TEACHING (ENGLISH) IN MULTICULTURAL CLASSES

Abstract

In this essay I intend to present how I got interested in the topic of cross-cultural studies related to language teaching. I would like to share my experience in this field and some of my thoughts and ideas I developed during my ten years teaching multilingual classes. As I faced an entirely different classroom situation. I started to read about the topic of learning styles in different cultures and investigated how they related to my students' performance. The more I dealt with the topic, the more aware I became of the necessity that if we wanted to fulfil our task - to bring about good results in a relatively short time - we should build into our in-service teacher development programme this - for us new - aspect of language teaching. With the appearance of genuine multilingual/multicultural classes, the need for teacher developed materials to be used in such groups and for further studies in this field became more and more demanding. I strongly believe that teachers involved in this work have to know how culture and language relate to each other, what are the implications of the interference of the native language with the language being studied for the teaching/learning process. The nature of the culture shock our students experience must be understood by the teachers in order to help the students overcome it and thus bring about better results. To overcome the obstacles caused by the culture shock, it is essential to deal with the topic of cultural awareness, to find ways how the teachers can assist the students in this struggle. To achieve our educational goals, it is necessary to investigate the nature and com- ponents of intercultural communication, to develop intercultural communication strategies to help our students live and study in the multicultural environment of TUB. I feel it is indispensable to explore the issues mentioned above and many others not touched upon here if we want to help our students to the best of our abilities. I also belive that such studies go beyond the job as they can promote better and mutual understandig between nations.