Introducing Cultural Contents in English Lessons


Introducing Cultural Contents in a class of Infant education or Primary can be very beneficial, because at that age children absorb all the information that we provide them. This subject can come in handy to explain other aspects of different countries, learn about other lifestyles and at the same time increase their vocabulary.

To begin with, the best resource we can have is to sing a song altogether, so that students can start getting in touch with the language and help make any possible shyness disappear. The teacher would have the job to encourage and motivate children, singing is a fun way of learning. With songs you are able to have a lot of interaction and get much benefit, work on different topics, like colours, animals and numbers. Its one of the most productive ways to work with youngest pupils. There are many songs and rhymes to teach children, here we could make use of the ICT, as having computers and projectors in class we can listen to songs or videos directly from internet.

Another way of introducing culture contents can be working with the climate. Depending on the age we are going to work with, we would adjust the level. Climate is different in each country, we could compare weather in Spain with United Kingdom. With the youngest students it would be a great way of introducing colours, for example: yellow-sun, blue-sky and with Primary they could start making sentences, example: today is sunny, in England it rains a lot. With this topic we can expand their vocabulary.

The Royal Family would be another topic to study and get to know a bit about Great Britain, and at the same time they could study all the members of their own family tree. Students from Primary could do projects about the Royal Family, looking for pictures on the net or magazines and create a big family tree mural. Infant education could start learning the main members of their own family: mother, father, sister, brother or make a drawing of all their own family and write underneath who is in the picture: mother, brother,etc.

As they are learning a culture of a different country, its good to know that the United Kingdom is formed by four nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A group project would be to draw and paint in a giant size poster of all the United Kingdom, and each corresponded name and then hang it on the class wall, so that every time the teacher mentions a different place, like London, famous for being the capital and having Big Ben, students can identify it on the map. All ages could learn the colours of different flags. In little groups they would all make the different flags, Wales with its colours and the dragon, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and the United Kingdom. It can be a way for introducing other countries in future projects.

When it comes near to holidays, normally its because some kind celebration is coming soon, like Christmas or Easter. Children always enjoy them so working with that topic is a great way of catching their attention. Easter time is popular in the United Kingdom, everybody participates and spends a lot of time preparing it all, especially for children. So we would use English to do crafts class. We would have to speak slowly and with very short sentences and using vocabulary they already know, but introducing a little bit more, for example: egg, Easter, paint, holiday. Every student would bring their own egg, and paint with different colors and ornaments, spots, stripes, faces.

Introducing cultural contents in an English lesson you can use many resources, and work with them individually, in pairs or groups, but we always have to have each student in consideration and his o her possibilities, and make sure they understand everything and that at the end of the day the English lesson has been beneficial to each one of the students.