Standard 2

Culture as it Affects Student Learning

The work in this section focuses on identifying cultural differences to both build a culturally inclusive learning environment for EFL/ESL students, as well as develop culturally-relevant materials that assist in student learning and retention of English. The onomastics paper focuses on analyzing the historical and modern naming practices in Japan. This analysis serves to offer valuable insight about the development of naming in Japan and how these practices demonstrate the various religious and cultural ideologies present in the language. Knowledge of these ideologies assists an EFL/ESL instructor for Japanese students by granting them insight into their students’ culture and how to adapt learning particular content (i.e., the vocabulary of family) for this population of students.

The reflection examines the TEDx talk by Dr. Anna Babel “Who counts as a speaker of a language?” presented in February of 2020. The presentation focused on analyzing the concept of “speaker hood” and discusses the prejudices and biases that influence defining this term. Definition of this term is particularly important for EFL/ESL students in their target language (i.e., when do they count as a speaker of English). Ergo, discussing with students this concept of speaker hood enables them to consider when they believe they will count as a speaker of English. Moreover, these types of discussions additionally assist in preparing students for the types of discrimination they could encounter depending on the types of errors they make while using the language.