A Cultural Approach in the Synchronous Class in English Teaching and Learning

Abstract

If culture is defined as a way of training to obtain knowledge through educational channels, the concept is associated with educability. Therefore, teaching cognitive, attitudinal, and procedural knowledge directly indicates teaching and learning culture to acquire norms and patterns of sociocultural behavior. The purpose of this study was: to debate about the way interaction among students and teachers in synchronous classes based on life’s materials, topics, and methods, and critical or reflective thinking can be adapted by the teacher to the students’ closest environment to communicate in English as an international language. If a language is taught, spoken, and learned in the country, culture surrounding the context is taught. If this language is not spoken in the place, the knowledge system also transmits norms and values, different from those of the language. So, the students get, culturally and socially, modes of action, principles, and knowledge through international language learning. Thus, teaching and learning English as an international language means the way possible interaction has opportunities for every student’s growth and the way their personality formation gets integral results. English taught and learned as an international language denotes reaching the students’ world and needs to communicate in English as a meaningful international language.

1. Introduction

Teaching any subject through an international language implies teaching on cultural issues about the world’s life. This is related to the way we, as teachers, deal with teaching, language, and culture and how we must favor in our teaching of English the increase of knowledge and cultural items. But during the pandemic, the teaching and learning contexts have changed and so the approach to this subject.

The purpose of this study is just to debate about the way interaction among students and teachers in synchronous classes based on Life’s materials, topics, methods, and critical or reflective thinking can be adapted by the teacher to the students’ closest environment to communicate in English as an international language (EIL).

2. What culture means for teaching and learning a language

First, we must define what culture means to us. Of course, the meaning of this word as a verb is to maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth. For example, “several investigators have attempted to culture biliary cells”; but, as a noun, there are two acceptations that can be found in the dictionaries:

1. 1. the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively, e.g., “twentieth-century popular culture” and 2. the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group, e.g., “Caribbean culture, Ecuadorian culture.”

The word culture is a polysemy term, which means that it is understood from different angles. But, although there are multiple possibilities for its understanding, a single interpretation or concept is not defined. We have to analyze all necessary shapes to have a general view.

Culture as synonymous of “everything created by man,” as Sergio Valdés Bernal proposed, implies human civilization, the general magnitude in which rational beings have lived and live. As such, it includes all kinds of knowledge achieved by humanity and the ways in which that relationship established by men themselves in society creates wealth and establishes a form of global coexistence.

When culture refers to the intellectual and artistic product resulting from the interpretive appropriation of art, and which, therefore, is assumed as a personal category, the word meaning is incorporated into esthetic patterns achieved, and it reinforces the way in which it becomes people’s own meaning and the cultural phenomenon in which each person is immersed to be assimilated, but which could be recreated from their point of view, and developed through the encounter and social reflection of an era. In this case, culture means appreciation, traditions, and customs.

In the event that culture defines a way of training to obtain general and specific knowledge through educational channels, the concept is associated with educability as a result of development and growth organized by society in terms of universal and professional literacy, transmission of everything, types of content, and standards of behavior and training to understand social life; culture is the intellectual level reached by each individual before society or their level of education.

That meaning indicates developing knowledge through formal or informal instruction and is the one that aims to achieve educational levels in the school, as an institution that prepares and responds to the needs of the economic development of each country, and that some include as innate capacities by belonging to a social group, and others analyze it as assumptions and basic values that regulate the behavior and interpretation of this in the social framework, but in both cases, the cultural level is achieved with education.

Therefore, teaching cognitive, attitudinal, and procedural knowledge directly, at school, indicates teaching and learning culture. Teaching a language such as English implies referring to norms and patterns of the sociocultural behavior of one or several Anglophone countries, since transmission occurs through communication. If a language is taught, spoken, and learned in the country, the culture that surrounds the given context is taught. If this teaching-learning process is using a language that is not spoken in the place where it is learned, the knowledge system also transmits norms and values that, from that cultural point of view, differ from those of the language.

