Chapter 12: "Cultural Identities and Differences" Teachers' Notes
Teaching aims:	(Brief) examination of "Western" culture. (Brief) examination of "Korean" culture. Identification of differences. Review: General. Recycle: Peer Dictation. Recycle: Descriptions. Free Talking "Customs/Beliefs".
Comments:	The focus of this Chapter is on Cultural differences, in an attempt to sensitize students to some of the ways in which "foreigners" and "foreign countries" are different to Korea. There is no comparison intended here, and this is important, for we must beware of "teaching" our culture along with our language. Rather the aim is to help the students to be culturally aware - to accept differences as evidence of differing life-styles. They need to allow for such differences when interacting with visitors to Korea, or when in an English-speaking country, or when doing business in English, and so the first step is to identify them. Another aim is to remind the students of their own culture. As with other countries which are finding themselves part of a Global Village, the indigenous culture is in danger of becoming little more than a tourist-attraction, and it will be useful for students to be able to talk about this in English to people that they meet. The Chapter comes at the end of the course (though see the "Extra activities" section), and therefore ties-up a number of strands by presenting opportunities for review. The course is reviewed through activities which will remind the students of work they have already done. Hopefully they can be left to their own devices in much of this work, so that they can "tie-up" their own strands by practicing the language that they have been exposed to during the year. Presentation and modeling of content is therefore not an aim of this Chapter. Instead there are many Teachers' Resources, giving the students various chances to perform activities which promote active use of the target language. Part of this reviewing and tying-up process is to hand in final versions of assignments that have been taken on during the year or the second semester. One of these might be a portfolio of communications with an email penfriend. Another will be the Class Newspaper or a travel-brochure. These activities are all part of the "participation" element of the final evaluation, and are important for their authenticity and the fact that they are designed and carried out by the students, with teacher-input when needed.  Finally the self-evaluation that students did in Chapter 2 appears again. It will be interesting to see at this point whether perceptions have changed, and whether self-confidence has been favorably affected, along with any improvement in fluency that has hopefully resulted from taking the course.