‘Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H. 2004. “Developing Cultural Awareness”. Modern English Teacher Vol. 13. number 1. p.5-11’ Activities for Cultural Aw areness Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara In this article we argue that it is useful to include cultural awareness activities in a language course, as doing so can not only increase the educational value of the course but can facilitate language acquisition too. Definition of Cultural What do you think of the following definitions of cultural? a) Referring to the propagation of living things b) Referring to intellectual, aesthetic refinement c) Referring to the totality of customs, artistic achievements and general civilisation of a country or people d) Referring to the totality of a way of life shared by a group of people linked by common and distinctive characteristics, activities, beliefs, or circumstances (e.g. Australian culture, Arab culture, Liverpool culture) e) Referring to the beliefs and behaviour of a community of people who share inclinations, attitudes, interests and goals (e.g. pop culture, football culture, wine culture) All the above are valid definitions of ‘cultural’ but it is definitions d) and e) that we are referring to when we talk about the value of activities for cultural awareness. Definition of Aw areness We would like to make a distinction between cultural knowledge and cultural awareness. Cultural know ledge consists of information about the characteristics of our own and other people’s cultures. This information is typically : • external, in that it is given to us by someone else • static, in that it we do not modify it from experience • articulated, in that it is reduced to what words can express • stereotypi...