Traditionally, it is argued that the teaching of English teaches the norms and customs of English-speaking countries. Thus, the learning of the language is enclosed within the cultural canons of certain regions and countries, however, the learner is not always going to uproot himself from his own culture, and sometimes, he does not incorporate foreign cultural elements into his life.

Another, more recent position places the learning of a language such as English within a much more general cultural reference framework, as it is a universal language with worldwide influence in any context.

A language is learned but, at the same time, culture is acquired or at least the frame of reference is broadened. In this way, the idea of unity between culture and education when a language is taught has been an inalienable point in linguistic analyzes [1, 2, 3], although it is only taken as background in the studies on English as a foreign language, which place more emphasis on the purely linguistic aspect in which one of its components is precisely sociolinguistic [4].

In more recent years, the concept of culture has connoted the presence of the identity of social groups stratified by categories such as intellectual level, beliefs, behavior, among others, much more than the representation of a culture tied to a country and limited in teaching just to the customs and traditions of that place, as the assumption of correct patterns sketching of cultural input that does serve to what the learner expresses.

The teaching and learning of English must correspond to cultural and social norms and standards of accuracy for those countries that speak that language; but as for every person who develops bilingualism, there is a bicultural mind that represents facts of reality according to their own patterns and norms of identity, the cultural fact is present in the acquisition of a second language and constitutes a form of reaffirmation of one’s own identity of the subject [5, 6]. For this reason, some authors emphasize that the cultural context for language teaching, as the basis for international communication, must encompass much more than the borders established by a nationality.

One of the most important scholars on the subject is Sandra McKay of San Francisco State University. Her point of view begins precisely by distancing herself from the traditional way of thinking about the relationship between culture, teaching, and the study of a language that has an international impact: “the teaching and learning of an international language must be based on an entirely different set of assumptions than the teaching and learning of any other second or foreign language.”

The foundation, that for language teaching culture is an intrinsic element in the learning process, is still present because the relationship is obvious; but the view that English is a means of international communication transforms the achievement of that culture it transmits. In today’s world, various types of English are spoken, including English that incorporates a region or country whose speakers communicate with another language. Hence, it is important to observe the way culture can be transmitted with the teaching of a language, which, in turn, allows us to understand the cultural processes related to teaching or learning under pedagogical rules.

3. The formative synchronous lesson for the cultural output

With the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic, training in universities has become much more specific since it has considered the conditions of each student and has provided different solutions so that distancing does not stop education. This training during the pandemic has been characterized by promoting comprehensive learning in the student’s training [7]; in the synchronous and asynchronous lessons, the learners can incorporate their own important strategies and resources, such as time available for learning, and their will to do so.

The integral formation of the student, who is prepared for his professional life, starts from the socialization process that, through communication, expresses skills, moral values, ethical principles, critical and reflective thinking, and a much more adequate behavior in relation to the culture of his profession and the society in which he lives.

Education at the university and for society has as its main objective the integral formation that is expressed not only in knowledge acquired, but also in the modes of action in accordance with those principles established culturally and socially. This comprehensive training, therefore, assumes the humanist conception in which education means full life, the development of skills and abilities [8] for the current moment and for the future, full of transformations in which international communication will have to be more effective, and each global action has an impact on individuals regardless of location. Thus, education will respond to the demands of science and technology, society, and culture in general.

Consequently, the COVID-19 pandemic makes humanistic training focus on the teacher’s attention to the cultural elements of knowledge and the improvement of human sensitivity and social concerns based on real differences of all kinds. For this reason, the synchronous class begins not with the moment in which technology allows closeness of those present in different places, but in which the will and feelings of walking together create culture and also educate for life and for communication between social beings with rational understanding.

In the synchronous class, student communication, with verbal and nonverbal responses, is essential to establish a functional virtual classroom; hence, the dependence on technological tools is a fact. Face-to-face conditions are replaced by technological innovations, with which the student’s teaching-learning process can be guided and controlled in an equivalent way.

The constant use of platforms and videoconferences reveals the objectives fulfillment and the competence that is formed from remote conditions. Obviously, the development of the intellect and the individual student and the teacher’s cultures to manage efficiently the use of technology guarantee success of the training-educational work, or not. This implies that the students, based on the support from the teacher and peers, assume that they can know beyond what they intended to know [9].

