Incorporating Culture into Listening Comprehension Through Presentation of Movies

The use of movie videos as an instructional aid in the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) should be encouraged due to various pedagogical benefits. This article attempts to suggest a technique of utilizing movies in English listening classes in order to improve the aural perception skills of the learners. It comprises three stages:previewing, viewing, and postviewing. In the previewing stage, learners read a bried description of the theme of the movies to activate their prior knowledge, guess the meaning of certain keywords presented in sentential contexts, or familiarize-either with or without any subtitles-and while doing so they are supposed to answer several questions in written form. Finally, the learners are enganged into a postviewing activity in the form of contrasting cultures reflected in the movies. This technique of teaching listening has proved to be effective in developing listening skills in a foreign language and sentizing them to the target culture, which is an inseparable aspect of language learning.


tutions.
It is essential, however, that a review of the concepts involved in this technique--culture, language, and listening comprehension-precede the de- tailed explication of the technique itself.Consequently, this paper will be divided into three sections.The first section will briefly examine the interlock- ing nature of language and culture as it relates to EFL, then in the second one the processes that occur during aural comprehension of EFL will be re- viewed.Finally, the teaching technique will be presented in details.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
To date culture has been defined as various different-although some- what related--concepts, ranging from a group of people who share the samc background (Matikainen and Dufff, 2000) to the way of life of a sociery (Straub, 1999).As a mafter of fact, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1954, as ciretl by Lessard-Clouston, 1997) obtained more than three hundred definitions ol' culiure in their investigation.This confirms the notoriously-hard-to-dcllrrc nature of the term 'culture', as asserted by Byram and Grundy (2002).I low- ever, it might be appropriate and practical to consider culture in both its ntrrow and broader senses as the dyad of little "c" culture and big"C" cultrrrc.
The little 'oc" culture refers to the aspects of lifestyle or patterns of daily living, while the big "C" culture represents a civilization's accomplishmcnts ilr literature and the fine arts, its social institutions, its history, geography, trrrl political system (Herron et al, 2002).Pryor (2004), who argues that culture lies at the heart of curriculrurr, views culture as learned patterns of values, beliefs, perceptions and bclurv iors which are shared by groups of people but may be practiced dillbrcntly by the members in a particular situation.She further states that these culturnl paiierris can be observed iri ihe iangriage "rhey use, in ad<iition to orglrrizl tion, customs and material products.It is apnarent, then, that languagc ir value-laden; therefore, EFL learners definitely still grasp the values thnt ex ist in the target culture even if the culture is not taught explicitly in the lnlr- guage class (Lessard-Clouston, 1997).On this gtound it is quite reasorruhle tlrat Herron et al (2002) claim culture becomes the core of foreign lang,ulg.rinstruction.
Apparently culture plays a vital role in EFL learning; therefore, it seems to be a wise suggestion to integrate it into language instruction, regardless of the language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to be taught.As the present paper deals mainly with listening, this particular language skill will be reviewed briefly in the next section, before the integration of culture and listening is discussed.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Formerly thought of as a passive language skill, listening was often as- signeci iess emphasis in EFL ciasses rhan rhe active skiii, speaking (Herschenhorn,1979).The label of passive language skill, however, is actu- ally a misnomer as listening requires active processing in the learners, mind despite the superficially silent activities of perceiving oral stimulus.When receiving such stimulus and then attempting to make sense of it, the learners interactively perform two types of cognitive processing, namely bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (conceptually-driven).
The bottom-up processing involves constructing meaning from the smallest unit of the spoken language to the largest one in a linear mode (Nunan, 1998).Thus, the leamers make an effort to understand a spoken dis- course by decoding a number of sounds to form words. Next, a nexus of words are linked to form phrases, which make up sentences, These sentences build a complete text, the meaning of which is then constructed by the lis- teners.In addition to the grammatical relationships, such suprasegmental phonemes as stress, rhythm and intonation also substantially contribute to this data-driven processing (van Duzer,lg97).Learners can be trained to perforrn this processing for instance, by activities that require them to dis- criminate two sounds or distinguish rising and falling intonations.
The top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to interpreting meaning as intended by the speakers by means of schemata or structures of knowledge in the mind (Nunan, 1998).This view emphasizes the promi- nence of background knowledge already possessed by the learners in making sense of the information they hear.In the aural perception, the prior knowl- edge may facilitate their attempt to grasp the incoming informafion by relat- ing the familiar with the new one, and significant laik of such knowledge can hamper their efforts to comprehend a particular utterance.It is, therefoi, essential that leamers are accustomed to performing this processing, usually Kusumarasdyati, Incorporating Culture 57 by extracting the gist of the exchange they listen to.
Thus, it is justified that listening is not a passive language skill, Con- trary to the misleading popular belief, comprehension through auditory channel requires some cognitive processes that interact actively in simultaneous manner.To aid the learners in performing these processes better, various materials should be carefully selected to ensure a conducive atmosphere of learning.Creating such an atmosphere can be easily conducted by selecting commercially available films in video format and employing them as listening materials in the language lab.

