In an engaging workshop in Rosario, Argentina, English Language Fellow Mathilde Verillaud introduced the idea of teaching American culture by using what students already know: their own culture.
Verillaud encouraged the teachers who attended the workshop to reflect on their own stereotypes of American and Argentine people. Using pictograms inspired by Liang Liu’ s work on the cultural differences between East and West, Verillaud demonstrated that students can compare, infer, and eventually guess American cultural concepts through a process in which they describe their own cultural concepts.
The teachers in the workshop laughed, debated, agreed, and disagreed in a lively discussion and were eager to use their experience to supplement more cultural concepts in their classes.