I.1. Promoting Cultural Literacy in the EFL Class 6 [311057]

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GRADULUI DIDACTIC I

COORDONATOR ȘTIINȚIFIC:

Lector Dr. LIGIA TOMOIAGA

CANDIDAT: [anonimizat]. ALINA MARIA IONAȘ

BAIA MARE

2016

CULTURAL LITERACY IN THE EFL CLASS
GAINS AND LOSSES ON MAKING BOOKS INTO MOVIES

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 3

INTRODUCTION 4

CHAPTER I. TEACHING CULTURE 6

I.1. Promoting Cultural Literacy in the EFL Class 6

I.2. The Importance of Teaching Culture 7

I.2.1. Intercultural Communicative Competence 11

I.2.2. [anonimizat] 12

I.2.3. Culture, [anonimizat]………………………… 13

I.2.4. Materials Used for Teaching Culture 18

I.2.5 Traditional Methods of Teaching Culture Improved with Technology……….. 19

I.2.6. Teaching World Cultures 24

I.2.7 Culture in the 21st Century ……………………………………………………………………… 27

I.2.8. Suggested Types of Activities Used for Teaching Culture 32

CHAPTER II. MOTIVATION 39

II.1. Group Processes and Motivation 41

Ii.2. Demotivation Factors 42

CHAPTER III. READING LITERATURE 45

III.1. The role of literature in the EFL classroom 45

III.2. Translation: Procedure and Strategies 47

III.3. Reading As a Skill …………………………………………………………………………………….. 49

III.4. Differences: Reading Skills and Reading Strategies …………………………………. …50

III.5. Extensive and Intensive Reading 53

III.6. Reading of Literature 55

III.7. From Books to Movies 60

CHAPTER IV. PRACTICAL PART 66

CONCLUSIONS …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 102

APPENDICES ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 106

BIBLIOGRAPHY 126

WEBGRAPHY 132

INTRODUCTION

We live in a world where the book begins to lose its impact and importance on the new generation. More attractive alternatives tend to capture the attention of our students. The fact that students try to replace reading by spending time in front of the television could be because of the media and the Internet which provide information for granted. I had a [anonimizat], or because they had problems in writing relevant and consistent messages about the books.

Reading is not among the students’ passions maybe because of the present curricula which offers a technical and abstract vision of what reading a book means. The theoretical concepts tend to turn reading into a chore, [anonimizat].

This paper addresses the need for students to broaden their horizons of knowledge in a modern era in which the time we give reading decreases. It wants to be a scholarly and artistic universe that could be the source of future passions or simply a warning of values that modern society tends to avoid. [anonimizat] “Mădăraș Secondary School”, [anonimizat], holidays, customs, traditions, lifestyles. As I [anonimizat], so I [anonimizat].

After watching famous movies, students will be the protagonists of group discussions where they will be free to express their opinions, will be encouraged to develop their creativity and artistic sense and to appreciate the movies watched.

I have used in this paper the works of two writers whose books are recognized all over the world. (C. S. LEWIS –THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and J. K. ROWLINGS – HARRY POTTER). These books are already screened for the public to move beyond reading, to watch the created characters in order to engage further in action or to develop their imagination by re-analyzing the characters in the books in terms of viewing.

By reading excerpts from these works and by seeing the movies, students will discover how attractive English can be.

This paper encourages students to acquire knowledge of culture and literature in general by stimulating the desire for knowledge and information in English and the knowledge of English vocabulary and concepts through conversation and writing.

A teacher can’t make his/her students to learn. He/she can just provide the environment where students are encouraged to learn. I always try to make my class a place where children feel comfortable and happy. It is an important step in learning. I agree with Einstein who said that: I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. (Albert Einstein)

For me as a researcher and a teacher, teaching is more than just instructing students to be ready for the next day class, performing tasks, or administering tests. It’s about passion, being a role model, making connections, and touching lives.

In fact, learning a new language entails new ways of thinking, feeling, and expression. I believe in the idea that the more understanding about the world a person has, the more sense the world makes and the more pleasing it is to live in this world..

I would like to end this introduction with a quotation which I believe and hope that will guide my future career: A mediocre teacher tells. A good teacher explains. A superior teacher demonstrates. A great teacher inspires. (W. A. Ward)

CHAPTER I

TEACHING CULTURE

I.1 Promoting Cultural Literacy in the EFL Class

To teach a foreign language is to teach a foreign culture, and it is important to be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleagues, and, if we live abroad, our neighbours, do not share all of our cultural paradigms.

Teaching is more than just instructing students to be ready for the next day class, performing tasks, or administering tests. According to Englebert teaching is about passion, being a role model, making connections, and touching lives. In fact, learning a new language entails new ways of thinking, feeling, and expression. I am certainly a big believer in knowing more rather than less (Englebert, 2004:37).

The key concept in cultural literacy is familiarity. In its widest sense, cultural literacy is about reading. It is about understanding the meaning of words based on a background of common knowledge that enables one to make sense of what is read.

Learning English as a foreign is comprised of a number of components including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency and cultural competence, which is the knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country. When reading becomes a pleasure rather than a chore, one becomes more culturally literate. It’s a simple fact that the more one reads, the more one can understand what is read; the more enjoyable reading becomes, the more culturally literate one becomes Thanasoulas (2001).

Language and culture cannot survive one without the other. It is impossible for one to teach language without teaching culture. Language teaching is culture teaching and teachers do their students a great disservice in placing emphasis on the former, to the detriment of the latter. Students need to learn the language in order to truly appreciate the culture, but they do not need to learn about the culture in order to truly comprehend the language.

The need for cultural literacy in ELT arises mainly from the fact that most language learners, not exposed to cultural elements of the society in question, seem to encounter significant hardship in communicating meaning to native speakers. (Bada 2000:101)

I.2 The Importance of Teaching Culture in the EFL Class

Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that is both a result and integral to the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Culture thus consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, ceremonies and symbols.

Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. Difference among culture is due to such factors as differing physical habitats and resources, the range of possibilities inherent in areas such as language, ritual and social organization; and historical phenomena such as the development of links with other cultures.

A person’s attitudes, ideals, values and beliefs are greatly influenced by the culture in which he/she lives.

Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them (Kramsch 1993:1). In general, culture as the fifth skill emphasizes the learners ability to perceive, to understand and ultimately, to accept cultural relativity (Kramsch, 1993:11).

Communication requires understanding, and understanding requires stepping into the shoes of the foreigner and sifting her cultural baggage, while always putting the target culture in relation with one’s own (Kramsch 1993:205).

Brooks (1968) emphasized the importance of culture not for the study of literature but for language learning. There is an ongoing trend of treating culture as a “throw-in” activity due to the belief that culture is a peripheral consideration to the nature of foreign or second language teaching (Warford & White 2012).

Many teachers avoid teaching culture for several reasons:

They may feel that students at lower proficiency levels are not ready for it yet.

They may feel that it is additional material that they simply do not have time to teach.

In the case of formal culture, they may feel that they do not know enough about it themselves to teach it adequately.

In the case of popular culture, they may feel that it is not worth teaching.

The exquisite connection between the culture that is lived and the language that is spoken can only be realized by those who possess knowledge of both. (National Standards In Foreign Language Education Project, 1999:47)

Language teachers need to go beyond monitoring linguistic production in the classroom and become aware of the complex and numerous processes of intercultural mediation that any foreign language learner undergoes (Butjes, 1990:55-56).

To hark back to the relationship between language and culture; Samovar, Porter, & Jain (1981:24) observe:

Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted… Culture is the foundation of communication.

The teacher’s role is to stimulate students’ interest in the target culture, and to help establish the foreign language classroom not so much as a place where the language is taught, but as one where opportunities for learning of various kinds are provided through the interactions that take place between the participants (Ellis, 1992:171, cited in Kramsch, 1993:245).

Schumann’s acculturation model explains that: the closer they feel to the target language speech community, the better learners will ‘acculturate,’ and the more successful their SLL will be. The more alienated from that community they perceive themselves to be, the more pidgin-like their second language will remain. (Mitchell & Myles 2004)

Students can gain cultural competency and improve their interaction and speaking skills through the teaching of culture in foreign language classrooms.

Students must now what it means to be part of a culture, their own culture. By exploring their own culture, by discussing the very values, expectations, traditions, customs, and rituals they unconsciously take part in, they are ready to reflect upon the values, expectations, and traditions of others (Straub 1999).

In a sense, cultural knowledge and experience should make us aware that, far from becoming members of the same “monocultural global village” (Kramsch, 1987c), we can actually become observers and participants at the same time, registering what is transpiring in every culture and trying to find “third places” (Kramsch, 1993), a third niche, from which to divine pernicious dichotomies and bridge cultural gaps. After all, as regards language teachers, we cannot teach an understanding of the foreign as long as the familiar has not become foreign to us in many respects (Hunfeld, 1990:16, translated by, and cited in Kramsch, 1993:234).

Weaver’s (1993) cultural iceberg (Figure 1) shows that a large proportion of our own culturally-shaped knowledge is invisible and mostly subconsciously applied in our everyday interactions.

Figure 1

Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that language. Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviours and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behaviour. In many regards, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the cultural features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied (Krasner, 1999).

Teachers must allow students to observe and explore cultural interactions from their own perspectives to enable them to find their own voices in the second language speech community. Cultural activities and objectives should be carefully organized and incorporated into lesson plans to enrich and inform the teaching content (Peterson and Coltrane 2003:1).

Language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality clearly shows that language and culture are bounded together. The relationship between language and culture is made meaningful in language learning as the person who learns language without learning culture risks becoming a fluent fool. (Bennett, Bennett & Allen 2003:237)

I.2.1 Intercultural Communicative Competence

The National Center for Cultural Competence defines culture as an: integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviours of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations.

The concept of “intercultural communicative competence” (Byram, 1997) has refocused the goal of language education with culture integrated into language study. The use of the term “inter-cultural” reflects the view that EFL learners have to gain insight into both their own and the foreign culture (Kramsch, 1993). Intercultural communicative competence refers to the ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social identities, and the ability to interact with people as complex human beings with multiple identities and their own individuality according to Byram, Gribkova & Starkey (2002:10).

This competency emphasizes the mediation between different cultures, the ability to look at oneself from an external perspective, analyze and adapt one’s own behaviours, values and beliefs An interculturally competent learner therefore displays a range of affective, behavioural and cognitive capacities as follows (Byram 2006:22-26):

I.2.2 Cultural Identity, Culture Shock, and Culture Bump

Some other culturally related terms include cultural identity, culture shock, and culture bump. Damen (1987) noted that cultural identity is associated with the relationship between the individual and society, and it is at stake when the process of acculturation is under way, because to become bicultural is to develop an altered cultural personality and identity. Kramer (1994) indicated that foreign language learning is a hermeneutic process where learners expose their own cultural identity to the contrasting influences of a foreign language and culture.

Culture shock which is a common experience for a person learning a second language in a second culture refers to the phenomena ranging from mild irritating to deep psychological panic and crisis (Brown 1986:2007). In terms of the origin of the term, Damen (1987) pointed out that it was coined in 1958 by Oberg who suggested that it resulted from anxiety over losing familiar signs and symbols.

Damen further indicated that culture shock is an intermediate stage in the acculturative process, and is particularly painful as it follows an initial period of euphoria and joy at the new and strange. Culture shock may endure for some, whereas for others it is quickly followed by a devastating period of depression, dislike of the new and strange, illness, discouragement, and despair (Damen, 1987). Using Pederson (1995) as a guide, Brown and Eisterhold (2004) state that the classic model of culture shock has five stages:

The honeymoon stage

The disintegration stage

The reintegration stage

The autonomy stage

The interdependence stage

Unlike culture shock, culture bump, as Archer (1986) noted, occurs when a person from one culture finds himself or herself in a different, strange, or uncomfortable situation when interacting with people of a different culture. Archer posited that such a phenomenon results from a difference in the way people from one culture behave in a certain situation from those in another culture. Moreover, a culture bump, as Archer indicated, also happens when a person has expectations of one behaviour and gets something completely different; and an individual does not have to leave one’s own culture in order to experience a culture bump.

Jiang (2001) noted that for native English speaking teachers who work in English as a foreign language contexts culture bumps are inevitable, so whenever culture bumps occur, those teachers should use the incident as an opportunity to teach their own culture, since knowledge obtained from experience tends to be more deeply rooted than from books. Culture bumps can happen to anyone who is not familiar with a new culture; therefore, not only language students but language teachers may also encounter such experiences which can turn out to be very instructive for teachers and students to discuss in the class.

I.2.3 Culture, Language Teaching and Course Books, Curricula

What is language good at?

Language is our best instrument of knowing and our instrument of ordering the surrounding reality and it is what helps us put order in the reality. Language is also capable of expressing consciousness, the mind, which is complex and extremely disordered. (Dobrinescu Anca Mihaela, 2001:11, 12)

As Kaplan, R. (1986:19) points out, we do not have good definitions for either culture or language; because we are enmired in both, it is hard to get outside them enough to try to define them.

b)The roles of teachers, curricula, and textbooks in culture learning in second and foreign language learning.

Several different factors may have an impact on the success and failure of culture teaching in language classrooms. Teachers, curricula, and textbooks are among the most important factors to take into consideration. Damen (1987:5) postulated that there are reasons for the “limitations of teachers” efficiency as cultural guides:

1. Teachers do not know what “culture” to teach.

2. Until recently only a few textbooks of methodologies have been available to assist teachers in the direction of culture learning.

Assuming that language teachers can naturally teach culture is a serious mistake, for defining what culture is not easy, and neither is deciding on what culture to teach. Furthermore, without proper training in instructional methods to teach culture, it is not likely that teachers can do the job of teaching culture as effectively as expected. Regrettably, guidance on culture teaching may seldom be overtly stated in the curriculum of second or foreign language teaching programs.

Lafayette (1988:47) pointed out that among the three main components of the language curriculum (language, literature, and culture), the greatest amount of time and energy is still directed to the grammatical and lexical aspects of language; nonetheless, culture remains the weakest component “due to its uneven treatment in textbooks and to the lack of familiarity, among teachers, with the culture itself and with the techniques needed to teach it” However, it may seem that culture is getting some more attention in the curriculum, as culture has been increasingly advocated as an integral part of the curriculum in foreign language education (Tang, 2006).

The development of intercultural communicative competence in language learners requires linking knowledge of culture to the curriculum, teaching-learning methods, techniques, and use of materials. As Byram and Risager (1999) point out, culture is a significant dimension of communicative competence and therefore should receive specific attention of teachers, curriculum, and material developers. One of the practical and convenient means of achieving the aim might be seen as course books. Course books are assumed to supply a route into the target culture learning. The common framework followed in course book writing presents cultures in four categories namely the aesthetic, sociological, semantic, and pragmatic (Gray, 2010).

The distinction between second and foreign language teaching-learning settings is worth taking into account as the nature of EFL context puts the learners at a disadvantage in terms of the quality and the quantity of the cultural input presented. Especially in a course book-driven EFL context, this scrutiny should be carried out more thoroughly, for the course books constitute the main component of English language teaching process, provide teachers with a road to follow in the course of their instruction and remain almost as the only source of input for EFL students. For these reasons, it could be hypothesised that course books assume a significant role in shaping the perceptions of EFL learners and teachers with regard to the ownership of target language and culture.

Course books should include local and international settings that are familiar to the lives of learners. Course books should also help learners to gain an intercultural awareness and insight which will enable them to spot the differences and similarities across cultures and act strategically (Hyde, 1998).

As James (2002) highlights, language teachers are challenged to be experts of culture as well. That is the reason why most teachers look upon a coursebook as „the most convenient means of providing the structure that the teaching-learning system… requires” (Hutchinson and Torres, p. 317).

I claim that it is the coursebook which should be the most important source for teaching culture and language together. The question raises whether English textbooks are reliable enough in terms of their cultural content.