PRESENTATION OF MOVIES IN LISTENING CLASS
Movie videos should not be regarded as merely a peripheral 'extra' in a listening class; on the contrary, they can function as the core content and become an integral part of the curiculum (Sommer, 2001).Appropriate, crea- tive exploitation of these movies can reveal their potentials in fostering the acquisition of listening skills (Eken, 2003); therefore, their use as instructional materials in listening lessons should be encouraged due to at least four pedagogical values.
The first benefit relates to motivation: films about issues that draw the learners' interest can positively affect their motivation to leam (Stempleski,  1992; Allan,l985; Lonergan, 1984).My experience of teaching the university students proved this to be true, Every time I dimmed the lights in the language lab at the beginning of the listening lessons, the students immedi- ately realized that a movie video was about to be played and they always clemonstrated enthusiasm, which would not diminish even after the movie cnded.Second, the movies assist the leamers' comprehension by enabling them to listen to exchanges and see such visual supports as facial expres- sions and gestures simultaneously (Allan, 1985;Sheerin, 1982), which may boost their insights into the topic of the conversations.In real life, unless lhey are speaking on the telephone or listening to the radio, such visual supports are virtually present to accompany the verbal exchanges, so the exis- tcnce of facial expressions and gestures in the movies can sirnulate the dialogues in real situations.In addition to the visual supports the films also pro- vide exposures to the language uttered in authentic settings (Stempleski,   1992; Telatnik and Kruse, 1982).This third benefit, i.e. authentic language, is cxtremely valuable to assist the students in preparing for the participation in the real conversations because the exchanges in the movies are very similar to the ones in real life in terms the rate of delivery, the choice of words and the tendency of truncations (such as elliptical structures and contractions), as opposed to the exchanges in the majority of commercial listening materials, which may sound quite arlificial.Finally, the movies present the cultural context of the conversations (Herron et al,2002; Chapple and Cur-  tis, 2000), hence enhancing more appropriate use oflanguage and preventing cross-cnltural misunderstandings.Further, they can be a usefu!"spring- board" (Toplin, 2002) ta investigate the target culture.
These advantageous aspects of movies as listening materials provide sufficientiy strong grounci for ianguage eciucators to have them shown in EFL instructions.Although presenting fuii-length movies in a classroom in- vites objections mainly due to the time constraint (Bluestone, 2000), after repeated practice I am confident in maintaining ihat this does not necessarily become a significant obstacle.In tertiary institutions where I have implemented this teaching technique, one session of listening lesson lasts for 100 minutes.Given this condition, apparently showing one entire movie (ap- proximately 90-l 15 minutes long) and doing the relevant exercises cannot be completed in a single session, but this can be easily overcome by splitting the presentation into two sessions.As a matter of fact, such a division of time can cater for invaluable opportunities for the leamers to exercise their power of imagination if we-the learning facilitators-are imaginative in as- sisting the iearners to construct knowledge from the aural perception.
The movie can be presented in two modes: with or without subtitles.
The decision to include the subtitles or otherwise in a movie presentation re- lies on the complexity level of the story and the nature of speech.If the theme and the piot appear to be too complicated to apprehend (for example, Dead Poets Society), it is a wise choice to show the subtitles as this will save the leamers from an arduous task, i.e. concentrating on the theme while at the same time grappling with the language.In addition to the complexity of the content, several attributes of the utterances also determines the results of such a decision, for instance, the density ofthe language and the rate and ac- cent of delivery.Characters who articulate excessively unfamiliar technical terms (such as legal jargons in Music,Bot), words with a particular accent (A Walk in Clouds), or fast speech (Next Stop Llronderland) can possibly ham- per the learner's efforts to comprehend, so I prefer to provide subtitles in their first language when such movies are on display.Kusumarasdyati, Incorporating Culture 59   To guide them in comprehending ideas from the orar input as well as strengthening their imaginative faculty, I devise a handout to accompany the movie viewing.This handout comprises three parts and reflects the siages that they undergo during the lessons: previewing, while-viewing, and post- viewing (Allan, 1984;underwood, 1989).A description of each stage will be elaborated below.

