Learning the Culture: Language Learning Goal 7
It's very enjoyable to be able to participate in the culture to that
extent in the target language.
Hi there Steve Kaufmann here again, and today I want to talk to you about culture.
This is the seventh and last of my personal goals in language learning.
Remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe, click on the
bell on the bell for notifications.
And if you enjoy my podcasts, please leave a review.
We do appreciate it.
All right.
So I've been going through the sort of seven personal goals when
it comes to language learning as in sort of a hierarchical order.
Uh, my first goal is to learn as many words as I can, and that remains
a goal: increasing my vocabulary.
Then I want to have that vocabulary so that I can start reading.
It's kind of the easiest thing to do once I can read, then I can make
more sense out of what I listened to.
So then I increase my listening.
Um, with the sort of listening, I develop some momentum, which gets me to speaking.
When I speak, I realize the gaps in my grammar and my usage.
So then I focus in on grammar sort of in that order.
I don't start with grammar, for example.
Then in my last video, I talked about writing, which can be a powerful way of
improving our skills in the language.
Um, but it's not something that I've been doing a lot of recently, but I
still recommend it, it's an important way of improving in the language.
And then this all brings us to the culture, which is an important
motivator for me, because I want...
the reason I learned these languages is to get closer to the culture of those
languages, to learn more about them, for those countries and people and cultures
to come alive for me, which they do when I have an understanding, even an imperfect
understanding, of those languages.
Ideally, I want to approach those cultures in the language that I'm learning.
So sometimes if at an early stage in learning the language I get too much
explanation ofthe culture, of festivals, of special names for relatives or any
of this kind of detail, uh, in English or a language that I speak well,
uh, I find it difficult to absorb.
Uh, it's not so meaningful to me.
That's why I resist it because once I've had enough exposure to the language
where I've been in situations, or I've watched movies where people refer to their
um, mother's brother in certain ways.
So these names for different family members, or even references to, uh, you
know, culture, you know, like festivals or, you know, in, in terms of Persian,
uh, uh, how they eat on Nowruz and all of this kind of thing is more meaningful when
I can access it in the target language.
But of course we are dealing with the culture from the beginning.
Okay.
When we're learning another language, we're imitating that language.
We're imitating a portion of the culture because the
language is part of the culture.
So the language is in itself, part of the culture that we're learning, but
the fine points of the culture, the sort of, how people interact with each
other, uh, this comes alive better when we have a better understanding of the
language and, uh, it might be through watching a movie or a series on Netflix
that we come closer to a Turkish family or Arabic, uh, you know, problems in
Egypt having to do with the role of women and these subjects that are very
often treated in, in movies or series.
And if we can access them in the target language, we sympathize
more, uh, with, with the people.
So, uh, and that's very enjoyable.
It's very enjoyable to be able to participate in the culture to that
extent in the target language.
Similarly, when we have enough of the language that we can be with those
people and communicate in the target language, understand what they're saying,
participate in how they react with each other, uh, participate ourselves in
the target language, that in a sense is sort of the, the final achievement.
That's in a way the ultimate goal.
We want to be able to do that, but the reason I make it my seventh goal
is that I feel a lot of other things have to fall into place in order to be
able to enjoy the culture in that way.
That's not to say you can't, you know, watch movies with subtitles.
I mentioned, for example, that uh watching Russian movies, like ... at
an early stage in my learning, you relying on the English subtitles.
It was nevertheless, a great motivator for me, but watching that same
movie and understanding what they're saying is a much richer experience.
So as with many of the sort of hierarchy of goals, my greater
emphasis at a particular stage might be on reading or listening or, or
whatever, but there's still elements of all of these goals at every stage.
Uh, it's just a matter of how much emphasis.
So at an early stage, I may resist a great emphasis on festivals
or these kinds of things.
But if I'm now at a stage, say in Persian, where I can read like Sahra
did for me on LingQ, she created a course on Iranian history, a
course on Iranian food, a course on different minorities, Iran in Iran.
If I can access all of this information in the target language, to me,
that's, that's the time to do it.
So I tend to want to save it.
Similarly, you know, reading novels, um, in translation is not as attractive
to me as waiting until I can read those novels in the target language.
Uh, so I kind of save the cultural thing, the bulk of it until I have enough of the
language, but I don't deny myself some peaks at the culture at an early stage.
You know, there's so many more opportunities for us to access different
aspects of the culture today then was the case before I've mentioned several times.
The Jordanian cartoon series, which is very much aimed at, at a
Jordanian audience with cartoons.
It's a bit like the Simpsons, but with sort of little morals in every
episode, uh family life it's called.
I can access that using LingQ, granted sentence by sentence,
going through the words.
Netflix enables us to access, you know, series where we kind of
find the same family every series.
And they're speaking in that language.
We're trying as much as we can to understand what they're saying.
And so there's just so many more ways we can access the culture then was the case
before, and we can access that aspect of the culture that's of interest to us far
too often, uh, in textbooks, the textbook writer wants to introduce to you those
aspects of the culture that they think are interesting or that you should know.
Whereas I think where it's more satisfying to access those aspects of
the culture that are of interest to us.
And that could be anime in the case of Japanese.
It could be a K-pop in the case of Korean.
And I think as is the case with all aspects of language learning, where it's
meaningful, where you are, you are doing things of interest to you, things that you
find enjoyable you're going to do better.
And so this final goal then the seventh goal of accessing the culture is best
done when we take the initiative, we choose things of interest to us.
If we're able to access it in part or wholly in the target language.
It makes the whole exercise more meaningful.
So there you have it.
This is the seventh and final video on this subject of my language
learning goals, my hierarchy of language learning goals.
So it started with accumulating vocabulary, which remains a goal then
uh, reading leads me onto listening.
Listening leads me on to speaking.
Speaking makes me aware of my shortcomings and usage.
Uh, from there, I want to work on my writing in order to improve my usage.
And when I have all the pieces of the puzzle put together, then
I'm able to access the culture.
Now I did a couple of videos...
I have done some videos on this subject before, and you might
want to have a look at them.
One was called Culture and Language Learning, and the other one is First
Learn the Language then the Culture.
So thank you for listening.
And that's the end of this series.
Bye for now.
