Professional Documents
Culture Documents
14
As the lingua franca of the twentieth century, English is one of the most
important means for acquiring access of Anglo-American
technology. As a
result, there is a huge need to learn English in non-English-speaking
countries - a
need which creates a great demand for English instructors.
Since this demand far outruns
the available supply of qualified local
teachers of English, many countries
recruit teachers who are native
speakers of English.
These teachers, most of whom come from Britain or the United States,
bring with them the notion that a language and its culture are two
inextricably related entities, and as such should be taught together. Resting
on the empirically unverified theory of linguistic relativity, the implicit
claim is that no real acquisition
of the target language can take place
without the learners internalization
of target language speakers patterns
and values. After all, so the belief goes, the new linguistic and cultural
competence will enable the learner to develop new perceptions of reality
and to behave differently in the light of such perceptions. What is implied
here is that learners experience a series of cognitive and affective changes
thanks to which they take on a new identity (Brown 1981) - an identity with
both bilingual and bicultural features. Thus, foreign language teaching is
seen as a pedagogical process aimed at changing the learners behavior by
injecting new norms and values into it (Trivedi 1978). Since these norms
and values involve learning to perceive the world as the speakers of the
target language habitually
see it, the foreign language teacher is often
advised to persuade the learners that success in language learning depends
ELT Journal
1984
upon the degree to which they integrate themselves with the native
environment
of the language, whether they are learning it in the country
in which it is spoken or not (Curtin 1979:281).
Attitudes
to foreign
language
learning in
English-speaking
countries
Attitudes
to EFL in
non-Englishspeaking
countries
culture
15
of Africa and Latin America, there is a feeling on the part of the educated
elite that English instruction
in particular and modernization
in general
which has not been acculturated and shaped to fit their countrys needs
constitute a threat to national identity. Thus, suggestions have been made
to de-Anglo-Americanize
English, both in linguistic and in cultural
respects, in order for the language to be in tune with the needs of the EFL
learners in such countries
as Japan (Nakayama
1982) and Venezuela
(Thomas 1983). Moreover, there has been an increase in the production of
local teaching materials that are culturally and experientially
appropriate
for learners in developing countries. In Kuwait, for instance, EFL texts are
being prepared
with the Kuwaiti situation
in mind (Hajjaj 1981).
Likewise, China produces its own materials which are clearly modeled on
British EFL texts of the 1960s with one major variation - a
thoroughly
transformed
cultural content that aims at reinforcing
Chinese cultural
norms and values (Scott 1980). Even in industrialized
European countries,
as Freudenstein et al. (1981) indicate, EFL learners want to acquire an international variety of English, independent
of the cultural norms and values
of native English speakers. In fact, many of these learners tend to reject the
norms and values of the English-speaking
cultures, but still acquire English
satisfactorily,
due to their wish to identify with international
attitudes
which have developed in such fields as pop culture, travel culture, and
scientific culture where English happens to be the principal medium of
communication
(Ladousse 1982).
On a deeper level, the hosts willingness to learn English in the context
of national or international
norms and values is indicative of their belief in
the possibility
of becoming
bilingual
without becoming
bicultural - a
phenomenon
whose existence is pointed out by Paulston (1978:373). It is
apparent that this concept of bilingualism
without biculturalism,
which
seeks to dissociate the learning of the target language from its nationalitybound cultural context, soon clashes with the native English-speaking
teachers unwitting efforts to disseminate among their students the cultural
norms and values of the English-speaking
country as part of their foreign
language teaching.
The failings of the
guest teacher
16
The conflict between the opposing pedagogical views of the hosts and the
guest teachers of EFL is in many cases exacerbated
by the latters
ignorance of the ways and minds of the local people and their language. In
fact, it is quite ironic that, while espousing the idea that foreign language
acquisition is a means to increase cross-cultural
awareness and sensitivity,
the guest teachers are often unable to understand
the host culture or to
speak the local vernacular. Another irony lies in their attempts to expose
their students to the norms and values of the English-speaking
culture in
the students own setting, while very often they themselves continue to
remain monolingual
and monocultural
there.1
This monolingualism
and monoculturalism
eventually paves the way to
mental and physical isolation from the host society. Given the linguistic
and cultural difficulties involved in establishing meaningful
relationships
in the host culture, the guest teachers retreat into the comfort of an
English-speaking
enclave
of compatriots,
foreigners,
and
a few
unorthodox
local individuals. In addition to living in an enclave, there are
other factors which reinforce
the native English-speaking
teachers
isolation and alienation.
For one thing, they know that, at least officially,
they are not expected to acquire the language of the hosts. For another,
Cem and Margaret Alptekin
they are aware that the hosts vernacular is unlikely to be useful once they
are back in their home country, and they therefore fail to develop the
necessary motivation
to learn it. Furthermore,
they are conscious of the
temporary nature of their sojourn in the host country, and see little need to
affiliate with the hosts, either linguistically
or culturally.