The school in the pandemic has remained a social agent of change, but with its human content, it is also a social agent of hope to end the crisis with better conditions for human understanding, which is valid for developing the current culture in front of the crisis and, with it, international communication and the search for solutions to adversity with more noble and human sentiments. And this change in order to win life and all its implications inexorably contribute to understanding culture as part of the application of a much more accurate training and human education to assume the use of technology for the sake of humanity.

The pandemic has activated mechanisms in society for the educational orientation toward the preservation of life and the glorification of the created culture. For this reason, even in the current conditions, it is based on what cultural issues can be attended by educators in order to continue perfecting the process: the durability of formal education, the context in which education occurs, and the language or resources with which the transmission of knowledge materializes.

The student expands his learning and his theoretical and practical vision for the problems in life with his training, which at the end is achieved with reflective thinking, culture, and communication. The interaction is, therefore, the way that allows the organization of the classes with synchronous and asynchronous meetings between the teacher and the learner to achieve the horizontality of the process [10] and together achieve the social aspiration of generating culture with strong knowledge.

The view on synchronous and asynchronous classes has increased in recent years, especially to explain the necessary use of technologies [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17], whose realization is achieved through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the time conceived for the link, but following established didactic principles. The participants in the synchronous classroom are linked from different places coinciding in time, hence its definition “at the same time.” The student, to achieve his learning, has an asynchronous interaction, in which time is “distributed” or “dilated” throughout the entire teaching organization [18], and the participants establish their own learning strategies with their autonomy to meet their goals.

Significant and experiential learning in synchronous classes focuses on achieving the student’s objectives from the appreciation and usefulness of that experience, since the cultural and didactic purposes that each educational action facilitates are maintained. In other words, the subject is capable of putting into practice their cognitive, procedural, and attitudinal knowledge, based on their cultural context and perception of reality [19].

With a cultural approach, as a historical condition of knowledge, the transmission of knowledge occurs under the predominance of the synchronous experience in a communicative way and the strategic scaffolding of the individual for his asynchronous experience with which he develops his own knowledge.

The synchronous class includes the interaction between the teacher and the student in a virtual classroom [20], and it is valued as the natural continuity of face-to-face classes, in which the main characteristics that can be evaluated are appraised. It must be fulfilled in formal education. The asynchronous class is judged as it subordinates to the initial synchronous class and, as derived from the independent study, needs that every university student works. Although both are extremely important and currently they complement each other, the synchronous class continues to have a greater impact on the teacher-student relationship; hence, it is a priority to focus the attention in language classes as a transmission of cultural knowledge.

In the conditions of the synchronous class, not only the shared time is important, but also the context where the educational processes are taking place, especially since each place presents a wide variety of cultural development. Each student frames a different context that the teacher must attend to, and the teacher, as well, must analyze and understand their own context.

The synchronous context is not the sum of different places and technologies; it is to look for a possible environment where common needs, objectives, challenges, and aspirations converge from a real distance, but under a prism of consensual interaction and respect. The learning scenario is ecologically changing and widening the gaps, as César Coll [21] would say, “… not only the learning of the functional use for these technologies, but also the knowledge of the sociocultural practices associated with the management of these technologies (…) to participate in those practices using the mentioned technologies appropriately” (p.125). Of course, in a state-of-the-art technological development career, in most cases, is ahead of the economic possibilities of the students.

The place of the virtual synchronous class is quintessentially transformative of itself and of its asynchronous counterpart. It is based on connectivity through networks that, in order to fulfill their pedagogical role, must organize all interaction in a place where present, past, and future converge; reality and virtuality; physical and formal environment and media and informal environment; and also education and learning online knowledge and the direct emotion of feelings and affections.

The virtual language of a synchronous class is achieved through simultaneous ICTs between students and teachers because learning always indicates cultivating oneself with cultural tools contextualized to reality [22]. But such language under the context of the pandemic creatively occupies all possible forms, combining oral language, written language, kinesthetic and gestural language with logic mathematics, and the algorithms of computerized systems. For this reason, the new experience of synchronous learning relates technologies to man’s needs to communicate, needs that network his education and shape his training for his working life, among other concepts and possibilities that can only occur within virtual development.

