The following options sound quite good to me. Which one would you choose?
a) learn the language
b) visit the country
c) follow their cultural products (TV, litterature, magazines etc)
d) read their press (magazines aside)
e) get related to someone
There is no <em>"f" all of the above"</em> option
I pick "C". If you read and watch a lot of the local production, you'll have a good idea about the country's mainstream dreams, habits, everyday problems, ideals, social structure, morals, politics. Even about history, geography and fashion. You don't even need to speak the language, although it helps.
I would downvote "A" because educational material is mostly artificial and focussed on teaching grammar and structure. Original material is picked for its linguistic value, not its cultural merits. Almost no primary scource in the target language sounds like the dialogue in a course book. "A" might work if you took courses in the target country, but you'd still be in a controlled environment (school) and the information would be language-oriented and officialy approved.
"B" is out of the question, unless you plan to stay for at last 6 months, visit many cities and small villages, attent local events and be really open-minded about foreign cultures.
"D" could be an option, but you need to read/watch tons and tons of it and have a good grasp on history and social movements of that country to read between the lines. Not very practical, is it?
"E" is limited to one person, their family and friends. Not average enough to get an idea about the general population.
What do you think?
Christina!
I got your point!
Knight,
I don't generalise even if I know many people from a country. I can't even generalise for my own!
I think watching a few TV dramas, films, reality shows, TV games and reading magazines will not show the truth or the reality, but if you watch for patterns, you will see what the people pay attention to and what they avoid talking about.
As a language learner, I am often looking for films and books in the target language. When I find lots of heroic historical fiction and lots of sagas of young tycoons with troubled lives, but no scifi, crime fiction or current social conflicts whatsoever, I feel I can deduce a thing or two about the culture. Or, when I watch the same genre from 3-4 different countries, I think I can spot a few differences.
Christina,
You did not get the point. If you only rely on what they show in media you have no way to know what is truth and what is not. Biased does not necessarily mean hiding truth, at times it also means telling lies. Whether they are hiding or telling a lie or exaggerating, you have no way to know or judge on your own until you do not interact with local people. Daily habits, fashion, sensibilities etc. vary from place to place, region to region specially in a diverse country like India. You can never generalise by watching few movies or TV shows etc. I will never judge a country or it's people purely based on media information. I need to connect with locals. This is my take.
Great effort Christina! I too would pick C but with a rider to have 4 or 5 real/virtual friends from that country of different age groups & different back grounds. The reason being that media(TV, movies, print, internet etc.) is not unbiased. If you try to know about my country based on information from the media of my country you will not get true picture of the things because almost all the news is paid. And there is a tendency to either exaggerate the praise/critcism or to sensationalize the stuff or demonize the bad. Sometimes things are not even little closer to reality. Yes you will have to use multiple resources of local as well as international media to get some idea but to get a clear picture you need to keep interacting with locals from different regions of the country with divergent ideologies and different age groups and gender. You do not need to visit that country for that. You might find some friends from that country in your city only and/or otherwise in this virtual world of internet it is not difficult to find friends from anywhere. Of course it needs effort.
C is the best method cause it's a fun and interesting way to learn and language, and prevents you from losing your interest and motivation. Grammars, sentence patterns can be learnt through extensive reading and films and music teach you about phonetics, slang etc. While I understand when you mean by saying A is 'artificial', I think learning the language is fundamental to learning its culture. Cause language is really the medium to everything culturally related, why would you want to learn about the culture if you don't care for the language anyway? B and E are effective but then comes the geographical, social and financial constraints etc. D is okay, but when following the press it's essential to note that the material may be biased, cause it seems all medias have their political stances these days, so it doesn't always offer a clear and complete view on things.
