Blending Cultures: A Guide for Esl Teachers and Students.

Contents

Foreward

Introduction

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Teaching styles

Tactile and Kinesthetic Learners

Teaching pronunciation

Intonation

Pauses and stress changes

Teaching Writing

American English

Some help with Grammar

The seven aspects of learning

Hints on Classroom management

Some useful Websites

Foreward

Teaching English as a second language or as a foreign language is an exciting challenge. There are so many factors that influence the work the teachers do. One thing is for sure, niether the teacher or student will ever be the same after the classes are over.

The teacher will have a much broader perspective on the world and feel much more comfortable in a foreign, cultural environment. The student will also have an expanded. mind and most likely increased abilities in what are unrelated fields. The brain will be changed and both the left and right sides will function better.

Much research has been done to determine the relationships between culture and language. There has also been lots of research that has determined that language actually shapes the way people think!!! Attitudes are very different when one speaks more than one language with the language being used influencing the feelings and attitudes of the speaker. For example, when an Arabian person speaks Arabic when talking about a Jewish person their attitude and feelings are very different than when they speak about the same person while speaking Hebrew.

When one is involved in the language teaching profession it soon becomes apparent that the thinking patterns of the students are quite different in the various countries the teacher can find themselves working in. The question then arises, does the Language shape the thinking or is it the culture that shapes the thinking because language is an expression of the culture. The ultimate outcome is that regardless of what shapes what there is a very definite need to be sensitive to these influences and take them into consideration as one helps the students acquire a new language and use it proficiently. This can only happen if there is a connection coupled with cultural sensitivity on the part of the teacher. There is definite proof that there is a definite increase in other abilities demonstrated by bi-lingual people. The arts and musical abilities are very much heightened as one example.

Introduction

There are strong and increasing pressures in most societies now in these times of surging economic changes. Financial hardship is common for some retirees as well as high unemployment for many of the younger people. The world is changing rapidly and English is ever becoming the dominant language of commerce. Growing numbers of the older generations still feel active and in need of something to do with their lives as things are changing.

Many people read the advertisments for volunteers or for the schools and colleges that offer language teacher training to enable English Language Teachers to work abroad. They, quite naturally, think it would be a nice way to travel economically and see some other parts of the world, at little or no expense, while they still have the time and energy.

I was one of these people although I was not really retired at that time, just freshly Divorced and bored with living alone in an apartment instead of a house in the country.

I was fortunate in as much that I had already travelled quite extensively. I chose to try to teach Business English to company executives because in my quite extensive business travelling. I had come to realize the big differences in the usage of the English language one encountered in the various countries. This had caught my attention as I had been an executive myself in an international corporation in London England for some years previously. I was aware that these language differences could possibly and often did lead to big misunderstandings and large, immediate financial losses as well as the future loss of potential business. The problems were not just poor use of langauge but largely due to lack of comprehension because of the cultural differences and erroneously understanding of words that had been directly translated using a Dictionary.

I had experience in teaching technical subjects when I was younger so I took an English Second Language Teacher training Course and set out to see more of the world.

Having already thought quite a lot about the possible causes of the language usage

differences and had arrived at some conclusions but still totally unaware of the size of the problems which face many English teachers. Now, with more than thirteen years of English second language teaching experience I feel that I have finally found many of the answers.

The ESL Teacher training courses do not prepare you for the difficulties that can be experienced in the field as a result of cultural unawareness and even more from the tremendous effect culture has on language as well as language acquisition. In many countries you will encounter people from many of the English speaking countries working temporarily in the language schools and trying to teach their language to the local people. They have been hired on the assumption that a native speaker can easily teach their mother tongue. The schools have realized that their own, home grown, teachers have some difficulties with pronunciation and lack of the ability to be able to explain the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the English language and think that a native speaker can easily rectify that. They do not realize that although the native speakers can speak their own language and communicate with their fellow countrymen quite well they have never had to study in depth the reasons for the idiosyncrasies. The native speakers can speak their local kind of English from wherever they came from but they do not use middle of the road, internationally understood English. The students in another country find the native speakers difficult to understand.The English language varies from place to place, quite a lot, due to local socioeconomic conditions, education level, life style and