Discovering a Foreign Culture Cultural Activities on Educational Tours Create Cultural Understanding and Produce Citizens of the World

Discovering a Foreign Culture
Cultural Activities on Educational Tours Create Cultural Understanding and Produce Citizens of the World

  When students encounter a foreign culture their reaction is likely incredulity. Their first instinct is normally to resort to stereotypes that provide them with a safety net, and explain what they cannot comprehend. As a teacher, it is our duty to break these stereotypes and show the value of understanding other customs. The more students learn, the more likely their initial culture shock will progress to empathy and acceptance of other possible lifestyles.
Traditionally culture was regarded as the addition of different fine arts. Knowing one country’s culture would be reduced to being acquainted with the literature, painting, sculpture, classical music and history of the land. Recently the concept has been expanded, and whilst recognizing the validity of the above definition in a specific sense of the word, it has been recognized that culture can further be defined as a set of ideas, beliefs and ways of behaving of a particular group of people, which may be influenced or illustrated by artistic manifestations of any kind. Culture in this larger sense has always been an important element of several subjects, such as foreign languages, history, art, literature, and the social sciences, and it is significant that more often than not it can best be acquired in extra-curricular activities and everyday situations outside school.
There is a metaphor that is commonly used to describe how culture works, which is called the Cultural Iceberg (Weaver, 1986): a small part of the iceberg is clearly visible (aspects of culture which are evident, such as literature, music, dress…), but most of the iceberg goes deep under the surface (all those customs, values, etc. that we as members of the cultural community know but do not or cannot articulate).


Consequently, there is a series of features that are distinctive characteristics of a particular society or
culture and are very complicated to explain and define, although they are perfectly clear for the natives of the language. A society and its culture normally relate to elements such as:

• Everyday living: food and drink, meal times, table manners; public holidays; working hours and practices; leisure activities (hobbies, sports, reading habits, media). One is never aware of how early or how late dinner is in one country until there is a confrontation with other customs. We often find that there is no other explanation than “because that is the way it is” or “my mum always used to do it that way”.
• Living conditions: living standards; housing conditions;
welfare arrangements.
• Interpersonal relations (including relations of power
and solidarity) with respect to relations between sexes, relations between generations even social greetings and ways to address neighbors, friends or teachers.
• Values, beliefs and attitudes in relation to factors such as social class, occupational groups (academic, management, public service, skilled and manual workforces); wealth; regional cultures; security; ethnic minorities; national identity; arts; humor.
• Body language: knowledge of the conventions—something especially important when one cannot only rely on verbal communication because of gaps in knowledge.
• Social conventions: hospitality (presents, punctuality,
dress, meals, behavioral and conversational conventions and taboos, length of stay, farewells).
• Ritual behavior in areas such as rites (birth, marriage,
death), audience and spectator behavior at public performances and celebrations, etc.


BREAKING THROUGH THE ICEBERG

All this explains why we can sometimes spot someone who is not from our community just by looking at what they are wearing, or seeing how they greet when they meet. It would also explain the surprises we can experience when foreign people speak about their family relationships, celebrations or job expectations. This part of culture is the most difficult one to learn and to teach, as it requires a deep understanding of the country and its people, one that is best acquired by actually being in the country or by reading extensively about it.

We should take this into consideration when we choose the cultural topics to be included in our syllabus. The natural tendency is to include cultural elements such as art, music, literature, geography and history. But those elements that convey the deep culture of a country such as the notion of kinship and non-verbal communication are just as important, or even more so than the surface culture. Some of the techniques and tasks that teachers can include in their teaching are:

• Quizzes on aspects of the target language such as traditional customs, festivals, daily habits in cities and villages. These are relatively easy to find and complete with the aid of the Internet.
• Listening to folk music and traditional songs, which very often reflect the most common beliefs and myths of a particular culture. When these songs celebrate a particular attitude we must bear in mind that they are known by most children in the country and whichever values they transmit will have been taken in by the population of the country.
• Talking and reading about traditional customs and important holidays. When a day or an event has been deemed so important that it is celebrated as a holiday it is because in the popular conscience it must have a relevant meaning. The same applies to the number of holidays in a country, which transmits
an idea of the attitude towards work in that particular country.
• Reading contemporary articles in magazines and comics, or online.
• Producing a poster, brochure or web page for visitors
that should include cultural explanations.
• Watching films and videos and commenting on particular
aspects that students may not understand because they are culturally-specific.
• Making presentations or projects on the differences between the two cultures about meals, timetables, leisure activities, etc.

In this digital age in which the Internet provides instant communication, telling students a few facts and details about the target culture is clearly insufficient. Students have access to many of the same resources as teachers, so educators must become facilitators of knowledge rather than just the source of knowledge itself.

We have to take teaching culture a step forward. Students need to participate and get a first-hand experience. When visiting another culture, all that had been considered a “strange” habit or something “weird” that happens abroad, achieves a new dimension. Of course, this cultural awareness is a slow process when it is done inside a classroom but it happens very quickly when the students travel and experience all that they have learnt in their textbooks in genuine situations. Teachers are always trying to introduce realia, authentic materials, in their lessons, but there is nothing more real than being in the foreign country itself and having to communicate with native speakers.


