INTRODUCTION
- Language and culture are two interrelated aspects that cannot be separated. In the case of teaching and learning English as a foreign language, cross cultural understanding becomes one of the most important aspects that must be recognized by language learners. Sugirin (2009:1) states that for the success of English Language Teaching (ELT), the teachers must have good understanding of the Indonesian cultures and qualified competencies of English as well as the cultures of English speakers. One of the ways in balancing students’ competencies in both language and culture, especially those learning English as a foreign language, is by giving Cross Cultural Understanding (CCU) course. For the students of English Education Department, the insight of cross cultural understanding would be very crucial 304 Volume 2, Number 1, February 2017 as they would also be English teachers giving lessons about English language and culture in the future. Furthermore, by understanding both the language and the culture, the language learners would be able to use foreign language appropriately, i.e. the ability of using foreign language based on the grammatical rules as well as the context of situation. Considering the aforementioned needs, creating conducive and interactive classroom setting would be a good strategy to enhance students’ understanding and invite students’ excitement toward the course. In order to establish these kinds of situations, active learning strategies equipped with integrated steps would be potentially advantageous. By using active learning strategies, students would not only be considered as the receivers. Furthermore, the classroom activities provided by the lecturers would not be monotonous where lecturers are considered as the central of information (the senders). This paper proposes some active learning strategies in teaching cross cultural understanding for the students of English Education Department. The main purpose of these strategies is to give understanding about the importance of cross cultural understanding for ELT. Other purposes are correlated with teaching skills, i.e. to train students’ ability in delivering materials and encourage students’ creativity in creating classroom activities with cross cultural understanding aspect on it. Establishing these purposes hopefully would also be beneficial in preparing the students’ role as future English teachers.
CROSS CULTURE UNDERSTANDING ATTITDE
- English as a second language programs that are solely language oriented cannot fully assist foreign and immigrant students to understand and adapt to important cultural differences of the host country. It purpose, which is directed to intermediate and advanced students.
- Cross Cultural Understanding is the subject that learns about the differences culture in each country. It tells about the custom, culture, behavior, and life from a country such as United States that use English as their language
- There are many topics in this subject to increase our knowledge about the culture in United States. They are introduction, verbal patterns, nonverbal communication, personal relationships, and family values. Besides that there are also the topics that related with previous topic. They are educational attitude, work values, time and space pattern, cultural conflict, and cultural adjustment. But, in this paper I decided to choose “Educational Attitude” as my topic.
- Pengajar: LUKMAN .