Reflection of Hinkel's Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning :: Chapter 2 and 3

The more I read this chapter, the more I could relate what happened when I was learning Spanish earlier. Culture isn't something you learn quickly just when someone explains to you. You really have to expose yourself in it, and even then, you might not even acquire the culture, but just know the differences.

As my parents speak English, I could get a feel of what they are trying to say. The English native speaker might not due to the awkward grammar wording. For example, back many years ago, when I would bring a friend over and they would stay for dinner, my mom would ask my friend, "You think eat what?" Of course, it sounds strange and one might not even understand it unless you speak Mandarin. In Mandarin, no matter what type of sentence it is (question or not), subject is always first or the beginning. The pronoun (in this case, "what") is placed at the end and it also states a question. What my mom really means in English is, "What do you want to eat?" Well then, you might want to ask, "Why did she use the word 'think'?" That's a whole new lesson.

Through the previous example, I can relate learning a second language, first language has already carved a window out for the L2. With that sense, culture can be somewhat of a same way. When you hear a word in your L2, you might interpret the meaning of that word according to your own culture. An example would be the English word football. In Spanish, el fútbol is soccer in English. If a beginning English learner hears football and their native language is Spanish, they would automatically think of soccer!

I have never really thought about a simple word can mean different things at different settings. This brings words' definition to a whole new level. The book's example is "hungry". Not only does it mean "the state of desiring food" or "when the body lacks nutrients", but it also mean "would you like to join me to eat?" "Have some snack!" or even teasing! I think this doesn't have to be just with words but with phrases too.

Introducing ELL students different implicatures doesn't seem easy at all. It almost seems to me that the learners must be at least intermediate level of English to see the different meaning behind statements or words. Bringing newspapers and or magazines to share with the class can help students start to get use to the different implicature there are.

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