Culture in second language Teaching

Response 4

Culture in a second language Teaching
Nowadays, culture is one of the topics that are taking into account at the moment of teaching, and it is been teaching in private Institutes, which is very important because it will allow the student to acquire more vocabulary, to use expressions inside a context, and it allows the student to feel indentify with the language.
I agree with Mrs. Peterson and Bronwyn Coltrane, when they said that “a student can not truly master the language until they have also mastered the culture context in which the language occurs.”, so, teaching culture to our students foster an appropriate communication, and it avoids misunderstandings, because a word, phrase, greeting could be annoying for a person who has a different culture.
Nonetheless, I think that something that is very important, and should be taught in culture course is the way you have to talk in formal situations or with people at work, besides we are learning about cultural behaviors, food, greeting etc, we are facing a real world, and in Costa Rica English has been set up in work’s curriculum, so most of the professionals might face a situation in which he or she should talk in English in a proper way.
About the activities we can use in class, I liked what was mentioned in the article about using students as cultural resources, because it will enable students to have a better insight of the target culture. However, I do believe that the best way to understand culture is living in the country, be related with member of the target language, so it is noticeable that teaching culture should improve and in order to achieve a real contact, and an opportunity to have an experience in the target-language community.