Does anyone have two birthdays?

Queen Elizabeth has two birthdays, but why and how?

NB: We have what we call the jubilee it is the day when she attended the crown}
1-she has the actual birthday or the real one it is in the 21st of April 1926.it is
celebrated in privet
2- the birthday of the monarch that is celebrated publically takes place in summer
exactly in the second Saturday in June and it is the official birthday of the monarch .
How the official birthday is celebrated publically?
NB: {The diamond jubilee it has to do with an event, it has been raining for 60 years
in great Britain }
The severance birthday is marked by many things: the celebration of the birthday of
the monarch celebrated publically in the United Kingdom
* The ceremony of trooping the color.
* The flying of the union jack on government building.
*the 42-gun salute
* The publication of the birthday honors list.
We started talking about the trooping ceremony or the ceremony of trooping the
color(presentation of videos)
1-The first point is the ceremony of trooping the color
T: what this trooping the color is about? By color we mean the flag, and that is going
to be trooped or carried i.e. caring the flag in front of the queen
T: who carries the flag? The soldiers (night horse guard)
2-The second point is the flying of the union jack: the flying of the union jack on
government building
T: what the history of the union jack? It is about the flags of the union, the cemetery in
the flag itself and what is quite important is that the flag should not be held the other
way around.
3-The third point is the 42-gun salute:
T: why is this firing of the colons? It is a military celebration of ceremony, its a kind of
military honor to be given to the monarch, it is a custom
4-The last point is about the publication of the birthday honors list: it is a list including
names of people who belong to different backgrounds but why their names are in this
list? It is because they marked and introduced a kind of change in their community it
might be a doctor in the field of medicine or a teacher at the university or a simple
employer at a company.

So, all these things marked the celebration of the monarch.

Task:
-is it important for us to be equated with cultural information?
-How is the queens birthday celebrated?
-Do you think that it is important to foreign language teachers and learners to
integrate this cultural component?
Baring in mind that the content is already crowded, we have phonetics, grammar,
and can we add culture to this overcrowded program?
Task:
What you know about culture? What you want to know about culture What you have
learned about culture

*we are interested in culture within the frame work of foreign language learning and
teaching, we have nothing to do with anthropological or ethnographic studies.
29/ 10 /2012 TEFL
{Culture is an umbrella term}
I bring the answer of the questions from net
The learned:
What culture is not?
What culture is not? there are numerous misconceptions about the nature of culture,
for it is a broad and complex 81phenomena, one way for understanding what culture
is, by knowing what it is not .
BROOKS1968 remediates its frame work by differentiating it from other close subject,
according to him :
-culture is not geography for the latter is the setting of the former, geography is the
stage upon which the drama of human culture is played but the play is the scene not
the scenery. (The culture is the play and geography is the scene)
-Culture is not the same as history which heavily relies on written records of course
everything thing has history even history. in general it is fair to say that history goes
back no further than the invention of writing i.e. we dont have historical records until
we have invented writing (it goes no further than the invention of writing) though
much younger than geography, human culture is vastly older than history, for culture
appeared To go back in time a greater past on 10 million years (so they are comparing
between geography and culture, the older is geography, culture and history)
-Furthermore, culture is not folklore i.e. the systematically studied customs, religion
and superstitions that are transmitted in an informal way from one generation to

