Response eight

Chapter two: American Culture and American diversity

When we talk about culture we also are talking about beliefs, costums, traditions, ways of living, thinking, eating and so on. This aspects differ from culture to culture and in some cases are a little similar. This link from the peace corps give an exercise about the image you have about american people. So you can go to this link and do the exercise:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/enrichment/culturematters/Ch2/Intro.html

Response nine- essay on patchwork

Essay of our experience in the project of patchwork

The project of making a patchwork gave us a great opportunity to put in practice our creativity, to share our culture with people from other countries, to exchange ideas and get knowledge from others. This lesson brought beside from giving an experience to the class brought a multicultural education. The definition of multicultural education is a discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good.

The first idea I had was to make my patchwork representing my province, Limón. But, I had a lot of problems making my quilt; the first one was to know how a quilt was? What materials I can paste or sew in my piece of fabric? Then, when I decided, my creativity began to run, so I print in colors from the internet a map of Limon, I paste with glue some animals of the sea: a lobster, a crab, also a palm in the fabric and tiny little pieces of rocks to represent the sand, but that was not a great idea all the pieces felt down and the fabric was wet because of the glue, finally it was a mess. So I had to call the professor to change my piece of quilt to another.

The second idea was much better I remembered that my best friend make me a beautiful quilt of a butterfly, so I took it and sew a flower in the fabric, so it could saw much better. The professor said is much better do you sew it? Everybody laugh of course but it was perfect, I love it. Then we had to wait for the presentation of the whole quilt on Thursday.

The day of the presentation begun with a typical folklore dance of Costa Rica accompanied with marimbas, it was fun I enjoy the group presentation, then we could taste the good typical food of Costa Rica like: arroz con leche, picadillo de platano, pozol and so on. Later it was the turn of the culture and society class, everybody was nervous and expecting a good presentation of the pieces of quilt, the professor called everyone to participate, she gave the names of culture class to the exchange people in separate pieces of paper, so the idea was that they had to search for us and to talk about our culture and exchange ideas of our cultures and give clues about our pieces of quilt. My partner was a girl from Germany, she was so friendly and she wanted to know about my culture, so I start asking questions of how many days she were in Costa Rica? She said that only four days but she pretend to stay one year in our country. Then she ask me about me where I lived, then I show here the pieces of quilt and what represent each quilt she was so surprise of our creativity, then my partner apart from speaking German and English, she could speak very well Spanish but Spanish of spain, she told me that it was because her grandmother was a tourist guide in florencia, España. It was a lot of exchange information, and ideas.

In conclusion, it was a wonderful experience; I think this lesson is a way to acquire knowledge from other culture beside ours and to put creativity in practice, the opportunity to communicate with other people from diverse groups, from other country.

Response Six- Difference between both movies "Shall we dance"

One movie is from Japan the other one is American movie. Both had the same content but they are different in scenarios, acts, operation.

The japanese version of shall we dance states its culture like a ring in a finger, they are really respectfull they do not need to demonstrate love by having sex in this movie, they use a lot of facial expressions to show many emotions, also eye contact.

The scenario of this movie starts in a ballroom while the woman was waiting for her love to take the first dance, he was playing machines. Then, he decide to take the train to his home like always and something catch his attention it was an ad at the window of the second floor where he was taking dance lesson that says: Shall we dance Mr. Sugiyama?. In the ballroom it was the time for her to choose her partner to dance, she look around, but he was not there. When here hope was falling apart his love enter to the ballroom and she inmediately walk to his love and they finally dance. The end.

This is the movie...

Then the American version begins with an example of a typical family of U.S. they live more open minded the trailer begins with an american man that works hardly and at the end of the day he had to take the train to get to his house but something in the way catch his attention a beautiful woman starring at the window. The next day the lady was not there so he decide to go where she was and notice that it was a dance class, it was a mistake he think to go in, but he take advantage of the situation to take the classes in order to see the pretty lady, he do a lot of mistakes at the beginnig because he was not interesting but then he focus more on his steps and also in his stimulus that was the lady and also in his goal that was to improve day by day. The days pass, the attraction between them went a little solid, too much eye contact, and phisical attraction too but they knew that the love they had was impossible. Almost at the end of this movie, he decide to forget everything and focus more on his family. The friends of her make a party but she knew it was here last chance to dance with here love so she decide to make an ad at the window of the class so he will notice it and he will go to take the last dance with here.

This is the link of the american version

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQ5NDc3OTI=.html

Response Seven

THE VALUES AMERICANS LIVE BY

By L. Robert Kohls, Ph.D.

A guide to understand the U.S. culture and its values.

Dr. L. Robert Kohls, Director of International Programs at San Francisco State University

http://web.pdx.edu/~sbaweb/faculty/amlei/alaccess/576/ValuesAmericansLiveBy.pdf

This article is very interesting because it talks about American values, is as a guide to understanding American culture and says that should not seem their actions or ways of thinking as disrespect or rudness we have to tolerate and respect other cultures besides ours and try to learn about them and take for your own the positive things for your life.
In this particular case, this article "The values Americans live" what I understood was that they are very independent people , have a very large ego, are very positive in a 100% , they like to be under the control of everything, are open minded and so on.

This is a comparative table that explain more about values from U.S. and other countries values.

