LESSON-PLANS FOR TEACHING CULTURAL AWARENESS

A series of lesson-plans for sensitising students to the importance of cultural difference.

These plans were originally developed in the 1997-8 academic year by a team working at Bilkent University, English Program for the Faculty of Business Administration. The team comprised Daren Hodson (Co-ordinator), Humeyra Baţol, James Bowman, Umur Çelikyay, Zeynep Özek and Ţule Savaţan (Instructors), and has been reproduced here with permission.

Introduction

Lesson 1

Activity 1: To enlarge students' understanding of 'culture'

Activity 2

Final Activity: Why do we have culture in an English composition course?

Lesson 2

Reading Activity: Formations of Modernity

Discussion Activities

Lesson 3

Learning Objectives

Activity 1

Post-Reading Activites

Introduction

This course, originally designed for students of the Department of Management, emphasises research and oral presentation skills. Students engage in conducting research, reporting synthesised information from different sources, as well as in problem solving and decision making activities. The content of the course centers around the theme of ‘culture’ under which such subjects as gender, ethnicity, class, etc. are researched and studied. Students engage in conducting research, reporting synthesised information from different sources, as well as in problem solving and decision making activities. The content of the course centers around the theme of ‘culture’ under which such subjects as gender, ethnicity, class, etc. are researched and studied. This theme, we believe, is particularly relevant to management students at Bilkent University: understanding differences in culture and developing cultural awareness are invaluable for success in today’s global business environment.
Nonetheless, this material can also prove useful to students taking any kind of culture-related courses, e.g. British or American Studies.

The material is composed of a series of lesson-plans. Whilst most of the activities can be designed to fit any lesson length, it is advised that the material could be ideally accommodated into 40-50 minute units.

Lesson 1

Warm up activity:

What for you does ‘culture’ mean? Why? Write for 3 minutes. List, semantic map, clustering (Teacher’s preference)
Come together into pairs or small groups of 3-4 and compare your writings. What do you agree about? What do you disagree about? Why do you think that you disagree about these ideas?

Activity 1: To enlarge students' understanding of ‘culture’

Divide class into pairs and have pairs to select a piece of paper from a bag. Papers will say ‘Turkish culture’, ‘youth culture’, ‘European culture’, ‘American culture’, ‘African culture’, ‘Italian culture’, ‘primitive culture’, ‘Arab culture’, ‘Thai culture’.

Each pair makes a list of at least 5 things, ideas, words that they associate with their category. Pairs then split, and two large groups are formed; these people then present their ‘culture’ and its associations to their larger group. The other members must add at least 3 more ideas/words to the list.

How, now, has your understanding of ‘culture’ changed, compared to when you first thought of it? What does ‘culture’ include that you didn’t think of before? Why?

Activity 2

Groups or pairs will be given pictures representing stereotypical aspects of different cultures and asked to explain what the picture tells them about ‘culture’. Describe the pictures without showing the others, then show the others. Then explain what the picture mean to them in terms of culture. How are the images in these pictures similar and different from images that you are familiar with in your own culture? How does this help you to understand the picture? (Do you think that it limits the way you understand it?) Give reasons. Other groups may then join the discussions.

Final Activity: Why do we have culture in an English composition course?
Why do we have culture as a theme in an English composition course? Why/How can you benefit by studying and writing about ‘culture’ as a management at an international university? Put ideas on board and discuss.
Teachers’ Note: This activity enables the teacher to clarify the goals of the course.

Lesson 2

Students work in pairs to explain what they had in the first class along with the reasons. Then they report their ideas to the whole class. Teacher helps out and clarifies points about the first class.

Reading Activity: Formations of Modernity

‘The meaning of the term ‘culture’ has changed over time, especially in the period of the transition from traditional social formations to modernity.

The first and earliest meaning of ‘culture’ can be found in writing of the fifteenth century when the word was used to refer to the tending of crops (cultivation) or looking after animals. This meaning is retained in modern English in such words as ‘agriculture’ and ‘horticulture’.