There are many coursebooks on the market and though more and more are conscious about transmitting the target culture, most of them do not explore the possibility. The teacher therefore must be resolute to apply her cultural knowledge driven from both her own personal experience and from handbooks and other written, visual or audible sources. The challenge for the teacher is to use them with communicative methodological techniques as additional materials to the textbooks. Enthusiastic teachers can consider this energy and time consuming activity as a permanent self-education and self-development.

Many scholars agree with the fact that language is an expression of culture and individuality of its speakers and have, hence, deeply examined cultural terms, as well as the problems involved in their translation when there is a lack of equivalence between two languages and cultures (Kade, Kutz, Nord, Rabadán, and Venuti, for example).

Vlakhov and Florin seem to have been the first ones to coin the term realia to refer to cultural elements, and the term has now been generalized and is frequently used to refer to objects, customs, habits, and other cultural and material aspects that have an impact in shaping a certain language (Cerdá Massó, p. 248).

It is known that a perfect translation of culturally-bound texts is impossible. The translation focusing on the purpose of the SL text writing is, however, always possible. This can be proven with the translation of so many literary works into other languages (Hariyanto).

It is true that translating realia or cultural terms causes many translation difficulties, but this does not mean that they cannot be translated. In fact, along the lines of some translation scholars, particularly those of the Leipzig school (Kade, Jäger, Neubert), all languages can say (or are capable of saying) the same things; but, as a rule, all of them say it in a different way. Indeed, should two languages say it in the same way, then we would not be speaking of two languages, but of one and the same language.

The translator can have recourse to several devices for solving the problem of bridging the gap across cultures, providing that she is culturally aware of those differences. She can rely on various procedures, techniques or strategies to deal with such translation problems

The translator can coin or borrow the term from the SL into the TL, or adapt it to suit the TC. It is also possible to explain the conceptual differences in a footnote or in the text itself, and so on. .It is up to the translator to choose the most suitable way to render it in the TL, and for the TC, depending on the aim, the time available, the potential readers, etc. of the translation.

Damen (1987:213) postulated that when educators are committed by the communicative approach to second language learning and teaching to provide opportunities for meaningful communicative interaction for the learners and to give priority to learners needs, educators should examine their personal commitment to the five hidden assumptions (see Table 1) before, after, and during training periods.

Table 1: While riding the communicative competence bandwagon

Damen (1987) further elucidated the hidden assumptions. The first assumption implies that the principles of cultural relativity must be welcomed and practiced in the language classroom. It is also pointed out that: “… cultural relativity, the nonevaluative acceptance of the logic and holism of a given cultural system, precludes attitudes of chauvinism, especially on the teachers’ part” (Damen 1987:212).

The second assumption implies that the goals and objectives of cultural learning in the classroom should be carefully chosen and honed to the needs and desires of the learner. The third assumption clearly states that as culture learning and language learning occur together, the question of whether culture should be taught or not is not valid.

The fundamental question in terms of cultural instruction has to do with the selection of content and approach. The fourth assumption entails that to embrace the concept of cultural relativity is to recognize that the cultural patterns within a given culture function as parts to the whole and exhibit a general consistency at a certain point in time.

Finally Damen suggested that the final assumption shows the need to maintain individuals’ psychocultural identity. Ethnocentrism which, as Damen pointed out, is synonymous with adherence to a given set of cultural options adjudged right, is a natural and necessary human attitude.

I.2.4 Materials Used for Teaching Culture in the EFL Classroom

In order to get a comprehensive picture of the target culture from many angles, we need to present our students with different kinds of information. By using a combination of visual, audio and tactile materials, we are also likely to succeed in addressing the different learning styles of our students.

According to Julian Edge, materials exist in order to support learning and teaching, so they should be designed to suit the people and the processes involved. Where this is not the case, it is the materials, or the use of them, which need to change.

According to Edge, “Our purpose is not to teach materials. Our purpose is to teach students, and to use materials in that process".

We should use materials with enthusiasm. A negative attitude from the teacher towards the materials is strongly demotivating for the learners; it takes away their feelings of security and purpose. Certainly, some materials are better than others, but just about any type of material can be used well by a committed teacher (Julian Edge 1993:43).

Using authentic sources from the native speech community helps to engage students in authentic cultural experiences. Sources can include films, news broadcasts, and television shows; Web sites; and photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials. Teachers can adapt their use of authentic materials to suit the age and language proficiency level of the students.

For example, even beginning language students can watch and listen to video clips taken from a television show in the target language and focus on such cultural conventions as greetings. The teacher might supply students with a detailed translation or give them a chart, diagram, or outline to complete while they listen to a dialogue or watch a video. After the class has viewed the relevant segments, the teacher can engage the students in discussion of the cultural norms represented in the segments and what these norms might say about the values of the culture. Discussion topics might include nonverbal behaviours (e.g., the physical distance between speakers, gestures, eye contact, societal roles, and how people in different social roles relate to each other). Students might describe the behaviours they observe and discuss which of them are similar to their native culture and which are not and determine strategies for effective communication in the target language (Peterson and Coltrane 2003:1).

I.2.5. Traditional Methods of Teaching Culture Improved with Technology

The more traditional methods and approaches to teaching culture, such as movies and video, can be enhanced through the integration of digital media. Feature films have become readily available and have been included in numerous textbooks and designed to actively involve the learner (Aparisi, Blanco, & Rinka, 2007; Blanco & Tocaimaza-Hatch, 2007). Foreign language instructors are beginning to incorporate more movies in the FL classroom as “an accessible window” (Bueno, 2009:319) to the target culture through “combined effects of images, sounds, camera, plots and dialogue” (Stephens, 2001:2).

According to Bueno (2009:10, 11,12), media literacy promotes cross-cultural competence and comprehension focused on meaning rather than on form, as well as repeated exposure to L2 cultural products, practices, and perspectives, and the target language itself.

Videos place students in the role of observers of first-hand images of L2 culture, social norms, habits, and interactions. This helps students be less apt to make judgments on whether these practices are “good” or “bad.” In turn, this leads to less stereotyping and a realization that customs, values, and language vary by regions, country, or culture.

For example, Power Point presentations can be effectively used in classrooms. Their visual nature engages students and attracts attention while reflecting the culture of the creator in explicit and implicit ways.

Another technology-based application that can be implemented in culturally diverse classrooms to enable students to share their cultures with their classmates is digital storytelling tools such as Microsoft Movie Maker or Photo Story 3. According to Robin (13) digital storytelling encourages learners to be creative storytellers “through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story”.

The learners then can insert various types of multimedia into their digital story and make it more appealing with some computer-based graphics, music, computer-generated text, video clips, and they can play their story on a computer, share it on the web, or burn on a CD.

The effects of incorporating audio-visuals in classrooms have been stresses with the Audio-Visual Method. Digital storytelling not only brings audio-visuals into the classrooms but also puts the learners to the centre of material development process. Along with the motivation that they bring, digital stories give the members of a culturally diverse classroom to share and reflect their cultures in class. Teachers can use digital storytelling as a group work activity in which each group member belongs to different cultural background. In addition to encouraging constructivist learning in class, group work digital storytelling tasks would increase the students’ awareness of each others’ culture. Such form of applications would also allow the students to exhibit their talents as well as demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter.

Teachers can also exhibit their understandings of the cultures of the students in their classes with the tech-based stories they design. Avgerinou and Ericson (1997:287) summarise the use of visuals thus:

The way we learn and, subsequently, remember bears a strong realationship to the way our senses operate. This means that we, as educators, cannot afford to ignore the fact that a very high proportion of all sensory learning is visuals.

This introductory quotation helps provide support for the use of visuals within one’s teaching (here film), which is arguably a more innovative and modern approach. If we consider that most students are nowadays more “visualised” than ever before, and then incorporated film clips, for example, as part of one’s lesson, can be a way to grab their attention.

Furthermore, according to Barrata (2004:5)

… in today’s world, more than ever, we (especially children) are bombarded with visuals on a daily basis, such as advertisements on billboards and in magazines, Play stations, the internet, pop-up ads, text message emoticons and much more. In fact, it can be said that today’s children are growing up in a world much more visual then their parents. Therefore, if we are truly preparing children for the real world in which they will find their eventual careers, then it makes sense for us as educators to incorporate elements of that real world in the classroom; the real world that students are exposed to in their lives outside the classroom. In doing so, we help to create a classroom environment that is just as real.

The use of film/TV in the EFL classroom is especially useful as "no teacher alone can reproduce the variety of situations, voices, accents, themes and presentation techniques that are a feature of this medium" (Hill, 1999:2).

Hill (op. cit) also states that the use of video in the classroom can involve real –life exemplars, which is very relevant to a teaching approach which seeks to prepare students for real life. Finally, he mentions that “television can provide a range of paralinguistic clues, often essential for successful comprehension and accurate understanding” (ibid.).

Film can be both entertaining and educational.

Folklore and fairytales have been examined as effective venues for teaching culture in a foreign language classroom (Akpinar & Ozturk, 2009; Davidheiser, 2007; Gholson & Stumpf, 2005; Kowalski, 2002; Morain, 1997; Seelye, 1993) because they are an integral part of people’s everyday life (Gholson & Stumpf, 2005).

Morain (1997) proposed the idea that folklore is superior to literary writing because it depicts the attitudes of large groups of people.

According to Seelye (1993:19), a study of carefully selected folk materials could illuminate some of the important cultural themes that underlie a country’s thought and action.

Gholson and Stumpf (2005) believe that folklore might help promote cultural dialogue in which L2 learners gain respect for differences between their native culture and L2 culture, as well as acknowledge the similarities in both cultures.

Akpinar and Ozturk (2009) suggest that folklore can be taught in an L2 classroom through an inquiry approach. Folklore engages the students in exploring the theme and structure of a folktale, relating these to their L1 background knowledge, and then drawing conclusions about the target culture, its beliefs, values, lifestyles, history, etc.). Furthermore, such use of an inquiry approach to teaching L2 culture through folklore “broadens the pool of ideas from which they [L2 learners] expand their problem-solving and decision-making skills” (Temple, Martinez, Yokota, & Naylor, 2002:160).

In particular, fairytales provide students with opportunities to explore not only the historical background information, but also learn about values and morals and to construct their own judgment (Davidheiser, 2007).

As one of the ways to incorporate technology in teaching culture with folklore and fairytales, a teacher can ask the students to write their own conclusion to the fairytale or folklore story they are reading, or create their own story using storybird.com.

Storybird is a virtual collection of artwork writers can use to build their stories. Students can work either independently or collaboratively, and the finished work can be easily shared with peers and even with a global audience. Such a learning activity fosters interpretation of the cultural information the students learned from the fairytale, promotes creative writing, and contextualized language practice. Having the students write their own conclusion, or a new fairytale, makes them process cultural knowledge they gained while working with the authentic fairytale, as well as its vocabulary, on a deeper level (Davidheiser, 2007).

The availability of technology resources at a teacher’s disposal has made it easier for teachers to find culturally authentic materials (Bush, 2007). When instructors integrate authentic images found online, the teaching of cultural awareness becomes more motivating and effective, as it increases the cultural content of the course (Bush, 2007).

In addition to authentic pictures, art is another venue for teaching culture in an L2 classroom. Berho and Defferding (2005) propose the incorporation of target culture artwork, as well as student-created art pieces.

Since culture is claimed to be an integral part of language learning, using art, as well as the study of artists’ lives, presents L2 learners with the opportunities to explore the values and themes of the target culture (Berho & Defferding, 2005).

One of the ways to incorporate art that can be used to visit museums in the target language country is Google Art Project It allows the learners to virtually tour museums and peruse artwork. Students can collect pieces of art that appeal to them and save them in their own collection using “Create an Artwork Collection” feature. They can also add comments to each painting explaining why they chose that particular artwork. The whole collection can then be shared with the teacher and the classmates by either presenting it to the whole class or discussing it in small groups. The students can analyze the common themes, write stories inspired by the art piece, research the artists’ lives, and what inspired them to create their particular masterpieces. These can then be shared digitally with audiences using Prezi, a free Web 2.0 presentation tool.

The digital resources allow teachers to create new techniques, as well as reevaluate and improve the more traditional techniques that help bring the target culture into the classroom. Research has shown that language learning should occur in a dynamic and active manner. Technology-based activities together with an inquiry learning approach allow students to interact directly with the second language and its culture without time and place restrictions and to explore and construct a deeper understanding of L2 cultural knowledge.

I.2.6 Teaching World Cultures

According to the new Professional Teaching Standards, every teacher must promote global awareness in classroom instruction (Regina Higgins 2012:17). Today the mission of a teacher should be to prepare students to be “globally competitive for work”.

Some teachers welcome the challenge of global learning, and look for every opportunity to infuse their lessons with international content. Many teach cultures expertly, but we’ve all heard horror stories of cultural lessons gone wrong – the discussion that succeeds only in reinforcing stereotypes, the “re-enactment” of cultural or religious ceremonies that show gross disrespect.

Lack of knowledge or understanding, or even good intentions but poor planning can mar students’ learning about cultures. Many teachers steer clear of cultural content for fear of making embarrassing mistakes. But now that the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards stipulate that teachers must “demonstrate knowledge of diverse cultures” and “develop lessons that counteract stereotypes” (Standard II); and “promote global awareness and its relevance” (Standard III), teaching cultures is no longer optional.

Using images, sounds and artefacts from world cultures in our teaching can help us make our classes more interesting. It is important that when we teach cultural content lessons to stress the similarities to establish a context that makes sense of the differences.

For the foreign language teacher teaching culture is valuable and the reasons are many. Culture shapes our view of the world. And language is the most representative element in any culture. Any item of behaviour, tradition or pattern can only be understood in light of its meaning to the people who practice it. Knowledge of the codes of behaviour of another people is important if today’s foreign language student is to communicate fully in the target language.

Humanistically, the study of different cultures aids us in getting to know different people which is a necessary prelude to understanding and respecting other peoples and their ways of life. It helps to open our students’ eyes to the similarities and differences in the life of various cultural groups. Today, most of our students live in a monolingual and monocultural environment. Consequently, they become culture-bound individuals who tend to make premature and inappropriate value judgments. This can cause them to consider the foreign peoples whose language they are trying to learn as very peculiar and even ill-mannered.

In 1980, the Presidents Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies stated:

Foreign language instruction at any level should be a humanistic pursuit intended to sensitize students to other cultures, to the relativity of values, to appreciation of similarities among peoples and respect for the differences among them. (Wilkes, p. 107)

We have to ask ourselves the 2 questions:

1. When should the study of culture begin? Ideally, the study of culture should begin on the very first day of class and should continue every day there after. Because of the large decrease in enrolment in second and third year language courses, the concept of culture can be communicated to only a small number of students unless this is done in the earliest phases of their instruction.

2. What type of culture should be taught in the foreign language classroom? Nelson Brooks has identified five meanings of culture: growth; refinement; fine arts; patterns of living; and a total way of life. He believes that patterns of living should receive the major emphasis in the classroom. It is patterns of living that are the least understood, yet the most important in the early phases of language instruction. He labels this meaning of culture as culture 4 and defines it as follows:

Culture 4 (patterns of living) refers to the individuals role in the unending kaleidoscope of life situations of every kind and the rules and models for attitude and conduct in them. By reference to these models, every human being, from infancy onward, justifies the world to himself as best he can, associates with those around him, and relates to the social order to which he is attached (Brooks, p. 210).

From the point of view of language instruction, culture 4 can be divided into formal culture and deep culture. Formal culture, sometimes referred to as culture with a capital C, includes the humanistic manifestations and contributions of a foreign culture: art; music; literature; architecture; technology; politics. However, with this way of looking at culture, we often lose sight of the individual.

