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[spectrum]

I'm a regular poster using this name because people from my school will recognize me.  (To my colleagues: howdy!)

Here's the question. A department is proposing courses that combine language and culture.  So for example, they say that teaching German language can be combined with with teaching German history and culture in a sequence of courses.  That's fine.  But the claim is further that you get a twofer effect: it's not just just a spoon, it's not just a fork, it's both: it's a spork.  So for one of these 3-credit courses, it teaches language AND it teaches culture, 3 credits worth of each.  I'm told it's all the range in modern foreign language pedagogy.

I have major reservations.  First, I suspect that this would be very difficult to accomplish even with excellent teachers.  Second, I think these courses will end up being taught by adjuncts with little time to prepare, and they will just teach a regular language course, throwing in a few comments about Octoberfest and lederhosen to say that they are teaching the culture.   

So I'm wondering whether these sorts of courses get taught at other schools, and if so, how they fare.  If you can reassure my that my reservations are baseless and these sorts of courses work very well well, I'll be thrilled.

[digger]

We encourage hybrid courses -- often they offer very rich content. However, we would not allow this type of double dipping…

[mended_drum]

My undergraduate department tried this out.  I was one of the victims.  It's was an okay course, but it did not replace the three courses for which it was supposed to substitute.  Not even close.

[peppergal]

Yes, it is true that the current Hot Thing in language pedagogy is teaching language via teaching culture.  In fact, this is how many of the textbooks currently on the market are designed.  I have taught with such textbooks, both at the beginning and at the intermediate level.

That having been said, it's not really a twofer.  It's still a language class, and students are still being evaluated based on their mastery of the language.  Getting double units for the class doesn't seem right to me.

[august_leo]

My undergrad school had at least one of these (I took that course). In my case, it was a German course but instead of reading Goethe and Schiller (again), we read Marx and Nietzsche. It was a great course, but obviously the instructor needed to know his stuff (which he did). The course only counted for the normal German amount of credits. The only plus was that it was cool and I was also reading Nietzsche in other courses. It was a 400-level course and we used primary sources.

I hope that info helped.

[spectrum]

Thanks for the helpful replies.  Just to clarify: a course like this only give students 3 credits on their transcript, but it will be used to satisfy both language and culture requirements.  So it's double dipping.  I'll all for double dipping when it makes sense, but like sporks, I don't think these courses do the double function claimed.  I can see it at the upper level undergraduate level, but this is at the intro level.   

[msparticularity]

Ah--thanks for the additional info. It is not at all unusual in either of the places that I have taught for a course to satisfy two or even three core and/or major requirements. For example, I taught one that met both the capstone and the diversity requirement for the core as well as a major requirement at my old place. I taught another that met an intro humanities and a diversity requirement--and we were working on having it address one of the writing requirements also. This is actually both necessary and realistic, I think, in an era of proliferating core and major requirements--but as you say, it is very important that there be enough oversight to ensure that those requirements are actually being taught.

FWIW, I'm working on NCATE accreditation for secondary teacher licensure, and teaching foreign language and culture in an integrated way is a foundational principal for ACTFL--the foreign language educators' professional association. I did some reading up on it, and there really has been a shift away from what many of us experienced years ago--what is now called the "visiting" approach where one gets a few blips of cultural topics--and toward a deep and authentic integration of the two.

[spectrum]

msparticularity

Thanks.  The "deep and authentic integration" of language and culture sounds great.  Given some people's reservations about their experience in these courses, I wonder how easy these courses are to teach. 

[peppergal]

msparticularity

Thanks.  The "deep and authentic integration" of language and culture sounds great.  Given some people's reservations about their experience in these courses, I wonder how easy these courses are to teach. 

In my experience, it was more rewarding to teach such classes than it was to teach the old fashioned way (the switch to culture-based language instruction happened while I was a grad student).

For example, one of the texts in the beginning language class I am currently teaching is a children's story.  The story opened up a great discussion about differences in home construction between the US and the target language culture (which the class conducted for the most part in the target language).

Of course, prep time has increased, but I think that is more than compensated for by seeing my students using language in an authentic way after only six weeks of learning the language.

[spectrum]

Peppergal

That's also helpful.  But it sounds like the kind of culture that you teach is more everyday culture.  Actually I'm not sure how that's different from how I was taught German in high school -- I learned about modern German life though the language course.  It is a great way of learning.

The courses that have been proposed at my school don't do that.  Rather, they aim to teach high culture -- literature and other humanities -- and also history of the countries in question, all at a completely intro level.  That's what doesn't make sense to me.  I can understand doing high culture and history in an advanced language course, but at an intro level it looks to me like a mismatch. 

Is high culture and history now standardly included in intro language courses? 

[msparticularity]

Peppergal

That's also helpful.  But it sounds like the kind of culture that you teach is more everyday culture.  Actually I'm not sure how that's different from how I was taught German in high school -- I learned about modern German life though the language course.  It is a great way of learning.

The courses that have been proposed at my school don't do that.  Rather, they aim to teach high culture -- literature and other humanities -- and also history of the countries in question, all at a completely intro level.  That's what doesn't make sense to me.  I can understand doing high culture and history in an advanced language course, but at an intro level it looks to me like a mismatch. 

Is high culture and history now standardly included in intro language courses? 

I think I can kind of see how that might work, but I agree it seems like something of a mismatch at the intro level . Introductory humanities courses (which I taught for several years) do integrate history, literature, and visual culture. It sounds like this approach would add language on top of that. The challenge here comes in providing relevant language instruction. I mean, it's one thing if we can discuss Anglo-Saxon history and material culture and also read a bit of Beowulf together in the original Old English. It's quite another if what we're doing is teaching the history and culture and then doing basic language instruction and reading the related lit in translation.

[peppergal]

Peppergal

That's also helpful.  But it sounds like the kind of culture that you teach is more everyday culture.  Actually I'm not sure how that's different from how I was taught German in high school -- I learned about modern German life though the language course.  It is a great way of learning.

The courses that have been proposed at my school don't do that.  Rather, they aim to teach high culture -- literature and other humanities -- and also history of the countries in question, all at a completely intro level.  That's what doesn't make sense to me.  I can understand doing high culture and history in an advanced language course, but at an intro level it looks to me like a mismatch. 

Is high culture and history now standardly included in intro language courses? 

Oh, that was just the example I used because it had happened that day.  Next week they're reading a short poem by a Major Author.  As far as I know it is standard in intro language classes.

[felicia68]

I think the double dipping works, and at this stage in the game, it really depends on choosing a good textbook that covers the culture and language objectives in an integrated way.

I have an upper level conversation course that I designed, and it's taken me teaching it five to seven times to finally meld, completely, the 3 separate books I used to use to get both the language and culture together.

I see the problem with adjunct hires - but that's also an age issue because young adjuncts will have been exposed to the integration of the disciciplines.  Also if the adjunct is strictly held to a syllabus with a decent textbook, it should work out. 

I've been at conference presentations on this topic (oh yeah, I gave a paper at one, I forgot about that).  I was really surprised at how some unis keep these things separate.  So partly it's univesity culture.    If the lit profs are protective of the lit, and the history profs protective of the history, and if the language profs really claim that they do nothing but teach language, then you  have an institutional problem.