When learning another language it is important to learn about the culture of people who speak that language

Topic: When learning another language it is important to learn about the culture of people who speak that language

Teacher’s Name: Joanne Tham

Date: 10th December, 2010

Word Count: 686

To possess a second language is to possess a second soul. And culture means the widening of the mind and of the spirit. In the present age, learning another language is important to learn about the culture of the people who speak that language. But in the meantime, the questions whether learning about the culture to learn another language has sparked much debate. In my opinion, when learning another language it is very important to learn about the culture of its learners for two reasons. Firstly, the culture is part of language.Secondly, the culture will help you to learn about language and grasp the language more quickly.

First, convincing arguments can be made that the culture is part of language. Unless you can understand how language is used, e.g. accents, religion, traditions, music and food, then you are missing out on the biggest part of learning. Of course you can just learn grammar, but sooner or later you want to actually talk to someone, then what are you going to do? Culture provides the catalyst for language teaching and learning, University Sains Malaysia vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dzulkifli Abdul Razak said. As language evolved through culture and civilization, learning its historical aspect would greatly help in understanding and learning the various languages. As a result, he said, language and culture should therefore be integrated well in the teaching and learning processes. I have found this to be true a culture is part of language. For example, when I talked with native speakers, they will talk some sports, foods and places, I usually didn’t understand it. This example illustrates how important of culture is to learn another language.
And second reason to support my viewpoint is that the culture will help to language learner to learn language quickly. According to Kluckhohn (1961), language is a culture’s orientation to time. It means language is the culture of the time positioning. As we know the cultures have past-oriented, present-oriented or future-oriented. It was different attitude to describes the degree to which the culture values the past, the present or the future. For example, in Chinese, people use “old” to describe old people, but my English teacher told me in western countries people use “senior” to describe them.
But some people against that language learner learning another language need to learn about the culture. I don’t think that it is really possible to separate language and culture. In my mind, they are in an interdependent relationship whereby culture influences language and language influences culture. For example, some courses, some specialists and some sports. While it is true that might use English only to read and write essay in English. I think in some specialized subjects are will need to learn about culture. For example, the architecture is needs to learn about national history and national culture. Because the structure is along with the different culture to change style. For accurate, different dynasties has different structure style. For example, the Imperial palace is have Ming dynasty style and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing is have Qing dynasty. Though those two buildings are identical places, but its had different styles. In a word, I think study architecture require to learn about culture in order to understand different style. Therefore, I think learning about culture is learning about soul and widening of the mind.

In summary, while some language learners think it about culture is significant of a learn of language. It was still clear that learning another language it is important to learn about the culture of people who speak that language. I would advise all language learners to learn about culture. Overall, I am convinced language learners to learn about a culture of language learner. I suppose when learning another language, and make we couldn’t learning get well. In fact, many language schools teaching languages are also learning their own culture at now.

References:

1. Matikainen, T. &Duffy, C.B. (2000).Developing cultural understanding. English Teaching Forum 38(3), 40-49
2. Datuk Dzulkifli Abdul Razak,University Sains Malaysia of Language and Translation Centre, culture and language week said