Of course, there is no single path, nor can an educational process be uniform, which is becoming more flexible and more diverse, both in its methodologies and in its strategies for assuming them. The construction of knowledge of university students starts from their own realities, from the involvement they have in solving their problems and from the responsibility they feel to fulfill their social obligations. The teacher must be able to offer various resources and take advantage of virtual group work to achieve the objectives of the subjects.

A cultural approach in the synchronous classroom requires the teacher to be both, a flexible and a strict conductor, a friend and a facilitator of the student’s learning process. That dominates the content and the virtual learning environment, which promotes its appropriate and diverse use of meaningful language in communication. The teacher who prepares long for comprehensive training also creates and molds convictions and makes synchrony facilitate the empowerment of cultural baggage. A participant under the cultural approach of technological virtuality must be sensitive to appreciate the world and understand the social and natural realities of any part for his realization as a human being who is a biological, social being, and a transformer of those conditions in the development of the personality.

4. Teaching English and National Geographic Learning

So, when we teach language, we also teach culture. Therefore, the course selected for teaching is of paramount importance to increase the students’ knowledge and their possibilities to understand the world. Then, we have to say that our teachers are using a very attractive course to teach English at our university, which contributes to have an extensive cultural background, in order to succeed in life and please demands of knowledge from that coming context students are going to live.

Lots of series from Cambridge University, Pearson, Macmillan, National Geographic Learning, among others, and their e-learning platforms have considered culture to teach and learn English; moreover, the focus of attention in each is quite different although their goals are directed to get an international standard from the official accreditation levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

In the course by National Geographic, Life, the approach to English is toward an international language where the language has been developed following links to wider notions of cultures than that of the country where the language is spoken. In this course, the skills to develop learning are a vehicle to an important incentive for students to know more about the world cultures, and two new issues are incorporated to the methodological analysis in each unit: real life functions and critical thinking, besides the common study of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, reading, speaking, and writing.

National Geographic has established high standards in terms of interaction with different contexts and cultures around the world. It has been clearly defined the classification of sociocultural strategies [23] that students should learn how to use, which incorporates two inner strategies: one for establishing and maintaining intercultural contact to avoid intercultural problems, whose purpose tolerates to do the students’ interaction with several possible cultures and through different cultures, and the other for creating sociocultural portraits of an L2 context and the participants in intercultural communication, which allows keeping and increasing self-cultural identity for every person; in other words, it is about finding potential ways to understand the language users and different contexts, no matter their cultures, at the moment of communication, in which backgrounds that are similar to one’s own culture are distinguished from those in which they differ.

For this reason, National Geographic, which has been meticulous all the time in the way in which nature and society are echoed, is committed to reflecting the culture of the world in which we live, a general culture for the whole humanity, in which the most significant achievements are seen and treated within the course as if there were no distinctions of any kind. Teaching culture through language for the authors of Life means:

• To accept a culture theory about the world, people included in it, and the ways communication reflects them.

• To include knowledge, gestures, beliefs, art, morals, laws, costumes, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society in the way people think and act.

• To have the sense of the equality among cultures and an increased understanding of one’s native and target cultures.

In addition, many definitions have been written about English as an International Language (EIL) and the way people actually analyze it, alternating a view of EIL as a mix of the many varieties of spoken English today with another in which English includes second language speakers. However, the global use of English for communication is growing fast among speakers of other languages in places where English is not the main or second language and therefore the importance of EIL studies for teaching and theory [24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30]. Data collected and referred to constantly evidence English expansion and its impact in communication:

1. More than 350 million people around the world speak English as a first language.

2. More than 430 million speak English as a second language.

3. English is the international language of business, which includes travel and trade, and in jobs for multinational companies, it is required.

4. Much of the technical terminology in science and means of communication is based on English words, so the language is used for their discoveries.

