American Ways Teachers Manual with Answe PDF

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American Ways An Introduction to American Culture

Fourth Edition

Teacher’s Manual with Answer Key Online

Maryanne Kearny Datesman JoAnn Crandall Edward N. Kearny

American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture, Fourth Edition Teacher’s Manual with Answer Key Online

Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Pearson Education, 10 Bank Street, White Plains, NY 10606 Staff Credits: The people who made up the American Ways, Fourth Edition, Teacher’s Manual team are Lisa Bayrasli, Barbara Del Rowe, Warren Fischbach, Amy McCormick, Joan Poole, and Debbie Sistino. ISBN: 978-0-13-304703-5; 0-13-304703-2

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Contents PART 1: HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL Teaching American Culture in the Language Classroom How to Use the Activities in the Text Before You Read After You Read Skill Building Expand Your Knowledge Write About It Explore on Your Own

PART 2: ANSWER KEY FOR STUDENT TEXT Chapters 1–12

PART 3: REPRODUCIBLE ACTIVITY MASTERS

1 1 3 4 6 7 8 14 15

17 17

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PART

1

HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL

Teaching American Culture in the Language Classroom Why Include Culture in Language Classes? There are a number of reasons for including culture in your language classes: • Culture provides interesting content for language learning, leading to engaging discussions, writing assignments, or group projects, and also can be used to develop both informal social language and more formal academic language. • Culture can also be used to increase the cognitive component of the language class, helping students to develop higher order thinking skills as they analyze, compare, and discuss the cultural content. • Reading about and discussing other cultures can serve as a valuable backdrop for analyzing students’ own cultures. It is often said that we do not really understand our own culture until we have lived outside it, or seen it through another person’s eyes. In the words of a famous proverb, “A fish that never leaves the water does not discover water.” • Studying culture can lead to a better understanding of people’s behavior and help students move from ethnocentric pronouncements of what is “right” or “wrong” to more thoughtful tolerance of cultural diversity. Culture, then, can be interesting content, even for those students whose primary motivation for learning English is academic, for it promotes complex linguistic and cognitive interaction and encourages students to use the kinds of skills and language that are required for both academic and professional contexts.

What Culture Should Be Taught? Traditional definitions of culture—or what has been called “culture with a capital C”—focus on the literature, music, dance, drama, and other arts of a group or a country. That is often the focus of cultural studies in traditional language classrooms, especially the study of literature as a window to that culture. Although this “Culture” is important, what may be of more interest to students and potentially more useful to them, if they are going to interact with people from a new culture, is to understand culture as it is more commonly understood by anthropologists: that is, the set of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors or customs that define or distinguish a group of people. Or as Edward T. Hall defines it, “a set of ideals, values, and standards of behavior . . . that make the actions of individuals intelligible to the group.” In this book, culture represents the ways of perceiving, thinking, communicating, behaving, and evaluating that characterize Americans. Culture is shared, but in a country as large and diverse as the United States, there is also a great deal of cultural diversity based on ethnicity, race, gender, and/or social class, all of which create a number of different societies in the country. But even with these differences, there is still a kind of overarching culture that people grow up with that distinguishes them from those who live in other countries. Moreover, culture is dynamic: cultures change as their populations change. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the United States where immigration, refugee resettlement, and a number of other demographic patterns have created a rapidly changing population and country. That overarching culture, the traditional mainstream core, the changes it is undergoing, and its many variations form the substance of this book.

What Should Be the Goals of a Culture Class or a Cultural Component? There are a number of goals that you and your students might set for studying culture. • At the most basic level, that goal may be to make students more aware of American cultural patterns and how they differ with or are similar to their own.

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• At a deeper level, that goal may be to help students learn the reasons for those practices; that is, to understand why people do what they do. This requires some knowledge of a people’s history and traditions, and the geography, and climate in which they live. • For those students who may be going to live, work, or study with Americans, the goal may be to also develop the skills to interact appropriately with Americans in a variety of contexts. This involves much more detailed attention to social roles, nonverbal communication, and speech acts. Observing the media, interviewing Americans, or other activities such as these are intended to help students move from awareness and understanding to being able to predict or avoid problems and to resolve them effectively. The language classroom is often the only “safe” place where students can express their frustration or ask cross-cultural questions without fear of ridicule or hostility. The goal of the cultural component is not to explain away problematic features of the United States or to promote cultural imperialism; rather, it is to promote cross-cultural awareness, tolerance, or even acceptance, and greater global understanding. Students come to the language classroom with different goals. They are also likely to have different perspectives regarding the cultural component. Taking the time to ask them their goals will lead to better discussions and a more fruitful class.