U.S. Values Some Other Country’s Values

Personal Control over the

Environmental/Responsibility .............. Fate/Destiny

Change Seen as Natural

And Positive .............................Stability/Tradition/Continuity

Time and its Control ........................Human interaction

Equality/Fairness .........................Hierarchy/Rank/Status

Individualism/Independence......Group’s Welfare/Dependence

Self-Help/Initiative ........................Birthright Inheritance

Competition .........................................Cooperation

Future Orientation ............................Past Orientation

Action/Work Orientation ................“Being” Orientation

Informality...........................................Formality

Directness/Openness/Honesty ......Indirectness/Ritual/”Face”

Practicality/Efficiency ......................Idealism/Theory

Materialism/Acquisitiveness ......Spiritualism/Detachment

Which list more nearly represents the values of your native country?

Response 5: Teaching culture: Personal Relationship to cultural content

All the products of the culture identify a country, the way of that particular country think, all their values, way of living and so on.

Every detail is important to study in a country to know more about it.

Respose 5: Learning culture: flowcharts

For Institutions involve many cultural practices. A strategy for understanding institutions is to list the procedures they require through a flowchart.

For example for getting a driver´s licence in costa rica list the steps and then put them on the flowchart.

Renewing or obtaining a new license is a three step process.

1-Pay for the license in advance at any Banco de Costa Rica office. There is one near Consevi.

2-Get a physical exam and blood typing

3-Take your payment receipt, your medical exam paperwork, and other documents to the licensing offices behind ConsevI

FLOWCHART

Respose 5: Learning culture: Maps

A usefull strategy for examining the culture dimensions of places is mapping .

Excersice:

Draw a plan floor of your house and include objects in the various rooms and label them show the drawing to a partner.Explain the use and the purpose of each room.

This is the floor plan of my house:

Response 5: Teaching culture : Analyzing Artifacts:

The definition given by wikipedia says that:

anything created by humans which gives information about the culture of its creator and users.However, current objects of modern or near-modern society are also cultural artifacts. For example, in an anthropological context, a 17th Century lathe or piece of faience, and a television all provide a wealth of information about the time in which they were manufactured and used. Cultural artifacts can provide knowledge about technological processes, economy and social makeup, and a host of other subjects.

In this week we did an exercise in class about artifacts, in base on the definition and examples, the professor gave us we had to create an artifact individually.

What I create was like a credit card but not a simple credit card.

My artifact is helpfull and easy to use for traveling whenever, at any time you want.

How you use it? you have to get into a cabin and slide the card into a device and in moments you will be in the destination you want any country you want faster than an airplaine (as you see in the picture below).

Where do you find this artifact?

In my company

Which people use it?

Is for all users

Reponse 2- How do your beliefs, values, and cultural upbringing influence the way you behave?

My beliefs, values and culture influence a lot in the way I behave, because I grew up practicing and learning from my parents that but also we have to remember that when we grew up we decide which values and beliefs are important to our lifes . Also I think these forms the human being, their attitudes, way to see life, the way we behave with other people, in our works, in our places of study...

How does it feel when others see you as different—or as an outsider?

We know everybody is different So for that reason we have to be tolerant with other people that have different culture and instead of giving critics try to learn and transform the negative things into positive.

Response 1 - Our first class of Culture and Society

In our first class the professor start by doing an ice breaker about our eages, we have to form a line starting with the oldest person to end with the youngest one, we continue doing activities.

Then the professor give one number to each person from one to four in order to form groups. When we got together we had to give the meaning of culture and then explain to rest of the class our beliefs. While we were discussing the term of culture the professor started monitoring each group cheking that everybody participated in the activity.

After that we saw some terms like practices, communities, perspectives and person that are related to culture. The activity was that each group have one term, in my case my group have the term products; products are: music, behavior, the way people dress, food, literary pieces, religion, interaction. Then we have to present what we believe it was products and compare with the book we were using to check if we were closer to the meaning or not. Of course we were in the right way. At the end of the class we knew what was culture about and the way other people from our class that are from other country think and belief.

Extra information about society and culture...

Society and Culture

The aim of Society and Culture is to develop a student's knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes essential to achieving social and cultural literacy by examining the interactions between persons, societies, cultures and environments across time.

Through the study of Society and Culture, students will develop:

knowledge and understanding about:

1. personal, social and cultural identity
2. cultures shared by members of societies
3. interactions of persons, societies, cultures and environments across time
4. continuity and change, personal and social futures and strategies for change
5. the role of power, authority, gender and technology in societies and cultures
6. the methodologies of social and cultural research.

skills to:

1. apply and evaluate social and cultural research
2. investigate and engage in effective evaluation, analysis and synthesis of information from a variety of sources
3. communicate information, ideas and issues in appropriate forms to different audiences in a variety of contexts.

informed and responsible values and attitudes towards:

1. a just society
2. intercultural understanding
3. informed and active citizenship
4. ethical research practices
5. lifelong learning.

Response 4- Culture in Second Language article

Learning a second Language is not only the study of grammar components, learn how to read, to write and or how to speak very well is more than that it is also to learn about the culture of the languague we are learning: their beliefs, customs, traditions, ways of thinking.

For this reasons teachers have to incorporate in their classes and in the curriculum the teaching of culture in second language. And how we do that?

Instructional Strategies for Teaching Language and Culture:

1. Authentic Materials
2. Role Plays
3. Cultural Capsules
4. The use of films
5. Students as cultural resources
6. Literature
7. Songs

To read more about this article go to:

http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0309peterson.html

Welcome to Cuture and society corner

Hi!! my name is Celia, I hope you could enjoy this blog very much. Feel free to post your comments, recommendations, constructive critics... and read about interesting information that will be usefull and very practical for your daily life.