Week 8: Culture and Material Evaluation

As we have been learning throughout the semester, culture is composed of multiple aspects and it can be a concept that is difficult to learn and teach. I have gained a lot of knowledge on how an ESL teacher can influence the way in which their students view culture (both the target language culture and their native identity), but this is the first time I have read about the significance of ESL materials. The readings this week by Tyler-Mendes, Giashi, and Hinkel have all demonstrated how textbooks can be a factor that may influence how gender roles or race are perceived in a specific culture. There has recently been an increased amount of focus on the images in textbooks in comparison with the textual content, which is why this is such an important topic. Tyler-Mendes argued that the images in the EFL textbooks should be discussed in order to counter racial stereotypes about English speakers and English-speaking nations and I completely agree. I have not had access to these textbooks yet, but this study found that their images create an American culture with economic and social success. The people in the images are also predominately white and represent the middle class, power, and money. If other races were shown, such as African Americans, they were represented in a poorer or powerless position. I found this to be very sad and it would reinforce the racial stereotypes that we want to avoid. The reading by Tyler-Mendes also addressed the critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire, in which we should examine the politics of unequal power relations and then take actions for social transformation. This relates to how ESL teachers should incorporate dialogue in our classrooms so that we can question who benefits from the existing power structure and what the purpose of the textbook is.

All three of the readings provided great implications for ESL teachers that I found to be very useful. We may not be able to choose the materials for our classes but we can employ literary skills to address this problem. Giashi stressed the importance of critical image analysis as a tool that can help us reveal underlying trends in the resources we use. This skill is especially important as we encounter ESL texts because they may be reinforcing stereotypes or serve to benefit a specific person or group. We should consider the textbook images and then initiate discussions with our students about them. Being able to critically analyze resources will help my future class to examine race and power issues in our surrounding society and how that affects one’s perception of culture and identity. I also found the implications in Chapter 11 by Hinkel to be interesting because they focus on how a teacher can learn along with their students. I love that idea and I hope to reflect on cultural awareness just as much as my students. The reading stated, “With encouragement, students can learn how to learn about cultures” and that reiterates the idea that one needs to critically analyze the information they are presented with to learn about culture and be aware of possible stereotypes.