This is another blog post which is essentially an extension from the “A In The Life Of The Queen Lesson Plan“, which I posted up on ELT Experiences a number of days ago.  Personally, it is quite challenging to develop cultural awareness in the language classroom and anyway to improve learners’ knowledge of the UK it always a positive.  Some activities could include using a range of authentic British Newspapers (it is always better to have a selection of newspapers, rather than just one so learners are exposed to a range of lexis for the same story), incorporating music, videos or quizzes.  Personally, I enjoy the use of quizzes in the classroom and it is a wonderful activity if used as a web quest.

During the last week with my Young Adults at the British Council Bucharest, I decided to get learners more aware of British Culture through the use of a quiz, whereby they could search for answers on the iPads (lucky if your institution has them for use in class).  The quiz that I used included the following:

British Culture – Quiz

Students were keen to complete this activity and were happy to look on their iPhones or the iPads to find out the answers.  It really exposed the learners to British Culture.  The next part of the lesson focused on the learners trying to find out about their own culture and whilst working in pairs, would have to write up their own questions (practices question forms) and make a note of the answers on a separate piece of paper.  So I used the following template:

British Culture Student Questions

The final activity, once learners created their own questions, was that learners handed their own worksheet to another group and would then have to search for the answers.  This type of lesson developed learner autonomy and was incredibly engaging.  I hope you have a chance to develop this idea in your classroom and please let me know how it went.

For further ideas about developing culture in the classroom, I would recommend the following book:

How do you incorporate culture in the classroom?  What is the most difficult aspect of teaching culture?  What books do you recommend for teaching culture in the classroom?  What sort of activities do you encourage for learners to share about their culture?