A Study of the Importance of the Awareness of a Student's Cultural Background

Learning the Cultural Backgrounds

Learning the cultural backgrounds of students is necessary for teachers to be successful in teaching students English as a foreign or second language. The knowledge gained by Mrs. Evans about the cultural backgrounds of her students enabled her to be more sensitive to their cultures when teaching them (Schoen and Schoen, 2003).

Cultural sensitivity is necessary to ensure a teacher creates positive interactions and relationships with her students (Schoen and Schoen, 2003). Positive interactions and relations between a teacher and her students ensure that the students have positive attitudes and perceptions towards the language learning process.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis, in this case, is necessary to identify and discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are associated with Serge who is a learning disabled student and the learning strategy applied to help him overcome the disability.

One of the strengths of Mrs. Evans, Serge’s English teacher that helped her make the language learning process a success was being patient.

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Mrs. Evan did not give up on helping Serge to learn English. Mrs. Serge taught English to Evans for a long duration without him being able to read, write and speak the language fluently. Due to her persistence and patience, Mrs. Evans was able to teach Serge English successfully.

Mrs. Evans portrayed a weakness by lacking cultural diversity. For a teacher to be able to teach her students English as a second language, she has to first of all study their cultural backgrounds. Understanding cultural backgrounds of students enables the teachers to understand cultural aspects that may hinder the language learning process (Salend and Salinas, 2003).

An opportunity presented in the case study that would have been capitalized on is the availability of learning resources. In the case study, it seems that Serge has access to many resources that if appropriately used would help him to be an excellent English reader, writer, and speaker.

A threat presented in the case study that would have hindered the language learning process is stigmatization directed towards Serge. A diagnosis at times brings about stigmatization and discrimination of an individual for being different from others.

Stigmatization directed towards Serge for being a learning disabled individual would have probably caused him to lose interest in the English class (Schoen and Schoen, 2003).