The most profitable way of looking at culture is to see what it does. Deep culture, or culture with a small c, focuses on the behavioural patterns or lifestyles of the people: When and what they eat; how they make a living; the attitudes they express towards friends and members of their families; which expressions they use to show approval or disapproval. In this sense, culture is a body of ready-made solutions to the problems encountered by the group. It is a cushion between man and his environment. If we provide our students only with a list of facts of history or geography and a list of lexical items, we have not provided them with an intimate view of what life is really like in the target culture.

Now that the what, why, and when of incorporating culture in the foreign language classroom has been established, a focus on the how is needed. Better international understanding is a noble aim, but how can the transition be made from theoretical matters to the active, crowded, and sometimes noisy foreign language classroom? One problem in all classroom work is the involvement of students’ interest, attention, and active participation. Learning activities which focus on active rather than passive learning are the best.

Traditional methods of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom have been focused on formal culture and passive learning. Students do need both a geographical and historical perspective in order to understand contemporary behaviour patterns but this can be done with hands on activities. Beginning foreign language students want to feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language. From the first day of class teachers should have prepared a cultural island in their classrooms. Posters, pictures, maps, signs, and realia of many kinds are essential in helping students develop a mental image (all are available from Gessler Publishing Company).

Assigning students foreign names from the first day can heighten student interest. Short presentations on a topic of interest with appropriate pictures or slides add to this mental image. Start students off by making them aware of the influence of various foreign cultures in this country. Introduce students to the borrowed words in our English language or the place-names of our country. This helps students to realize they already know many words in the target language (i.e. poncho, fiesta, rodeo). Some of the foods they eat are another example of the influence of foreign cultures (i.e. taco, burrito, chili) (Brown:56).

I2.7 Culture in the 21st Century

“The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing. It offers the potential for humans to learn new ways of thinking and organizing social structures.” Douglas Engelbard (1997)

Although teachers have begun to incorporate more culture in the lesson, the major concern that remains is finding effective ways for integrating culture and language that prepare the learners to come.

Although foreign languages may be no longer taught as a compendium of rules through drills and contrived dialogues, culture is still often taught separately and not integrated in the process of foreign language learning.

According to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999:43):

“the true content of the foreign language course is not the grammar and the vocabulary of the language, but the cultures expressed through that language” .

Below we will review the research pertaining to the three components – 3 P’s, inquiry-based instruction, and technology that supports the importance of incorporating them in the teaching of culture.

Products, Practices, Perspectives (3P’s)

Germane to this discussion is an examination of the currently available most effective practices in teaching culture to achieve the cultural goals stated in the Standards for Foreign Language Learning (1999):

2.1 Students should demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.

2.2 Students should demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.

Cultural perspectives can be described as popular beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions held by the members of L2 culture.

Figure 2 depicts the relationship of the three components of culture (3 P’s) according to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (1999:47). This triangle model of the cultural framework represents how products, practices, and perspectives are interrelated, and allows teachers to see the relationships among the three elements of culture to consider when planning instructional lessons.

Figure 2

The most significant improvement of the 3P framework in comparison to its preceding concept of the “big C” and “little c” cultures (Alatis, Straehle, Gallenberger, & Ronkin, 1996; Phillips & Terry, 1999) is the expansion of the definition of culture to include how a specific culture behaves and interacts.

According to Lange (1999:60), defining culture in terms of the 3Ps avoids “the common, overworked conflict between C and c by interweaving the formal and informal aspects of daily life, as one normally lives it in any culture” .

Regarding materials and resources for teaching culture, the 3P approach “permits the use of any document – be it an advertisement, newspaper article, or literature text – for cultural learning where appropriate” (Lange, 1999:60).

One of the challenges teachers face when introducing cultural products or practices is that delivered information, such as bits of trivia, can appear to be disconnected, and possibly lead to stereotypes. By using the 3P cultural framework in their planning, teachers can ensure that culture is explored in a systematic and contextual way, as well as allow for some flexibility (Lange, 1999).

In addition, this framework helps teachers tie together the disparate knowledge about products and practices, while helping students begin to relate products and practices to perspectives and acquire a deeper understanding of culture overall.

Peter Newmark (1988:6) is entirely correct when he states: “No language, no culture is so ‘primitive’ that it cannot embrace the terms of, say, computer technology”.

Technology has changed the nature of instruction and learning. Teachers are exploring digital technologies to make learning more effective and engage students actively. Technology promotes socially active language in multiple authentic contexts due to its “accessibility, flexibility, connectivity speed and independence of methodological approach” (Gonzalez, 2009:62).

It gives foreign language teachers various opportunities to create better and more effective instructional materials to teach not only the language structure, but also the target culture.

In the age of the internet, there are endless cultural resources available to teachers There are a multitude of travel videos and blogs that can show students what life is like in another country. Students can also create their own blogs in the target language to respond to or be assessed on cultural topics. Music videos, television shows, radio channels and movies can be streamed online in the classroom. Aside from internet resources, inviting native-speaker guests into the classroom for interviews or role-playing activities can also prove to be a great way for students to learn about proper cultural interactions (Koning, 2012).

Likewise, folk tales and myths can be used as a launching point for cultural discussions (Koning, 2012). The resources and options available for teaching culture are virtually endless. Various researchers support the use of technology to foster learning in culturally responsive classrooms.

Students can take advantage of technology by learning in formal and informal settings through interactive social spaces (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010). Technological devices such as smart phones, laptops and computers, PDAs, etc., as well as Web 2.0 technologies are widely used to support student learning in a classroom setting, and they have opened new vistas for language learning and teaching in particular (Lee, 2009).

One of the alluring benefits of technology is that it provides authentic communication in an interactive environment that facilitates the teaching of culture (Lee, 2009).

Through the use of interactive media, students become less dependent on the printed word and more engaged with authentic cultural content they can access and explore freely, because they have more control of the selection and application of materials and resources. These numerous resources and materials allow teachers to tailor digital media to make culture learning more relevant and accessible to the students in their classroom (Moore, 2006). With the incorporation of technology, both the teacher and the students become part of the interactive environment. Technology creates an “open-ended” (Hellebrandt, 1996:257) learning environment in which the results are not predetermined.

More importantly, with interactive web resources that provide the benefits of networking and real time communication, the students can continue to learn the target language and enhance their cultural understanding outside the classroom (Moore, 2006).

Technology permits both teachers and students “to go beyond quick and superficial stops on the information highway and establish meaningful interactive learning scenarios” (Hellebrandt, 1996:263).

A number of researchers have investigated the use of technology in an L2 classroom. For instance, Levy (2009) describes technologies that can be used in a foreign language classroom in relation to skills, including grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, pronunciation, listening, speaking, and culture. Levy (2009:776) says that “simply accessing an L2 Web site can expose learners to numerous aspects of the target culture”. However, when exploring the websites, learners are engaged passively, which may result in low retention. Similar results were found in Moore’s study (2006), in which it was concluded that the majority of classroom students simply “surf the net” rather than being engaged in the learning. On the other hand, only a few teachers indicated that they use Internet for meaningful activities.

Kukulska-Hulme (2010) and Lee (2009) provide a list of various activities, which have emerged during the period of 2005-2010, that can be used in a FL classroom. These activities include social applications (e.g., Facebook) and blogging (e.g., Twitter); mobile Internet access (browsing websites and reading news); use of multiple media (watching movies, listening to audio books, podcasts and vodcasts); location-based activities (using GPS to find a place); and usercreated content (making a film, creating a podcast) (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010 : 8).

Such activities allow language learners to maximize the opportunity to be exposed to L2 in meaningful and authentic contexts and audiences. This leads to learners’ construction of their own L2 cultural knowledge (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010).

In addition, these tools increase opportunities for students to communicate in L2 not only within the classroom walls, but also outside the classroom (Lee, 2009).

Lee (2009) considers that “learning the target culture from native speakers’ experiences and perspectives is more meaningful than the surface learning of a set of simple facts about the target culture in a traditional classroom setting.

Incorporating virtual worlds in classroom instruction presents an opportunity for learners to experience L2 culture online (Levy, 2009).

I.2.8 Suggested Types of Activities

According to Omaggio, (1993:357) teaching culture is considered important by most teachers but it has remained “insubstantial and sporadic in most language classrooms”. Omaggio gives several reasons for this including lack of time, uncertainty about which aspects of culture to teach, and lack of practical techniques.

Oxford (1994) has used the term “cultural texture” to describe the many aspects of culture that we need to teach to our students. To achieve this texture, we need to vary three different parameters.

Information Sources

Activity-types

Selling-points

Many books which attempt to teach culture offer only discussion activities. Discussion is a valuable form of learning in culture, but we cannot expect all students to be able to discuss complex issues at a high level in a foreign language. Often, even high-level students need some preparatory activities with clear goals before they can proceed to discussion.

Traditional methods of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom have been focused on formal culture and passive learning. Students do need both a geographical and historical perspective in order to understand contemporary behaviour patterns but this can be done with hands on activities. Beginning foreign language students want to feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language. From the first day of class teachers should have prepared a cultural island in their classrooms. Posters, pictures, maps, signs, and realia of many kinds are essential in helping students develop a mental image (all are available from Gessler Publishing Company).

I have noticed that quizzes are one of the more successful activity types. Quizzes can be used to test materials that we have previously taught, but they are also useful in learning new information. Some activities will be discussed below:

Activity 1

True/false quiz. Students work individually then check their answers in pairs. They receive a short text and have to mark the sentences as T/F.

Read the text and circle the correct answer: T/F

Paul has got a lot of friends, but his favourite friend is Mark. He is not in Paul’s class, but they go to the same school. They usually play together after they finish their homework or on Saturday. Paul is 10 years old and Mark has the same age. Paul has got a little sister and Mark has one, too.

Paul and Mark are classmates. TRUE / FALSE

Mark has got many friends. TRUE / FALSE

Mark and Paul usually do their homework together. TRUE / FALSE

The two boys have little sisters. TRUE / FALSE

They play together at the weekend. TRUE / FALSE

It is not important whether students get the right answer or not, students will become more interested in finding out the right answer. The right answers can be given by the teacher, through a reading, listening, or video.

Activity 2

Reformulation:

When students have read an activity or listened to a story, we may like to use reformulation to allow them to check what they have learned and to reinforce it by retelling it to a partner. Reformulation simply means: to explain what you have learned in your own words. It is a very simple technique, but has proved very successful for learning both culture and language.

We often give readings for homework and require students to take notes on the content. These notes can be in the form of pictures, keywords, or mind-maps. We ask the students to reformulate the content of the reading with a partner using their notes without looking at the original paper. Reformulation is also effective after watching a short video extract or listening to a story. Through reformulation, students check what they have learnt, find out things that they have missed from their partner, and improve their language by noticing gaps in their own ability to explain.

Example:

Students receive a short text called The joke about the genie.

An Australian is sitting at a bar, and he sees a lamp on a table. He picks up the lamp and rubs it, and out pops a genie. It says, “I will give you three wishes”.

The man thinks for a while, then he says: “I want a beer that is never empty”.

The genie waves his hand, and a bottle of genie appears on the bar. The Australian starts drinking it. When it is almost empty it starts to refill. The man is very happy. The genie asks about his next two wishes.

The man says: “I want two more of those”. (http://wk.baidu.com.cn/)

Activity 3

Find similarities and differences:

Image 1

This photo of a bride in a traditional Indian wedding provides an opportunity to emphasize cultural similarities as well as differences.

The teacher shows the class a photo of a traditional wedding in India. The bride’s red sari and necklace of flowers becomes the focus of the discussion, and soon all anyone can talk about how strange it is for a bride to be wearing a red (not white) dress, and wearing flowers around her neck (not holding a floral bouquet).

Analysis

We see differences more readily than we see similarities. In this case, students saw something that seemed strange to them, and, because they hadn’t been prepared, the strangeness was all they could see. Naturally, it took over their discussion.

A single tradition doesn’t define an entire culture. We have to remember that no world culture or region is uniform. Every culture has sacred rites and taboos. Before you teach about a sacred ritual, research carefully, and, if possible, talk with someone from the culture who can advise you about how to avoid disrespect. (Regina Higgins, http://www.learnnc.org/)

Activity 4

Celebrating festivals. – Halloween

Image 2

According to Deborah Peck, celebrating foreign festivals is a favourite activity of many students. Even though this activity takes a lot of planning, it works well as a culminating activity. My Spanish-speaking students start by bringing in recipes from home and then we put our own cookbook together. We then prepare for the festival by drawing posters, decorating the room, and preparing some of the foods in our cookbook. At Christmas time, we fill a pinata with candy and learn some folk songs and folk dances (Most textbooks have songs at the back of the book). This kind of activity enables student to actively participate in the cultural heritage of the people they are studying (Deborah Peck, 2016).

Objectives

Enriching students general knowledge about Halloween

Using their creativity and imagination for creating special decorations and Carnival costumes

Practicing communication skills

Stimulating the students competitiveness

Procedure

PPT presentations

workshops for making ghosts of napkins and carving pumpkins

an exhibition of carved pumpkins

costume presentation and a parade

in the end, the jury will give diplomas

Activity 5

Proverbs

Using proverbs as a way to explore culture, as well as a way for students to explore the values that are often represented in the proverbs of their native culture (Cicarelli 1996:45).

In the following activity students have to match the proverbs with their definitions. And then choose three of them and comment on them in no more than 5 lines.

Match the proverbs with their definition.

Activity 6

Food hunting

Image 3

The teacher sends the students on cultural scavenger hunts to supermarkets and department stores and have them make lists of imported goods that are not Romanian traditional food.

The teacher can also ask the students before starting to ask their colleagues about those types of foods that they used to eat regularly in their native country.

They children will then make a list of the shops they visited and the types of food they found and also state the origin of the food.. then compare lists with their colleagues. They can even bring pictures into class with the items they had selected.

Activity 7

Cultural names

There are lots of sayings about names, and most of them are at best only partially true. Students investigate the meanings and origins of their names in order to establish their own personal histories and to explore cultural significance of naming traditions. Students begin by writing down everything they know about their own names, then the teacher shares details about his or her own name story. Next, students use an online tool to research their own or someone else’s name and share their findings with the class.

Activity 8

Cultural information

Cultural information should be presented in a nonjudgmental fashion, in a way that does not place value or judgment or distinctions between the students’ native culture and the culture explored in the classroom. Kramsch (1993) describes the "third culture" of the language classroom – a neutral space that learners can create and use to explore and reflect on their own and the target culture and language.

The students are given clues or background information about the objects and ideas brought in the classroom by the teacher so that they can incorporate the new information into their own worldview. An example might be a cup of tea and some biscuits. Students are told that the object is somehow used for a special moment of the day, then they would either research or be informed about why, when and how the object is used. This could lead into related discussion about foods eaten in the target culture, the geography, growing seasons, and so forth. The students act as antropologists, exploring and understanding the target culture in relation to their own.

CHAPTER II

MOTIVATION

Rivers (1972: 118) quotes Ausubel as pointing out that “Motivation is as much an effect as a cause of learning” and “the relationship between the two, he says, is "typically reciprocal, rather than unidirectional”.

Motivation is a key issue in teaching a foreign language as well as other subjects. One crucial difference is that teaching a foreign language has a significant impact on the social nature of learners since it sometimes requires learners to adopt new social and cultural behaviours (Gardner, 1979; Williams, 1994).

Motivation is a process rather than a product. Therefore we cannot observe it directly but we can infer it from actions and verbalisations. Motivation involves goals that provide impetus for and direction to action (Schunk et al 2002:183)

Student motivation is influenced by both internal and external factors that can start, sustain, intensify, or discourage behaviour” (Reeve 1996). The teacher has to activate these motivational components in the students. Many teachers believe that by sticking to the language materials and trying to discipline their refractory students, they will manage to create a classroom environment that will be conducive to learning.

Nevertheless, these teachers seem to lose sight of the fact that, unless they accept their students’ personalities and work on those minute details that constitute their social and psychological make-up, they will fail to motivate them. What is more, they will not be able to form a cohesive and coherent group, unless they succeed in turning most “curriculum goals” (goals set by outsiders) into “group goals” (goals accepted by the group members, that is, students).