We as educators know that in those situations language skills are not enough. For this reason we are constantly trying to introduce the cultural component in our lesson plans. All this is becoming easier thanks to new technologies, but doing a virtual tour of a city will never substitute the thrill of finding your way around once you are there, seeing and feeling the atmosphere, and even getting lost and reading a map or asking the locals for directions.

ACTIVITIES’ IMPACT
Teachers have been organizing trips for years, but we also know going to a place doesn’t guarantee your full immersion into the target culture. Here is where cultural activities come in. Making educational trips interactive and providing a hands-on experience for all participants can add great value. Activities must be properly introduced in order to be meaningful; they need to be done in the right place and at the appropriate stage of a trip. The same as a language item needs to be learnt in context, a cultural activity needs to be explained beforehand and reflected on after it has been carried out. Students have to see a purpose in what they are doing, so that they immerse themselves in the activity and get the most out of it.

One of the advantages of learning through cultural activities in the country is that they cater for all learning styles by involving reading, listening and doing things. They are multi-sensory experiences, which are a key part of the learning process but often hard to do in a classroom environment. When a student can first read or hear about the typical dishes of a country and then prepare and eat the food in situ it is more likely that those dishes and the whole experience will be fully enjoyed, and even repeated at home. The horizons of every student will be expanded in many fields, not just the socio-cultural one.

Cultural activities carried out on site teach life skills such as orientation (both in a city and in nature), sports and physical education, musical appreciation, cooking techniques or world literature and philosophy. There are also more culturally-specific activities such as learning gestures and body language distinctive of a country, traditions and games, folklore and dancing, arts and crafts, etc. Most of these are very difficult to understand unless you are actually in the country. In a classroom environment they can only be explained and anticipated. For example, you need to play pétanque at least once before deciding whether it is a fascinating hobby or an unexciting waste of time.
The advantages of travelling are not restricted to cultural awareness, since educational tours can provide a great environment to teach values. Travelling to a different country and going through the process of not understanding what you see because it is strange, then trying to comprehend what is going on, and finally taking it in makes people more tolerant. When students realize that other countries have different value systems that are based on a set of beliefs that make as much sense as their own, they are getting a very valuable lesson on tolerance and inter-cultural understanding. In a time when the new generations are very likely to travel abroad and even live or work in a different country, this awareness of cultural differences and acceptance of such diversity is fundamental.

A trip to a different country can be the perfect setting to gain insight into current affairs by visiting conservation projects, local schools, humanitarian institutions (e.g. an orphanage), and old villages. Cultural activities also take into consideration the importance of ecology, tolerance, fair play in sports, a healthy lifestyle, racial equality, and other aspects that are taught at home but have special relevance in other environments.

Foreign language skills are also enhanced when students are involved in cultural activities. Simply visiting another country does not guarantee advanced lingual skills will be used, since the first uses of a foreign tongue tend to be restricted to very basic interaction. But, when we motivate our students by setting the right context and explaining what they are doing and why, they will try to speak the language. In order to get to a confidence level that will allow them to maintain a conversation, students tend to start with exchanges carried out to fulfill basic needs. When they realize that they can understand the answers students will feel a remarkable sense of pride and become ready for the challenge of using their foreign language skills to the fullest.

Everyone who speaks a foreign language can still remember their first meaningful conversation in the target language; that sense of achievement when you see that after so many years of hard work and classroom exercises, vocabulary tests and grammar explanations, it all makes sense and it is transformed into something alive and useful. This is much more likely to happen when you are in a country where you are exposed to the language and when you understand and empathize with the culture in which you are living, no matter for how long or short a period of time. This process will greatly increase students’ motivation to keep learning and improving the language, which is one of the aims of travelling to another country. If students understand what they are doing and why they are saying something, they will be compelled to keep trying the language. And if this can be done in a culturally appropriate way, their feeling of achievement will be even bigger.
In conclusion, when we say that “travel changes lives” we have to be specific about what type of travel achieves this aim. We know that just boarding a plane, getting to a different place, having a business meeting and returning that same night, will only make you tired. But it is true that when you go to a place and see, understand and experience what is going around you, that experience is very likely to stay in your mind for many years to come. The influence that travelling can have on young people is rather impressive, and teachers are in the privileged position of offering students their first chance not only of going to a different country and speaking the language, but also of understanding a different culture by actually doing some of the things that natives of the land do. Cultural activities that offer a true insight into a foreign country allow them (and us) to become citizens of the world.


References:
Byram, M., Nichols, A. & Stevens, D. (Eds.) (2001), Developing intercultural competence in practice. Clevedon,
UK: Multilingual Matters.
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:
www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf.
Damen, L. (1987). Culture learning: The fifth dimension in the language classroom. Reading, MA: Addision-Wesley.
Fantini, B. C., & Fantini, A. E. (1997). New ways in teaching culture. Arlington, VA: TESOL.
Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.
Paige, R. M. (Ed.) (1986). Cross-cultural orientation: New conceptualizations and applications. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Elena