Mike Calou

Research Final Draft

5/20/09

Why is it Important to be Culturally Aware When We Teach English Composition?

A New Composition Teacher’s Quest for Understanding

The teaching of the writing can be compared to a dance; both partners have to work closely together in order to accomplish the task of dancing. The music will continue even when one partner steps on the toes of the other partner. So it is with the teaching of writing. To teach someone to write effectively, to communicate, involves more than just the teacher and the student. There is another element that plays a part in the process of teaching writing, culture: the culture of the student and the culture of the teacher. Each person relies heavily on their cultural background to express thoughts and ideas. In order to express an idea or a thought and put that idea or thought on paper it is necessary to know the language you wish to communicate with. Language and culture are inextricably mixed with each other; in fact, it is hard to separate the two of them. So, what’s the problem? I’m only asking my student to write a few words about an experience that they have recently had. This should be a simple assignment for an entry level college student in a first-year composition class. The problem with this simplified version of writing is that it pre-supposes the student understands the assignment and that he can articulate the experience in words and transmit those words to paper or a word processor.

The premise of my research is that culture and language are linked: joined at the hip, so to speak. In order to effectively communicate, in any culture, we need to understand the language we are communicating in and the culture that we are communicating with. The purpose of researching this question was twofold. First, as a new teacher to the field of English and composition teaching I felt the need to be better informed about the link between language and culture. Even though I am currently studying TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) I realize that a more thorough understanding of language and its link to culture will not only make me a better teacher of English, but also a better teacher of writing. The second reason for researching this question is to enlighten new teachers about the significance and relation of culture to language. I hope to inform my audience about the importance of recognizing cultural differences as an additive part of teaching pedagogy rather than as a subtractive part. My research is divided into four parts:

1. Man is a symbolic creature.
2. The role of language in culture
3. The impact of culture in the classroom
4. Culture awareness strategies for the teacher.

I start my research with a look at the nature of language: the fact that man is a symbol using creature. For this section I rely on the work of Kenneth Burke and his book, “Language as Symbolic Action.” Burke states that man is, by his nature, a symbol using animal. That Man uses language in a more sophisticated way than other animals by virtue of having a larger brain. Briefly, I describe the human evolution of language and the connection to culture and the fact that man has been using language for a long time. Along with the idea of man as a symbol user is the notion that language “creates our reality.” Language is indispensible to the communication of thoughts and ideas. In order to convey an idea, we must express it in some fashion: thus Burke’s premise of man as symbol user. For example, we also use language to record our past. What history would there be without language?

In the next section I review the role of language in a culture. An article by Martin A. Nowak titled, “Evolutionary Biology of Language,” describes the evolutionary aspect of language; the fact that language evolution was a natural part of the human evolutionary process. The transfer of non-genetic information is made possible due to the language human’s use. Our cultural identity is shaped by language. C. Wright Mills in his article, “Language, Logic, and Culture” says that when we acquire language we are also acquiring the culture of that language. The link between culture and language is a distinctly human feature of who we are as individuals. I conclude this section with a look at the development of children as they acquire language. Michael Tomasell writes in his article, “The Human Adaptation for Culture” that the acculturation process starts when the child is learning language. The child imitates the adult’s language and the cultural attributes that go along with that language.

In the next section I discuss the impact of culture in the classroom. I use an example from Canada to illustrate the impact that culture has in the classroom. In Canada there has been a long running debate about which language should be adopted as the “national” language: some would question whether it is a debate or a mandate for revolution. The Canadians in eastern Canada are beholden to their French “roots” and thus they want to speak French. In the province of Quebec there has been much debate about seceding from Canada: because of the cultural differences between eastern Canada and the rest of the country. The Canadian example illustrates the powerful connection between language and culture in an ongoing national debate.

Finally, I conclude with a look at four cultural awareness strategies that may be used to help the composition teacher (or any teacher in a culturally diverse environment) come to grips with the idea that cultural awareness is necessary in order to actively engage the multi-cultural student: of which there are not only many students, but many cultures as well.

