Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Culture Learning Activity (with K. Pusey)


Student level: upper intermediate
L1: mixed
Target culture: American culture
Main features: use Web 2.0 tools to promote culture learn/break essentialist views

Breaking essentialist views of culture
1.     Ask students to write down 1 or 2 stereotypes/images/things they think about when they think of “American culture”
a.     Give examples: guns, fast food, obesity, military, pop music, hamburgers, Budweiser, white people
2.     Have Ss research the topic to break their essentialist view: search for counter-examples of the vie the initially express (fast-food vs. slow food; guns vs. anti-gun control; hamburger vs. vegetarian/vegan; gangs vs. youth advocacy groups; Budweiser vs. non-alcoholic party drinks)
a.     Use 2 different Web 2.0 sources (ex. blogs, podcasts, social media sites, Twitter, search hashtags)
b.     Search the hashtag #gangs on Twitter as an example
c.     Go to Google blogs and search for “_____ blog” as another example
3.     Write a summary of findings and post images from Tumblr or other site
a.     Summary/writing topic: Have Ss write a summary that answers the following questions:
                                               i.     What aspect of American culture did you select?
                                             ii.     Why did you choose this topic?
                                            iii.     What did you find out from reading the blogs and/or listening to the podcasts that was new to you and/or different from what you thought before reading/listening?
4.     Post their findings on course wiki
5.     Report findings in class (next class)


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