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Correspondence: a response to Sybing

Correspondence: a response to Sybing
Correspondence: a response to Sybing
Sybing’s account of ‘culture in the EFL classroom’ overlooks a number of key aspects of the cultural dimension to ELT and this results in misleading inaccuracies and problematic solutions in his article. Firstly, Sybing claims that there has been resistance to culture in the language classroom whereas in theory and empirical research quite the opposite has been true. Secondly, Sybing’s understanding of culture and language seems to follow the largely discredited strong interpretation of linguistic relativity in which a language is viewed as containing and constraining a culture and world view, in this case English, with national conceptions of UK/US culture. Furthermore, the article contains a number of sweeping generalisations concerning the preferences of English language learners. Alternative perspectives are needed which move beyond simply reinforcing the status quo and falling back on old stereotypes but instead view all cultures, however they might be defined, as equally important and useful
0951-0893
Baird, Robert
42b17178-829b-4360-a5ba-85851315a02f
Baker, Will
9f1b758c-e6e0-43ca-b7bf-a0d5e1387d10
Moran Panero, Sonia
ed8406bd-916f-4da2-9227-26a93e352408
Yu, Melissa
6b495929-c458-4417-ade7-f656444a507c
Baird, Robert
42b17178-829b-4360-a5ba-85851315a02f
Baker, Will
9f1b758c-e6e0-43ca-b7bf-a0d5e1387d10
Moran Panero, Sonia
ed8406bd-916f-4da2-9227-26a93e352408
Yu, Melissa
6b495929-c458-4417-ade7-f656444a507c

Baird, Robert, Baker, Will, Moran Panero, Sonia and Yu, Melissa (2011) Correspondence: a response to Sybing. ELT Journal. (doi:10.1093/elt/ccr087).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Sybing’s account of ‘culture in the EFL classroom’ overlooks a number of key aspects of the cultural dimension to ELT and this results in misleading inaccuracies and problematic solutions in his article. Firstly, Sybing claims that there has been resistance to culture in the language classroom whereas in theory and empirical research quite the opposite has been true. Secondly, Sybing’s understanding of culture and language seems to follow the largely discredited strong interpretation of linguistic relativity in which a language is viewed as containing and constraining a culture and world view, in this case English, with national conceptions of UK/US culture. Furthermore, the article contains a number of sweeping generalisations concerning the preferences of English language learners. Alternative perspectives are needed which move beyond simply reinforcing the status quo and falling back on old stereotypes but instead view all cultures, however they might be defined, as equally important and useful

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 15 December 2011
Organisations: Modern Languages

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 209265
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/209265
ISSN: 0951-0893
PURE UUID: 7574e15b-ce97-494c-ae21-fbee60a5b595
ORCID for Will Baker: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0533-2795
ORCID for Sonia Moran Panero: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9895-4379

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 27 Jan 2012 10:00
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:59

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Contributors

Author: Robert Baird
Author: Will Baker ORCID iD
Author: Melissa Yu

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