By the eighteenth century, ‘culture’ had acquired distinct class overtones. Only the wealthy classes of Europe could aspire to such a high level of refinement. The modern meaning of ‘culture’, which associates it with ‘the arts’ is also closely related to this definition

Finally another meaning of the word culture has emerged, which has had a considerable impact on all the social sciences. It differs in emphasis from the other definitions, however, by concentrating more on the symbolic dimension, and on what culture does rather than on what culture is.

Text Tasks:

Scan for main ideas.
Read for number of definitions of culture.

Comprehension Activities:

How many different definitions of culture does the writer mention: How does he categorise these definitions?

Why do you think there are different definitions in different centuries? (i.e. Why do you think the first definition was based on crops and animals?

How does the approach towards defining culture change?

Assign each group a definition to present with two examples to illustrate what the definition means and how it works.

Discussion Activities

Where do you place yourself in terms of defining culture?

Where does your definition fit into these definitions?

Do we use all these definitions today?

Do you think that the ‘culture’ of a person affect the way he/ she defines ‘culture’?

Lesson 3
CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS
Goering, it was said, growled that every time he heard the word culture he reached for his revolver. His hand would ache today/ Since the end of the cold war, ’culture’ has been everywhere-not the opera-house or gallery kind, but the sort that claims to be the basic driving force behind human behaviour. All over the world, scholars and politicians seek to explain economics, politics and diplomacy in terms of ‘culture-areas’ rather than, say, policies or ideas, economic interests, personalities or plain cock-ups … culture is so imprecise and changeable a phenomenon that it explains less than most people realise.

To see how complex the issue is, begin by considering the telling image with which Bernard Lewis opens his history of the Middle East. A man sits at a table in a coffee house in some Middle Eastern city, ‘drinking a cup of coffee or tea. perhaps smoking a cigarette, reading a newspaper, playing a board game, and listening with half an ear to whatever is coming out of the radio or the television installed in the corner.’ Undoubtedly Arab, almost certainly Muslim, the man would clearly identify himself as a member of these cultural groups. He would also, if asked, be likely to say that ‘Western culture’ was alien, even hostile to them....

The Economist November 9th 1996

Learning Objectives:

Culture--

Enlarge the students' “concept” of culture, widen their perspective.

How does the author use/appropriate the term “culture” in this argument?

How is the term culture useful for economic, business purposes and, therefore, more relevant to their own learning goals as management students?

Recognising the complexity of a term such as culture, which can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes.

Reading and Writing Skills--

Summarise the text: main ideas and their relationship, major vs. minor ideas.

Scanning activities or quickly searching for meaning before reading. For example, how is the word “culture” used in the text?

Vocabulary development--homework: choose 5 new words and record their meanings and the way they are used in the text into your notebook. Discuss dictionary usage with class in 2nd meeting, get them to talk about their experience of finding meanings of specific words after they do this task.

Activity 1

Reading Part 1--a guide to comprehension.

Students will identify the following:

1. Main idea of the text
2. Purpose of the text
3. Sources used
4. Sample question to give to class: What does the example of the man in the cafe stand for? Why is it used?

Homework for second session:

locate 3 new words and record definitions in notes and how these words are used in this context.

select a favourite paragraph and be prepared to explain why you like it more than other parts.

Post reading Activities:

Using sources --

Why the author uses the source, how it fits into his own argument?

What is his personal attitude to the source--agrees with it, disagrees, has a neutral attitude/no clear attitude, just background information? and which words demonstrate “attitude” of author towards his sources?

Final Questions/Exercises:

(After reading and discussing, return to these initial assumptions in Lesson 1 and re-examine these assumptions. What new ideas have you gathered from reading that further explain them...?)

Is the term "culture" useful for economic, business purposes and, therefore, more relevant to the students' learning objectives?

Ask each student to react to one idea from the text that they agree with and one idea they disagree with.

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