Cultural Barriers to Communicative Learning in ESL Class
Abstract
Teachers of ESL, teaching English texts are familiar with a feeling that their utterances are going to waste as they neither get the expected feedback nor non-verbal response from their learners. In such a situation there is a danger of lowering expectations and falling in a downward spiral of simplifying language further, using direct questions that elicit close ended responses and thus decreasing the chances of conversational exchanges.
A thorough understanding of the expectations of L2 learners, their needs, motivation and interactive competence while keeping their socio-cultural framework in view is needed.
This paper advocates the use of texts that have authentic materials involving naturally occurring language as a means of communication rather than those texts that have native speaker contexts which may be alien to the speakers of other languages. It presents a few cultural barriers that impede communicative learning.