another by means of oral communication .folklore can offer only a limited and partial
view of what we mean about culture.
-Moreover; culture is different from sociology .sociology informed us with precision
that in a given community that three and a half children in a family
(statistics).LAYMEN(1978) also distinguishes between what is social and what is
cultural ,in general what is social refers to the interactions of groups of people with
the group serving as the major focus of analysis (or it is the unit of analysis),while
culture refers to a set of behavioral, cognitive and emotional pattern .what is social
and what is cultural may coincide and may be identical ,both the social and cultural
are essential and may be complementary ,hence the term socio-cultural.
-Furthermore, Culture is not to be confined (restricted) within literature; literature can
supply us with better part though clearly a most valuable part of what is needed to be
taught under the heading of culture. When we teach literature we need culture.
-Culture is not also to be confused with civilization. BROOKS puts it clearly that
civilization appeared with an advanced state of human society in which a high level of
culture, science, industry , and government has been named ;it deals meaning with
cultural refinement and technological invention as the building of cities and
populated areas. Brooks argues that culture is above all and most of all about human
beings a point distinguish it from the disciplines mentioned before.
Brooks the most important single criterion in distinguishing culture from
geography,literature,folklore, civilization, is the fact that in culture we never lose sight
of the individual ,the geography for example of mountains ,rivers,lacks, natural
resources ,..Is quite impersonal and would be or it is whether people are present or
not ,it is only when we see human beings in this geographical picture and observe
their relationship between their individual lives and culture ;so, the scenery the
mountains are not cultural only when we relate it to individuals.
What culture is?
Culture is not an easy concept to define for it reflects what one is is saying for
instance, and what it means for others.
Definition: The concept of culture originates in the term agriculture which denotes the
cultivation of the sole, plants. Nowadays two basic orientations of the definition of that
concept are:
The literary-esthetic artistic approach or (big C culture) known also as former culture
or high culture.
The orientation of social sciences and anthropology which views culture as what
shapes everyday life namely patterns ,ways of behaviour including the thoughts of
given people in other words small c culture it is also known as deep culture (the terms
were coined by brooks 1968 AND SEELY 1993.
Anthropologists were the first to try to define culture given that this concept is the
core of that discipline; however, going through one of the main anthologies and
collections of readings in this subject makes one become aware. Given the various

definitions of that concept ,300 definitions were analyzed by KROEBER and

KLUCKHOHM (1954) these two scholars(anthropologists) put forward 300 definitions
,on the basis of which culture was regarded in the very broad perspective being to
lead to all aspects of human life (we link culture to all aspects of human life ).these
many conflicting definitions reflects the complexity of the concept of culture .since the
19th century anthropologists in both UK and USA approached culture as human
universal patterned way of living .
Culture is most commonly defined in behaviorist terms, behaviorists view culture as a
set of shared observable behaviour (so all what is observable is cultural) or patterns of
behaviour having to do with events ,however, (behaviorists) are interested in the
mere description of behaviors without compensating them (observation without
interpretation)i.e. without trying to understand the underlying rules and
circumstances of their occurrence (at means we just observe the behavior and
describe it as it is without going deeper to understand the underling rules of such
behavior).
Subsequent definitions of culture are functional, unlike the behaviorists the
functionalist were interested in understanding the underlying reasons and rules which
explain and govern the observed behaviors and events (they attempt to do the work
disregarded by behaviorists).both behaviorists and functionalist however assume that
identifying cultural behaviors and their functions can objectively and accurately be
done ,though practically speaking it is not to be the case ,for example; a cultural
anthropologist may observe a smile (which is a behavior) and infer the reason for
smiling which is happiness ,another may infer that the interpretation of a smile in the
same context is not happiness ,but embarrassment ;so, can we guess objectively what
is the interpretation of a smile. The third anthropologist may not perceive the smile at
all but another act.
Behaviorist and functionalist restricted culture to what is observable in behavior, or on
what can be deduced on this space but the behaviorist described the behavior and
the functionalist tried to deduce the underlying rules.
the unobservable features of culture is taken into account by the cognitive approach ,
it is known also as the ideational approach .it views culture as a system of ideas and
mental constructs rather than material and observable things . InROBENSON words
(1985) she defines culture stating culture is like a computer programme, the
programme differs from culture to culture,and the programme refers to cognitive
maps . HOFSTED (1991) refers to culture as the soft ware of the mind ;to put it
otherwise cognitivists views culture not as a behavior, but as knowledge or as an
internal system of thinking, interpreting and behaving( we should pay attention to this
chronological cycle what controls our thinking ,interpreting and behaving is this
cognitive map ).
Other definitions of culture consider it as symbols and meanings, in other words, while
cognitive anthropologists point to culture as a process (computer soft ware, cognitive
map both are processes) a cognitive mapping; symbolic anthropologists consider it as
a product at means the product of the process i.e. a set of meanings. These meanings

