Tuesday 8 March 2016

Talking about interculturalism...

I loved this webpage where you can find 
interesting things like these ones...

Aren´t they cute???


http://www.explosion.com/71233/25-sounds-in-different-languages-22-is-priceless/

The benefits of learning languages

Look what I´ve found looking for information about 
learning and teaching languages...
You can find the Best Infographics About Teaching & Learning English As A Second (or Third!) Language at http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org


Monday 7 March 2016

Intercultural awareness

Hi again!
I continue working on Second language aquisition, and this time I´d like to remind you that, among other things,  languages are the key to understanding other cultures…  There is not a “target language” but a range of different cultures; so, as  our world is multilingual, we may say that a new language may create a new mindset…. Here is where INTERCULTURAL ideas enter; we may say that Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures. In interactions with people from foreign cultures, a person who is interculturally competent understands the culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling, and acting. That is why the material used to teach should have an equal value on L1 and L2, and it should promote dialogue and interaction between cultures, arousing curiosity and tolerance for other cultures (and taking into account our own culture as well).


An important concept to cultural awareness is CODE MESHING, which allows students to integrate home languages along with standard languages in a way that respects the fluid nature of language and 
the students´identities.
Code meshing can be described as  the act of combining colloquial and local words with Standard written English in order to embrace pluralism and diversity. It refers to the concurrent use of different languages, dialects, and genres, sounds, and even more distinct linguistic features and conventions in a single rhetorical performance. This way, language may be mediating culture and presupossing  awareness of own culture.