Introduction
In this chapter students learned about culture and all of the various components that comprise the culture of a given society, such as norms and values, beliefs, and material and nonmaterial elements. They discovered that one of the most important ways in which culture is transmitted from one generation to the next is through language. In this activity students will take a closer look at language: what it is, how it is learned, and how it influences culture and society.

Lesson Description
Students will visit a Web site about language and culture to learn more about what language is, the components of language, and how language influences thought processes and culture. Students will answer questions about the material on the Web site and will then conduct an interview with a non-native English speaker to ascertain this person's perspective on learning English as a second language.

Instructional Objectives

1. Students will be able to identify the components of a language.
2. Students will be able to describe the processes by which humans acquire language.
3. Students will be able to judge the influence of language on culture.

Student Web Activity Answers

1. There are about 5,000 to 6,000 different languages spoken in the world today. About half of the world's languages are no longer spoken by children, and this is the first step in the extinction of a language.
2. Flexibility is a major advantage because meanings can be changed and new symbols created, allowing humans to respond linguistically to environmental, historical, and social changes.
3. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can be altered to change the meaning of a word; k, p, s, and t are some examples. A morpheme is the smallest combination of sounds that have meaning and cannot be broken into smaller meaningful units, such as cow and boy.
4. The etic approach is using one's own cultural perspective when interpreting aspects of a different culture. The emic approach involves suspending one's own cultural perspective and observing reality through the filter of the new language and culture—learning the categories of reality used by the other society.
5. The responses from students' interviews will vary.

Go To Student Web Activity