are historically related in the sense that past experiences influence the present and
the future ones in a dynamic progress.
Conclusion: culture is regarded as a broad concept because it integrates all aspects of
human life; we think that culture is a life experience in which people share problems,
habits, values, challenges etc in the words of SEELY 1993: what is culture according
to him culture is everything humans have learned
Merouch theses: Culture is the one which embodies all relevant factors and find the
middle ground between the behavioral, the functional, the symbolic, the cognitive,
and the social and other perspectives.
Task:
element
of
culture
:
belief,knowledge,views,values,assumption,behaviour,patterns,norms,customs,rituals,s
uperstissions, symbols, stereotypes, myth, taboo ( answers for the sentences)
5/ 11/ 2012 TEFL
FOR AND AGAINST CULTURE TEACHING
Are we supposed, we as language teachers, to teach about culture? Are we supposed
to be language teacher or language and culture teachers at the same time? Are we
supposed to teach about the target culture or not? There are arguments for culture
teaching and others against. (Look at handouts)
12/11/2012
Argument Explanation
19/11/2012
Culture teaching (how, when, and why to teach)(look for the record from Amel)
Principles of culture teaching:
12-culture teaching should be purposeful (done for a purpose), systematic (it should be
taught systematically, regularly or on regular basis), planed (it should not be taught in
a random way, you should shoes the activity and the aim behind the activity and
methodology), and evaluated(i.e. to be considered in exams, when I test and assess
the learners I should consider the cultural components at means cultural learning
should be evaluated along with linguistic learning).
In Algeria we are trying to include culture in textbooks and teaching but not in
evaluation but why? Where the difficulty lies? Is it in the types of activities? How are
we going to evaluate it?
kramsch (1993) culture is not the fifth skill to be added to the four skills but culture is
always in the background, that is it is always to be integrated in language skills (back
to my agenda) we teach culture systematically: it means that we should not deal with
culture as if it is incidentally a raised in a reading passage, say for example Im
teaching you about pollution and then I come across a cultural point and I say ah!!

By the way this is related to the US culture and it means this and this and that no, it
should be presented from the beginning.
3-as foreign language learning and teaching, culture learning and teaching is learner
geared (ie learner centered) which means that in language learning and teaching the
learner is the center and should be viewed as an active participator in the learning
and teaching process , when I teach culture without the learner so Im not teaching
culture ,and when it comes to culture it is not only learners participation and
involvement, but also learners emotional involvement for culture teaching to take
place
4-culture teaching is not a mere listing of facts (when I teach culture Im not going to
give a list of facts this is what happens this is the way they used to live, so its not just
a simple listing of facts) or transformed of a body of knowledgefrom the mind of the
teacher to that of the learner (at means its not of the learner to be considered as a
recipient ,you are not recipient of culture information because this is not actual culture
teaching and real culture teaching )
So, we should not just list these cultural events but Im going to train the students
how to approach this cultural event or cultural issue, how to deal with it , how to
critically think about it ,how to look beyond it , how to look at the deep structure of
the events and hence discover the values , the assumptions , the principles
.Remember what cultural is not always observable what lies in the deep structure of
thinking is cultural ,once students approach these cultural issues you will raise
awareness in their minds .another point related to this one which we have just
mentioned
5-culture teaching is not only a matter of inculcating (teaching)culture specific
knowledge (Vs culture general) so Im teaching English than I should teach culture
that is related only to English ,the information that we are going to provide u with is
culture specific ,but when it comes to the general we are going to present universal
issues e.g. environmental problems so its not culture specific .we are not concerned
with English general issues because it is English culture learning or culture specific .
And culture teaching is not only inculcating culture specific knowledge it is more than
that as we just said its a matter of raising awareness,raising the students
understanding ,stimulating the students critical thinking , it is even a question of
changing attitudes
NB: in merouch thesis the data collected proved that the majority of middle school
students hate the English speaking cultures especially USA and British culture and
they link it to political issues. Do you think that students with this mentality will
acquire the English language? Of course not, especially English is second language so
this is a miracle. Foreign language teachers try to make students like the culture or at
least to be neutral. In the past it was the opposite when people wanted to immigrate
and they see that it is rosy in the other side they had an unrealistic attitudes towards
the foreign countries. As foreign lge learners, foreign lge teachers and culture
teachers we have at least to make students have neutral attitudes. As you know the
finality the target is not culture learning its lge learning so if culture is going to be a
hinder, im going at least to remedy things and facilitate it.