It is important that the students themselves recognize and understand the connection between language and culture and encourage the development of cross-cultural understanding.

There are many ways to incorporate culture in the classroom.

The “process framework” is a seven-stage tool for lesson plan development that can help integrate culture into lessons. The first four stages- presentation of new material, practice, grammar exploration and transposition or use, are fairly common in language education (Koning, 2012). The next three stages sociolinguistic exploration, culture exploration, and intercultural exploration- bring cultural elements to the lesson. Sociolinguistic exploration helps students understand how language changes in different context and with different people and different topics. In culture exploration, the cultural contexts of interactions are examined, and students learn how speakers interact and behave during various functions. In the last stage, intercultural exploration, the systems of interaction used in the target language and in English are compared and contrasted (Koning, 2012).

Another method for integrating culture into the classroom is the Sociocultural Model Lesson Plan (SMLP). The SMLP uses literacy as a vehicle for transmitting cultural information (Warford & White 2012). It is composed of five stages:

(1) Activation of Schemata;

(2) Text Interpretaton;

(3) Sociocultural Interpretation;

(4)Sociocultural Presentation and

(5) Sociocultural Debriefing.

In Activation of Schemata, the instructor poses leading questions about cultural conventions that are pertinent to the text the students will explore.

During Text Interpretation, the instructor guides student readings with bottom-up and top-down questions to help them process the text. Following the reading, the instructor facilitates Sociocultural Interpretation by comparing elements of the target culture found in the reading with elements of the student’s culture and by discussing which of their assumptions were correct or incorrect.

During Sociocultural Presentation, students develop an adaptation or re-creation of the presented text. Finally, the instructor and the students examine the appropriateness of the students’ simulations against the linguistic and cultural elements previously identified in the lesson. The process framework and SMLP are just two examples of potential methods for integrating culture into lesson plans.

II.1. Group Processes and Motivation

A discussion of motivation and motivational strategies would not be complete without a consideration of group processes, in as much as there is usually a group of people that we as teachers are called on to motivate. Tuckman (1969, quoted in Argyle, 1969) established that a group went through four stages from its formation, which has important implications for the study of the classroom and the use of group activities during teaching.

Stage 1 Forming: At first, there is some anxiety among the members of the group, as they are dependent on the leader (that is, the teacher) and they have to find out what behaviour is acceptable.

Stage 2 Storming: There is conflict between sub-groups and rebellion against the leader. Members of the group resist their leader and the role relations attending the function of the group are questioned.

Stage 3 Norming: The group begins to develop a sort of cohesion. Members of the group begin to support each other. At this stage, there is co-operation and open exchange of views and feelings about their roles and each other.

Stage 4 Performing: Most problems are resolved and there is a great deal of interpersonal activity. Everyone is devoted to completing the tasks they have been assigned.

Experience shows that almost every group goes through these four (or even more) stages until it reaches equilibrium and, thus, taps into its potential. In reality, this process may go on forever, since student lethargy and underachievement norms in the classroom are considered to be basic hindrances to effective teaching and learning (Daniels, 1994). Against this background, we will try to design a framework for motivational strategies.

As we have already said, skill in motivating students to learn is of paramount importance. Until recently, however, teachers were forced to rely on “bag-of-tricks” approaches in their attempt to manage their classroom and motivate their learners.

Good and Brophy (1994:212) hold that these approaches have been influenced by two contradictory views:

a) that learning should be fun and that any motivation problems that may appear should be ascribed to the teacher’s attempt to convert an enjoyable activity to drudgery; and

b) that school activities are inherently boring and unrewarding, so that we must rely on extrinsic rewards and punishment with a view to forcing students to engage in these unpleasant tasks.

II.2. Demotivation Factors

In the education field, demotivation hinders people from pursuing their goals. It plays the bad-guy role in English education, leading great deal of students to give-up. Furthermore, it is easy for highly motivated students to become demotivated, puzzling instructors who have been teaching passionately with proven methods. According to Trang and Baldauf Jr. (2007:102)

Research has shown that motivation is crucial for L2 learning because it directly influences how much effort students make, how often students learn L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers, how much input they receive in the language being learned., how well they do on curriculum-related achievement tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes, and how long they reserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over.

According to Trang and Baldauf Jr. there are two groups of demotives: internal attributions and external attributions. The internal attributions include students’ attitudes towards English, their experiences of failure or lack of success, and the incidents related to their self-esteem, the external ones contain teacher-related factors, the learning environment, and other external factors (ibid.).

According to Thanasoulas (2003) “demotivated” learner is someone who was once motivated but has lost his or her interest for some reason. In the same layer, we can speak of “demotives”, which are the negative counterparts of “motives”. Whereas a motive can be said to raise an action tendency, a demotive decreases it”. Dornyei (1998:142) recognized three negative factors:

1. An attractive alternative action that serves as a powerful distraction (e.g. watching TV instead of doing one’s homework).

2. The gradual loss of interest in a longlasting, ongoing activity.

3. The sudden realization that the costs of pursuing a goal are too high (e.g. when someone recognizes how demanding it is to attend an evening course while working during the day).

Anxiety also plays important role in learning second/foreign language.

Mitchell & Myles (2004) believe that the anxious learners are also less willing to speak and develop in class or to engage target language speakers in formal interaction. The learner can not build a positive relationship with success in learning if there is a language anxiety. In this regard, it is important to make students enthusiastic about learning.

Learners’ motivation can differ extremely due to their anxiety and confidence they have toward the language they are learning and the classroom atmosphere they are in. In that sense, not only is the anxiety connected to motivation, but also connected to proficiency and more so to communication proficiency, as argued by Clement, Dornyei, and Noels (1994).

The behaviour of the teacher influences the behaviour of the student, subsequently affecting learning outcomes. Student motivation is affected by a variety of factors, some of which are directly influenced by what a teacher does how the teacher structures the course and how he/she behaves in class). (p. 101)

The role of teacher is that s/he must know about his/her student and the kind of motivation s/he needs. In fact, the effective learning in the classroom depend on the teacher’s ability in knowing that students are different in their characteristics and each student has his own features and treats them accordingly. And because a student comes from different background, it is natural that they are different in their interaction and they need different kinds of motivation that enhance their interaction.

Davis (2002) suggests that it is necessary to give frequent, early positive feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well and helps them feel that they are valued members of learning. The learners in this stage need positive reinforcement to motivate them to learn. The teacher is supposed to promote cooperation instead of competition and help the students understand that mistakes are natural. It is also advocated to design tests that are clear and involve the students in negotiating the final grades. Teachers should also allow learners to maintain a positive social image while engaged in the learning tasks. It is recommended that the teacher select activities that contain positive role for the participants. It is also suggested that teacher avoid face-threatening acts such as humiliation or criticism. Teachers are also to not to put students on the spot. These strategies confirm that motivation is something all our students carry with them in one form to another. It is not the case that all we need to do as a teacher to recognize it, encourage it, feel it, and watch it grow. The teacher’s job is also to teach how to develop and increase motivation by using appropriate motivational strategies framework in the classroom.

CHAPTER III

READING LITERATURE

III.1 The role of literature in the EFL classroom

Introduction

Literature is a form of knowledge, thus capable of revealing deep aspects of the human being, always transgressing the level of the visible and the superficial (Dobrinescu Anca Mihaela, 2010:134)

Herein lies the role of literature in the foreign language classroom. Rather than being a fifth adjunct to the four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), culture can best find its expression through the medium of literature. Moreover, trying to interpret and account for the values, assumptions, and beliefs infusing the literary texts of the target culture is instrumental in defining and redefining those obtaining in the home culture (Gantidou, personal communication).

Of course, literature can extend to cover the use of film and television in the FL classroom, for they "have the capacity…to present language and situation simultaneously, that is, language in fully contextualized form" (Corder, 1968, cited in Jalling, 1968:65).

A major shortcoming, though, is that the viewer can only be an observer, not a participant. There is only reaction but no interaction on her part (ibid.:68). It is simply accepted as given that literature is a viable component of second language programs at the appropriate level and that one of the major functions of literature is to serve as a medium to transmit the culture of the people who speak the language in which it is written. Literary texts are often replete with cultural information and evoke memorable reactions for readers. Texts that are carefully selected for a given group of students with specific goals in mind can be very helpful in allowing students to acquire insight into a culture.

Literary texts display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that literary translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures.

Translating literary texts, however, is not an easy task, since it certainly poses many problems for the translator. One of the problems a translator can face arises from the fact that some words or phrases denoting objects, facts, phenomena, etc… are so deeply rooted in their source culture (SC) and so specific (and perhaps exclusive or unique) to the culture that produced them that they have no equivalent in the target culture (TC), be it because they are unknown, or because they are not yet codified in the target language (TL).

When discussing the problems of correspondence in translation, “differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure” (Nida 130). Moreover, several theorists, such as Santoyo, García Yebra and Yifeng, amongst others, support untranslatability when we face texts with terms which are so culture-bound and culture-specific as to defy translation (cf. Fernández Guerra, “The issue”, p. 41).

In all cases, when cultural differences exist between the two languages, it is extremely difficult to achieve a successful transfer, if not impossible (whatever the competence of the translator in the two languages involved). And even the slightest variation from the source language (SL) cultural term can be taken as an act of subversion against the culture it represents. Literary translation itself can even be regarded as an act of subversion, or a means of providing an alternative or subversion of reality.

As Levine affirms, “the literary translator can be considered a subversive scribe” (7). In the same line of thought, when talking about the task of translating literature, Silver states: “I understand subversion as at the core of the translation project itself” (Silver, p. 5).

III.2. Translation: Procedures and Strategies

According to Krings (263-275) or Lörscher (76-81), among others, translation strategies are usually defined as the procedures leading to the optimal solution of a translation problem.

The procedures or strategies that are usually mentioned in academic publications serve both to analyse and catalogue translation equivalence and to improve the acquisition of translation competence, since knowing and comparing them is definitively necessary to obtain an adequate translation.

It is also worth mentioning that some studies focus only on specific translation procedures that should be used when dealing with cultural elements. Some procedures will now be briefly described and illustrated:

Adaptation is used in those cases in which the type of situation being referred to by the SL message is unknown in the TC and translators create a new situation that can be described as situational equivalence (Vinay and Darbelnet, p. 52-53). There are situations in which adaptation seems, to some extent, necessary: in advertising slogans, or children’s stories, for example. In other cases there are certain conventions, more or less generalized, as regards adapted translations of foreign cultural elements in the TL. This applies, for instance, to weights and measures, musical notation, generally accepted titles of literary works or geographical names, etc. The basic goal of the translator when trying to “adapt” the translation is to have a similar effect on the TL readers, “domesticating”, in a way, the cultural terms.

Borrowing a term is taking a word or expression straight from another language, without translation. The procedure is normally used when a term does not exist in the TC, or when the translator tries to get some stylistic or exotic effect. It can be “pure”, if there is no change of any kind in the foreign term (broker, chip, clown, feeling, stop, etc.), or “naturalized”, if the word has some change in the spelling, and perhaps some morphological or phonetic adaptation (as indiskette “disquete”, format “formatear”, indent “indenter”, reset “resetear” etc.).

As far as English is concerned, Wagner states that it is “the only language whose elements are seventy-five percent of foreign origin” (cf. Fernandez, p. 514).

When translating texts with a great amount of cultural terms, however, we should be cautious (García Yebra, p. 340), unless we want to maintain a certain local colour or exoticism. Compression/reduction/condensation/omission of information is not common when translating cultural terms and, when it occurs, it is usually to avoid repetitions, misleading information, or lack of naturalness.

Literal translation, or word by word, occurs when a SL word or phrase is translated into a TL word or phrase, without worrying about style, but adapting the text to the TL syntactic rules, with minimal adjustments, so that it sounds both correct and idiomatic (word order, functional words, etc.).

In Vinay and Dalbernet’s words (48), it is the direct transfer of a SL text into a grammatically and idiomatically appropriate TL text in which the translators’ task is limited to observing the adherence to the linguistic servitudes of the TL.

An example of literal translation could be John loves Mary “Juan ama a María”, in which the preposition “a” has been added because it is a requirement for direct objects denoting a person.

Jaaskelainen considers that the strategies used by a translator are skills and procedures that promote the acquisition and use of information, and may be associated both with the product (the translated text), as well as with the process of translation itself, whose strategies “are a set of (loosely formulated) rules or principles which a translator uses to reach the goals determined by the translating situation” and can be global or local strategies: “global strategies refer to general principles and modes of action and local strategies refer to specific activities in relation to the translator’s problem-solving and decision-making” (Jääskeläinen, p. 16).

III. 3 Reading As a Skill

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." (Jane Austen; Northanger Abbey)

Reading skill is one of the major skills of language. Reading means “reading and understanding” (Ur, 1996).

A foreign language learner who says: “I can read words but I don’t know what they mean” is not, therefore, reading, in this sense. It is merely decoding the written symbols. Here comprehensible input stands for that input which they can understand. Text comprehension involves the construction of an integrated and coherent representation of a text’s meaning (Gernsbacher, 1997). Therefore, we might predict a relation between a reader’s ability to comprehend text and their ability to produce a structurally coherent narrative.

It is said that reading is an interaction between reader and text.

Students of any language need to be able to read in that language. Native speakers ‘read’ and process an enormous amount of material each day, and they approach it in different ways depending largely on their motivation for reading.

Catherine Wallace (1992:6, 7) has identified three general purposes which readers have when reading: Reading for Survival, Reading for Learning, and Reading for Pleasure. A tourist checking the signs in a station in order to find the right train; a student poring over a thick textbook, stopping every so often to make notes; a young child following a story in the book as his mother reads it to him: all these people are reading, but in each case the reading clearly serves very different purposes and involves very different processes. In the case of foreign language students, what is important is the extent to which they can recognise this, interacting with and making sense of a particular text in whatever way.

We all know that most of the students don’t like to read nowadays. So we have to ask ourselves a question: Why is reading so unpopular?

I believe that there are several reasons for this, which all stem from one general problem – deep-rooted fear of reading in English. What they all too often lack is the confidence to attempt to enjoy it, or the realisation that Reading can be anything other than just another classroom chore.

EFL students may study English for a number of years, during which time reading is “taught” through a succession of random texts in coursebooks, which may or may not be “authentic” or even interesting to the students. The only two things which connect these texts with one another are the inevitable comprehension questions following the text, and the fact that the passages themselves generally get longer and more complex as the student progresses through the course.

Wallace (1992:7) points out that if readers do not read for pleasure in their mother-tongue they are highly unlikely to do so in a second or foreign language.

This may be true, but it does not justify the fact that students neglect reading. We must make it very clear to our students that reading does not necessarily have to mean classic literature A student who enjoys reading film reviews will benefit far more from simply reading the latest review in English on the internet, and enjoying it, than he would from ploughing through an article on the present political situation, however objectively “interesting” it may be, or “relevant” to the unit of the coursebook.

Nevertheless, if we wish students to read a variety of texts purely for interest of enjoyment, then we need to provide them with opportunities of simulating ‘real-life’ and dealing with these options in class.

III .4 Differences between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies

A reading skill is a helpful tool that a student practices in order to improve reading (Hollas, 2002). Teachers teach various skills to improve the understanding of reading. Unfortunately, many of the students while decoding do not comprehend what they are reading. On the other hand, a reading strategy is a plan or way of doing something; a specific procedure one uses to perform a skill (Hollas, 2002).

Weinstein and Mayer (1986) defined strategies as behaviours and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning that are intended to influence the learners encoding process. Further, Alexander, et al. (1985) defined a strategy as a procedural, purposeful, effortful, wilful, essential and facilitative. They asserted that strategies are mandatory for academic development.

Students today have difficulty getting through a short reading assignment, such as a newspaper article. This difficulty is associated with the lack of ability to focus and concentrate on written words. Due to this, many students need guidance and strategies to help focus on reading and to do more than just read the words on a piece of paper.