Man Is a Symbolic Creature

I’d like to start my research with a look at the concept: man as a symbolic creature. This term was used by Kenneth Burke in his book, “Language as Symbolic Action” (1966). Humans use words to convey thoughts, ideas, to persuade, communicate, and express emotion. The symbols we use are not arbitrary. In western culture we use an alphabet to form words, words to form sentences, and so on. How we put together the letters and words is what makes humans different from other animals. In the beginning humans communicated very primitively:

5,000,000 years ago humans began using symbolic communication (vocalizations, gestures). The first primates (australopithecines) who adapted to the savannah had their hands freed for other purposes. Cooperation and communication became useful in these new, open environments and simple communication and gestures became instinctively advantageous. (1)

The next evolution of communication was language:

2,000,000 years ago humans developed primitive language and tools. Basic communication and cognitive abilities exist with the appearance of the genus Homo (Homo habilus, then Homo erectus). Fire and hunting are new skills of this species, and simple language undoubtedly helped for cooperative hunting and social interaction. (2)

Human language use continued to evolve and become more complex:

100,000 years ago modern language & cognitive abilities appear. Syntax structures (supported by evolution of Broca’s area of the brain) have co-evolved with improved cognitive abilities to process information passed via language by Homo sapiens. The result is this hunter-gatherer species with cranial capacity twice that of H. erectus, and increased technological and cultural complexity. (3)

For 100,000 years man has been using increasingly more sophisticated language in order to convey thoughts, ideas, to persuade, communicate, and express emotion. The development and refinement of culture was in part possible because of the evolution of language. Language is an important part of all cultures. The ability to write effectively in any culture is dependent on the writer’s language proficiency.

We use language to create reality. Burke says, “Our reality is built through symbols. Take away books and what do we know about history? Do we simply use words, or do they not also use us?” (4) The human view of reality is shaped by language. This is an important concept because our language, any cultural language, is part of our identity. Who we are as human beings is shaped by the language we use everyday to: hear, speak, read, and write. We take for granted the importance of the language we use everyday. By taking something for granted we tend to forget how important it is.

When we interact with our writing students we have to remember that language is an integral part of who we are as humans.

The Role of Language in Culture

The importance of language previously mentioned cannot be overstated. From an evolutionary standpoint humans have evolved initially through genetic replication. Language provides humans with a means of intellectual evolution. According to Martin Nowak:

Evolution relies on the transfer of information from one generation to the next. For billions of years this process was limited to the transfer of genetic information. Language facilitates the transfer of non-genetic information and thus leads to a new mode of evolution. Therefore the emergence of language can be seen as a major transition in evolutionary history (Maynard Smith & Szathmary 1995, 1999), being of comparable importance to the origin of genetic replication, the first cells, or the emergence of multi-cellular organisms. (5)

The evolution of language goes hand in hand with the evolution of culture. As people organized into civilizations the language of the civilization facilitated the growth and development of the civilization. Inherent in language are all sorts of traditions and unique uses attached to the particular culture. The way the group behaves socially; morally, ethically, psychologically, and philosophically. All the aspects of culture that we take for granted are language driven. C. Wright Mills says:

By acquiring the categories of language, we acquire the structured “ways” of a group, and along with the language, the value-implicates of those “ways”. Our behavior and perception, our logic and thought, come within the control ambit of a system of language. Along with language, we acquire a set of social norms and values. A vocabulary is not merely a string of words; immanent within it are societal textures—institutional and political coordinates. (6)

The cultural implications of human development are rooted in language. When a young child learns to communicate the adult models the language of that particular culture. According to Michael Tomasell:

Because linguistic symbols are perspectival, i.e. used to focus the attention of others on specific aspects of situations as opposed to other aspects, if the child is to use the symbol in its conventionally appropriate manner she must understand something of the adult’s perspective. It is in this sense and only in this sense that internalization involves a special form of social learning-cultural learning-in which the child internalizes the perspective of another person. (7)

The point is that culture and language are deeply embedded in our psyche and because of this the teaching of writing will be difficult for students whose primary language is not English.

