British Studies Now

1. British Studies materials for English teachers in Poland Materials writing team

2. Advertisements for language and cultural learning SimonGill

3. Songs in the discussion on national identity Dorota Owczarek

4. The cartoon as a text Donald Sargeant

The challenge of mediating the insights of cultural studies in the language-and-culture classroom motivated this second thematic strand. In fact, the pedagogical pitfalls and opportunities presented by cultural studies materials provided a leitmotif throughout the conference. The papers in this section, however, focus exclusively on specific text-types and offer a range of practical and principled classroom approaches.

Several presentations were given by the Polish writing team on their book for upper-secondary school and teacher training college students, British Studies materials for English teachers in Poland: a cross-cultural approach. In this publication we have included extracts from the Introduction to this book, which gives a flavour of how the materials writers have attempted to produce a cross-cultural approach to the teaching of English.

Most language teachers will have used advertisements from time to time with their students. Adverts offer a rich and easily accessible source of representational uses of language and powerful examples of linguistic playfulness (see McRae 1991 and Cook 1994; 2000). In a detailed and informative paper, Simon Gill makes a persuasive case for enlisting advertising texts for teaching cultural awareness as well as enhancing language skills. Like advertisements, songs are a popular text-type for teachers and students alike. Dorota Owczarek describes the procedure she followed using songs from the 1750s, 1930s and 1980s in a discovery activity to reveal the development of a British sense of nationhood. Teachers are probably less likely to take up the political cartoon as a text-type for cultural learning, precisely because they assume that it is so heavily loaded with particular cultural references that it will require a disproportionate degree of decoding before it can be of any use. Donald Sargeant’s lively interactive session proved highly persuasive and here he summarises some of the key benefits of using cartoons as a way of gaining access to a repertoire of caricatures and catchphrases that provide a shared frame of reference for members of a national community.

References

§ Cook G (1994) Discourse and Literature: the interplay of form and mind Oxford: Oxford University Press

§ Cook G (2000) Language Play, Language Learning Oxford: Oxford University Press

§ McRae J (1991) Literature with a small ‘l’ London & Basingstoke: Macmillan


Working with texts

1. British Studies materials for English teachers in Poland Materials writing team 2. Advertisements for language and cultural learning SimonGill 3. Songs in the discussion on national identity Dorota Owczarek 4. The cartoon as a text Donald Sargeant The challenge of mediating the insights of cultural studies in the language-and-culture classroom motivated this second thematic strand. In fact, the pedagogical pitfalls and opportunities presented by cultural studies materials provided a leitmotif throughout the conference. The papers in this section, however, focus exclusively on specific text-types and offer a range of practical and principled classroom approaches. Several presentations were given by the Polish writing team on their book for upper-secondary school and teacher training college students, British Studies materials for English teachers in Poland: a cross-cultural approach. In this publication we have included extracts from the Introduction to this book, which gives a flavour of how the materials writers have attempted to produce a cross-cultural approach to the teaching of English. Most language teachers will have used advertisements from time to time with their students. Adverts offer a rich and easily accessible source of representational uses of language and powerful examples of linguistic playfulness (see McRae 1991 and Cook 1994; 2000). In a detailed and informative paper, Simon Gill makes a persuasive case for enlisting advertising texts for teaching cultural awareness as well as enhancing language skills. Like advertisements, songs are a popular text-type for teachers and students alike. Dorota Owczarek describes the procedure she followed using songs from the 1750s, 1930s and 1980s in a discovery activity to reveal the development of a British sense of nationhood. Teachers are probably less likely to take up the political cartoon as a text-type for cultural learning, precisely because they assume that it is so heavily loaded with particular cultural references that it will require a disproportionate degree of decoding before it can be of any use. Donald Sargeant’s lively interactive session proved highly persuasive and here he summarises some of the key benefits of using cartoons as a way of gaining access to a repertoire of caricatures and catchphrases that provide a shared frame of reference for members of a national community. References § Cook G (1994) Discourse and Literature: the interplay of form and mind Oxford: Oxford University Press § Cook G (2000) Language Play, Language Learning Oxford: Oxford University Press § McRae J (1991) Literature with a small ‘l’ London & Basingstoke: Macmillan