WHOSE CULTURE AND WHOSE RULES IN THE EFL CLASSROOM? Dr. Ali Shehadeh / Chait; Department of Linguistics / College of Humanities and Social Sciences / United Arab Emirates University / Ali.Shehadeh@uaeu.ac.ae Ali Shehadeh is Chair of Department Emirates University. His research of Linguistics, United Arab papers have appeared in Language Learning/ TESOL Quarter~ System/ Journal of Applied Linguistics/ and ELT Journal as well as in international journals and magazines on E LT like English Teaching Forum, English Teaching Professional; and TESOL Arabia Perspectives. It also appeared in edited volumes including Edwards, C. and Willis's, J. (Eds.), (2005) Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching/ published by Palgrave Macmillan, U.K., and Coombe, C. and Barlow's, L. (Eds.), (2007) Language Teacher Research in the Middle East published by TESOL International, USA. Language and Culture It is well established that teaching language to a large extent means teaching culture because language is an expression of culture. Language is a means for conveying and transmitting culture. It may not be divorced from its culture because it is not created in isolation. It is also well establ ished that each culture has its own social norms, ethics, taboos, and concepts of what is socially acceptable or unacceptable. For instance, having a boy/girlfriend, being a single parent, living as an unmarried couple, participating NEW WAYS International 9 in mixed-sex education, and talking about female relatives or family trees are generally accepted in the British-North American culture, which is made of more open, permissive, and tolerant societies. These societies' social norms regarding such issues are not often accepted or even debated by many Arab people. By contrast, in the Arabic culture, a more conservative culture, there are strict family, social, and religious hierarchies. Also, many taboos forbid explicitly talking about certain body parts or organs, talking about female family members, and shaking hands with women. For instance, in some Arab counties, it is not appropriate to reveal the name of your wife, mother, sister, or any other close female relative in public. Below are two examples that illustrate the point. Example 1 In one ofthe intensive courses I was teaching at a large public Gulf university, the course textbook, Tactics of Listening/ included a complete unit on the family (U nit 9), Two tasks of the unit specifically required that students talk about family members. One required that students work in pairs or small groups and ask each other two sets of questions: SET 1: Do you have any brothers? What are thei r names? How old are they? SET 2: Do you have a sister? What is her name? How old is she? In doing this task, most students (male-only classes) were very hesitant to do the activity that related to the female part. These students asked only if thei r speech partners had any brothers and their names or ages, but not whether they had any sisters and thei r names or ages. The other task required that 10 NEW WAYS International students draw thei r own fami Iy tree on a piece of paper and explain it to their classmates or to the class. Many students were also reluctant to do this task. Others who agreed to do the task asked me, "Should I also include the names of females?" Example 2 The other example comes from one of the episodes of a serial comedy entitled Tashma Tash(mean ing rough Iy "enough is enough! ") broadcast on national TV. The episode was about a schoolteacher who accompanied his i II mother to the hospital. In the waiting room he met a colleague of his who was also waiting to see a doctor. When the mother's turn to see the doctor came, the nurse called out her name: "Patient Monira, please proceed to clinic No. 2.// The man took his mother to clinic 2. The other teacher then knew that his colleague's mother's name was Monira, so he exclaimed, "I see, so your mother's name is Monira? Aha! // Soon the news spread! The following day all the other teachers in the school called this teacher "Son of Monira// ("This is the son of Monira. . How are you, son of Monira. Did you see the son of Monira?"). A few days later the schoolchildren followed the man on the street, clapping their hands and shouting, "Son of Monira! Son of Monira, Son of Monira." Soon, everyone in town called him "Son of Monira": The man got fed up and decided to flee the country completely. Returning after more than 20 years, he was now quite old and thinking that everyone must have forgotten all about him and his mother. He was close to the neighborhood where he used to live when he asked an old man about an old building (the house he owned before fleeing the country). The old man shot back, "Do you mean Son of Monira's house?" Can You Teach Language Without Culture? A Survey Given that culture is inextricably intertwined with language, the main question to answer is: Can you actually teach the language without its culture? In an attempt to answer this question, I conducted a small-scale experiment in which I tried to gauge my students' views on the issue. I asked them two sets of questions: one set related to their motivation, attitudes, and their goals of learning English, and one set directly related to introducing the target language culture (TLC) into the classroom. In the first set, I asked my students why they were learning