Culture and affect in the practice of English teaching as a second language

Gabriela Di Gesú

pp. 225-237

in: Giuseppina Marsico, Marilena Ristum, Souza de Souza Bastos (eds), Educational contexts and borders through a cultural lens, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

Learning English as a second language (L2) has been studied from several different perspectives. Since the appearance of some papers authored by Frawley and Lantolf back in 1985 (Lantolf 2010), socio-cultural theory (SCT) has also contributed to studying the phenomenon. The myriad papers on how people learn to read, write, speak, and listen in a L2 show that looking at the development of the micro-skills in isolation provides partial and insufficient knowledge. We argue that when L2 acquisition is observed systemically, the process may be better understood and practice can be enhanced. This chapter will look at English teachers working at all levels in public institutions in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. English is part of the curriculum in elementary and high schools, whereas English reading courses for academic purposes are primarily offered at state universities. Students can perceive English as a lingua franca, as a valuable tool to acquire, or as a school course that they must pass. Teachers can act as catalysts by bridging the two language systems and cultures, or as inhibitor signs by simply teaching the lexical and grammatical units of the language. We will see how social representations about their performance as nonnative speakers of the language, the instruction received at teacher training colleges and the perceptions that they have on the English language set boundaries that inhibit rather than catalyze L2 learning. To expand those boundaries, teachers need to make new meanings of the social representations of their role and of English. Different theoretical frameworks are explored to explain the student-institution-teacher triad in teaching a foreign language from a systemic perspective. The teachers' quotations and comments presented in this analysis were recorded ethnographically in the author's professional work setting.