Nick 3

Describe your experiences of Arabic culture.

I: and when you went over there for the two weeks did you just stay with his family or were you

N: yeah I stayed in their house in there uh with the whole family and it’s huge there’s just all pieces of extended family are there like not in America you know I mean people might stay for a night or whatever but here people (.) go to work come here for a few nights go to their house where ever (.) it was just it’s incredible the the family atmosphere that still is there that kind of (.) lacks in America I find some

I: uh huh

N: it was just incredible meeting all their family and (.) and even though we didn’t speak the language and we picked up a few words hello good bye (.) stuff like that (2) but it was just really incredible meeting all these people and they didn’t really care that we couldn’t speak they the kids didn’t understand it they tried to speak to us anyway (.) and we would just have to go you know we don’t really know what you’re say(h)ing (.) but you could get it and then uh I don’t know it was just really nice staying with the family they’re incredible people


Reflections – Both Nick and Serem were inspired to study a second language due to real-world encounters with language and culture outside of the classroom. Do you find that your students have had similar experiences or encounters? Do you feel that cultural connections are an important component of language learning in the classroom? What proportion of a language course should ideally be devoted to cultural awareness, learning, and sharing? Have you found ways to make these connections in the day to day lessons? If so, what are some examples? How do students respond to these types of activities? How have you or might you incorporate students’ experiences into the cultural aspects of language learning?

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