The concept of “language as power” is relevant given the previous discussion of the importance of language in a culture. Power in a culture is held by those people who are the most articulate and those people who have a “command of the language.” Our current president is an example of someone who has “climbed the rungs to power” due in large part to his rhetorical skills. Language is also used as a means of control in the classroom. The verbal skills of the teacher are constantly on display to guide, admonish, lead, manage, and facilitate. So, it is obvious that the power wielded by language can be used positively or negatively. It is the positive use of language that I would like to discuss further.

The Impact of Culture in the Classroom

In classrooms across this country children and adults are indoctrinated into the culture of America. The enculturation of students into society is accomplished through the use of a language rich curriculum. The classroom culture is not just rich in cultural language (English) it is also symbolically rich in artifacts and other symbols of our national culture. The impact of culture in the classroom is huge: the dominant culture of society. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Cultures survive and prosper based on the type of acculturation that occurs in public schools.

Cultural elitism or cultural dominance can be a bad thing in the classroom. The United States is not the only country that has an ethnocentric view of language. In Canada there has been a long running debate about the language the country should adopt as the “national” language. In eastern Canada, in the province of Quebec, French is the predominant language. However, in most of Canada English is spoken. The social implications of language diversity in Canada are such that those who speak French are in essence pushed aside in the school setting because they do not speak English. Economic status and social mobility are easier to achieve if the individual speaks English. The ramifications are that the French speaking eastern province of Quebec has been trying for years to secede from Canada. According to Monica Heller, in her article “Language Choice, Social Institutions, and Symbolic Domination”:

As a result, the interests of other students may be pushed to the side. In particular, the interests of an “authentic” Canadian Franco- phone group (Quebecois) which is socio-economically less well-off are marginalized, as are those of recent immigrants from Africa. Class and race become fault lines in the internal construction of relations of power. (8)

The power of the dominant culture pervades the classroom as well. Inherent

in the power that language yields in culture is the concept of “language ideology.” Language ideology provides a framework for understanding why it is important for writing teachers to be culturally aware of the student. A language ideology is defined as “ingrained, unquestioned beliefs about the way the world is, the way it should be, and the way it has to be with respect to language” (9). The language ideology of the culture may limit access to groups of people whose language ideology is different. In the case of the writing classroom the students who speak English as a second language have a different language ideology.

In a classroom the language ideology of the teacher can affect the teacher’s perspective of his students. If the teacher is characterized as “middle-class” his language ideology may prejudice him towards thinking that every student should be able to write “standard” English. The fallacy in this notion is that students from other cultures possess a language ideology from their primary language culture and the transition to an English ideology may take a long time or never occur at all. The point here is that we cannot separate ourselves from the language we primarily speak and the teacher, in this case the writing teacher, has to be aware that his language ideology can affect the way he teaches writing to his students.

An excellent summary of the power and effect of language ideology in the classroom follows:

Standard Language Ideology is “a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogeneous language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant institutions and which has as its model the written language, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class” (Green, 1997). This represents a belief in standard, uniform way of speaking, which is thought to be a better way of communicating, and also that this is the normal way that language exists. (10)

An awareness of the power and dominating aspect of language is essential for the writing teacher. A writer has a voice and this voice is expressed through the culture and language of the writer. If the writing teacher is not aware of the student’s cultural differences then optimum teaching will not take place.

The debate about a national language in this country is still going on today. In California the move away from bilingual education was a statement about the issue of a national language. Economics and efficiency may also be at the heart of this debate. Writing teachers are in the middle of this debate because they work with students whose primary language is not English. My argument focuses on an “awareness” of culture because of the fact that culture is inextricably linked to language; and the cultural awareness of the teacher, if positively focused, can be an effective strategy to improve the writing ability of the culturally diverse student.

Culture Awareness Strategies for the Teacher

Teaching Communication Strategies

In order to assist culturally diverse students navigate in a first year composition class, or any writing class at any educational level, the teacher should consider teaching skills and strategies that will enable the student to elicit questions and help the student better understand what is going on in the classroom. Teaching communication strategies can lower the “affective filter” of the student and allow them to more freely access the new language; English.