The skills of a strategic reader in the content areas can be broken down into seven areas (Hollas, 2002):

1. Predict – declaring in advance or to foretell on the basis of observation and/or experience.

2. Visualize – forming mental pictures of scenes, characters and events.

3. Connect – to link two things together or to associate and see a relationship.

4. Question – to inquire or examine.

5. Clarify – to make understandable or to become clear and free of confusion.

6. Summarize – to concisely obtain the essence or main point of the text.

7. Evaluate – to form an opinion about what you have read.

These seven areas can be linked to various strategies to improve the effectiveness of each reader. The “predicting, visualizing and connecting” areas are implemented as before reading strategies. The “question and clarification” areas are implemented as during reading strategies whereas, “summarizing and evaluating” are implemented as after reading strategies.

The goal of the teacher is to help students apply reading strategies to become effective readers. Furthermore, strategies help students when they are reading and strategies are used in various tasks. For example, while students are predicting outcomes of a reading passage, strategies assist them. Also it is the same when students are summarizing what they read.

Students use strategies as they are looking for clues; for example, context clues and rereading to correct what they read.

They also need strategies either in interpreting main idea of texts or in determining the type of the texts.

Difference between a Skill and a Strategy

Table 2

There are many reading strategies that appear to be very important according to a multitude of researchers. It is a difficult task to decide which strategies are the most significant.

Procedural prompts can be used to assist students to generate questions and gain the ability to summarize what they have read. Rosenshine and Meister (1997) asserted that this should be the first step in teaching students cognitive strategies. They asserted that they serve to build upon students’ background knowledge and provide a knowledge support on which they may build. For example, in order to generate questions about narrative text the authors recommended providing prompts that focus on a story’s grammar:

What is the setting?

Who are the main characters?

What problem did the main character face?

What attempts were made to resolve the problem?

How was the problem finally resolved?

What is the theme of the story?

III. 5 Extensive and Intensive Reading

To get maximum benefit from their reading, students need to be involved in both extensive and intensive reading. Whereas with the former a teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they read and to do so for pleasure and general language improvement, the latter is often teacher chosen and directed, and is designed to enable students to develop specific receptive skills.

But it is not enough to tell students to “read a lot”; we need to offer them a programme which includes appropriate materials, guidance, tasks and facilities such as permanent or portable libraries of books.

Extensive reading materials

One of a fundamental successful extensive reading programme is that students should be reading material which they can understand. If they are struggling to understand every word, they will not read with pleasure and maybe they loose their interest.. We need to provide books accessible to our students.

They can take the form of original fiction and non-fiction books as well as simplifications of the established works of literature. Students at the appropriate level can read them with ease and confidence. One example could be a short extract from the second chapter of a level 1 (elementary) murder mystery for adults. In the first chapter a man in a hospital bed appears to be suffering from amnesia. In the second chapter the same man speaks to us directly:

There is a man near my bed. His clothes are white. No. Some of his clothes are white. He has a white coat, but his trousers are brown. He also has brown hair. The man in the white coat says he’s a doctor. He says his name is Doctor Cox. He tells me to call him Philip. He says he is going to help me.

But he’s not going to help me. They think I don’t remember. They think I don’t know anything. They know nothing, the doctors. Or the police. Nobody knows who I am. I sit in the bed and answer questions. They ask lots of questions.

“Do you know what amnesia is, John? Doctor Cox asks me. Doctor Cox. Doctor Philip Cox. He thinks he’s somebody. He’s nobody. I know what amnesia is. (Harmer, 2001:210)

The language is simple and controlled, but the atmosphere – in true murder-mystery style – is satisfyingly creepy. A student who likes this kind of story and whose level of English is fairly low should enjoy it enormously.

The teacher has an important role in the extensive reading programme.

Most students will not read if they are not encouraged by their teacher. So the teacher’s role is very important. For example, we can occasionally read aloud from books and show how exciting books can be. We can teach them how to choose the books depending on the kind of books (crime fiction, romantic novels, science fiction, etc) that they enjoy. Because students should be allowed to choose their own reading texts, they will not all be able reading the same texts at once, so we should encourage them to report back on their reading in a number of ways.

For example, every two weeks students can ask questions and/or tell their classmates about books they have found particularly enjoyable, noticeably awful, or we can ask them to keep a weekly reading diary, or they can write short book reviews for the class noticeboard or we can also put comment sheets into the books for students to write in, as the following example for a book called The Earthquake shows: (Harmer, 2001:212)

Table 3

Intensive reading

In order to get students to read in class we have to create interest in the topic and tasks. While teachers are encouraging students to read for general understanding, without worrying about the meaning of every single word, the students are desperate to know what each individual word means. We may encourage students to read for general understanding without understanding every word on a first or second read-through. But then, depending on what else is going to be done, we can give them a chance to ask questions about individual works and/or give them a chance to look them up. A word of caution needs to be added here. If students ask for the meaning of all the words they don’t know, the majority of a lesson may be taken up in this way. We need, therefore, to limit the amount of time spent on vocabulary. (Harmer, 2001:213)

III .6 Reading of Literature

Good books have the power to let the reader enter a new world, a world between his own imagination and that of the author. Whereas it is impossible for anyone else to conceive the way you imagine, for instance, a character in a novel, the characters in a movie or a TV-show will appear fairly similar to all who see it.

The joke illustrates that literature can make people engage with stories, which again makes them eager to communicate what they have read. Once I have finished reading a book which I have enjoyed I want to talk about it with someone else, preferably someone who also has read the book, to compare and talk about how we understood the novel.

Literature plays a vital role in many people’s lives. As it gives us opportunity to discover, analyse and evaluate the world around us.

In responding to literature, alone and with others, at home and in school, pupils are given a chance to put various emotions and experiences into words, and may thus develop new ways of seeing themselves and the world. Such a development is invaluable in preparing students for interaction with people from other parts of the world, one of the main objectives of the English subject.

Studying literature in a foreign language gives a unique window into different cultures. Combining so many aspects of learning, literature is believed to enhance Bildung and intercultural competence. Bildung is concerned with the individual development of a person, as well as his acquiring of knowledge and skills. Bildung should be promoted through education, but is also a continuing process which is enhanced from experience throughout life. An important aspect of Bildung is being socialised into a society, and developing as a democratic, knowledgeable citizen.

According to Byram (1997), intercultural competence is a person’s possession of attitudes, skills and competences which enable him to communicate successfully with people from other cultures. This aspect of Bildung is often stressed in relation to reading literature in the EFL-classroom. The concept of intercultural competence relates to the concept of Bildung, but is specifically linked to foreign language learning. In English teaching the relationship between reading literature and the development of intercultural competence is often linked to teaching novels in the classroom (Lütge, 2012; Burwitz-Melzer, 2001; Fenner, 2001).

Reading literature is important in the EFL-classroom for several reasons. First of all, as to the development of the basic skill of reading, we know that reading proficiency requires practice. In this respect, reading works of literature may help develop proficient readers. Since working with English literature means that the students have to read significant amounts of texts, literature is a great source of input for the learners, and a way of “acquiring” the language, as opposed to “learning” it.

Literature offers extensive input and students will thus slowly acquire the different aspects of the language. Without being aware of it, literature may broaden their vocabulary, and make clear to them how words can be used in many different ways in different contexts. Also, it off Literature is believed to give access to a people’s world of attitudes and values, collective imaginings and historical frames of reference. As such, literature in a foreign language opens up for an encounter with the Other . (Kramsch, 1993:175)

The choice of novels. It is very important for our students to have the opportunity to also read books they really enjoy.

Let books be your dining table,

And you shall be full of delights,

Let them be your mattress,

And you shall sleep restful nights.

St. EPHREM the Syrian (303-373)

In “Methodology and Ways of Teaching English, Module II”, Mihaela Dogaru (pp. 41-44) presents a list of activities designed for first encounters with the literary work, when students need to be attracted to the text, so that their interest is aroused:

Visual prompts. Photos or magazine pictures are useful in eliciting the response of students to the central theme or situation they are going to meet in a literary work.

Using the theme. The teacher takes a major theme from the text and explores it with the class. They are to try to identify how they feel about what they are reading and note down their thoughts.

Key words or sentences. The teacher selects a small number of key words or sentences from the first part of the text. In groups, students brainstorm for possible narrative links between the words, when each group decided on a preferred pattern of connection, a story is built up orally or in written form.

Questionnaires. Learners are given a questionnaire to fill in, to determine their attitude to the issues raised by the book’s central theme.

What happens next? This activity can take the form of a role-play. Students, in groups, discuss possible continuations, then either improvise and act them, or prepare, script, and act them out etc.

Age groups:

Teachers must make educated decisions as to what novels their pupils should read. In this respect, it is interesting to discuss what types of literature can be recommended for teenage readers.

Novels from any English speaking culture, novels which have recently become popular, or novels known as classics can readily be incorporated into the teaching syllabus.

Williams (2013:163-189) has developed characteristics for different reader groups in order to help teachers influence and encourage teenagers to engage actively with reading. The group of 16-18-year-olds coincides with the pupils in upper secondary school. She calls this group a “crossover” or semi-adult group, where pupils are likely to be in the process of becoming more confident and mature, and they are considered the most sophisticated and ambitious readers. She recommends novels which are somewhat newly published and award-winning and which display real dilemmas in which there are no simple solutions. According to Williams, novels should make readers engage emotionally through relating to the characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

She argues that novels written from the first person’s point of view are preferable in order to let the learners into the main character’s mind. Novels should be appealing to both teenagers and adults, since the pupils are in the process of growing into adulthood and therefore want to read novels which discuss themes which challenge them and make them re-evaluate and rethink their immediate emotions and reactions.

Also, the Bildungsroman which typically touches upon topics such as growing up, parents, authority and the future which lies ahead is recommended for this age group.

A similar, yet more comprehensive study of reader-roles has been provided by Appleyard (1991:94-120), who has put forth a developmental perspective of different roles which readers take on, loosely corresponding to age groups. The five roles distinguished seek different experiences from reading novels. Appleyard discovered that what characterises the adolescent reader, is a newfound interest in the inner lives of the characters. Thus, an exciting story is no longer sufficient for them to enjoy a novel.

Appleyard identifies three qualities which young readers seek from reading novels. Adolescents are in a process of discovering more about their increasingly complex inner lives, and the world around them. When reading, young adults observe and evaluate not only the fictional world and its characters, but also their own world, the people in it and themselves. First, therefore, they seek books in which they become involved and identify with the character(s).

Young readers seek inspiration from the characters in the story, by reflecting on their abilities, motives and feelings, which may be similar to or different from their own. Secondly, they want the fictional world to be much like the real world, where characters, like real people, have flaws, where life can be complicated, and where the limits between right and wrong become blurred. Thirdly, adolescents crave books where they have to think in order to understand the meaning of a text, or what is “hidden” in the text.

Fenner (2001:19) supports the idea that young learners are in the process of establishing their identity. One of the characteristics for this reader group therefore is that they are often narcissistic and will compare themselves to the characters in a book.

Vicary (2013:77-91) argues that learners of English should read extensively, which ideally means that they should read whole books. Instead of focusing on each word, in extensive reading they should try to comprehend the overall meaning of the book. Rather than reading challenging books, he claims, they should read something that is easy to comprehend. For the learner, it should not feel like work, instead it should be an experience of delight, which invites the reader to read not little, but a lot. Resembling an authentic situation, Vicary argues that the learner should get to choose from a wide range of books independently, stop reading if it is not interesting, and then pick up another one. Fenner claims that if the readers find the content interesting, they are willing to struggle to understand the text.

Since the reality of a literary text lies within the reader’s imagination, it is different from other texts in that it has a greater chance of transcending both time and place.

It opens up a possibility for the reader to place himself within a story and for him to interpret it in his own way. This means that the reader will learn not only about what he is reading, but also about himself as he is given access to other worlds. This means that the more gaps there are within a literary work, and the more meaning the reader can add to the text himself, the more effective this learning process is.

As shown, literature is considered a cultural artefact which may help develop sociocultural knowledge.

Although nowadays most of our students would rather use the internet or watch a film than read a book, they are open to reading literary texts if they are interested in the topic. As foreign language teachers, we should put them next to the beautiful and fascinating world of literature that has already captivated us.

III. 7 From Books to Movies

Image 4

Reading movies

After many years of discredit because of the stress on communication as the main goal in learning a language, literature has made a grand comeback on the stage of language teaching… playing an essential role in TEFL.

Bouman (1991:15) thinks that literature is, in fact, an ideal form of communication, and has the power to create a whole reality through the written code chosen by the writer. This medium has another advantage: it allows autonomous learning, as students can increase their contact with the second language outside the classroom by reading (I hope, for pleasure). Perhaps the only drawback of literary works is that they do not allow for immediate interaction: the reader cannot establish a process of negotiation of meaning with the writer, and he/she cannot listen to those written words.

A way to compensate for this lack is to combine literary works with their filmed versions, as we are using the written medium – literature – and the visual and aural one – films – for teaching the second language.

Difficulties Arising from Trying to Combine Literary Works and their Filmed Versions

Image 5

According to (Ellis, 1990) we could start by arguing against this type of combination. Many people strongly dislike watching a movie after having read the book, perhaps because the imaginary world depicted by the writer and imagined – or rather, visualised by the reader does not coincide with the version as seen by the film-maker or director.

The typical comment of those daring enough to take the risk of viewing a film they have already “read” is that “the film was not as good as the book”. The power of the written code is such that it can create a mental image in the mind of the reader that cannot compete with its visual adaptation, a finished product as seen by its director, although the world of the mind when reading has no limits of space, time, or resources.

To the problem of the dislike some people show when watching a film after having read the book, a second problem could be considered: when combining both modes, the difficulty arises of trying to depict, through images, words that suggest figures of speech, or archaic registers, or peculiar combinations, or even descriptions of imaginary words that many computer designers would be at pains to adapt. Nevertheless, the latter is not a problem anymore, as film technology is progressing at full speed.

According to Wood a third problem could arise if learners, usually more inclined towards video than print as a source of information and stimulation, presuppose the filmed version may be a means of saving time and effort not to read the literary work. Even though the movie provides a wider visual and aural background through the use of paralinguistic features (Wood, 1999), the written text is a unique source of linguistic input.

What I’m trying to say is that watching the movie version of great books is a bit like eating vegan food or listening to cover bands – even when it’s good, it’s just not as good as the real thing. Why? Because you’re only getting one interpretation of the real thing when in fact there could be many. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words may paint a thousand different pictures. Movies will only give you one. When you read a book, your interpretation of it is unique to you.

Both literary works and films are authentic materials that can be exploited in and outside the classroom, motivating the students to work with two codes which also have a great value as a source of entertainment. Films, in particular, constitute a stimulating and appealing activity in our everyday life, and books should also be part of it. If they do not, watching the film may stimulate the students’ interest in reading the written version.

Both films and books are very good sources of comprehensible input, which in turn is essential – though not sufficient – to promote acquisition (Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991; Ellis, 1994).

The use of both “tools" can be justified by many of the theories that explain L2 acquisition, particularly if we combine viewing or reading with communication-based activities with a focus on some grammatical considerations. Ortega, 2000).

Moreover, both films and books have the potential to create a very wide linguistic and extralinguistic context that provides a relevant schema background, making language relevant and comprehensible (Stoller, 1988). In the written mode we can see not only isolated words and sentences, but also discourse and textual elements such as reference, deixis, time and place clauses. They might offer difficulties for the students’ comprehension, but with the help of the linguistic context students may be able to understand or infer unknown words and structures, or even acquire – incidentally – some specific vocabulary (Watanabe, 1997).

On the other hand, the paralinguistic features of the filmed version allow learners to see and understand how discourse elements link all the parts of the text, especially with the use of images, music, movement, and the like. These contextual cues enrich or at least improve the students’ comprehension, and probably can also improve their competence, and even though the realisation of both modes is obviously different, they still constitute part of a context for comprehension and, hopefully, learning.

