The document discusses sociocultural factors in second language acquisition (SLA), emphasizing the importance of understanding cultural differences in language learning. It outlines how culture influences perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors, affecting both teachers and learners. The text also highlights the need for intercultural competence and appropriate strategies to enhance cultural understanding in education.

1. SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS in slaJared RaymondSangithaMothayapanFaizAmirPang FeiMianChui Jun HuiLu SiruiSun JingUniversity of Malaya KL

2. CULTURE: DEFINITIONS & THEORIESa way of life; the context within how people exist, think, feel, and relate to others.the “glue” that binds a group of people togetherideas, customs, skills, arts and tools that characterized a given group of people in a given period of time.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

3. a blue print that guides the behavior of people in a community. It helps to know how far we can go as individuals and our responsibilities to the group. Larson and Smalley ( 1972 ) a dynamic system of rules, explicit and implicit, established by groups in order to ensure their survival, involving attitudes, values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors, shared by a group but harbored differently by each explicit unit within the group, communicated across generations, relatively stable but with the potential to change across time. Matsumoto ( 2000) PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

4. The meaningful universe in which each human being exists is not a universal reality, but ‘a category of reality’ consisting of selectively organized features considered significant by the society in which he lives. Condon (1973, p. 17) Culture is needed to fulfill certain biological and psychological needs in people. No society exists without a culture.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

5. People tend to believe that their own reality is the “correct” perception.Perception is subjective. Misunderstandings are likely to occur between members of different culture.Language is a part of culture, and culture is a part of language. These two cannot be separated without losing the significance of either one.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

6. STEREOTYPES OR GENERALIZATIONS?In the bias of our own culture-bound worldview, we often picture other culture in an oversimplified manner, lumping cultural differences into exaggerated categories, and view every person in a culture as possessing stereotypical traits.Stereotype formed because our cultural milieu shapes our worldview in such a way that reality is thought to be objectively perceived through our own cultural pattern. A different perception is seen as either false or strange.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

7. Implication: SLA/SLLBoth teacher and learner of a second language need to understand cultural differences, to recognize openly that people are not all the same beneath the skin.A teacher or a researcher must strive to understand the identities of the learners in terms of their sociocultural background.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

8. ATTITUDES of Learnerstowards the culture or language

9. towards the members of the cultural groups whose language they are learning

10. influenced by parents’ and peers’ attitudes which forms a perception of oneself, of others, and of the culture in which one is living

11. Negative attitudes can be changed – exposure and realityPBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

12. SECOND CULTURE ACQUISITIONLanguage learners undergo culture learning.

13. Culture learning:- a process of creating shared meaning between cultural representatives - experiential - continues over years of language learning, and penetrates deeply into one’s patterns of thinking, feeling, and actingPBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

14. Stages of Culture AcquisitionPeriod of excitement & euphoria over the newness of the surroundings (fascination with the new culture)Culture shock (differences between old & new culture create anxiety) Anomie (feelings of social uncertainty; begin to accept the differences)Recovery: first tentative and vacillating full recovery (assimilation or adaptation, acceptance, self-confidence in the “new” person)PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

15. SOCIAL DISTANCEThe cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures that come to contact within an individual.Parameters of social distance : Schumann (1976c)1) Dominance - is the L2 group politically, culturally,technically, or economically dominant, non-dominant, or subordinate in relation to the TL group? 2) Integration - Is the integration pattern of the L2 group assimilation, acculturation, or reservation?PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

16. 3) Cohesiveness - Is the L2 group cohesive?4)Congruence– Are the cultures of the two groups congruent-similar in their value and belief systems?5) Permanence - What is the L2 group’s intended length of residence in the target language area?Schumann’s hypothesis: the greater the social distance between two cultures, the greater the difficulty in learning the second language. PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

17. Social distance:William Acton(1979) devised a measure of perceived social distance, instead of trying to measure actual social distance

18. When learners encounter a new culture, their acculturation process is a factor of how they perceive their own culture in relation to the culture of the target language.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

19. optimalperceived social distance ratio - typifies the “good” language learner. - maintaining some distance between themselves and both cultures.Supported Lambert’s (1967) contention that mastery of the foreign language takes place hand in hand with feelings of anomie or homelessness, where learners have moved away from their native culture but are still not completely assimilated into or adjusted to the target culture.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

20. Svanes (1987,1988)found that university foreign students studying in Norway appeared to achieve higher language proficiency if they had “a balanced and critical attitude to the host people” (1988,p.368) as opposed to uncritical admiration for all aspects of the target language PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

21. Teaching intercultural competencePBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

22. Why do we need to pay attention to the intercultural competence?Cultural differences may cause learners to feel alienation during the process of learning a second language.We need to be sensitive to the fragility of students by using techniques that promote cultural understanding to lessen the blocks on the way of studying a second language.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

23. Researches to improve cultural understanding in classroomSociocultural strategies , Process-oriented tasks, Internet-based culture portfolios Interviews of native speakers of the target language , the using of drama in class room.Role play assists teacher in the process of acculturation in the classroom.Studying second language where that language is spoken natively is the best way to facilitate acculturation.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

24. 4 conceptual categories to study the cultural normsIndividualismPower distanceUncertainty avoidanceMasculinity.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

25. LANGUAGE POLICY AND POLITICSLanguage Policy : what a government does officially through legislation, court decisions or policy to determine how languages are used, to cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities or to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain languages.Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages.Types of Language PoliciesPolicies of assimilationPolicies of non-interventionPolicies of differentiated legal statusPolicies of promotion of the official languagePBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

26. World EnglishesWorld Englishes refers to the emergence of localized or indigenized varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in nations colonized by England or the United States. Indian English, Singapore English, and Philippine English are commonly referred to as examples of World Englishes, as each of these varieties has native speakers.In certain countries, learning English does not involve taking on a new culture. For example is learning English in India.PBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL

27. ESL and EFLESL is usually used when talking about primary and secondary schools, in order to clarify English is not the students' first language, but their second.

28. EFL indicates the use of English in a non–English-speaking region.

29. Study can occur either in the student's home country, as part of the normal school curriculum or, for the more privileged minority, in an Anglophone country that they visit as educational tourist immediately before or after graduating from universityPBET 2113 Group 5 (TESL) Sem 2 AY 2009-2010, Department of Language & Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya KL