Advancing Futures: How do I develop a culture of global thinking in my classroom?
Today’s world is a complex, interconnected world and in order to survive, learners need more than just language skills. As the world has become, and is becoming a smaller place, the requirement for us to engage, not just in our local communities but outside as well, has become more prominent. In this blog, I will examine some of the tools that we as teachers can employ in our ELT classrooms. I will show you how you can help your students understand the importance, provide them with support in how they can go about taking action and ultimately have fun learning Global Skills.
Global Skills and the ELT Classroom
But what does this mean to us as ELT teachers? I hear you ask. As ELT teachers, we need to teach English of course. The basics: grammar, vocab and the four skills. These are fundamental and should not be overlooked. How we go about doing this though is usually fairly open and we have opportunities to use different methodologies as well as different content sources. This I believe, is and has always been, one of the most exciting elements of being an ELT teacher. The rather grisly saying ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat’ comes to mind. But I digress, more on proverbs when we look at language and culture later. What we usually do is look at the needs of our learners and the needs of the societies we are in. We then develop curriculum, plan syllabus and lessons to meet those needs. Fundamentally, when thinking about global skills we need to nurture active and engaged learners that consider the bigger picture and appreciate the depth and nature of this shared humanity whilst still learning the English language. Wow! it seems daunting, and rather grand, so this may be a good time to now break down what Global Skills can be defined as.
What exactly are Global Skills?
For me Global Skills are the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes that we use and have that enable us to navigate the Global Village (1), the 21st Century and to showcase global competence. They are linked very much to Global Citizenship and intercultural competence. To paraphrase Sabine McKinnon (2) ‘They allow us to effectively and appropriately interact with people from other cultures to ours’. You will see people label them in many ways and use terms as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. You will hear the terms soft skills, life skills, thinking skills, social skills and transferable skills. And all of these are true and correct, however in my opinion to make this simpler for us as teachers and for our students to get their head around I am with Sabine and believe it’s all about culture. What we actually do is use these skills mentioned above to ‘effectively and appropriately interact with people’. So let’s now explore culture and look at some practical classroom tasks that can achieve our lofty goals above. Read on to see what we mean by culture and what you can do to involve learners and help them become well rounded global citizens.
Culture
Comparisons of Culture
One of the simplest forms of developing a global mindset and global skills in our learners is to provide for comparison. Exposing learners to different cultures and then asking them to compare the culture to their own is a great way to shine a light on both sides of the coin. Before we go further, let’s examine in a bit more depth what we mean by culture.
What is culture?
When researching this blog, I came upon a nice analogy of culture as an onion. This is similar to one you may have seen in the DreamWorks production of Shrek. The conversation between Shrek, the lovable green ogre and his faithful but needy companion Donkey, goes like this (3):
Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes. No.
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.
Shrek: No.
Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs.
Shrek: No. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like(s) onions.
So, like Ogres, culture has layers. And like onions, not everyone may like the culture of a certain place but let’s not look at that now. We can use this dislike as a tool for comparison of course but I am digressing again slightly. Here is culture as an onion defined by the Hofstede Insights (4).
On the outer layer are the symbols of the culture. Let me indulge myself here and consider the culture of the country I was born in. The symbols I have chosen for this country are the flag, the Union Jack, a brand, Harrods and a geographical symbol, Ben Nevis. (Have you guessed already?) The heroes may be people both fictional or real Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, Dylan Thomas and George Best come to mind. Rituals may include saying ‘sorry’ all the time, celebrating Bonfire Night and going to the pub. And finally, at the core of this are our values. For the UK, these might be democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect. And while the outer layers may change through time, the inner core moves very little through time.
Now elements in these layers of course, may be different for different individuals. You might not like George Best and may not believe Bonfire Night is worth celebrating and that is fine. But it’s useful to note what layers mean to you and how these layers define you and your culture. You may share commonalities with people from your own cultures and potentially from others. Comparing cultures as I mentioned above is a great way to develop global skills and understanding.
Classroom task
Have a think about your own culture and draw yourself an onion. Get your students to make posters that identify themselves through the analogy of an onion. They can present their ideas and see if they have the same as each other. then expand the activity and have them research another country and see what the differences are and what the similarities are. If you are lucky to have classroom exchange potential, then students could even interview each other across cultures. We will look later at the classroom exchange and its potential.
Language, culture and Global Skills
Being able to speak English, or another second language, is in itself a Global Skill and more importantly opens up opportunities to us other skills at the same time. In this next example of highlighting and comparing cultures, I would like to focus on language and more specifically, proverbs. Proverbs are wonderful as they provide simple sayings that give an insight or advice using common sense truths based on experience. They often use metaphor and meanings are often translated across cultures but not necessarily language. With this next task we can tangible show learners that even though some people can be separated by language that culturally we can be very similar. Take a look at the examples below.
English Proverb: Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Do you know what this means? It means to escape danger only to find yourself in more danger having done so. This proverb is used in many cultures. In Thai, for example, they say, ‘หนีเสือปะจระเข้’ (ni sua pa chorake) which translates as, ‘run away from the tiger and meet the crocodile’. In Turkish they say, yağmurdan kaçarken doluya tutulmak meaning, ‘out of the rain into the hail’. And in Vietnamese, tránh vỏ dưa gặp vỏ dừa translates as ‘escape from a watermelon rind only to meet a coconut shell’. There are numerous other examples in many languages which shows that while we have different cultures and different language we still share similar ideas and beliefs.