Furthermore, if students are familiarised with the story line of the book or film, they can concentrate their efforts on the linguistic features (Hemphill, Picardi and Tager-Flushbert, 1991).

In particular, we can take advantage of the universality of mass media (Mandler, Scribner, Cole and DeForest, 1980) both to develop cultural awareness and foster an interest in reading – for pleasure the written version of that story they have seen on TV or in their classroom.

Also, the comparison of both modes can evoke a critical analysis: how the filmmaker conveys metaphors and descriptions, figures of speech… in short, how he makes it possible to “see” rather than to “read” (Ross, 1991). And most important of all, how the director makes it possible to spend one hour and a half “watching” a story that has taken many long hours, and days, or even weeks, to read.

Nevertheless, we think it more advisable to choose books which use current English; it is better for our purpose – that of improving students’ competence and also they are closer to the students’ interests, which in turn make it easier for them to learn. Besides, their filmed version are easily accessible, either because they have a fashionable topic or because they form part of a series of filmed versions of the same story. There is still another reason for our choice: the world depicted in the written works and their adaptation should not be too far removed from the students’ current reality, or if it is, at least it should show some degree of connection with their culture and background knowledge (and the culture/s we want them to learn).

A lot of parents want their kids to read the book then watch the movie. But why? My opinion is that if you read the book, you have an image in your head of what the character looks like, what their voices sound like, and what the scene looks like, and usually it is pretty good. But when you watch the movie, all those images get shattered.
When you watch a movie, you start thinking that the characters in the book actually look like the actors that are in the movie. The movie producers use famous people to act out the characters in the book. When you read a book, there may be parts of the book that you really like that you would like to see on the TV screen. But then, when the movie finally comes out, the part you like isn’t even filmed!

Like in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, there was one part that always made me laugh. It was the part when the giant turns from stone to a living thing, and walks around looking for “the little witch that was running around on the ground”. I really wanted to see that part in the movie, but when the movie finally came out, that part of the book was not even in the movie, and you don’t even see the giant change back to a living thing at all. I bet that this has happened to a lot of people and that they were all disappointed.

Writing a book is a lot easier than making a movie. With a book you can describe places that come out of your imagination, which could never become “reality” no matter how hard Hollywood tries. But movies can also be better than a book. With a movie, you don’t have to read anything, you can watch a movie while doing homework if you wanted to. But with a book, the only thing you can do is read, you can’t read a book and do homework at the same time, that’s impossible. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t read a book just because I had to actually read it, but when you’re reading a book, all you can do is read the book.

But, with a book, you can bring it anywhere you want, and stop whenever you like and later, just start reading exactly where you stopped. But with a movie, you kind of have to watch it at home, and you have to remember when you stopped in order to start again. 
One thing that I don’t like about movies is that people only make movies around 3-4 hours long because they are afraid that people won’t watch it if it’s too long, which means they have to cut a lot of parts out and then put some more parts in to let it make sense. But with a book, it can be as long as the author wants it to be, as long as it all makes sense. I’ve seen people who read books that are over 600 pages long and not mind a bit, but when a 3 hour movies comes, they just can’t concentrate that long.
So I conclude that books are better than the movie.

CHAPTER IV

PRACTICAL PART

I think that we live in a world where the book as a cultural object begins to lose its importance and impact on the new generation. Seemingly more attractive alternative and, in any case, more comfortable, they tend to capture the attention of our students.

When the teacher asks the students questions related to reading books, students answer with other questions like:

Is there a movie made after the book? Or Is it on the internet? Or is it enough just the summary (possibly downloaded from the internet)?

A natural question must be asked: why students refuse to read? We can find many answers: reading versus television, reading versus computer, reading versus various ways of leisure activities, etc. For all these confrontations book seems to lose ground.

The attempt of replacing reading with spending time in front of TV or computer can be explained in the light of the new lifestyle in which the media and the Internet provide information for granted. The consequences are alarming.

In this regard, and to take the pulse of the new generation about its attitude to reading, I applied in May 2016 a questionnaire on 66 students from classes V-VIII at Scoala Gimnaziala Mădăraș.

The purpose of the questionnaire was to see what is the place of reading in the lives of my students, what types of texts they like, to see their attitudes to the texts studied in class, what other preoccupations they have and the liaison between book and computer. By interpreting the data correct conclusions will be drawn. It consists of 6 questions, each of them trying to point out students’ opinion on different aspects of their lives. The purpose was to see how useful/unuseful reading is and how much does enhance students motivation for learning English.

Questionnaire:

What does reading mean to you?

passion ;

obligation;

a way to be educated;

a way to spend your free time;

other

What kind of books do you like?

Fairy tales;

Novels;

Poetry;

Science fiction;

Other ( newspaper, creations, nothing)

The texts studied in class are:

Useful for our general knowledge;

Boring;

Mandatory;

Easy;

other

When the texts in the textbook are just fragments you:

Read the full text;

Don’t read the full text;

Watch the movie;

Don’t read at all;

Other.

5. Reading as a way of leisure replaces:

a) listening to music;

b) doing sports;

c) spending time with friends;

d) giving up watching films;

e) other.

6. Could reading be replaced by computer?

a) yes;

b) I don’t know;

c) maybe;

d) no;

e) other

Results of the Questionnaire

The first question is related to check how much students like to read. Just 12% consider it to be passion, unfortunately 50% obligation, 20% a way to be educated, 17% a way to spend your spare time and 1% a way to forget your problems. So the result is that most students read because they have to and not for pleasure.

The next question was about what kind of texts like. I wanted to find out their choices in order to use the books in class and to stimulate them to read: 28% fairy tales, 20% novels, 10% poetry, 40% science fiction, 2% other.

The third question about the texts studied in class: 50% consider they are for general knowledge, 5% boring, 10% mandatory, 30% easy, 5% other. Maybe they don’t read the texts because they find them hard or boring.

Regarding the texts in their books. This question was used to see how important reading is for them and how much they like/don’t like to read..: 50% say they read the whole text, not jut the fragment in the book, 20% don’t read the full text, 15% watch the movie, 10% don’t read at all, 5% other.

The fitth question regarding reading as a free time activity replaces. Here I wanted so see what do they like doing in their free time: 20% listening to music, 20% sports, 10% spending time with friends, 30% watching a movie, 20% other.

On the last question the results are alarming because: 30% consider that reading could be replaced by computer, 20% don’t know, 20% maybe, 25% no, 5% other. Just a quarter answered that reading could not be replaced by movie.

The conclusion is that reading is more an obligation than a passion and that students are more interested in watching television or in doing some other activities, or perhaps reading just what they like or just what they are interested in.

To see the students’ reactions to books they like. I have let them choose a book that has been made into a movie. I have worked with grades VII-VIII on Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix and with grades V-VI on Chronicles of Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Activity 1

LESSON PLAN

TEACHER:

GRADE: VII-VIII

LEVEL: Upper-intermediate

NO. OF CLASSES/WEEK: 2 classes/week

TOPIC: Fictional Heroes

LESSON: “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix”

MOTIVATION: This lesson was conceived in order to provide the students with more in-depth information on one of today’s highly popular fantasy series, Harry Potter, helping students to analyse the hero status of its protagonist in relation to the general features of this archetype. The use of critical thinking strategies will allow the students to express their thoughts, opinions and feelings on the subject in a personal manner, motivating them to actively participate in the class activities.

PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS: The students will base their new acquisitions on the knowledge they have already acquired during classes on fantasy literature and on the information taken from the media on the Harry Potter series, and on the fact that they have already seen the film. They are also familiarised with some of the critical thinking strategies to be used in this lesson.

COMPETENCES:

to be able to brainstorm on a given topic

to analyse ideas in a text and then share them with a classmate

to express and argument their opinions

to feel confident about engaging in a debate on a given subject

MATERIALS: worksheets, notebooks, blackboard, picture

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Rowling, J. K. 2004. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bloomsbury, London

Whited, L. A. (ed.) 2002. The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. Perspectives on a Literary

Phenomenon, University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London.Available at:

http://books.google.ro/books?id=iO5pApw2JycC&printsec=frontcover&dq=

*** SparkNotes – Harry Potter. Available at:

http://gsearch.sparknotes.com/search?q= harry+potter& searchbg=&template

=default&output= xml_no_dtd&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&client= default_frontend

&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&site=default_collection&x=17& y=28)

THE LESSON STAGES:

I. Warm up: (lockstep) (5 minutes)

The students are told they are going to see the picture of one of the most famous fictional characters nowadays; they have to guess who it is. The answers may be: Frodo, Spiderman, Superman, etc. Some students will probably guess it is Harry Potter. The teacher shows the picture and sticks it on the blackboard; underneath she writes his name: HARRY POTTER. The students are asked to find at least three words that can be formed with the letters that form the name: “potter”, “pot”, “art”, “try”, “heart”, etc. At least one student will probably discover the word HERO – the theme word of the lesson.

2. Clustering (individual work) (5 minutes)

The nucleus word, HERO, is written in the middle of the page, and for five minutes, each student has to write down around it any idea that comes to mind on this topic. Then, connections may be drawn between ideas. The students should make no judgement about the thoughts, just put them down. When the time is up, the students will read their ideas, and as many as possible will be written on the blackboard.

The students might associate the theme word with: bravery, endurance, faith, strength, optimism, reward, fight, good vs. evil, growth, fear, intelligence, Hercules, Harry Potter, Frodo, Prince Caspian etc. The teacher then announces that, since they started with the picture of Harry Potter, he will be the character they will discuss during this class.

3. Practice (15 minutes) group work

Some classes before students have watched the film Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. Now in groups they receive sheets with fragments from the book and after a quick scanning they should be able to reorder the events.. They are then asked to fill in a paper with differences: book versus movie. They work in groups then they come to fill in on a flipchart. The teacher asks them:

Why do you think these changes were made?

II. Reciprocal Teaching (pair work) 15 minutes

Now some of the students are given a photo of Harry and of Voldemort his enemy. Then they are given sheets with the Venn diagram and they are asked to write some traits of the two characters. The diagram will be done at the board too. Other students are distributed a two-page worksheet presenting some critical considerations on Harry Potter’s hero status. An explanation of some difficult words is also included. The students must work in pairs, each member of the pair being responsible for one page of the worksheet, read it and take out the main ideas. Then the members of the pairs take turns playing the role of “teacher”, summarising what was just read, trying to clarify the parts that are unclear. They try to extract the main ideas and to express their opinion on the passages.

Students should notice that, while some of the passages present the general traits of a hero and the way Harry Potter fits into this pattern, others present Harry as an anti-hero, or at least an unlikely hero. Again, the ideas are then shared with the rest of the class.

III. Refection (10 minutes)

1. Corners (group work)

The students have already reached the conclusion that Harry Potter can be seen either as a typical hero, fitting perfectly into the pattern of this archetype, or as an anti-hero, due to his weaknesses. His successes might be due to his good luck or to the fact that he is protected by powerful forces and people (his mother’s sacrifice, Dumbledore, his friends etc.). A question arises: Is Harry Potter a real hero? This is the subject of the next activity.

The teacher asks the students to write for three minutes, presenting their opinions on the subject. Then the students who believe that Harry is really a hero are asked to go to one corner of the room. Those who believe the opposite is true should go to another corner. There may be students who undecided, or who believe that Harry presents some characteristics of the hero type, but these do not make him a real hero; they will occupy another corner of the room.

The students in each group share their papers with the rest of the group for five minutes. The group will then have two select two spokespersons to represent them in the debate that will follow.

The teacher calls for a debate, by inviting each of the groups, in turn, to state succinctly its position and the major reasons for supporting their view. Once the formal statement has been presented by the spokespersons, other members of the groups should be encouraged to participate in the debate. The teacher may stimulate the conversation when necessary, by raising other issues, related to those that have been presented.

The teacher explains to the participants that they should feel free to switch groups at any time, if they have been persuaded by another group’s arguments. Participants should also take notes on their thinking while they listen and discuss.

When the time is almost up, the teacher encourages the students to reach some consensus and then stops the discussion.

IV. Homework

The students have to write a position paper, setting out their individual positions and the reasons behind them (no less then 200 words). The teacher praises the students and marks the best contributions. The class is dismissed.

Clustering:

Book vs. Movie:

Image 6

What am I noticing about the written text that is different from the digital text?

Why do you think these changes were made?

Figure 3

Image 7

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON HARRY POTTER

Heroes respond to a call to sacrifice and to give their lives. Their lives begin in the ordinary world, where they are summoned to adventure and perilous tasks. This involves, with the help of a mentor, crossing a threshold into another world in which they undergo various trials and encounter allies and foes. There are other elements in the journey, but eventually the hero returns to the ordinary world bearing something of benefit. The journey is an archetypal pattern, and there are myriad ways in which a story may be told and yet display the archetype […] Harry’s great returning gift is that of hope – hope that seemingly implacable evil will be overcome.

[Harry] is not in fact strictly a hero in classical terms, but an ordinary boy, mundane and reluctant […]. Although he has remarkable gifts of magic, he has to rely on moral courage and on his friends to accomplish his tasks. He is not the self-sufficient, individualistic hero. In mythic terms, he is very like the ordinary hobbits Frodo and Sam in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, whose weakness and small stature accomplish what the great and powerful cannot. […] Harry’s testings and trials prepare him for his ultimate suffering in the last book, which leads at last to healing and peace.

(Colin Duriez, The Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter, 2007, pp. 168-169)

Summon, tr.v. sum·moned = To order to take a specified action; bid.

Mundane, adj. = Relating to, characteristic of, or concerned with commonplaces;

ordinary.

Reluctant, adj. = Unwilling; disinclined.

Self-sufficient, adj. = Able to provide for oneself without the help of others; independent.

Rowling has been very clear on the Bildungsroman aspect of her series, having said of Harry, “I do want him to grow up”. […] Most heroes journey as part of their development. […] he journeys each year to Hogwarts […] a place of tests: some academic, some practical, some moral. Many of these tests include adventure, danger, choice – heady stuff that forces Harry to grow or fail. And failure in a universe of magic is too often fatal.

(Mary Pharr, Harry Potter as Hero-in-Progress in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, 2002, p.58)

Heady, adj. = extremely exciting.

[…] Harry is not the most focused or relentless hero, at least not until later in the book. His tendency to stray from his quest is not literal or physical, but mental and emotional. When there are no clear leads and nothing to do, […] Harry tends to lose focus and drift, following his emotions. This happens most dangerously in Godric’s Hollow, when Harry leads them into a trap, his real reasons for going there having nothing to do with the quest and everything to do with his grief and doubt concerning Dumbledore.

Because Harry was famous before he even knew he was a wizard, much of his personality is shaped by his desire to live up to his fame. He steers clear of special treatment, flattery, and praise. He strives to live a normal wizard’s life, and to a great extent he does. He has close friendships, enemies, dilemmas, and triumphs just like any other twelve-year-old boy. But Harry is distinct because of his courage and loyalty.

Harry is not a typical or mythological hero. He is an underdog, with his skinny stature, broken glasses, and relative inexperience in the wizard world. Yet he lives up to his fame by bravely entering situations with the inborn faith that someone – either himself or someone he has befriended – will get him through the situation alive.

(Spark Notes. Available at: http://gsearch.sparknotes.com/search?q= harry+potter&

searchbg=&template=default&output= xml_no_dtd&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&client=

default_frontend&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&site=default_collection&x=17& y=28)

Relentless, adj. = Steady and persistent; unremitting.

Stray, intr.v. strayed = To deviate from the correct course.

Drift, n. = The direction in which something is going.

Underdog, n. = One at a disadvantage and expected to lose.

Inborn, adj. = Natural; possessed by a person from birth.