One strategy is the teaching of “fillers.” These fillers are words used by students to let the teacher know that they are really trying to communicate. According to Zoltán Dörnyei, “learners should be told to use whatever fillers they can to show the Native Speaker that they really are trying …. The most important thing of all has to be ‘don’t give up’” (11). Students may also benefit from learning vocabulary specific to conversation; for example the use of pause fillers. The student who is literate in their primary language already has a repertoire of communication strategies: to communicate a need for better understanding. Dörnyei offers six procedures for teaching communication strategies to students:

1. Raising learner awareness about the nature and communicative potential of communication strategies.
2. Encouraging students to be willing to take risks and use communication strategies.
3. Providing L2 models of the use of certain communication strategies.
4. Highlighting cross-cultural differences in communication strategies use.
5. Teaching communication strategies directly.
6. Providing opportunities for practice in strategy use. (12)

Teaching the culturally diverse student strategies to communicate more effectively increases cultural as well as language awareness. This awareness can have a positive impact on the writing the student will generate because the student feels more comfortable soliciting questions from not only the teacher but other students as well.

The research focused on the training of three communication strategies and offered both awareness and practice activities. These strategies were: (a) topic avoidance and replacement, (b) circumlocution, and (c) using fillers and hesitation devices.

Topic avoidance and replacement strategy teaching involved, “students were taught to go off the point, evade answers, and steer the conversation in a given direction. First the teachers provided demonstrations of the strategies, then students were asked to perform these in their LI” (13). Teaching “circumlocution” strategies involved:

“Comparing various dictionary definitions and analyzing the structure of effective ones. Students were then given various tasks in which they had to describe objects and later more abstract notions, to extend definitions using long relative clauses, and play games such as Call My Bluff.” (14)

The process used to teach “fillers and hesitation devices” included, “first collecting and classifying fillers, then inserting fillers into dialogues, lengthening dialogue turns as much as possible by adding sequences of fillers, expressing hesitation explicitly by using fillers, and matching fillers with different emotions and moods” (15). The use of communication strategies may help students feel comfortable using English. It may appear on the surface that these strategies would be more effective in terms of teaching speech production. However, I would argue that the primary goal of the teacher, whether the teacher is teaching speech production or writing, is to help the student feel comfortable with using English and this may be accomplished if the previous communication strategies are explicitly taught. According to Dörnyei:

Why then do learners need them? The answer is that they provide the learners with a sense of security in the second language by allowing them room to manoeuvre in times of difficulty. Rather than giving up their message, learners may decide to try and remain in the conversation and achieve their communicative goal. Providing learners help towards accomplishing this is, I believe, a worthy objective of communicative language instruction. (16)

There would be planning necessary on my part to attempt the use of these strategies, but in the classroom I have experienced positive results when teaching similar strategies to ten year old students. These strategies are definitely applicable to the college composition classroom. I have used similar strategies without even being aware; for example, teaching my students test taking vocabulary such as the meaning of best explains, most likely, have in common, based on this information, except, combined. The list of words and phrases to teach is quite extensive.

Use of Visually Engaging Authentic Materials

The writing classroom can be a very abstract place. By this I mean that much of the work that is done by students is in the form of writing. Writing can be abstract if the teacher gives a writing assignment and then lets the student “take it from there.” This is a simplified example, but it is a reality in many writing classes. Another strategy to use with beginning writers is “using slides or other reproductions of Spanish paintings from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries to promote language and cultural learning” (17). It has been my experience that using a visual aid helps language development. Visual aids can provide a “concrete” image of a very abstract topic. When the writer is shown a visual image and then given a prompt to write about, this helps to writer put his writing into a “context”: the context in this case is the image. Marian Ortuño says that, “Using paintings as an instructional aid can help bridge the gap between language and culture to make learning both enjoyable and intellectually profitable. Because each picture serves as a window opening onto an authentic view of human experience, paintings lend themselves well to the teaching of language and culture, along with history, literature, and art itself” (18).

