Гребенник А.Ю., Дидович Г.И.

Национальный Технический Университет

«Харьковский Политехнический Институт»

Some Features in Teaching British Background

A lot of courses for teaching a foreign language include a component named like ‘Background and Culture’. Sometimes these components are seen mainly as the background to the literature component of this course, to give an account of the society in which, for example, a novel is set. Sometimes these components are considered as contributing the background knowledge of society that will enable foreign learners to talk, write or read about the sorts of things people in that society know. Both of these aims seem perfectly reasonable. What is surprising, however, is the level at which these components are often set. The level usually appears to derive from a mixture of a potted ‘British history and institutions’ course, often combined with a few extracts which might relate to a tourist’s guide to London. Certainly, information about Britain that might be relevant to the student one day is imparted in such courses. Much of the detail of the information is informative, sometimes surprising, to the native reader. That phenomenon should surely strike us as odd, if the aim of the component is to impart that knowledge of British background and culture which British native speakers are generally assumed to know.

A more modest approach than one attempting to distinguish and describe the

main features of British institutions might usefully be added to this major undertaking. The modest approach would specifically use the British background and culture course, on occasions when this is appropriate, to provide the sorts of cultural stereotypes which British speakers assume their listeners share with them, and which British listeners assume in interpretation. Such an approach would demand an analysis of the language to be experienced in terms of the features of context. The language to be experienced would be that which is to be encountered in the next written comprehension or listening comprehension lesson. The aim of the component would be to consider types of speakers, types of listeners, types of place/time, situations of context, which rouse different expectations in the native listener. To consider also types of gender (fairy stories, anecdotes etc.) and the part they play in a culture – to draw attention to the sort of ‘hero’ which a particular culture establishes (‘little man makes good’ as in David and Goliath, and innumerable stories where the poor farmer’s third son marries the princess; ‘super physical-man’ as in Hercules, Tarzan, James Bond, Superman himself, cowboys, pilots and football heroes etc.) To consider what is culturally deemed ’success’ or ‘failure’ or ‘just desserts’. The point of most narratives or anecdotes is not simply to inform the listener, as we keep repeating, but to draw a moral, to justify a position, to exemplify a point. All of these imply value-judgments of one sort or another, and value-judgments are precisely what differ from one culture to the next, and even within different sectors of the same culture. If the student is to understand the language he is exposed to, ‘understanding’ must imply ‘seeing the point’ of the language. The student must have enough background knowledge of the culture, knowledge which is relevant to the particular instance of the language he is concerned with, to enable him to assess why what is being said is being said. It is clearly the case that in cultures closest to British culture, cultural values will, in many cases, overlap. It is extremely unlikely that they will overlap totally. Thus, the more distant the culture, in terms of values and expectations, the more important it is that students be prepared, in ‘background’ classes, to understand what it is that people who are producing the target language care about, notice, bother to talk about, make judgments about. It is not sufficient for the student to be told that the British talk about the weather, whereas the French talk about food. Such assertions may be true, but they are only the beginning of the socio-cultural exploration which will enable the foreign learner to appreciate why members of a particular society talk at all.

As a rule, native listener experiences spoken language in a situational context where he is aware of significant features of context even before anyone speaks at all. Sometimes, however, even the native listener experiences spoken language which is relatively ‘out of context’. How does he behave then? If we observe the behaviour of someone coming up and joining a group of other people who are already engaged in a conversation, we will notice that the new arrival usually waits for a minute or two before beginning to take part in the conversation, to give himself time to work out what is being talked about and what sort of attitudes are being expressed by different participants. The tactful individual joins in the conversation rather carefully and, even so, may sometimes find that he has guessed wrong and the participants are in fact talking about something other than what he has worked out they must be talking about. The native listener will give himself time to work out what is going on, and will frequently have to work quite hard, making very active use of the limiting constraints of his previous experience.

The position is rather similar when he turns on the radio or television. He has to use all the incoming cues, in a highly active manner, to determine who is speaking and why, to whom, and in what situation. In this case he is working out what the context must be from the language. He can only do this in the light of his previous experience of similar text. If he tunes in to a radio programme where an elderly man is talking about the effects of rain on the harvest, a whole range of possible programmes may be at issue: a programme illustrating rural dialects, an agricultural programme for farmers, a news broadcast with one illustrative farmer expressing gloom, an advertisement for water sprinklers, a documentary programme about rural life in south-west England, etc. A very wide range (opening up) of possible situations can be constructed on the basis of the listener’s experience of previous texts uttered in contexts. Progressively, as the listener listens, he will narrow down his assessment of the type, in global terms, of discourse that he is listening to and which he is succeeding in constructing a mental context for.

References: 1. Rubdy R. Key concepts in English language teaching. English Language Teaching Journal, 1998, v.52. 2. Shehan P. Second language acquisition research and task-based instructions. English Language Teaching Journal, 1998.