Picture to be presented during the Evocation stage of the lesson:

Image 8

Activity 2

LESSON PLAN

TEACHER:

GRADE: VII-VIII

LEVEL: Upper-intermediate

NO. OF CLASSES/WEEK: 2 classes/week

TOPIC: Fictional Heroes

LESSON: “Harry Potter – Wizard School without the Magic”

MOTIVATION: In this lesson students will learn more about Harry Potter, a character they like very much. With the help ofa short video we will introduce some new vocabulary as : pop culture, mythology, archetypes, urban legends.

COMPETENCES: Students will:

Reflect on the adaptation of favourite books into movies;

Compare Harry Potter withHarry PotterWizard School without the magic;

Find out definitions for the termspop culture, mythology, archetypes, urban legends and introduce them into short film scripts;

Write and produce short films based on their scripts.

MATERIALS: paper, board, video projector, Copies of Harry PotterWizard School

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Mitchell, Elvis, 2011, "Harry Potter Wizard School without the Magic", New York Times Company.

Meet Harry Potter (http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/home.asp) is the U.S. publisher site for the series, with chapter excerpts, discussion guides, fun and games with Harry, and an interview with the author.

The Encyclopedia Potterica

(http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1900/index.html) is all about Harry’s world, from A-Z.

THE LESSON STAGES:

I. Warm up (1O minutes), lockstep

Teacher writes on the board some questions and after thinking for a few minutes students and teacher answer them together. The questions are:

Think about your favourite book. If it were used as a basis of a movie, what elements of the book would you expect to see in the movie?

How closely you would expect the characters, the plot, the setting to respect the book?

How would you expect those elements to change in its movie form?

II. Practice (20 minutes) whole class

Students receive the movie review for “Harry Potter Wizard School without the magic”, by Elvis Mitchell (appendix 2), they read it aloud and then discuss it with the whole class.

Teacher helps them by asking questions about the text. Like:

At the beginning of the review, to what does Mitchell compare Harry Potter? Why does he make this comparison?

How does the film begin?

What is the movies most entertaining scene?

What did the critic noticed about the presence of minorities in the film and how does this affect his review?

How did the critic feel about the movie? How do you know?

III. Practice new terminology (2O minutes) group work

Teacher writes on the board some words from the review: pop culture, archetype, urban legend, mythology. Students have to give the right definition of the words using the context. They write the definitions on the board.

Then in groups they have to write at least three examples for each word. Then they will exchange their papers with other group. Then they choose one example for each category and consider how to write a movie script for a short film that includes all the four words.

For example, the plot might be based on an urban legend in which a particular pop culture myth is exploited by a main character which represents an archetype.

They will begin in class for the teacher to help them and then continue at home. They will then present their short video or script to the class next time.

Activity 3

Movie clips: listening activity

Objectives

By watching the video students will:

Learn real English vocabulary, as spoken by real native speakers;

Practice and improve listening and comprehensive skills;

Learn proper pronunciation;

Feel that learning English can be fun

Learning through media (movies, music, etc) is one of the best ways to learn a new language.

We will use a short video called Adventureland. (YouTube)

Students in the V-VI th grade will watch the video, and pay attention to it. One of the advantages of working with video is that you can pause it whenever you want. Students will then have to answers a few questions related to the video.

Answer the questions:

How many giant pandas is James allowed to give away?

Two per day; b) none; c) three per day.

Which department does James want to work in?

Rides; b) games; c) food.

3. The general rule at the amusement park is that:

Nothing is free; b) you can let your friends ride for free; c) you can let family members ride for free.

4. The man:

a) Seems somewhat interested in James’ resume; b) wants to take a look at James’ resume; c) doesn’t really care about James’ resume.

Activity 4

Wizardry at school

Objectives:

Students will:

Brainstorm what aspects of their own school day could use a dose of wizardry to improve them;

Write a scene that shows what might happen on an average day at their school if magic of some kind was suddenly injected.

Students work in groups and they will have to write and read a short passage in which to imagine what would happen if Potters kind of wizardry was part of a day at their school.

Teacher asks students a question: What aspects of a typical school day could use a “dose of wizardry” or magic to improve them?

The answers will be written on the board and they will have to choose some aspect of the school day listed on the board.

Teacher tells them that they will have to write or think a scene in which some kind of magic changes it. They will have just to prove how that magic affects just one place in that school at a specific time. They then will read aloud.

Activity 5

Movie vs. Book – Compare and Contrast Guide and Critical Analysis

I have given students from VII-VIII th grade a movie vs book compare and contrast guide to help them achieve more thorough understanding of the text. They will be free to decide which version did they like better.

The result was that have been both disappointed and delighted by the movie, but they liked the book. They consider that many important parts were left out in the movie.

“Movie vs. Book”

Compare and Contrast Guide

Table 4

“Movie vs. Book” Critical Analysis

Table 5

Activity 6

Quizzes

Are one of the most successful activity types and a fantastic way to see what our pupils have already learnt and they can be equally useful as a consolidation exercise. I will use it here to test my students’ knowledge regarding the Harry Potter book and movie. My students love quizzes so it will be a pleasure for them to do it.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Book vs. Movie Quiz

Question 1:

When Harry is sitting in the park at the beginning of the movie, what do Dudley and his gang do?

They confront him and make fun of his nightmares.They do not notice him and continue walking.They attack him.Dudley’s friends depart and Dudley begins to make fun of Harry.

Question 2:

In the film, where does Hermione first introduce Harry and Ron to Luna Lovegood?

in the Hogwarts Expressin the carriage leading from the train platform to Hogwartsin the Great Hallin Potions classin the Room of Requirement

Question 3:

In the book, what must Mr. Weasley and Harry do to enter the Ministry of Magic before Harry’s hearing?

He and Harry must step inside a London phone boothMr. Weasley must make a phone call to the Ministry of Magic once he and Harry are inside the phone boothThey use the Floo NetworkThey use a

Question 4:

In the film, how are George and Fred’s attempt at using Extendable Ears foiled?

Crookshanks eats the earHermione cuts the string they are attached toMrs. Weasley puts an Imperturbable Charm on the door to the Order of the Phoenix meeeting roomThey are too far away for the ears to work

Question 5:

In the film, which character alerts Professor Umbridge to the existence of Dumbledore’s Amry?

Marietta Edgecombe (Cho’s friend)Cho ChangDraco MalfoyGinny Weasley

Question 6:

In the book, what greatly angers the Centaurs?

Hagrid leaves them for a long period of time to search for giantsThe ministry restricts their territoryOne of their members, Firenze, leaves the forest to teach at HogwartsProfessor Umbridge becomes Headmistress

Question 7:

In the film, OWLS are interrupted by what disruption?

Fred and George Weasley cause a stir before leaving Hogwarts for goodHagrid is sacked as a professor and is then chased from his cabinHarry has a vision of Sirius being tortured by VoldemortA snow storm Question 7:

Question 8:

In the film, what do Fred and George use to mark their departure from school?

They create a lake within the castleThey poison Professor Umbridge’s foodThey fly into the Great Hall and set off a huge fireworks displayThey turn Draco Malfoy into a ferret Question 8:

Question 9:

In the book, how does Harry hear the Prophecy about himself and Voldemort?

He hears it from Professor Trelawney in Dumbledore’s PensieveDumbledore tells himHe hears it from the crystal ball-like object he finds at the Ministry of MagicVoldemort tells him

Question 10:

In the film, which portrait howells angrily whenever there are visitors at The Order of the Phoenix headquaters?

A portrait of Sirius’s motherA portrait of SiriusA Black family PortraitThere are no howling portraits in the film

(http://www.factmonster.com/quizzes/harry-potter-phoenix-movie/3.html)

With the V- VI graders the activities were as follows

Activity 7

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe begins during the World War II in London, during which the German Nazis dropped bombs on the city. As a result, the Pevensie children are sent to live with the old professor in his countryside house. The discovery of Narnia happened quickly and you may have many questions about the children and the professor that are left unanswered.

This exercise is intended to be one for a study group or class that can guide us in reading and understanding a text.

In the first column, write what you already know about the topic. In the second column, write what you want to know about the topic and after you have completed your research, write what you learned in the third column.

Students have to fill in the table first individually then check the answers with the whole class.

Image 9

Activity 8

Comparing the book and movie.

The book and movie versions of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe chronicle the same story, but in slightly different ways. On your own, try to come up with a list of five differences you notice after reading the book and seeing the movie. Students work in pairs then check their list with the class and maybe fill in with new information.

After writing some differences students along with the teacher discuss and answer some questions that remained unanswered.

How did the beginning of the book differ from the begging of the movie?

Was the scenery the way you imagined it?

Were there any characters or events that were present in the movie but not in the book?

What was missing in the movie that was in the book?

How is the role of the professor different in the book than the movie?

Does the movie end in the same way the book does?

Activity 9 – Debate

Good or evil

Objectives

Students will:

engage in informal group discussions, pose questions and debate answers, think critically, and contribute their own information and ideas;

define good and evil;

support their ideas that human nature is good-or-evil.

Teacher reminds students a few things about the characters in the book. In the book and movie, Narnia is divided into two parts. On one side are the creatures that remain on the side of Aslan, hoping of springtime and freedom to live peacefully. On the other side are the creatures that side with the White Witch (to them she is the “Queen”), who support her reign and the never ending winter that has been cast upon the land. For the children it is not easy to make a difference between good or evil when they reach Narnia.

In a conversation with Peter, Edmund argues that they may not really know who is good and who is bad:

If you’re not still too high and mighty to talk to me, I’ve something to say which you’d better listen to.” “What is it?” asked Peter. “Hush! Not so loud,” said Edmund, “there’s no good frightening the girls. But have you realized what we’re doing?” “What?” said Peter, lowering his voice to a whisper. “We’re following a guide we know nothing about. How do we know which side that bird is on? Why shouldn’t it be leading us into a trap?” “That’s a nasty idea. Still – a robin you know. They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read. I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side.” “If it comes to that, which is the right side? How do we know that the fauns are in the right and the Queen (yes, I know we’ve been told she’s a witch) is in the wrong? We don’t really know anything about either.

(C. S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, pp. 58-59)

Narnia is split into two different sides during the battle. Teacher tells students that they will have to create their own mock debate over the White Witch. Is she good or evil?

Half of your group will adopt the role of Peter, Susan, Lucy or a creature on the side of Aslan. The other half will take on the role of a creature on the side of the Queen, as they call her. Each side is trying to convince Edmund that she is either good or evil. Remember to take on the perspective of the character you pick from the hat. If you are assigned to be her dwarf, you will probably feel a lot of loyalty toward her. In one box will be the good characters and in the other the bad ones. Students will have to pick the cards and join their group on the correct side of the room. One of them will be Edmund and he’ll have the right to choose a side at the end. Students work in groups and have 5-10 minutes to think of arguments against the other side. I will attach the table with characters.

Activity 10

Character web

Students receive a worksheet and they have to fill it in with as much information as they can.

1) On the left-hand side write down a few characteristics of each sibling prior to the adventures in Narnia.

2) In the middle describe any events in the story that affect or change the character for the worse or better.

3) In the last column explain how this character ends up displaying the traits of his or her title as king or queen. How did he or she make it there?

4) In the final row describe yourself prior to a changing point in your life so far. Describe this event or person who changed you.

In the final column give yourself a title that reflects who you are now or who you wish to be in the future.

Table 6

My children’s opinions on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and on The Chronicles of Narnia differ depending on age, on the fact that they like or not reading/watching something. I will share some of their opinions.

Activity 11

Reading movies

Objectives:

To analyze the effectiveness of using movies in class.

To examine the results of using movies with reading activities.

Students work in groups. Half of them (group I) have to read fragments from the chosen books without seeing the movie and the other half ( group II) will watch the movie without having read the book. Then group I receive a short list of vocabulary words and phrases used in the book for a better understanding of the story and they are given a cover picture and the book title for discussion. Group II is shown the movie trailer to introduce the theme. After both groups finish their task, they reunite together and exchange opinions.

Another exercise for the same activity could be:

The teacher should sit students in pairs one facing the other one. But one of them should be watching the screen, the other facing the back of the class. The teacher should select a short fragment of the video that contains visuals actions and the students who face the screen will watch it but without any sound, so the watchers will describe what is on the screen to their partner. After that, the student who did not watch the video, should talk about it, taking into account what his/her partner described to him/her.

This kind of activity offers them a lot of fun.

As students enjoyed these books and activities and they had a lot of fun being in the characters place, living and creating their own world, I have decided to make an optional course based on fairy tale.

It will be called Reading literature and it will look like this:

Optional Schedule

Reading Literature

The course addresses to my students in the VIII grade who already have some important knowledge in English.

The works I have chosen for reading and watching through their screening, try to make English fun and more attractive and interesting, and also try to make students to be more attracted and interested in what they are studying. Through English classes students are already familiar with some notions of culture, literature, civilization, festivals, customs, lifestyle.

As I have said earlier, students do not consider reading as something useful, interesting, enjoyable and necessary for their general knowledge.

I will try with this course to give students the opportunity to escape from everyday life through English.

In this sense the works I have chosen bring a little magic into our world because I think we need it. The course is based on the works of writers whose contribution to world literature is recognized and the world they offer our eyes is a world where purity and innocence saves us and shapes us as adults, a world of fairy tale.

By reading passages from the chosen books and by viewing their screenings, as well as by introducing fantastic into reality offers new perspectives on our everyday life and on ourselves and escaping from the real world will allow students to use their imagination in creative purposes and to use expressions and language elements that could not be used in other social contexts.

Students will discover how attractive English can be and interesting worlds with new rules with which they could never encounter in other contexts.

The works offer a new perspective of the world, thus making students develop their imagination through English.

General skills:

1. Obtaining information by receiving oral and written messages, in order to improve language skills and discipline

2. Production of oral and written messages in English in order to issue some reflections on writers and works studied;

3. Developing taste for cinema and literature;

4. Being selective in cultural and artistic area

5. Developing skills in analyzing a literary text

Communicative functions of the language

VALUES AND ATTITUDES:

1. Awareness of the role of English as a means of communicating ideas

2. Critical and flexible thinking

3. Positive relationships with others, respect for human diversity;

4. Involve prospective thinking through understanding the role of history in the present life and as a predictive factor of changes;

5. Resolving disputes about nonviolence, assuming ethnic, religious and cultural tolerance

6. Develop pro-active attitudes in personal and social life.

CONTENTS

J. R .R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

C. S. Lewis,The Chronicles of Narnia

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter

Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

Michael Ende, Never Ending Story

Philip Pullman, Golden Compass

Assessment methods

1. ORAL

Predictive – to assess communication skills

Continuation direct observation and drawing an observation cards Working Group

2. WRITTEN

Initial – to verify written communication skills

Sumative – realizing essays

3. ALTERNATIVE METHODS

Works practice – realization and presentation of projects

Role play, dramatic interpretation

Portfolio group and/or individual

Creation of a group diary

Bibliography

1. Internet (www. Grade Saver.com) – Search literary texts

2. Literary works presented in Chapter Contents

3. Dictionaries, encyclopedias

4. Existing educational softs

5. Tucker Nicholas, 1999, Children’s Literature in Education, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp 221-234

6. McDowell Myles, March 1973, Children’s Literature in Education, Volume 4, issue 1, pp. 50-63

At the end of the activities we have done during classes I have given my students a questionnaire whose aim was to illicit students’ feedback regarding using movie in the class and to investigate the relationship between movie-viewing and their performance and to establish how useful / unuseful teaching with video is and how much does inhance students motivation for learning English.

Questionnaire:

Q1. Do you think watching movies has a beneficial effect on learning English?

Q2. Do you think your movie preferences will affect your learning?

Q3. Do you think English subtitle are good in learning English?

Q4. Do you agree you have learned some English watching the film?

Q5. Do you think the dialogues in the film can be used in daily life?

At the first question 86% of the students answered that watching movies has a beneficial effect on learning English.

At the second question 55% think that movies can affect their learning in the way that it depends on the movie watched.