Why teach culture? : (objectives, goals, aim)

The Nostrands (1970), scholars in the field of culture, outlined a list of neutral aims in
relation to culture teaching, and exactly they put forward nine cultural aims or goals:
because their work was a pioneering work we are going to take it down, they were the
first to deal with these cultural goals:
The ability to react appropriately in a social situation
The ability to describe or to ascribe to the proper part of the population a pattern in
the culture or social behavior
The ability to recognize a pattern when it is illustrated
The ability to explain a pattern
The ability to predict how a pattern is likely to apply in a given situation
The ability to describe or manifest an attitude important for making one acceptable
in the foreign society
The ability to evaluate the form of a statement concerning a culture pattern
The ability to describe or demonstrate defensible methods of analyzing a sociocultural whole
The ability to identify basic human purposes that make significance the
understanding which is being taught
T: What can you think of these goals?
Remember the lecture of objectives and smart objectives. These are goals and not
objectives and cannot be necessarily specific.Measurability is very important and we
are going to see how. We measure culture learning we do not just evaluate. Now when
it comes to the aachievable and the r realistic, achievable attainable realistic
relevant, what do you think of that? Are the achievable, realistic, in relation to culture
learning? These aims are too ambitious, over demanding, not realistic .it goes beyond
the objectives of a foreign language class
Lafayette and schulz in (1975) put forward three realistic cultural goals: goals that can
be taught in foreign language class
Knowledge :ability to recognize ,when you know something you recognize it ,so you
recognize cultural information cultural patterns etc know what
Understanding: the ability to explain and interpret cultural information and patterns
know why
Behavior: the ability to demonstrate and use foreign cultural patterns and behaviour
know how
It is always stated that culture learning and teaching should go beyond the know
what, beyond knowledge and understanding and their behaviour .but we should not
constrain students to behave in speakers lge behavior.

Byram and zarate (1994) talk in terms of (savoir)

1. Savoir tre it has to do with the know why ,attitudes ,values , assumptions,
because when we explain a cultural behaviour it is usually explained in terms of
values , beliefs ,remember deep culture
2. Savoir apprendrethe ability to learn and this ability is highly stressed those days
in secondary schools and middle schools , because in this frame work of competency
based teaching students are supposed to learn by themselves and to develop their
own learning strategies and they have to learn how they learn by them selves
3. Savoir faire the knowhow ,skills , behaviors
4. Les saviors the know what , knowledge
There are three terms we should make them clear that are related to culture teaching
and to any other field:
When we say Knowledge it is different from understanding and from mere information,
Knowledge : is the accumulation of facts ,students are going to develop knowledge
about culture so they are going to accumulate cultural facts in lge teaching
Understanding : or cultural understanding engages learners in reflective learning
about the accumulated facts , we have to go beyond that we have to train the
learners to approach the accumulated facts , to think about the accumulated facts ,to
reflect upon them in order to understand them ,interpret them
Information: it is arbitrary when we say a set of information it will not be
contextualized , when I give you a set of cultural information it will be decontextualized , collection of facts and issues ,When I say knowledge these facts
should be structured ,in a frame work and context
Your aim as a foreign language teacher and learner should not be restricted to
providing learners with cultural information, not only knowledge; you should train
them to think about cultural issues, not just the know what but also the know why.
How much culture to teach? :
To what extent should culture be taught to learners? There are foreign patterns of
thoughts, foreign patterns of behaviour; to what extent should they be taught to
learners? , and to what extent should learners be obliged to constrain and adopt these
foreign patterns?
Learners should be made aware of the socio-cultural aspect of spoken and written
discourse in the target language but should not be constrained to appropriate them
(make it your own, adopt them),at means say for example that this is the English
style, this is the way British people write, shall I oblige my students to adopt the same
style? Normally not .the aim is not to assimilate the foreign culture and country,but
the aim is acculturation which means to know about the other culture without losing
sight of our own culture, acculturation has to do with decreasing the distance between