Finally, as
instructors
in the host society, they feel they need to be treated as
important, as bearing the cultural superiority that they suppose whoever
asks for foreign teachers must concede (Daniel 1975:63).
The consequences
Various pedagogical difficulties arise from this mismatch between the host
countrys and the guest teachers patterns of thinking and behaving. First,
the native English-speaking
teachers pedagogical attempts to modify the
cognitive and affective behavior of the students with a view to making them
bilingual and bicultural are met with reluctance, if not resistance, by the
students themselves. In fact, despite their desire to learn English, the
students are often unwilling to receive the cultural load of the target
language. Hence, it is not uncommon
for many who do not want to be
culturally assimilated to give up on learning the target language. If, on the
other hand,
the native English-speaking
teachers
succeed in their
pedagogical aims, it is not surprising, as Goke-Pariola
(1982) indicates for
the Nigerian context, to see students alienated from their own social setting
as they become adjusted to the values of the Anglo-American
world.
Secondly, teaching the target language along with the target culture is
done on the somewhat unrealistic assumption
that a language cannot be
used if it is emptied of its cultural content. Advocates of this position claim
that teaching English while, for example, referring to the culture of the
student would be useless. They discount the psychologically
sound and
motivating
effects of helping and encouraging
students to use the new
language to describe their own culture (Finocchiaro
1982:68), not to
mention the facilitating effect that culturally indigenous materials can have
on learners fluency and grammaticality
in target language use (Winfield
and Barnes-Felfeli
1982). What they also ignore is the fact that, as the
lingua franca of this century, English is used extensively by millions of
people outside its original geographic boundaries
to convey national and
international
perceptions of reality which may be quite different from those
of English-speaking
cultures. Brumfit (1980), for instance, points to the
awkwardness of pedagogical practices which deny EFL learners the opportunities and occasions to express their own cultural needs and ideas in
English :
[No person] who is not intolerably alienated from his own environment
is going to want to learn English in order to become an Englishman (or
an American) to such an extent that he never uses it to express the
ideology, the assumptions,
the cultural basis of himself rather than of
Englishmen.
We have the strange paradox
that in mother-tongue
teaching we emphasize the clarity of the childs ability to express himself,
while in the foreign language we demand that he express a culture of
which he has scarcely any experience.
. . I We need to devise a
methodology
which will enable the learner to use the language, not
passively in relation to situations which are imposed by motivations and
ideologies not his own, but actively as a product of his own needs. . .
The model of teaching which tells the foreigner to adopt our system is
because it implies that he cannot
both untruthful
. . . and unhelpful,
The question of culture
17
communicate
105).
without
adopting
our position
unnegotiably
(pp. 94-6,
vivid and relevant pedagogical models in EFL. They can show the learners
how it is possible to achieve cultural pluralism as a frame of mind, along
with demonstrable
competence in a given language. According to Bowen
(1977), successful bilingual teachers in EFL programs have a psychological
advantage over the monolingual
native English-speaking
teacher, since
they can prove to their students that they, the teachers, have in fact
acquired a foreign language, and that therefore the students can too.
Under these kinds of favorable and realistic learning conditions,
EFL
students in non-English-speaking
countries can be expected to acquire a
new identity as they become fluent in the target language. This will not,
however, be a bilingual
and bicultural
identity subject to anomie and
alienation.
Rather, it will be an identity which is able to transcend the
parochial confines of the native and target cultures by understanding
and
appreciating
cultural diversity and pluralism thanks to the new language,
while not losing sight of native norms and values in the process. In short, it
is a bilingual and intercultural identity.
Received January
1983
Note
receives
the Horizons
of Foreign Language
Education.
20
2/2:23-33.
D. A. 1975. Second-Language
Learning and
Teaching. London: Edward Arnold.
Winfield, F. E., and P. Barnes-Felfeli.
1982. The
effects of familiar and unfamiliar cultural context
on foreign language composition. Modern Language
Wilkins,
Journal
66/4:373-8.
The authors
Dr Cem Alptekin
is currently
coordinator
and
instructor of English for foreign students at the Ohio
State University in Columbus. He has taught English,
French, Turkish, and applied linguistics both in the
United States and abroad. He has also trained teachers
of EFL. His research interests center around sociopsychological
factors in foreign language learning,
and he has published in the TESOL Quarterly and the
Canadian Modern Language Review. He is also the author
of Reading Comprehension in English.
Margaret
Alptekin
currently
co-ordinates
and
teaches an ESL course at the Ohio State University in
Columbus. Having received her BA in French and her
MA in TEFL from Southern Illinois University, she
taught English, French, German, and phonetics in the
United States, Turkey, and France. Her major research
interest
lies
in
foreign
language
teaching
methodology.