5. English will provide the opportunity to study with the best educational programs.

6. English is the language most exercised on the Internet every day, as 52% or so of the world’s most visited websites have been surfed among the 565 million of daily visitors on the Internet.

7. This language opens the doors of entertainment and publishing in scientific journals, so the language users reach a vast enlightening world of music, movies, books, and awards that also increase culture [31].

That is why, this top language and general culture are very close to each other, because people communicate what they are and people are just the result of biological and social evolution in fact; in other words, people evolve constantly as they are the result of global understanding through language and culture.

Good English skills mean that learners are not reliant on translators and can work faster and more accurately with many English information and cultural sources. Teaching culture started under a theoretical foundation on foreign language education, which historical achievements were mentioned by Yang and Chen [32], but there has been a shift afterward as Culture is revealed at different layers of depth [33]:

• The publication of Nelson Brooks’ Language and Language Learning: Theory and Practice, in 1960. This book started a discussion on the topic of teaching culture in the foreign language classroom.

• At the turn of the twentieth century, the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the twenty-first century (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1996) enumerated culture as one of the five objectives for learning a foreign language.

• In November 2001, a Common European Framework of Reference for Languages appeared. After that study, the European Union Council Resolution recommended using the six reference levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2, to control and support the ability of using the language. The CEFR ideas have been widely accepted as the standards for grading an individual’s language and culture proficiency.

• In 2002, Teaching English as an International Language by Sandra McKay of San Francisco State University states that teachers can find a different approach to teaching and learning culture moving from teaching a foreign language to an international language.

• And we dare say there must be a new landmark coming out soon related to culture as a result of this technological moment we are living right now.

In terms of how people can learn any language, there are different models. One of the most acceptable theories is that of three-circle one proposed by Krachu in [34], which was referred to McKay in 2002 to move the aim of teaching English from the ideal inner circle to others in which English is also valid for learning, through which people are reflecting a cultural representation in the language according to the place of learning and interaction (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The three-circle model as shades of usage.

It is correct to use English in any of those circles or levels, in order to differentiate the possibility of using the language in many types of countries with different cultures and languages, but just as usage shades of an international language. English rapidly develops more complex relationships within and between communities of speakers around the world; the dialog addressing its role as a global language needs to be continued to expand the analysis of this language.

The inner circle is composed of those countries where English is developed as the traditional cultural and linguistic bases of English, i.e., the circle represents the core of the language, which share in common their Angle Saxon and some following roots of culture, but for every country, each individual develops a national identity competence, as English is the main language nationwide, so its teaching corresponds to that of a main language.

The outer circle represents a political relation to English through the institutionalized non-native varieties of the language which are in contact with other native or non-native languages that are official languages in those areas where long periods of language and culture exchange under political domination have raised accommodation and acculturation processes among the languages, because they have at least two important languages as official languages that provide a multicultural identity competence. This circle matches the concept of ESL teaching.

The expanding circle includes the countries where the varieties of the language are used essentially in EIL contexts. That means that English is used everywhere for different reasons and it is perceived as part of the different cultures of the world. Nevertheless, the users of English increase their national identity competence as the grasp of that language favors knowledge and the recognition of what group the person belongs to culturally speaking; so in our opinion, the speaker develops a reinforcing self-cultural identity competence to differentiate them for developing his or her own in a wider level. That is why, the circles are just shades that can vary from place to place. The number of people learning English in different regions of the world that keep their roots and values is vast, and then, English is perceived just as a culture growth. Therefore, countries like China are definitely greater in terms of language user than some populations living in the inner circle countries, but they develop their Chinese culture with proud.

As a result of that, we can say there is a new reality to approach the ELT that we as teachers have to know and adapt.

• Language learning must be replaced with one that recognizes that individual classrooms within one culture can vary greatly in terms of the expected role of the teachers and students. That is, there are a lot of new ways to engage in the process of learning a language, and in each, the roles of the teacher and the students have been enlarged. So, there is no a single way to teach and learn English to communicate; therefore, there are lots of possible correct notions of English everywhere.

