Week 2

            To start off my blog for ENG343, there seems to be a reoccurring theme, which clearly has a lot to do with what will be discussed throughout the semester in this class. This theme is culture. What is culture? How do we define it? How do people feel about it? In the field of TESOL, we as future educators need to understand that culture comes in hand with the learners and speakers of the other languages. These individuals have a culture that they belong to and they are learning a whole new language with its own set of cultures. This can be very hard for a language learner, because it’s so much more than just learning a language. In Atkinson’s article, it was said that educators and others believe that “culture” has no place in education. Is this even possible? I believe that culture exists in all fields, and there’s virtually no avoiding it. How can a teacher say that there is no place for culture in their classroom? The overall definition of culture in TESOL could definitely be revised, but how do we do this without trying to intentionally get rid of it?

            Culture is a very touchy subject in many areas of our society. I took a class my freshman year here at ISU and it was about Latin/Hispanic studies and mainly focused on immigration of Latin Americans to the United States and how they had to deal with several issues. Assimilation is part of this, and I was reading in my text how students were punished and frowned upon for using their native language in the classroom with other native speakers. Punishing a student for this kind of thing presents a certain image of the culture to the student when they are trying to accommodate themselves to a whole new one.

            When reading Holliday’s essentialist vs. non-essentialist, I found it very interesting. It seems to me that the essentialist is very confined and a bit more narrow-minded. The culture is smaller and they’re not very open to change while the non-essentialist is the opposite. It’s not based on location, and it’s more interchangeable. I agree and indentify myself more with the non-essentialist point of view because I myself am always open to change, learning new things, learning about new cultures, people and languages and personally possess a background of diversity.

            Overall, I believe the readings were very important and very interesting. These topics on culture, individualism vs. collectivism and the principles of culture were the topics with the most impact to me. These all helped me piece together the different parts and definitions of the term “culture” and help me view it as more than just a word. Knowing the differences will help all future educators of multicultural and multilingual classrooms better their practice.