable? What happens to students who follow the
rules and to those who do not? How does this affect their status in
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 4

7. the classroom, school, and their neighborhood? To answer these
questions, take some data in your own classroom. You could ask
students to answer these questions in small groups, and record
their responses. Alternatively, you could observe your classroom
carefully as you go about teaching. Notice the number of times that
you reward and reprimand students. Write these numbers down.
Also, you may begin to note the gender and race of students. Is
there a difference based on these characteristics? Watch for
patterns that emerge from your notes. Invite your colleague to
observe your classroom, and then discuss her observations.
 LEARNING. Pay attention to these issues. Who is earning the
highest grades in your class? Who is engaged in learning? With
whom do you spend time, and who gets little of your attention?
How much time do you spend giving feedback and to which
students? Which students are suggesting topics for learning and
doing? Which students wait for you to lead them? Notice patterns
among boys and girls, among cultural and linguistics groups, and
among the students with varying abilities.
IV. Build an Inclusive Culture
Be aware that an inclusive culture is not just about sharing cultural
experiences, but about using the diverse background, values, and
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 5

8. experiences that individual students and teachers bring to the classroom
to expand our understanding of how our world works. Understanding our
own and others’ culture is about creating spaces to not only recognize and
value diverse culture, but to support the inclusion of new values and
beliefs into our everyday lives and activities.
ACTIVITIES:
 Create professional development opportunities that allow teachers
time to reflect on their cultural heritage with peers (memoir writing,
artifact sharing, and shared cultural celebrations).
 Share your experiences, celebrations, and important events with
your students. Integrate storytelling (writing, speaking, drawing,
and creating) into your curriculum.
 Bring in your cultural “artifacts” that may or may or may not be
familiar students, and have students hypothesize and discuss their
purpose, meaning and value.
 Create space that everyone in your classroom can access. Together
make a class quilt, student bulletin board, or family photo album.
 Integrate celebrations into your classroom in which everyone in the
class can share—have the class make up their own!
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 6

9.  Use conversations about your own cultural background and
experiences to prompt students to share their own backgrounds
and heritage.
V. Conclusion
By way of conclusion, we should reiterate the main premise of the
present study: the teaching of culture should become an integral part of
foreign language instruction. ‘Culture should be our message to students
and language our medium’ (Peck, 1998). Frontiers have opened and never
before have nations come closer to one another—in theory, at least. As a
result, people from different cultures weave their lives into an international
fabric that is beginning to fray at the edges by virtue of miscommunication
and propaganda. In order to avoid this ignominious cultural and political
disintegration, and foster empathy and understanding, teachers should
‘present students with a true picture or representation of another culture
and language’ (Singhal, 1998). And this will be achieved only if cultural
awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalized
subject within the foreign language curriculum; that is, when culture
“inhabits” the classroom and under girds every language activity.
According to Singhal (1998), language teachers ought to receive both
experiential and academic training, with the aim of becoming ‘mediators in
culture teaching’ (ibid.). At any rate, culture teaching should aim to foster
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 7

10. ‘empathy with the cultural norms of the target language community’ and
‘an increased awareness of one’s own ‘cultural logic’ in relation to others’
(Willems, 1992, cited in Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 67). This cultural
logic, though, is achieved through ‘a recognition of ‘otherness’, and of the
limitations of one’s own cultural identity’ (Killick & Poveda, 1997).
While "culture" as a word and concept might be hard to define
succinctly, there is little argument that it is the linchpin of much of what
we do in our language classes. Ask your students why they're studying a
language. Odds are that the reason they give will be culturally based:
travel, food, music, literature, relationships—all require a particular
knowledge not just of the language, but of the cultural particulars of a
people and place. That said, how we teach culture remains a thorny issue
for all of us.
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 8

11. REFERENCES
Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the Language
Classroom. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989). Multicultural education.
Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Peck, D. 1998. Teaching Culture: Beyond Language. Yale: New Haven
Teachers Institute.
Singhal, M. 1998. Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom.
Thai TESOL Bulletin, Vol. 11 No. 1, February 1998.
Byram, M., Morgan, C. and Colleagues. 1994. Teaching and Learning
Language and Culture. Great Britain: WBC.
Killick, D. & Poveda, J. 1997. Perceptions of Cross-Cultural Capability: is
EFL Another Language? Proceedings of the conference at Leeds
Metropolitan University, 15-16 December 1997.
Teacher’s Guide to Folklife Resources for K-12 Classrooms. Retrieved
October 26, 2010, from http://www.loc.gov/folklife/teachers.html
The Library of Congress American Memory Collection. Retrieved October
26, 2010, from http://www.loc.gov/teachers/
Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Classroom by Tienny Makrus 9