The weekly column

Article 20, July 2000

How to Experience American Culture through the Internet for EFL Students

By Jin-shan Chen
Chih Lee College of Business

What constitutes effective teaching of English as a foreign language? How can computers help promote literate development in a way consistent with personal orientation? In the period of the Internet's first integration into the schools, what does the Internet offer that would be of most value in a classroom setting? What kinds of classroom activities would go along with Internet use? In what ways would these activities promote literate development? Though there may not be fixed answers, this paper tries to respond to these questions with an attempt to approach a more holistic interactive language learning circumstances along with the exposures of the target culture.

Introduction

U.S. Holidays http://www.aec.ukans.edu/LEO/holidays/holidays.html

U.S. Holidays is copyright 1995 by The University of Kansas, Applied English Center. It is an excellent site for the functional English instruction, and etching American culture. In the last ten years educators have started being aware of and have realized the crucial role of functional language instruction, which focuses on meaningful contextualization in materials selection, communicative purposes, and daily life interactions, in language acquisition and use.

In addition, learning a second language through culture instruction is an effective way for students to understand the underlined linguistic implications, and to narrow down the social distance, which would be considered as one of the major obstacles in language acquisition. Specifically, to know what a particular group of people do on a particular holiday, or festival is one of the best methods to decode the mystery of a different culture.

U.S. Holidays includes about ten introductions of various American holidays. The issue shown to me provides the information of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Passover, Easter, and Memorial Day. The pleasant festival atmosphere promotes student motivation and inspires their interest in expanding their scope to the American society. By experiencing specific social activities, and custom features in cultural base, students learn to respect and deal with culture diversities.

Classroom Implications:

Here we will only select Thanksgiving as an example for the classroom implication of this site. A teacher could select his/her own topic, or let students select their own topics for classroom instruction.

The main menu of Thanksgiving includes five major sections, History, Food, A Word Puzzle, Poetry and Things to Do for Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving issue could be used for a series of activities for a twenty-student classroom with five cooperative groups, four persons in each group.

I. History Exposure

Assign each group one topic from the History section catalogue. The First Thanksgiving, Plymouth History, The search for religious and political freedom, The Mayflower Compact, A Walking Tour of Plymouth Plantation, and The First Harvest Home are the six hypertext highlighted topics under the History section. Then ask each group to search for crucial information on that topic. To ensure individual participation in the task activity, a teacher could assign individual roles in a group, like a Moderator, who is responsible for making sure that the search and discussion are focused on the topic, a Researcher who is responsible for the technical operation for the searching on the computer, a Recorder who is responsible for writing
down what is found and the group discussion, and a Spokesman who is responsible for reporting their findings.

After gathering enough information for the presentation, students start working on a word processor to create their group file regarding their topic. If students have been taught HyperCard, a teacher can even ask them to create their stack including the images they found on the Internet, or pictures they drew by themselves for an issue introduction regarding to the group topic. Finally, students' show time could be designed to use a big screen for the whole classroom.

Once the presentations are done, in this site a teacher could integrate the features of Turkey Trivia, which is under the section catalogue of Food, to access students' comprehension, although the questions actually are not directly the major concern in the historical flow chart. In the Turkey Trivia Game, ten questions are provided to "test students' turkey IQ". Questions are designed as multiple choice, and a correct answer is presented right after students make their choice for each question and click "ANSWER". Neither feedback nor reinforcement is offered. Another interesting feature is "Turkey Trivia, Tidbits and Teasers". Here students get a list of more facts about turkey.

II. Thanksgiving Dinner Pot-luck

This is a wonderful activity for students to experience vividly the American holiday culture. After the first section of learning the history about Thanksgiving, the teacher now asks students to search for the special food that American eat for Thanksgiving dinner. Students are still working in groups. After the students get the basic concept of the numerous kinds of Thanksgiving foods, including the dining manner and sequence of having appetizer, main dish, desert, beverage, etc., the teacher announces that next week they will have a Thanksgiving Dinner Pot-luck. Every group must provide one dish plus the recipe, which they find on the Internet in class, for the whole class.

On the day for the activity of Thanksgiving Dinner Pot-luck, the teacher could design a lesson for a pure American Thanksgiving circumstances, introducing what American families usually do on Thanksgiving. By experiencing the dining culture of a particular holiday/festival, students realize the differences between the dining manner, table service, family interaction, etc., in Taiwanese customs and that in American culture. This kind of "field study" would be a great and interesting opportunity for students to learn more about the culture of English-spoken world.

III. Choral Reading & Creative Writing for Thanksgiving

Another activity the teacher could design for students about Thanksgiving is creative writing. By clicking "Thanksgiving poems" students can read numerous poems which were written by native speaker children. The teacher can ask each group to chorally read aloud a poem they like. It is a good way to call attention to individual students' pronunciation and diction.

Each group could be assigned a different method of choral reading - the whole group reads together, antiphonal - the group is divided into two groups with each group speaking certain parts, cumulatively - one or a few voices begin; voices are added individually or in groups as the poem builds toward high points or a climax, soles - individuals read a line. When a poem is introduced, students discuss the meaning and ways of reading it to bring out the meaning. This activity emphasizes group rather than individual effort and offers the shy student an opportunity to speak up.

Following this activity, the teacher now can ask each group to come up with their own poems. Students enjoy writing poetry based on patterns or formulas. The teacher presents examples, the class composes one or two poems by modeling the examples. Then, each group presents the poem they created by reading aloud in choral speaking. The teacher could also invite the other groups to discuss the meaning of the poem, which is presented, and then compare with the original meaning the presenting group comes up with for the poem.

In addition, the teacher can also introduce the electronic greeting card mailing service on the Internet by asking them to click "ascil picture". The individual will have the chance to e-mail their friends greeting cards through the Internet. Students would have great fun looking for their favorite pictures for the cards they want to create. It is a good opportunity to design another lesson for functional writing - the contents and formulas of English letters, and greeting cards.

Strengths:

Students are inspired and motivated by the pleasant atmosphere of holidays. The fears and anxiety in learning a foreign language are eliminated. The combination of colorful pictures and contexts about a specific topic contributes valuable inputs in learning process. Besides, the authentic daily life topics promote meaningful classroom interaction and behavior. Students could compare what they usually do with what Americans do on a particular holiday, by which the awareness and respect toward the diversity of multiple culture and behaviors could be built up

Hypertext-based contextualization helps to promote higher order thinking. When working on information searching, students need to use logical thinking, reasoning skills, and problem solving techniques. When trying to come up with the reports for presentations, students need to synthesize the data which they have found. Cognitive capability is developed along with the searching, while metacognitive competence is used as students try to answer the multiple choice questions, and to revise and edit their written reports. All in all, keyboarding skills and the familiarity with the Internet could be generally enhanced through this hands-on experience.

Cautions:

The site's integration with cooperative group learning tasks is one of the major efforts a language art lesson can offer. Yet, one may be find that the strengths of the site function would be reduced in a one-computer classroom. The teacher could still show something on a big screen to the whole class; however, students can not search information by themselves, nor go anywhere they want. In addition, in a one-computer classroom the use of the Internet technology is easily replaced by a traditional instructional methodology by distributing prepared handouts. All in all, it is suggested that group use of computers would be the most positive methodology in a computing classroom regarding the actual function of this site in a language classroom.

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