Week 6

In chapter 4 of Brown, the principles of cognitive, socioaffective, and linguistic are discussed as the foundation of teaching practice.  One of the things that is discussed here is the importance of learning a language’s culture when learning a language.  I remember in high school when I learned Spanish, the book that we had often made connections to the Spanish culture.  However, many languages are spread across vast cultures, so how do we teach a culture with the language?  English, for example, is spread across tons of countries, not to mention the cultures within those countries, so what culture do we teach with it?  If I were to teach English as a foreign language in Japan, what English culture would I associate with?

Chapter 16 of Brown reminds me a lot of a podcast that I listened to recently for one of my other education classes.  The podcast talked about teaching writing to students, and stated that you can give them ideas for writing strategies, but in the end, the student needs to have their own strategy and style in order to become a successful writer.  Brown discusses a similar idea when talking about language learning strategies, by saying that students can be intrinsically motivated on their own, but by allowing students to develop their own strategies, they may become more motivated.  This is similar to many other situations in life, such as reading.  If there is a book that I am supposed to read for a class, I cannot get myself motivated to read it, because I am being forced to do it.  However, if I was relaxing with no homework to do, I might decide to read that same book because I have decided to do it on my own time for fun.