What I am proposing here is that within the curriculum constraints of the college composition class there is room to provide culturally diverse students with a platform to be successful: the platform of the visual aid. In order for this strategy to work there would be some preliminary work necessary on the part of the writing teacher. The instructor would provide some background information about the painting; for example the historical importance of the scene or individuals depicted in the painting, a brief history of the time period, some information about the painter. The teacher should also provide questions for the student to use as a lead into writing about the painting. For example:

1. What emotions are expressed in the faces of the individuals in the painting?
2. Why are the people looking at the sky?
3. The background used by the painter is typical of his work. Why do you think he uses that background?
4. What was happening in Europe during the late eighteenth century when this picture was painted?

The goal of using a visual aid to enhance writing capability is to allow the student to feel comfortable with English in order to be able to express themselves better. According to Marian Ortuño:

In my experience, almost everyone feels capable of commenting on a picture, if only to communicate one’s own impressions. Consider also the benefits of a darkened classroom where eyes remain fixed on the projected image rather than on the speaker. Students will feel less inhibited as the potential for embarrassment diminishes. Awareness of personal accomplishment through successful communication in turn leads to the formation of a better “language ego” (19)

The selection of the visual aid should consider the learning objective to be acquired. Relevant visual aids might include: paintings, photographs, and online sources. The intent is to help the student feel more inclined to write using a “less stress” approach while enriching the students’ capability to write effectively.

Cross Cultural Competence

In order for the teacher to interact effectively in a culturally diverse classroom the teacher must be aware of their own cultural prejudices. There is scant instruction in teacher training that provides a background of how to deal with this issue. The emphasis in my teacher training classes and student-teaching was on the content: math, language, and classroom management. Cross cultural awareness is an attitude about another culture that is harbored by the teacher. In order to become more culturally aware the teacher has to be proactive and actively engage in a journey of self discovery.

I would like to propose a format to accomplish this self discovery based on Helms’s Racial Identity Theory, Banks’ Typology of Ethnicity, and Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. My belief is that there is not adequate cross cultural training in many teacher preparation programs and that the teacher, as a reflective professional, should consider cross cultural awareness as a professional growth objective.

Each theory describes a different approach to cultural awareness. Helms’s theory is a model of how we develop our racial and ethnic identity. Racial identity is a “sense of group or collective identity based on one’s perception that he or she shares a common racial heritage with a particular racial group” (20). Racial identity models were developed during the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. McAllister and Irvine describe the Helms model as:

“A model of White racial identity development consisting of two sections with three stages each. The first section consists of the stages that describe the process of abandoning racism (contact, disintegration, and reintegration), while the second section describes the development of a positive White identity (pseudo-independence, immersion/emersion, and autonomy.” (21)

This model could be used to describe the stages a teacher would use to develop cultural awareness. We enter the first stage when we contact people from another culture. The sixth stage, autonomy, is characterized by cultural autonomy and a willingness to interact with people from other cultures.

Bank’s typology provides a framework for us to understand how we become who we are culturally. His typology consists of six stages: ethnic psychological captivity, ethnic encapsulation, ethnic identity clarification, bi-ethnicity, multi-ethnicity and reflective nationalism, and globalism and global competency. (22) The basic premise of this model of culturality is that we all progress in our understanding of other cultures through a series of stages. The stages outlined above provide a way of understanding our own culturality and from this understanding we can develop a sense of “cross-culturality.” We progress through these stages in a non-linear manner. In the “ethnic psychological captivity” stage we strongly identify with our own culture and develop a sense of stereotypical beliefs about other cultures. By stage six we hold a multiple view of cultures and are able to function in one of three modes; ethnic, national, and global depending on the situation. According to McAllister and Irvine:

The stages should not be viewed as strictly sequential and linear. I am hypothesizing that some individuals may never experience a particular stage” (p. 227). He further states that every ethnic group is highly diverse and dynamic and that each person within a single ethnic group may not begin at the same stage in the culture learning process-persons from marginalized ethnic groups will have identity development journeys different from those characteristic of members of the dominant culture. But Banks does hypothesize that “once an individual experiences a particular stage, he or she is likely to experience the stages above it sequentially and developmentally. (23)

Bennett’s developmental model of intercultural sensitivity gives a way to categorize or name our level of cultural awareness. For example, in the first stage, denial; people assume their culture or world view is the only culture or world view and they act accordingly, very ethno-centric. McAllister and Irvine summarize Bennet’s developmental model thus, “ the DMIS (Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity) describes similar changes in a person’s behavior, cognition, and affect and deals with the learner’s subjective experience in understanding how different cultures ‘create and maintain world views’” (24). According to McAllister and Irvine,” The model has two aspects; the first part of the continuum has three stages of decreasing levels of ethnocentrism (denial, defense, and minimization) and the second has three stages of increasing ethno-relativism (acceptance, adaptation, integration). This model can be used by the teacher to become more culturally self-aware. With the help of Bennett’s model the culturally reflective teacher can determine where they are on the continuum of cultural awareness.

Developing Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection

The writing teacher must develop a sense that there may be students from several different cultures within the class. An awareness of some approaches that will help develop the teacher’s world view have been delineated by Margaret Alison Gibson in her article, “Approaches to Multicultural Education in the United States: Some Concepts and Assumptions.” The article by Margaret Gibson is geared to pre-service teacher education, but I am making the application to teachers already teaching in the classroom. Gibson outlines five aspects of cultural awareness that I think are worthy of consideration. The author offers five concepts that need to be understood by the teacher of multi-cultural students:

1. Benevolent multi-culturalism: The purpose of multi-cultural education is to equalize educational opportunities for culturally different students.
2. Education About Cultural Differences or Cultural Understanding: The purpose of multi-cultural education is to teach students to value cultural differences, to understand the meaning of the culture concept, and to accept others’ right to be different
3. Education for Cultural Pluralism: The purpose of multi-cultural education is to preserve and to extend cultural pluralism in American society.
4. Bicultural Education: The purpose of multi-cultural (or bicultural) education is to produce learners who have competencies in and can operate successfully in two different cultures.
5. Multi-cultural Education as the Normal Human Experience: multi-cultural education as the process whereby a person develops competencies in multiple systems of standards for perceiving, evaluating, believing, and doing. (25)

Each concept pertains to specific attitudes that the teacher can apply to interactions with multi-cultural students.

The first concept involves the idea that it is not the student or the student’s family that need to change their culture to adapt to the school culture. The teacher is in the position of authority and acts as an agent of the school culture. So, Gibson proposes an approach whereby the school works with the student and family to achieve academic success. What I mean by “working with” the student and his family is that in many cases the teacher is unaware that cultural differences exist between himself and the students. The teacher assumes that he and all students share the same cultural traditions. This approach is especially important to elementary and secondary teachers. In elementary and secondary education the teacher works closely with not only the student but also the students’ family so the students can achieve academic success. The teacher must not view the students as culturally “deficient.” The students’ home life in many cases may not be conducive to learning, but this is not a culturally related factor. The teacher is in the best position to avail himself to understanding the implications of how best to teach his students, so it makes sense that the teacher should attempt to know as much about the students as possible in order to better facilitate the learning of the students.

The second approach to multi-cultural awareness, multi-cultural education, is different from the first in that the focus is to educate all students in the necessity of being culturally aware. This approach can be utilized by teachers at all levels. In elementary and secondary education this approach would involve the teaching about different cultures that are represented within the classroom. Cultural education is a natural topic to teach during social studies and language arts and may be taught thematically. In higher education, in the composition class, cultural education may be used as a springboard to writing topic development. The main idea to be taught is that other cultures should be valued. That the value of culture lies in the uniqueness of the individual; the notion that we are not all robots, what makes life so wonderful is that we are all different and that these differences provide stimulating potential for ideas and thought. The author presents the major reasons why multi-cultural education is necessary in this country:

“1) America is a culturally diverse nation. (2) Cultural diversity is a positive force in the development of the American society and a valuable resource to be preserved. (3) Cultural diversity is so basic to the life of our nation that it must become an integral part of our educational process at all levels. (4) Educational institutions to date have not reflected the nation’s cultural diversity in school programs. (5) Schools in the future should be oriented toward the cultural enrichment of all students through programs which positively endorse cultural differences and foster an appreciation and acceptance of the differences.” (26)

The drawback to this approach of multi-cultural education is that it may possibly “pigeon hole” groups of people into a cultural stereotype; for example, Mexican- American children are… This may be an “unintended” outcome of what initially started as a positive approach to cultural awareness. Another negative side effect may be the teachers patronizing and romantic view of students from another culture. For example, the teacher may view socially different behavior from a student from a different culture as being a normal part of that culture; the student views this acceptance as patronizing.

The third approach to multi-cultural awareness, education for cultural pluralism, says that cultures must be allowed to co-exist with the dominant or majority culture. The concept of cultural “fusion” and cultural “assimilation” are the opposite views of cultural pluralism. It is necessary to understand three terms in order to fully appreciate the idea of “cultural pluralism. The first concept is “assimilation” which means the minority culture sheds their cultural identity and becomes part of the majority culture. The second concept is “fusion” and it means that two cultures blend into and become one unique group. The third concept is “pluralism” and it means that two cultures co-exist and interact in a productive, quasi-heterogeneous group. Gibson cites a type of mathematical equation to aid in understanding these concepts:

1) Assimilation: A + B + C = A, where A, B, and C represent different social groups and A represents the dominant group. 2) Fusion: A + B + C = D, where A, B, and C represent different social groups and D represents a distinct new group. 3) Pluralism: A + B + C = A + B + C, where A, B, and C represent different social groups that over time maintain their own unique identities. Cultural pluralism is frequently seen as a “peaceful coexistence between groups.” (27)

Gibson makes a distinction between culture and ethnic groups, “Boundary maintenance, not cultural similarities and differences, is the key to the continuity of an ethnic group. The importance of boundary maintenance and ethnic groups as essentially social and political rather than cultural” (28). In a multi-cultural society it may be advantageous for all groups to work together and maintain their own unique culturalism rather than “assimilate or fuse.” Ethnic groups may make a good argument to maintain their cultural status through the approach of “cultural pluralism.”

The fourth approach to multi-cultural awareness, bicultural education, involves the education of the student with the intent that the student will obtain competencies and be able to operate in a multi-cultural society. The premise of this approach is similar to the concept of “bilingualism.” The underlying philosophy of this approach is that both the dominant and minority cultures have something to gain by learning about another culture. Another benefit of this approach is that the minority student maintains his culture without the associated loss of culture with assimilation or fusion.

The fifth approach to multi-cultural awareness, multi-cultural education as the normal human experience, does not relate to the setting of a school environment. Multi-cultural education in this approach is viewed as an outgrowth of normal human development. There are four underlying assumptions to this approach. The first is that cultural education is an ongoing part of everyday life and as such educators are not solely responsible for multi-cultural education. This should make those who read my research feel less compelled to shoulder the blame for multi-cultural awareness inadequacies on the part of our students. The second assumption is that culture should not be solely associated with an ethnic group. Culture should be thought of as a “social group.” The third assumption is that it takes practice to become culturally aware. The interaction of students with culturally competent members of another culture is an important part of human cultural education. The fourth assumption is that we not confuse social identity with cultural competence. In essence, this assumption offers the individual the opportunity to exercise knowledge of a culture as the situation requires; which is a normal part of our everyday interactions in life.

Based on the previous discussion of multi-cultural awareness it seems obvious to me that the fifth approach to multi-culturalism is the most logical and practical. It is when we try to categorize and delineate our cultural identity that we fall prey to thoughts of prejudice and stereotypes. The most practical approach to multi-cultural awareness is through the natural part of interacting with one another that we do everyday as social human beings. Gibson has structuralized and outlined four approaches to aid multi-cultural awareness, but it is the fifth approach that makes the most sense.