the students native culture and the foreign lge culture, you change attitudes to
neutral one.
After all we are not teaching culture we are teaching about it, bear in mind that a
foreign lge teacher is not supposed to teach culture but to teach about it but about lge
we are teaching lge not about lge ; otherwise ,learners will not end up with using the
lge . we teach about culture because it is so complex and its not realistic to teach this
complex system and on the other hand all what is cultural is not relevant to what we
are doing in an English class, English lge learners are not concerned with the whole
cultural system of British people and American people, because no need to master the
lge just learn the lge to be able to communicate with it.
26/11/2012
What culture to teach? :
When it comes to what culture to teach i.e. the cultural content it is a question of big
C culture and small c culture, so they should both be included in the curriculum.
Big C culture: it doesnt includeonly literature and fine arts like music and architecture
which is a kind of art but also history,geography, technology all these matters are
included in big C culture, and mainly literature and fine arts ex: when we study
literature the American literature this is big C culture, but this is not enough we should
introduce small c culture
Small c culture: is the life style of English speaking people, not only the observable
things but also the needs, the thoughts, the values, the assumptions, the beliefs,
Summary:
When we say big C and small c culture this does not mean that we will include all
things related to big C and small c, things related to the how much to teach , if you
analyze for example a text book of English we are going to analyze the cultural
content and we will find that there are some units devoted to big C culture and others
for small c culture or well find a unit including both small c and big C ,what u should
bear in mind is that both of them are targeted .
Brooks (1968) has defined culture in terms that are meaningful to classroom teacher
and he identified five types of cultures:
1. Biological growth(this is a general meaning)
2. Personal refinement
3. Literature and fine art
4. Patterns for leaving
5. The sum total of a way of life
So these are five meanings as identified by BROOKS and for him culture 4 which is
patterns for leaving ( patterns of behaviour and thoughts are related to everyday

living) is the most important point or type of culture to be taught and introduced in
language classrooms and it is part of small c culture .
*remember what brooks highlighted, he said that we cant call something as cultural
unless we have human beings i.e. the individuals, in other words when we see for
example a scenery this is not cultural according to brooks what give it sense is when
we relate the piece of art to the artist .so, the artist is the one who will make the piece
of art cultural; hence, never lose the sense of the individual when you teach culture.
According to MORAN (1990),this was presented in a very famous symposium,
language learners should be taught the following points:
1. Information ,facts, data about the target culture (we have already distinguishes
between information and knowledge and it should be rather knowledge rather than
information ;data is about statistical data for example 20%of the population are
illiterate ){this is the know what and it is also called by Moran the know about}
2. Skills to behave appropriately in real or stimulated experiences in the target culture
{the know how}
3. Reflection on the unobservable features underlying the target culture (reflection on
what is unseen){the know why}
4. Comparison and contrast of what is foreign and what is native (compare and
contrast our own culture with the foreign culture){the know one self }
Other point concerning the knowhow, the cultural know how should not be restricted
to the linguistic performance, we should not learn just how to use the language but
also the behavior, paralinguistic features. At means that when we teach the cultural
knowhow we are not supposed to teach the learners what to say or what not to
say,but also what to do and what not to do (if not just linguistic communication also
related to all kinds of behavior but what one can do or cant do in a particular
situation, of course everything is done in a context).
Concerning the know about (know what); we have three basic conditions to cater for
when we select the cultural content for learners:
1. Contextualization (everything should be contextualized , we shouldnt only
contextualize language forms and language items but also cultural items and forms
,everything should be presented and practiced in context )
2. Systematicness (the study of culture should be systematic ,it should be taught
systematically not incidentally or randomly
3. Realism(it is the third major condition , at means that the cultural content that will
be presented to learners should be realistic and when we say realistic there should be
reference to problems like cultural and political problems ex: so we are living in a
world of war problems ,terrorism ; we should not depict only the meaning of the word
and when the content is realistic it tends to be valid )
Summary:

What should be taught in the name of culture, and of course remember you should
not teach everything and at the same level (different points of emphasis at different
levels depending on the level of the learners and their cognitive abilities and many
other factors)so what are those elements that should be taught in the name of culture
:
1. Its observable(behaviors) and unobservable(values, beliefs) features
2. Esthetic(big C) and sociological(small c) facts
3. Its past(we should teach something about history) and present
4. Skills and competencies(the knowhow) and not merely facts and statistics (the
know what)
5. The learners native culture (the know one self)
6. The cultures of the target language speaking communities in international
settings(Im going to design a textbook about the English speaking culture I may
devote the first unit for the UK culture and the second unit the USA culture the third
one is about Australia ,all in all they should be English speaking countries ,but this is
not the case in textbooks in Algeria they include all the possible cultures like the
African culture the Asian culture however they should at least specify only the English
speaking cultures because it is a hard task for learners to learn about English cultures
let alone several cultures .
Another important point is that there should be a kind of common thread ,we are
talking about the same topic but we look at it from different perspectives Englishspeaking perspective but why there should be this common thread, it is to avoid
fragmentation i.e. the cultural content presented to learners should not be
fragmented because we sometimes feel that when we are moving from one unit to
another one as if we are moving from one thing to n other completely different
thing ;so, we understand that we can refer to more than one culture because they all
share the same language and for the sub-cultures they are cultures within culture with
reference to the factor of age the factor of youth , to gender , ethnic origins , social
class education . For a book that is going to be used in middle school it will be a good
idea to present something about the culture of teenagers instead of referring to social
classes or gender, so remember different points of emphasis at different levels. in
culture we may include religion as well (they are known as international target
cultures, and in literature you will find them using the symbol c1 c2c3 i.e. culture
one , culture two , culture three, but also sub-cultures)
When to teach culture? :
When you introduce culture?
According to Brooks (1968), learning about culture should be programmed beginning
from elementary courses i.e. At the beginning of the learning processes, but why is
that?Why should culture be taught right from the beginning .the argument of Brooks
fro that is: he said that many students do not have the opportunity to reach advanced

levels so the sooner culture is introduced the better it is for the majority (it is a
pragmatic point of view)
NB: when we teach target and native culture we usually based on similarities and
differences but one should be careful to not start with teaching the differences first
because there will be negative outcome because the first impression is very important
and difficult to change, learners will accept the cultural content and issues when it is
similar to theirs but when it is different learners are likely to develop stereotypes and
negative attitudes.
So these are the two important points in the when we introduce culture at the very
beginning and we focus on similarities.
How to teach culture? :
Of course we should focus on the point of being selective,
The techniques we use to teach culture should involve the learners, when the learners
are engaged in these activities they should be acting; so, it should be learner centered
.u need not design culture gears activities it should not be culture exclusively gears, u
can design the same activity for linguistic communicative and cultural aim,but there
are other activities that are devoted to culture; for example,* case studies, critical
incidents, and culture assimilators.
We put them together because there are common points between them,case studies
and critical incidents they mean the same type of activity in some books we find them
using the term critical incidents and other books we find them using the term case
studies , and culture assimilators also have got something in common .whats
common between the three types is the problem solving , in these three types of
techniques learners are supposed to solve problems , at means they will be presented
with a contextual communicative situation ,an intercultural situation and in this
situation for example well find that people are embarrassed and students are
supposed to Fugger out whats wrong and why i.e. they try to interpret the situation
and try to suggest solutions as well . cultural assimilators are a kind of MCQ a list of
assimilators is given in a given situation youll be given options , these options are
called attributions ,attribution means reason , so you will try to chose the right
attribution or the right reason that accounts for the situation from the target culture
standing point i.e. you will try to adopt the others shoes and try to get whats the
reason from this conflicted situation from the target culture stand point but not from
your own culture .
*The second type is cultural capsules and cultural clusters, culture capsule is also
known as cult grams, it describes an event a situation an issue in the foreign culture
and the students are supposed to answer comprehension question related to the
situation ,if we take the form of culture capsule it is in a form of short passage
followed by comprehension question and the content of the reading passage should
be cultural / and a cultural cluster is a set of cultural capsules dealing with the same
theme e.g. if the major theme is food the first capsule will be about hotdogs the
second will be about coca cola .so these are exclusively culture gears or activities as
opposed to some activities that are ling communicative and cultural such as

-Discussion (pair, group, class discussion) of course it will be more powerful since it
develops speaking
-role play and simulation the two offers what we call life like experiences, the
difference between role play and simulation is that role play is a kind of play acting
i.e. you are trying to imagine that you are Marie but in simulation you try to be that
person, of course both have values at linguistic and cultural level and involve learners
in life like cultural experience
-media units it has to do with the use of audio visual materials to teach about the
foreign culture (film , movie , song , documentary ) it is highly motivating and
beneficial because they are going to bring the foreign culture into the foreign culture
class
-cultural quizzes of course the quizzes are used to teach and to test cultural learning,
a set of questions in form of quizzes