Week 6 Blog

Before even getting to the second page of Kubotas article on “Unfinished Knowledge: the story of Barbara”, it really impacted me on how much criticism and debate have come from teaching English as a second or foreign language because in the end there is always a common goal: to achieve an understanding of another tongue.  I think that if instead of debating about how to teach it or which method or ultimate goal is most effective, and instead focusing on how to come together as one unite of teachers and share our passion for instructing others more would get done as one.  Continuing reading this article I appreciated that Kubota respected the idea of making various culture prevalent while teaching a foreign language so that it is understood that every individual and their customs are important without trying to conform to the ideas of the language they try to learn.

Although I feel like after simply eating a chicken teriyaki and hearing what a colleague deems important wouldn’t drastically change my life, I can see how Barbara finally came around with her students.  This interaction she had with Carol was really important because it opened her mind and allowed her to express “that students need not abandon their own culture-they simply need to acquire new cultural conventions in order to succeed in the academic community”.  I really love this statement because I think it expresses perfectly what we regularly discuss in the classroom and puts it in a manner that is easy to understand and applicable to more than just the language acquisition subject.

I thought that the way that David compared culture with the idea of feminism was really interesting because I had never looked at the two in a similar light prior to reading this article.  Although I can understand this thought process it also made me wonder how two ideas describing a woman could be fully explained when it seemed like it still left out so much? Can manlihood be described in the same two ideas of essentialist and constructionalism? And if not, then how can the two genders be so different that they cannot be subgrouped into the same categories?

When reflecting upon the articles I noticed that a common theme was present, how do you teach the important aspects of a culture without broadcasting a stereotypical light on each said culture? After spinning this thought through my head a number of times I think that there is no set way that can help avoid this misunderstanding because every person can take an idea and interpret it differently.  Some points that can help avoid this miscommunication can be explaining the differences between each culture but also explaining how cultures are also similar in that they all mean something unique to the person who exhibits them.  Also if you help a student understand that although a group of people from a certain region may be prone to following a certain culture, it does not mean that they have to or don’t like aspects from other cultures as well.