Sociocultural Factors in Language Teaching and Learning

SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS
IN
LANGUAGE TEACHING
AND LEARNING
Presented by
Wempy Hadi Susanto
Ruslan
Nahjul Qowim

Culture
Larson and Smally (1972: 39) described
culture as a ‘blueprint’ that guides the
behaviour of people in a community and is incubated
in family life. It governs our behaviour in
groups, makes us sensitive to matters of status, and
helps us know what others expect of us and what will
happen if we do not live up to their expectations.
Culture helps us to know how far we can go as
individuals and what our responsibility is to the group.

 Culture might also be defined as the
ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools that
characterizes a given people in a given period of
time.
 Culture is more than that… ‘it is a system of
integrated patterns , most of which remain below
the threshold of consciousness, yet all of which
govern human behaviour just as surely as the
manipulated strings of a puppet controls its
motion’ (Candon 1973: 4)

 Culture establishes for each person a context of
cognitive and affective behaviour, a template for
personal and social existence.
 People perceive reality in within the context of
their own culture, a reality that they have created
not necessarily a reality that is empirically
defined.

From stereotype to generalization
 Mark Twain: “French always tangle up everything to
that degree that when you start into a sentence you
never know whether you are going to come out alive or
not”
 German is the most difficult language: “a gifted person
ought to learn English in 30 hours, French in 30
days, and German in 30 years”. Thus, he calls for
reforming German:
 “if it is to remain, it ought to be gently and reverently
set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead
have time to learn it”.

Stereotype!
 Our cultural milieu shapes our world view… reality is
thought to be objectively perceived through our own
cultural pattern, and a different perception is seen as
either “false", or ”strange”.
 If people recognize and understand differing world
views , they will usually adopt a positive and open-
minded attitude toward cross-cultural differences.

Attitudes
 Stereotyping usually implies some type of attitude
toward the culture or language in question.
 “The Chinese language is monosyllabic and
uniflectional…with a language so incapable of
variation, a literature cannot be produced which
possesses the qualities we look for and admire in
literary works. Elegance , variety, beauty of
imagery- these must all be lacking. A monotonous
and wearisome language must give rise to a forced
and formal literature lacking in originality..” (New
standard Encyclopedia)

Such biased attitude is based on
insufficient knowledge , misinformed
stereotyping.
Attitudes like all aspects of cognitive
development, develop in early
childhood and are a result of parents’
and peers’ attitudes , of contacts with
people from different life styles.

 Gardner and Lambert (1972)… motivation is a construct
made up of certain attitudes…
 Group specific
 The attitudes learners have toward the members of the
cultural group whose language they are learning.
 For Gardner & Lambert, an English-speaking Canadian’s
positive attitude toward French Canadians- a desire to
understand them and to empathize with them –will
lead to an integrative orientation to learn French.

Second culture acquisition
 Most learners of a second language learn the
language with very little sense of the culture of its
speakers.
 A foreign language course should present culture as a
list of facts to be cognitively consumed.
 Nocon (1996): language learners undergo culture
learning as a “process, that is, as a way of
perceiving, interpreting, feeling, being in the world, …
and relating to where one is and who one meets”

Acculturation!
 Second language learning involves the acquisition of a
second identity.
 Creation of a new identity is in the very heart of
culture learning, Acculturation.
 Sometimes learners experience culture shock. Culture
shock refers to phenomena ranging from mild
irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis.
 Culture shock is associated with feelings of
estrangement, anger, hostility, indecision, frustration,
unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, homesickness and
even physical illness.

Stages of culture shock
1. Stage 1: is a period of excitement and euphoria over the
new environment
2. Stage 2: -culture shock- emerges as individuals feel the
intrusion of more cultural differences into their own
images of self and security. (help of their fellow
countrymen in the second culture).
3. Stage 3: gradual recovery.. Some problems are solved
while others remain. A general progress is made
4. Stage 4: near or full recovery, either assimilation or
adaptation, acceptance of the new culture and self-
confidence in the “new” person that has developed in this
culture.

Social distance!
Gives explanatory power to the place of
culture learning in second language
learning.
Social distance: the cognitive and affective
proximity of two cultures that come in
contact within an individual.
Distance: used metaphorically to denote
dissimilarity between two cultures.

John Schumsnn (1976)
1. Dominance
2. Integration: is the pattern
assimilation, acculturation, or preservation?
What is the L2 group’s degree of enclosure-its
identity separate from other contiguous groups?
3. Cohesiveness. Is the L2 group cohesive? What is
the size of the L2 group?
4. Congruence. Are the cultures of the two groups
congruent- similar in their system!
5. Permanence. What is the L2 group’s intended
length of residence in the target language area?

“bad”/”good” language learning
situation!
 Schumann use good/bad learners to describe the learning
language situations.
1. TL group views L2 group as dominant, the L2 group views
itself in the same way, both groups desire enclosure for
the L2 group, the L2 group is both cohesive and large, the
two cultures are not congruent, the two groups hold
negative attitudes toward each other, and the L2 group
intends to stay in the target area for a short time
2. The second bad situation has all the characteristics of the
first except that in this case, the L2 group considers itself
subordinate and is considered subordinate by the TL
group.

Culture in the classroom
 Stevick (1976) learners can feel alienation in the process of
learning a second language , alienation from people in their
home, culture, the target culture, and from themselves.
 In teaching an alien language we need to be sensitive to the
fragility of students by using techniques that promote cultural
understanding.
 Role-play (Donahu & parsons, 1982): helps students overcome
cultural “fatigue”, promote the process of cross-cultural
dialogue, provides opportunities for oral communication

Other techniques!
Readings
Films
Simulation games
Culture assimilators
Culture Capsules
Culture games

Sociocultural Factors in Language Teaching and Learning

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