Is It Possible to Teach American Culture? Even with a small country or culture with few members, it may be difficult to make cultural generalizations, especially when one considers the relevance of gender, age, social status, or other factors. In a country as large as the United States, with people who have come from so many different countries, bringing with them so many different languages, religions, and customs, it may seem impossible to talk about “American culture” or even “American cultures.” As you and your students read American Ways, discuss this issue and return to it several times. Does the set of core values that has served as a basis for definition for generations of Americans continue to help define American people? Do even those who disagree with some or all of these values also acknowledge their existence? Answering this may be a central focus of your class.

Getting Started A number of games can be used to get your class started. One of our favorites is a game of “shapes” that we learned many years ago from a cross-cultural trainer, Sandra Mumford, but we do not really know its origin. In this game, tags are made out of different colors in a variety of odd shapes, with some common features among them (a rounded corner, a triangle, a square corner, a serrated edge, and so on). (See Activity Masters 1 and 2, Shapes, on pp. 40–41 of this Teacher’s Manual, for ideas.) You can use the Activity Masters as patterns to cut out shapes in different colors, or you can use your imagination and create your own. Just be sure that every shape has at least one feature in common with one other piece of a different color. You will also need an envelope and some straight pins or paper clips so that students can wear the shapes like tags. Here are the rules of the game: 1. Tell students that beginning now, they are not to talk. 2. Have students choose one tag from the envelope and one of the pins or paper clips to put the tag on. Remind them not to talk. 3. After everyone is wearing a tag, tell the students to walk around the room and look at each other’s tags, without talking. 4. When they have walked quite a bit and have looked at all the tags, ask them to form groups without talking. 5. Give students enough time to form groups. Some students may find that no one “matches” them or invites them to join the group. Others may find that several groups invite them in. Remind them to look at the tags and find their group, and not to talk.

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6. Then ask them to look around their group and notice why they all belong to the group. Have them notice what they have in common, but remind them not to talk. 7. After some time, ask them to walk around again, look at each other’s tags, and again to form new groups, and then to look around their group, noticing the tags, but not to talk. 8. After several rounds (at least three, but four or more is better), when students have formed the more typical groups based on color, or shape, or size, you will notice that they have to look much more carefully to find things that they have in common. Some students will find that no one thinks their tag is like any others, and they may find themselves standing alone, outside a group. Other times students will form one large group. 9. Now it’s time to discuss the activity with them. You might ask these questions: What did you notice? Did anyone feel left out? Ignored? Did anyone invite you to form a group? How did you feel? Did anyone exclude you? How did that make you feel? Did you notice any changes in the size of the groups over time? Why do you think that happened? This game can lead to an interesting opening discussion for the culture class or component and suggest ways in which we may differ, but also have a lot in common. It can lead to discussions about the importance of belonging to a group and how we exclude or include people, as well as discussion about tolerance or acceptance, or even prejudice and discrimination. It can also serve as a place to begin setting ground rules for your class. This is important, especially in multicultural classes, where there is likely to be misunderstanding. You may want to remind students that in this class you will expect all of them to be respectful of each other as individuals and as members of different cultures. They may have questions; they may be surprised or even shocked at what they read or hear; but they should refrain from judging each other, other customs, or cultural differences before they have tried to understand how a custom or practice fits in with the entire system of the culture. It can often be difficult to discuss values, beliefs, attitudes, or cultures. Not only may the content be sensitive, but the words may not be readily available. For that reason, we have provided a number of activities to be used in pairs or small groups where students may feel freer to speak up, and have suggested a number of ways in which you can organize these activities (Think, Pair, Share; SmallGroup Projects; Talk About It; etc.). The culture class is a community of individuals working together to understand each other. It is a microcosm of the global community, and the efforts of you and your students represent one small but important step toward greater global understanding.

How to Use the Activities in the Text This section reviews the types of activities that are included in the text and provides some ideas of how they might be used in the class. All chapters have the same six major sections, though the activities within each section may vary: Before You Read Preview Vocabulary Preview Content (Chapter Reading)

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After You Read Understand Main Ideas Understand Details Talk About It Skill Building Improve Your Reading Skills: Scanning, Skimming, Highlighting, or Note Taking Develop Your Critical Thinking Skills Build Your Vocabulary Expand Your Knowledge Think, Pair, Share; Small-Group Discussion; Have a Debate; Small-Group Project Ask Americans; Ask Yourself; People Watching; Observe the Media; Proverbs and Sayings Understand or Compare Polls Use the Internet Write About It Explore On Your Own Books to Read Movies to See Each of these sections (except for the chapter reading) is discussed below.

BEFORE YOU READ All chapters include pictures, quotations, and two sets of activities preceding the reading text: Preview Vocabulary and Preview Content. The purpose of this prereading section is to: • • • • •

Activate students’ prior knowledge; Identify key vocabulary that will be needed to understand and discuss the text; Develop common background knowledge from various students in the class to facilitate discussion; Focus attention for the reading of the chapter; Identify or predict themes that will be discussed in the chapter.

