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Culture as the Core: Transforming the
Language Curriculum
May 1 - 4, 1996
This conference built on the success of a previous conference, held at
the University of Minnesota in fall 1994, which focused on cultural issues.
This second conference had the following objectives:
- to define a conceptual framework for culture and culture learning in
the language classroom;
- to generate a set of principles to guide practitioners (language educators,
intercultural trainers, directors of multicultural programs) in their
work;
- to review existing research and generate a national research agenda
on culture and culture learning in the language classroom.
The conference consisted of two important components. The first part
of the conference was a two-day round of discussion among invited participants
from a variety of disciplines, who are experts on cultural issues. Most
of these experts had participated in the conference held in 1994, and included
representatives from cross-cultural training, second languages and cultures
education, and other related disciplines. These representatives came from
the University of Minnesota and other local institutions, and were joined
by national leaders in the fields of cross-cultural training and second
languages and cultures education. The second component of the conference
was an all day session targeted at second language teachers and other practitioners
in the field.
The Intercultural Studies Project team began the expert round with a
review of the 1994 conference and a discussion of the goals for the 1996
conference. The 1994 conference had centered on the contributions of various
disciplines to language and culture education. The conference had included
both experts and participants, hence had a teaching/workshop orientation.
At the conclusion of the conference, the experts agreed that they would
like to discuss amongst themselves, over a longer period of time and in
greater depth, the concepts, ideas, theories, instructional approaches,
and assessment processes that had come up in 1994.
Accordingly, the Intercultural Studies Project team commissioned three
working papers to be presented in draft form at the expert round in 1996.
The papers were to serve as the basis for discussion and were written on
the following three topics:
- a literature review of the research on culture learning in language
education settings, written by Professor Helen Jorstad and Professor R.
Michael Paige along with graduate students Jeanette Colby, Francine Klein,
and Laura Paulson and presented by Professor Paige;
- a conceptual/theoretical overview of culture and culture learning,
written and presented by Professor Wendy Allen, Dr. Janet Bennett, and
Dr. Milton Bennett;
- an applied paper focusing on the implication of theory and research
for culture education pedagogy, written and presented by Professor Dale
Lange.
A goal of the 1996 expert round was to provide extensive discussion and
feedback to the authors so that their papers could eventually be published.
The second part of the conference, held on Saturday, May 4th, was intended
to bring the fruits of the discussions to the practitioner community. Through
presentations designed to highlight the most important issues of teaching
culture in the second language classroom, over 120 teachers and practitioners
learned about and discussed critical aspects of curriculum design, assessment
of culture, and strategies for teaching culture.They were also engaged
in the search for an answer to how to put culture at the core of language
education. The conference featured some of the best known language and
culture educational researchers in the country, along with public school
teachers from the Twin Cities who have a recognized expertise in integrating
culture into their second language curriculum.
The fundamental theme of the conference was the proposal that studying
a language must include significant learning about another culture, both
implicitly and explicitly; the two are inseparable. The Standards for Foreign
Language Learning developed by the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages state that students "cannot truly master...language
until they have also mastered the cultural context in which the language
occurs." Cultural learning enables students to discover that there
are multiple ways of viewing the world, which can ultimately help them
participate in an increasingly global community.
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