English and required them to rank their answers on a scale from 1 to 5 as shown below: Why are you learning language? the English On a scale from 1 to 5, mark the following answers to this question (with 5 being the highest score and 1 the lowest): (9) it enables me to get a good job (instrumental motivation). it is part of the curriculum (compulsory). I have no other choice. (0) (11) overall, I am personally interested in learning this language. In the other set of questions, I asked students the following questions: Would you like to learn the English language and know about its people and the English culture, or would you rather learn the language and its grammar only? Would you mind being introduced to any concepts or issues that are part of the TLC norms, or would you rather drop these or replace certain concepts and issues that are part of the TLC norms with comparable ones in Arabic, your mother language culture (M LC)? Findings I am learning English because (1) it is a vehicle for self-development.. (2) it is a method of training processes. (8) I want to speak it like the native speakers of English. cognitive (3) I have a positive attitude toward the speakers of the English language (intrinsic motivation). (4) it is an entree to the culture of other groups. (5) I want to communicate successfully in the L2 with those who speak that language. (6) it is a way of promoting intercultural understanding. (7) I want to become a proficient! effective L2 speaker. With regard to the fi rst set of questions, I found that highly motivated and stronger students (based on the students' course marks and my personal observation during class work and participation) ranked the responses between 3 and 5 points (average: 4). Less motivated or weaker students, on the other hand, ranked the responses between 1 and 3 points (average: 2). With regard to the second set of questions, highly motivated students commented that they did not mind including concepts or issues of the TLC. Less motivated students, by contrast, commented that they were more inclined to drop such concepts/issues or replace these with comparable ones from the mother language culture (M LC)' For instance, these students NEW WAYS International 11 stated that they would be happy to talk about issues such as strong fami Iy ties and strong social relations, replace target language (Tl.) proper names with Arabic names (e.q., Ali for John, Ahmed for Peter, Fatima for Mary), and replace the TLC contexts and dialogues with Arabic contexts or dialogues. So, the dilemma that you as a language teacher face in such E FL contexts is that if you do not bring the TLC into the classroom, (a) you will distort the TL and its culture, as you will be teaching a language devoid of its culture, and (b) you are more likely to trivialize the learning/teaching process in the eyes of highly motivated and stronger students. On the other hand, if you bring in the TLC, you are more likely to alienate weaker and less motivated students. What then can be done? Some Ways Forward One way to move forward is to assure students, particularly the weaker and less motivated ones, that learning the L2 and learning about its culture and people are signs of cultural enrichment, not a cause of loss oftheir own culture or identity. Learning another language and culture widens and deepens their personal knowledge, enriches their personality, and makes them more understanding, tolerant, and sensitive to other peoples and cultures. Another way to move forward is to create an interculture (I i ke interlanguage), a negotiated culture that lies between the TLC and the native culture, with an aim of approximating each student's understanding in the direction of the TLC. For instance, in my E FL classes, I introduced tasks and activities that required the participation of both English and Arabic native speakers; we thus incorporated both English and Arabic I 12 NEW WAYS International names, personal ities, backgrounds, and contexts in the classroom work. Students felt that they related to the task in some way that made them more actively engaged in the task and the learning process as a whole. A third way would be for the teacher to be a role model for his or her students. For instance, in my attempt to get students to do the family tasks described above, I first told my students how many brothers and sisters I had, their names, and their ages. I also drew my own family tree on the board for everyone to see. Students found that fun and were then actually more motivated to follow suit and actively complete the task. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the solution to the dilemma of "Whose culture in the classroom?" is to introduce a negotiated culture in the classroom situation that draws from both the target language culture and the mother tongue culture. The solution to the dilemma of "Whose rules in the classroom?" is also to introduce negotiated rules that satisfy both the weaker students and the stronger ones, the more motivated students and the less motivated ones. In other words, hard and positive negotiations that strike a balance between differing expectations and demands are the key requirements to the implementation of successful rules in the language classroom in an EFL context. REFERENCE Richards, J. C. (2003), Tactics for listening: Basic (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.