Teaching Cultural Awareness Using the Four Skills

The following project examines the validity of teaching cultural awareness in a language classroom and includes five readers’ theatre plays that help students explore five different countries from around the globe. The countries were determined by the nationalities of the students that participated in the project. The setting for this study was a pull out ESL program in a public school with a large multi-ethnic population. Besides the plays, there are lesson plans, activities sheets and a biography of multi cultural books for children. All activities are designed to incorporate the four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The paper begins by exploring the positive effects of studying other countries besides the host country. It also searches for ways to justify teaching about culture when second language acquisition is the main objective. Through student reflections and teacher observation, we see that it is possible to interweave language skills with the study of culture. All teaching materials included in this project were developed with the intent of creating awareness and a desire for educators to begin embracing the ever growing diversity present in our schools today