Classroom task
So let’s turn this into a classroom activity. Why not create a similar table as below (empty of course) and have students research common proverbs in their language. they can then see if there are the same proverbs in other languages. The examples below are from my adopted country of Thailand and you can more examples of the shared culture mentioned above. As a class we could turn this into a challenge to see who can come up with the most throughout the term or use it as a warmer activity where children present their proverbs to each other. Additionally, you could create a class proverbs book and encourage learners to add their own once they have researched them. this could then be used as a reference. By collecting these idioms, we shine a light on cultures and examine similarities and differences while having fun with language and learning new phrases to increase fluency.
Proverb table
Culture through literature
Another useful way of highlighting culture is through literature. We can use both fictional and factual texts for this and then encourage comparison to raise awareness, discussion and practice of language. Take a look at this text from a coursebook for Primary learners from Macmillan Education.
Share It! Macmillan Education (5)
In this text from Share It!, students learn about family values in the context of a Ukrainian family and ‘A Big Potato’. The students read the story and complete comprehension activities. After that they then reflect and personalise by thinking about their own experiences of the values introduced in the story. This text, and the activities that go with it, are all about building the knowledge and attitudes towards other cultures. Building Global Skills as they tackle the language and come to understand the values before then comparing their own, and reflecting on this.
Classroom task
A way of exploiting task and values such as the ones identified in the story is to provide questionnaires that explicitly find out information around the topic of the values presented. While the one below is specific to the issue of family values we can easily adapt this for other aspects of culture too.
Tell the class they are going to investigate who in the family is responsible for everyday chores
● Elicit from the class the type of everyday chores they have to do
● Now elicit the members of the family that there might be. Here you could introduce the concept of a nuclear family and an extended family another cultural difference that may be apparent especially when comparing some Western and Asian cultures.
● Another language and culturally significant point to note here is the way you might ask someone questions in a survey. We have to consider register which in itself is a part of intercultural competence. Asking direct questions may not be polite so we might structure questions like this… “Would you mind If I asked you some questions” or “I wonder of you could help me with my questionnaire”
● Learners can then interview you, the teacher, as a model and then go away and ask their parents and family members.
● For older learners who may have the information at hand, they could interview each other. If you have a classroom share initiative, students could interview other students across the world.
● Learners can then present their findings in another lesson
You need a visa to enter
Another idea to bring culture into the classroom is to allow learners to decide what they want to research and then tell everyone else about. Giving students a choice is fundamental to foster engagement and provides a sense of achievement and also a reason to learn and share. So try this next activity at the start of a lesson or at the end in order for students to ‘get in’ or ‘leave’ the classroom. You will have likely seen videos on various social media platforms of teachers greeting (usually young) learners before they come into the room. The learners can choose whether they receive a hug, high five, a dance and so on. Why not adapt this and put the onus on the learners. If they want to come in (or leave), they must tell you a fact about a country they have researched. You could provide ideas for them such as
· Greetings / Farewells in different countries
· Tell me the national dish of a country you have researched
· Tell me an interesting fact about a country you have researched
· Tell me a country and the language they speak with same letter as your name or surname.
· Who’s your favourite ….? and where are they from?
The benefit of this is that it requires very little preparation from the teacher but allows for lots of information to be generated. Students have a choice and a reason to complete the task. Different cultures are researched and students share this with each other. As mentioned above these types of activities are normally associated with young learner classes, but with this topic, there is no reason that you could not do this with any age group and level.
Virtual Classroom Exchanges (6)
The last thing I want to tell you about is creating opportunities to share your classroom across the world. If you are lucky to be in a school that has partnerships with schools in other countries, then this could be easy but if you don’t, you may need to do some work. Going to a teaching conference is a good way to network and meet people who are looking to share and there are numerous Facebook groups that bring teachers together that you could look into. Another solution is the materials you use. Macmillan Education has a program for secondary teachers using a course called Gateway to the World6. This is called the Virtual Classroom Exchange. It is a unique feature of the Gateway to the World course which enables teachers to connect their students online with other users of the course around the world, encouraging them to use English for a real communicative purpose in an authentic cultural exchange. This program brings together learners from different cultures and backgrounds to promote teamwork, collaboration and foster intercultural awareness. Not only can the students research and present the projects, which are part of the course, to their own class but they will also have an opportunity to exchange them with their peers in a different school or country, using English as the means of communication. All teachers need to do is register their interest in the Virtual Classroom Exchange on a dedicated platform. They are then notified when a partner class has been found, and they can then begin their Virtual Classroom Exchange journey.
So whatever your circumstances are, look for opportunities to bring culture into the classroom. Build your students Global Skills through culture and at the same develop their English skills and increase their motivation. Good luck!
Notes
1. The Global Village is not a new phenomenon. Would you be surprised if I told you that it was first used by Marshal McLuhan, A Canadian writer and first real media guru. He used it in a book called The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man published in 1962. The book discusses the impact of mass media, especially the invention of the printing press, and its effect on culture and mass media. We might think of the Global Village today as one in which we can communicate freely through media channels on the internet and generally this has a positive connotation and provides insight and exposure to other cultures and ways of thinking.
3. Watch a clip of the conversation here https://youtu.be/zUQ9bjBfiRk
4. A great resource for intercultural information https://www.hofstede-insights.com/
5. Share It! A Primary Course for young learners https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/young-learners/share-it/course-information
6. The virtual classroom exchange information https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/teenagers/gateway-to-the-world/virtual-classroom-exchange