There are many ways of using the Preview Vocabulary and Preview Content activities and most of the other activities in this text: • Students can try to answer or do the activities individually, in pairs, or in small groups. • The activity can be assigned as homework. Then students can compare and discuss their answers in class. Let students be the “teacher” here. • Students can be asked to locate the place in the text where they found the answer. • The activity can be used to teach test-taking strategies. Ask students to read questions before they read the chapter and then read to find the answer.

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Preview Vocabulary Because this is a reading text designed to prepare students to read and write academic English, great thought has been given to the vocabulary used in the chapter readings and then selected for the vocabulary exercises. The emphasis is on academic vocabulary from the Academic Word List (AWL) developed by Averil Coxhead: a set of some 500 key words that are frequent and important in academic texts used in university or professional education. (For more information on the AWL, see www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist.) The AWL contains 570 word families that were selected by examining academic texts from a variety of subject areas. The list does not include words that are among the most frequent 2,000 words of English. Each word family has a headword (the stem form) and a list of other word forms (or parts of speech) for that headword. On page 306, of American Ways, there is a list of the AWL headwords used in the readings. (Another form of the word may have been used, not the stem form.) After each word are the numbers of all the chapters in which these words appear. The reading material in each chapter has been analyzed by comparing it to both the AWL and the 2,000 Most Frequent Word Family List. The language analyzer shows the reading in different colors for the 2,000 most common words, the AWL words, and the off-list words that do not appear on the other lists. It also gives the number and percentages for each type of vocabulary item. Vocabulary words used in exercises (1) are from the AWL or (2) are not from either of the two lists but are important to the context of the reading and are useful to know for academic reading in general. Words from the 2,000 most common words are not used in vocabulary exercises. The language analysis allows us to tightly control the vocabulary and carefully construct vocabulary exercises. Our analysis of the readings in American Ways shows that 90–96% of all the vocabulary is either from the most frequent 2,000 words or the AWL. The AWL words make up between 5% and 7%, and the off-list words (words that are neither among the most frequent 2,000 words nor on the AWL) average 6.6% per chapter. Interestingly, Chapter 4 has the highest percentage of off-list words because words such as frontier are not used so often, although it is probably one of the easier chapters because much of the content is concrete. American is another off-list word appearing frequently in the text. The percentages of 2,000 AWL, and off-list words are remarkably constant throughout the readings, so the reading level is very consistent. The grammar used in American Ways has not been controlled, but there is an attempt to avoid overly long and complicated sentences. A number of different activities activate the key vocabulary for the chapter and help students learn it. In this edition, many of the words that are highlighted in vocabulary activities in this section are drawn from the AWL. (See pp. 306–308 of the text for more discussion.) They are important because they are: • Key words; • Likely to be new or unfamiliar words; • Words that students will need to understand to make sense of the text and be able to discuss the text or write about the ideas in the chapter; • Words that are often used in many related forms; for example, economy, economic, economics, economize, economical, economically, uneconomical, economist. In some cases, the words are presented in questions that are intended to get students thinking about the chapter. Other activities include matching, classifying, identifying connotations or opposites, and completing sentences.

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Preview Content For every chapter, students are asked to predict what the chapter will be about by looking at chapter headings, pictures, charts, and polls and by analyzing the quotation that precedes the text. They are also asked to think about their own experiences related to the themes in the text. You might ask students to: • Read this section and quickly look through the text as homework, writing brief answers to the questions and noting anything they find confusing or surprising; • Share their written answers with a partner; • Discuss this as a large group, writing students’ ideas on the board; • After they read the text, go back and compare what they now think with what they predicted or thought before reading the text.

AFTER YOU READ This section provides a number of activities that can be done immediately after reading the chapter. The exercises ask students to: Understand Main Ideas; Understand Details; Talk About It.

Understand Main Ideas These activities help students understand the ways academic texts in English are constructed: from main ideas, to supporting details in a kind of “T.” This T shape (or “I,” if the main idea is repeated at the end) also is the format that whole sections or chapters take, and the same organizational format that students should use in their academic writing. As they progress through the chapters, they will begin to look for the main ideas and supporting ideas and notice that the main ideas are usually at the beginning of paragraphs and also in the beginning of sections and chapters, followed by supporting details. The goal is to enhance their reading (and listening) comprehension and also their academic writing in English, since they will be expected to follow this same kind of T format in their paragraphs. In writing an essay, they may use an I format to return to the main ideas and summarize them in the conclusion. (See p. 63 of the Student Book.) Often, in these activities, students will be asked to go back to the predictions they made before beginning the chapter. Discuss in class how they arrived at their predictions and what has led them to confirm or change their ideas. Spend some time helping students to see how a paragraph, a section, and the chapter are constructed. You can: • Ask students to work together in pairs, highlighting introductions, conclusions, and topic sentences. • Discuss how they arrived at their choices. Note the...