Conclusion

It has become clear to me after doing the research for this paper that the role of culture in the classroom cannot be understated; culture and language are linked and very closely related. It is through our culture and then through the language of that culture that we create thoughts and ideas. If we are not aware of the culture we are trying to communicate in then misinterpretations can occur. This is why the writing teacher has to be culturally sensitive to the students in his classroom. In order to effectively teach and for the student to progress in their writing the teacher and student must connect. I started this paper with a statement about culture and writing:

“The teaching of the writing can be compared to a dance; both partners have to work closely together in order to accomplish the task of dancing. The music will continue even when one partner steps on the toes of the other partner. So it is with the teaching of writing. To teach someone to write effectively, to communicate, involves more than just the teacher and the student. There is another element that plays a part in the process of teaching writing, culture: the culture of the student and the culture of the teacher.”

I have attempted to answer the question, why is it important to be culturally aware when we teach English composition? I have reviewed the literature about man being a symbolic creature, the importance of language in culture, and the impact of culture in the classroom has been discussed. Finally, I concluded with four culture awareness strategies that may be employed by the classroom teacher to help not only himself, but his students as well become more culturally sensitive:

1) Teaching Communication Strategies

2) Use of Visually Engaging Authentic Materials

3) Cross Cultural Competence

4) Developing Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection

The most important idea that I have tried to delineate here is that the teacher must be reflective and responsive to the culture that is created in his classroom. When the teacher reflects on what is happening in the classroom then he can adjust not only pedagogy, but classroom teaching strategies.

Works Cited

(1) Steve V: A Timeline of Human Emergence on Our Planet. 2 August 2008

< http://stevevinsac.blogspot.com/2008/07/timeline-of-human-emergence-on-our.html>

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Burke, Kenneth. Language As Symbolic Action. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966.

(5) Nowak, Martin A. “Evolutionary Biology of Language” Source: Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 355, No. 1403, Fifty Years of Evolution: Essays in Honor of John Maynard Smith (Nov. 29, 2000), pp. 1615-1622 Published by: The Royal Society.

(6) Mills, C. Wright. “Language, Logic, and Culture” Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Oct., 1939), pp. 670-680 Published by: American Sociological Association.

(7) Tomasell, Michael. “The Human Adaptation for Culture” Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 28 (1999), pp. 509-529 Published by: Annual Reviews and Heller, Monica. “Language Choice, Social Institutions, and Symbolic Domination” Source: Language in Society, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 373-405 Published by: Cambridge University Press.

(8) “Language Ideology” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(9) Ibid.

(10)Dörnyei, Zoltán “On the Teachability of Communication Strategies” Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 55-85 Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL).

(11)Ibid.

(12)Ibid.

(13)Ibid.

(14)Ibid.

(15)Ibid.

(16)Ortuño, Marian Mikaylo. “Teaching Language Skills and Cultural Awareness with Spanish Paintings” Source: Hispania, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 500-511 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

(17)Ibid.

(18)Ibid.

(19)McAllister, Gretchen and Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan. “Cross Cultural Competency and Multicultural Teacher Education” Source: Review of Educational Research, Vol. 70,

No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 3-24 Published by: American Educational Research

Association.

(20)Ibid.

(21)Ibid.

(22)Ibid.

(23)Ibid.

(24)Gibson, Margaret Alison. “Approaches to Multicultural Education in the United States: Some Concepts and Assumptions” Source: Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4, Anthropological Perspectives on Multi-Cultural Education (Nov., 1976), pp. 7-18 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.

(25)Ibid.

(26)Newman, W. M. American Pluralism. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

(27)Barth, F. (ed.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969 and Cohen, A. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1969

(28)Gibson, Margaret Alison. “Approaches to Multicultural Education in the United States: Some Concepts and Assumptions” Source: Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4, Anthropological Perspectives on Multi-Cultural Education (Nov., 1976), pp. 7-18 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.