At the third question 72% consider that subtitles are good at the beginning until they get used to just listen and not to wait for the translation to be offered by granted. And another reason could be that they didn’t have too much exposure to the movie-based teaching activities.

At the fourth question 57% consider that they have learned many things and helped them understand the story line of a movie and that movies motivated them to learn English.

At the last question 30% consider that scenes from the movies can be used in everyday life.

The results of the questionnaire were that students can learn better using this method and they become more interested. They have learnt new words, new vocabulary and thus they can express more fluently. This method increases the efficiency of the teaching and learning process.

CONCLUSIONS

Literature and culture in the EFL Classes provide elements and perspectives through which students cease to regard a foreign language as a harsh and cold code used by people who have little to do with their own context or identity.

Through literature as well as culture, students establish an intimate connection with the target language as they become aware of how much this is a living system that changes and mutates according to the needs of its native and foreign language speakers. They also realize that their own personal, social and historical context has been influenced by a foreign language and a foreign culture. Culture opens the door for students to increase their knowledge of the target culture.

As the study shows, literature, in spite of some weak points provides a motivating drive for language learning and teaching due to its spectacular features.

We have seen that teaching literature through reading and watching, through group work especially is effective in secondary classrooms. We as teachers are and should be trained in doing such activities. Most students can work well if teacher offers assistance and provides time for students to assess their own effectiveness, the case of my students.

It is even possible to say that reading can be better understood by sharing, exchanging and socializing. The learners become freer and can explore and notice their own improvement within a friendly and fellow feeling environment.

According to the present study children of all ages like to read fantasy books and enjoy watching fantasy stories, including fairy tales, animal toy fantasies or sword and sorcery stories. Fantasy literature is popular among children and teenagers, because it introduces them to the pleasure of reading from young age and as seen develops children’s imagination and creativity.

I have seen that the right choice of the book can offer students new vocabulary, and it can be a pleasure for the student to finish reading it.

In conclusion:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of some book screenings?

The disadvantages are particularly focused on education. For hundreds of years, books were the basis for human imagination and vocabulary. They develop our general knowledge, stimulate our feelings, imagination and love of art. Through reading the reader gives life to the events and characters in the book. Movies do not allow interaction between plot and characters by imagining them in our minds. . Some students might resist viewing the movie without or with English subtitles. These films take more effort to follow because of the need to read the subtitles and watch the scenes.

The books serve to educate our mind and spirit.

The advantage is that for some people they represent time and money gained by seeing the movie, and the fact that it is convenient for us.

Films had a positive effect on students’ language learning process.

Using films combined with reading helped students to become active participants in the classroom activities. Films improve learners’ interaction in class and provide students with more opportunities to use English. I faced difficulties while selecting suitable films for different levels and that watching a movie might be very time consuming.

I have received positive feedback from students when involved in films along with the reading activities and as a result students were participating in the classroom debates and vocabulary activities as well as written assignments related to the movie review. They claim that they enjoyed the assigned activities in the classroom.

Students were more motivated to see and hear real life situation than to follow the activities related to book. Their impression was that films also provide a relaxed atmosphere. Students claim that using movie is a good way to improve English vocabulary and gives them more chances to practice English.

Most of students said that they have learned new words, approximately 3-5 mainly because they have been repeated many times. While watching the movie and completing the vocabulary activities, students acquire and use new words. Learning new vocabulary helps students become more fluent because the more words they know, the easier it is to express themselves.

Films helped them improve reading comprehension, writing and speaking ability. After watching the movie, they were motivated to read the book. They were able to discuss and analyse the characters and had a better picture of the events.

Listening and reading are active process of trying to understand the meaning of a word, a phrase or a sentence. Films draw their attention and captured their interest.

The use of film/TV in the EFL classroom is especially useful as no teacher alone can reproduce the variety of situations, voices, accents, themes and presentation techniques that are a feature of this medium. (Hill, 1999, 2)

But I think people should read a book because they actually want to read the book and every book should be a new story.

Books develop verbal abilities and improve our imagination, by reading a written description of an event or a place, the mind is responsible for creating that image in our head, instead of having the image placed in front of us when we watch TV.

So both reading a book and watching a movie have advantages and disadvantages but we have to struggle a bit to convince our students that reading is very important for their development as humans.

In the world we are living, everybody should have at least a little knowledge about a foreign language, especially English. It is a good thing to speak a foreign language but teachers need to find interesting and enjoyable ways in order to involve children in successful learning process and enhance their progress, which is mostly not an easy task. For many children language learning is not the motivational factor.

Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different. (Stephen King)

Appendix 1

‘Harry Potter’ Wizard School Without the Magic

– By ELVIS MITCHELL

The world may not be ready yet for the film equivalent of books on tape, but this peculiar phenomenon has arrived in the form of the film adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The most highly awaited movie of the year has a dreary, literal-minded competence, following the letter of the law as laid down by the author. But it’s all muted flourish, with momentary pleasures, like Gringott’s, the bank staffed by trolls that looks like a Gaud throwaway. The picture is so careful that even the tape wrapped around the bridge of Harry’s glasses seems to have come out of the set design. (It never occurred to anyone to show him taping the frame together.)

The movie comes across as a covers act by an extremely competent tribute band not the real thing but an incredible simulation and there’s an audience for this sort of thing. But watching Harry Potter is like seeing Beatlemania staged in the Hollywood Bowl, where the cheers and screams will drown out whatever’s unfolding onstage.

To call this movie shameless is beside the point. It would probably be just as misguided to complain about the film’s unoriginality because (a) it has assumed that the target audience doesn’t want anything new and (b) Ms. Rowling’s books cannibalize and synthesize pop culture mythology, proof of the nothing-will-ever-go-away ethic. She has come up with something like Star Wars for a generation that never had a chance to thrill to its grandeur, but this is Young Sherlock Holmes as written by C. S. Lewis from a story by Roald Dahl.

The director, Chris Columbus, is as adept as Ms. Rowling at cobbling free-floating cultural myths into a wobbly whole. The first film from a Columbus script, Gremlins, had the cheeky cheesiness of an urban legend written for Marvel Comics. Mr. Columbus probably felt like the right choice for Harry Potter because he has often used the same circuit boards as Ms. Rowling to design his fables. His Home Alone movies, Mrs. Doubtfire and Step Mom employ the theme of abandonment by parents as if it were a brand name. And like Mr. Columbus’s films, Ms. Rowling’s novels pull together archetypes that others have long exploited. This movie begins with a shot of a street sign that will cause happy young audiences to erupt in recognition, as the dry-witted giant Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) and Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) drop a baby at the Doorstep of Destiny.

Years later Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), sporting the jagged thunderbolt scar across his forehead, is living there with his terrors of an aunt (Fiona Shaw) and uncle (Richard Griffiths).

Harry is the kid all kids dream they are. His special abilities are recognized by people other than the ones who have raised him. Hagrid returns to rescue him from his tiny room under the stairs and clues Harry in about the boy’s inner force, which is why he doesn’t fit into the world of Muggles, the non-magical and nonbelievers.

Harry is shown the way to Hogwarts, an English boarding school for wizards run by Professor Dumbledore (Richard Harris), where Harry pals up with the gawky but decent Ron (Rupert Grint) and the bossy, precocious Hermione (Emma Watson). The instructors, who rule the classrooms with varying degrees of imperiousness, include the acid Snape (Alan Rickman) and the mousy stutterer Quirrell (Ian Hart).

The casting is the standout, from the smaller roles up; it seems that every working British actor of the last 2 years makes an appearance. John Hurt blows through as an overly intense dealer in magic equipment, schooling Harry on selecting his tools. While shopping for his magic equipment, Harry comes across the Sorcerer’s Stone, a bedeviled jewel whose power affects his first year at the enchanted school.

Mr. Radcliffe has an unthinkably difficult role for a child actor; all he gets to do is look sheepish when everyone turns to him and intones that he may be the greatest wizard ever. He could have been hobbled by being cast because he resembles the Harry of the book cover illustrations. It’s a horrible burden to place on a kid, but it helps that Mr. Radcliffe does have the long-faced mournfulness of a 60’s pop star. He also possesses a watchful gravity and, shockingly, the large, authoritative hands of a real wizard.

The other child actors shine, too. Ms. Watson has the sass and smarts to suggest she might cast a spell of her own on Harry in the coming years and, one supposes, sequels. Mr. Grint has a surprising everyman quality, but the showstopper is Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy. This drolly menacing blond with a widow’s peak is Harry’s plotting foe, and he has the rotted self-confidence of one of the upperclassmen from Lindsay Anderson’s If. There has never been a kid who got so much joy from speaking his oddball name.

Ms. Shaw and Mr. Griffiths are enjoyably swinish, the most resolute of Muggles. Mr. Rickman, whose licorice-black pageboy has the bounce of a coiffure from a hair products ad, is a threatening schoolroom don who delivers his monologues with a hint of mint; his nostrils flare so athletically that he seems to be doing tantric yoga with his sinuses. The mountainously lovable Mr. Coltrane really is a fairy-tale figure that kids dream about.

The movie’s most consistently entertaining scene features a talking hat, and that’s not meant as an insult. The Sorting Hat, which has more personality than anything else in the movie, assigns the students to the various dormitories; it puts Harry, Ron and Hermione together.

But the other big set pieces are a letdown. The Quidditch match the school sport that’s part polo, part cricket and part Rollerball, played on flying brooms has all the second-rate sloppiness of the race in Stars Wars Episode 1The Phantom Menace. It’s a blur of mortifyingly ordinary computer-generated effects.

Given that movies can now show us everything, the manifestations that Ms. Rowling described could be less magical only if they were delivered at a news conference. And the entrance that may be as eagerly awaited as Harry’s appearance the arrival of Voldemort (Richard Bremmer), the archvillain is a disappointment, a special effect that serves as a reminder of how much he stands in Darth Vader’s shadow.

This overly familiar movie is like a theme park that’s a few years past its prime; the rides clatter and groan with metal fatigue every time they take a curve. The picture’s very raggedness makes it spooky, which is not the same thing as saying the movie is intentionally unsettling.

No one has given Harry a pair of Hogwarts-edition Nikes, nor do he, Hermione and Ron stop off to super- size it at the campus McDonald’sexclusions that seem like integrity these days. (There’s no need for product placement. The Internet is likely to have a systems crash from all the kids going online to order maroon-and-gold scarves, which Harry and his dorm mates wear.)

Another kind of exclusion seems bothersome, though. At a time when London is filled with faces of colour, the fleeting appearances by minority kids is scarier than Voldemort. (Harry’s gorgeous owl, snow white with sunken dark eyes and feather tails dappled with black, gets more screen time than they do.)

Mr. Columbus does go out of his way to give a couple of lines to a little boy with a well-groomed head of dreadlocks. This movie may not be whiter than most, but the peering- from-the-side lines status accorded to minorities seems particularly offensive in a picture aimed at kids. It’s no different in the books, really, but young imaginations automatically correct for this paucity.

A lack of imagination pervades the movie because it so slavishly follows the book. The filmmakers, the producers and the studio seem panicked by anything that might feel like a departure from the book which already feels film-ready so Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stonenever takes on a life of its own.

Someone has cast a sleepwalker’s spell over the proceedings, and at nearly two and a half hours you may go under, too. Its literal-mindedness makes the film seem cowed by the chilling omnipresence of its own Voldemort, Ms. Rowling, who hovered around the production.

The movie is so timid it’s like someone who flinches when you extend a hand to shake. This film is capable of a certain brand of magic it may turn the faithful into Muggles.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested), probably so that kids older than 12 won’t think it’s baby stuff. It includes scenes of magic someone must have found intense and threatening and a soup on of strong language.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE

Directed by Chris Columbus; written by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J. K. Rowling; director of photography, John Seale; edited by Richard Francis-Bruce; music by John Williams; production designer, Stuart Craig; visual effects supervisor, Rob Legato; produced by David Heyman; released by Warner Brothers. Running time146 minutes. This film is rated PG.

WITH Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), John Cleese (Nearly Headless Nick), Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid), Warwick Davis (Professor Flitwick), Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dursley), Richard Harris (Professor Dumbledore), Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell), John Hurt (Mr. Ollivander), Alan Rickman (Professor Snape), Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley), Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall), Julie Walters (Mrs. Weasley), Zo Wanamaker (Madame Hooch), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley), David Bradley (Mr. Filch) and Richard Bremmer (Lord Voldemort).

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Appendix 7

Appendix 8

Appendix 9

Appendix 10

Appendix 11

Appendix 12

Appendix 13

Appendix 14

Appendix 15

Appendix 16

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WEBGRAPHY

http://www.monografias.com/trabajos68/readins-comprehension-teaching-english/readins-comprehension-teaching-english2.shtml#ixzz42gNwyNdH Reading Comprehension in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (página 2)

http://busyteacher.org/7080-top-10-ways-to-teach-culture.html

http://iteslj.org/Artical/thanasoulas- Motivation .html

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Cullen-Culture.html

Home

figure 1 (https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/iceberg.htm) the cultural iceberg)

figure 2. The Culture Triangle (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999, p. 47) [Note: Reprinted with permission from ACTFL.)

figure 3 (http://www.math-aids.com/Venn_Diagram/)

image 1 (http:/www.flirck.Com/photos/anniemyers/1795432) Photo of a Hindu bride

image 2 (http://kingofwallpapers.com/halloween.html) Halloweeen photo

image 3 (http://clclt.com/charlotte/hunting-for-local-food) Food hunting

image 4 (http://www.playbuzz.com/moomimad1210/what-main-female-book-character-are-you). Picture of books and movies

image 5 (http://bcbfagaras.org)

image 6 (https://tinyobsessions.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/harry-potter-and-the-order-of-phoenix-book-vs-movie-part-1/) A picture of both the book and the movie

image 7 (http://www.southshorefamilyhealthcollaborative.com/taboo/) A photo of Harry and Voldemort

image 8 (http://www.filmofilia.com/wpcontent/uploads/2009/03/harry_potter_6_poster_5.jpg

image 9 (http://www.weareteachers.com/) KWL activity)

table 1 (While riding the communicative competence bandwagon)

table 2 (http://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/Sarasota/strattactics.htm#What%20is%20a%20Strategy?) Reading skills and strategies

table 3 (https://www.google.ro/#hl=&q=extensive%20reading%20materials,%20harmer) Extensive reading materials

table 4 (http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/post/books-vs-movies-teaching-visual-literacy-and-literature-through-film) Compare and contrast guide

table 5 (http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/post/books-vs-movies-teaching-visual-literacy-and-literature-through-film) Critical analysis

table 6 (http://heartlandfilm.org/wp-content/uploads/FILM-the-chronicles-of-narnia-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-film-curriculum.pdf)

http://english4success.ru/Upload/books/1418.pdf, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

https://bracademy.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+Lion,+The+Witch+and+The+Wardrobe+by+C.S.+Lewis.pdf

https://www.google.com/#hl=&q=google%20books

http: // forumminekraft.tk/harry-potter-sorcerer-stone-movie.html

http://euinvat.bluepink.ro/ harry potter a developing hero

http://hltmag.co.uk/index.htm, (Humanistic Language Teaching)

https://archive.org/stream/ERIC_ED511819/ERIC_ED511819_djvu.txt (Teaching Culture in the EFL classroom)

http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?lang=en&aid=173 ( Translating Culture:Problems, strategies and practical realities) http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1984/3/84.03.06.x.html, Teaching Culture: Beyond Language

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jul07/sart01.htm, humanizing language teaching

http://www.ziyonet.uz/uploads/books/47828/544dea13c86bb.doc( The question of culture: EFL in non-English speaking countries)

#36, Research Article: ‘Language and Culture’ by Mahsa Kia

http://luanvan.net.vn/luan-van/a-study-on-culture-based-activities-in-developing-cr

http://jpkc.hactcm.edu.cn/2005ymshywhrm/dg.htm(The Society And Culture Of Major English-Speaking Countries)