• In the teaching of an international language, bilingual users should be allowed to take ownership not only of the language but also of the methods used to teach it. Because if people are going to use any language, they must keep on going the way their cultural background and identity must develop to belong to their social group forever. Besides, they must use the language with autonomy and creativity, because every individual is different and uses the language with their own strategies and methods.

• The use of technology in education has increased fast lately, and new ways of interactions have been created. Therefore, interactions are freer than ever, so what people are incorporating to the language as embedded cultural output is more flexible and meaningful to everyone; thus, we have to approach culturally to the world people are living and make learning and teaching more significant for interaction by all means to all users.

These three points are the heart of teaching and learning in our university today. The series Life, which is a course to teach worldwide, can meet the expectations to learn English in which the students learn using their own cognitive and cultural structures, but other teachers can also have the same view to teach the language more significantly to incorporate culture from the whole world into the students’ mind. Life shows now the varieties of places, societies, and human results, so the teaching of English should show varieties of cultural issues the world around, incorporating the local reality as a valid tool for teaching.

Unfortunately, the issue of developing the reinforcing self-cultural identity competence has received insufficient attention in the context of teaching English as an international language yet. Traditional teaching methods and the influence of teaching English from an Anglophone context have not allowed other key developments for the indigenous and autochthonous culture of other people who use English as a cultural means of international communication.

In a study carried out by Kirkpatrick [35] on the use of traditional Chinese medicine and its therapeutic properties, beyond what has been described by scientific methods, it was noted that some points of view about what this procedure means now, and what it means traditionally for native people, have been modified for its acceptance in English-speaking countries, which reflects that important cultural elements are resized through the use of English.

In other words, the many versions of English as an international language must foster standards in cultural behavior, in which national identity will play an important role. This double growing in the development of English and the national culture from different countries, according to Anchimbe [36], needs a different user development: “… English as an international language to maintain its currency and vitality, it will have to be spoken by different voices yet understood by different ears. The differences, community-based as they are, are inevitable since, due to the specificity of ecology, no two communities can be found to use a language in exactly the same way…” (p. 284). This reinforces the need that from its conception must be done to destandardize the use of English and name any learning of English only as an international language and thereby erase the barriers created by the circles already mentioned.

This observation in favor of teaching English, only as an international language, adheres to a global conception of culture and the need to influence learning based on local recognition and the need to strengthen cultural identity patterns. For this reason, in Ecuador, and in any other part of the world, the users of the language can teach and learn different varieties of English, multiple English because the people’s cultures are multiple too.

5. Teaching culture in the synchronous lesson

In times of pandemic and seclusion, the students depend much more on their own strategies, to expand communication in English from virtual classes and get their own resources to enrich the English learning autonomy; but this time, when we think about teaching and learning English as an international language, the goal must let students reflect upon their reality and communicate to others about the surrounding context.

According to a cultural approach for teaching an international language, McKay stated that: “… the concept of thinking globally but acting locally is highly relevant to the teaching of EIL. The evidence clearly suggests that the use of EIL will continue to grow, as an international language that belongs not just to native speakers, but to all of its users. Given this shift in ownership, the time has come for decisions regarding teaching goals and approaches to be given to local educators so they can take their rightful place as valid users of English” ([27], p. 129).

It means that in any lesson we teach and learn, we can think globally, that is, we can show what humanity has achieved at this moment showing cultural issues referring to the virtual moment the world is living. But we must have the students act in the classrooms, talking and reflecting about their own experience and problems, and then, we must think about our goals in English in which the final objective must be interaction and communication among students concerning their surroundings and day-to-day life. Finally, teachers must think about the way the students are going to use the language meaningfully as valid users of English under present conditions, so that the need to speak and use the language arises from students’ real and authentic necessity to communicate.

6. Conclusion

The analysis of teaching English and universal culture through language has been debated. According to the current situation, teaching and learning English as an international language means the way possible interaction among students and teachers in synchronous classes has many opportunities for the growth of every student around the world and the way the formation of their personality gets integral results.

The fact that English is taught and learned as an international language means that any training must be based on materials, topics, methods, and critical thinking adapted by the teacher to the students’ closest environment to communicate in English as a real international language, which must reflect a more thoughtful culture and identity in people’s development.