Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Spanish Culture & Customs & Language Education

How the Study of Spanish Culture and Customs Provides a Rich Understanding for Spanish Language Education

Education, says JosT Luis Castillejo Brull (Diccionario de las Ciencias de la Educaci=n 475) is, in practice and principle, a cultural, moral, and behavioral process of inculcation and assimilation. "Basically, it is the process through which the young generations incorporate or assimilate the cultural patrimony of the adults" (475). Phonetically and morphologically, to educate comes from the Latin educare which means to "lead", "guide", and/or "orient". At the same time, semantically the word has meant from early times educere which means to "bring out", "extract", "bring to light". Hence, the two basic conceptual models: the "directive" one which subsumes that of educare, and the "extractive" one which subsumes that of educere. In this etymological perspective, Spanish education is the incorporation or assimilation of the cultural, moral, and behavioral patrimony of native speakers of the Spanish language; it is the extraction or bringing to light of the "soul" as well as of the "verb" of a culture. It is therefore obvious that language cannot be learned in a cultural vacuum, dissociated from the culture it expresses, simply as a different linguistic code.

Yet, language is a linguistically coded communication system. Without form there is no substance. Wegmann deplores the current emphasis given skill proficiency, communicative techniques, and passive skills which, she feels, often slight students of the Spanish language (xi). To Wegmann, the basic building blocks of language are words: First was the Verb. She contends that "research shows that successful vocabulary acquisition is the simple most important factor in learning a foreign language" (xi).

Vocabulary learning, however, is not the mere memorizing of words. Wegmann identifies six major vocabulary skills:

1. The recognition of cognates and near-cognates;...

Page 1 of 9 Next >

More on Spanish Culture & Customs & Language Education...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Spanish Culture & Customs & Language Education. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:54, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700608.html