Previewing
It is a common practice in instructions on language decoding (including listening) that at this beginning stage the teacher spends a sufficient amount of time helping the learners build the appropriate schemata to facilitate com- prehension (van Duzer, 1997) .This conceptually-driven styie of teaching are believed to enable the learners to provide a 'hook' that relates the knowl- edge they already possess and the one to be acquired, making the acquisition occur more smoothly.
Generaliy the previewing stage consists of two activities, namery, introducing the theme of the movie and preteaching the key vocabulary (Allan,  1985; Tomalin, 1986; Sheerin, 1982).Additionally, some teachers believe it rnight be quite fruitfulto familiarizethe learners with the main characters of the movie prior to viewing.Although chung and Huang (1998) found that preteaching the vocabulary is a better form ofadvance organizer than the de- scription of the main characters, based on my personal experience in listening classes the latter proves to be helpful in assisting the students' compre- Irension.working within this framework, at the beginning of the session I briefly describe the theme that underlies the whole plot of the movie, and also the presence or the absence of subtitles in the mother tongue.
Afterwards, I administer a worksheet and an answer sheet, and have the lcai'ners scan the items in the worksheet ior a few a minutes to familiarize lhemselves with the learning activities to be carried out before, during and after viewing the movie.If the film is presented with subtitles, before watch- ing it the learners need to read the brief description of the theme and the rnain characters (Figure 1).Usually the activity of guessing word meaning is not included here because lexical items will be a part of the while-viewing.
Part l: Before watching You are going to watch an interesting movie about Erin and Alan, two strangers who crossed paths several times without realizing each other's presence.Althaugh desiiny seerned to push them further and fuiher apaft, it had samething nice for Erin and Alan.
Naw familiarize yourselves with the following characters to help you comprehend the movie.

Erin
: a nurse, who dropped out of Harvard medical school.

Alan
: a student of marine bioiogy, volunteering in the aquarium.
Sean : an activist, Erin's iormer boyfriend.Piper .Erin's mother, who is eager to find a partner for her daughter However, if the subtitles are absent, in addition to describing the theme I review a number of keywords from the movie to cater for a scaffold that will assist them in the comprehensiorr later (Figure 2).Otherwise, the iearn- ers need to expend extra effort to understand what is happening in the movie and may give up disheartened if they fail to do so.
Rather than simply telling them the meaning of these keywords, I prefer presenting thern irr seniential context and asklng the students to perform intelligent guessing to figure out the meaning of each on the basis of the con- text.Retention is expected to be better if they construct and discover the meaning themselves.The students are suoposed to do the vocabulary building excrcist.or;rllvIaskthem to brainstorm the meaning, givingthem a chance to cxprr.:,r;tlrt.
inferred synonym or explain the definition to the rest of the clirss.ll r:r rlrt' lcamers who construct the meaning, and my role in this activity is rrrrrt:ly to Jrrovide feedback on the accuracy of their inference.

While-viewing
Immediately after the previewing stage, I engage thenr irr tlrc, r ote ,rr trr ity: viewing the movie.While doing so, they are supposcd to lrnrvt.r.,,,rrr,.ilcms in the worksheet in written form.Again, the prcscnc:c ol':irrlrtrtlt',i rrr the film determines the types of questions to ask in the workslrcet ll tlrr.lilrrr is shown with subtitles in the mother tongue, I ask thcm sollle (ln(.\tr()n., tr)  theck their comprehension and also some others to irnplovc llrt'ir lrrrt;rl knowledge.A sample of worksheet items for the movie M,r/ ,\'trr7r ll'rrtrl:.tlundto exemplifu these two types of questions can be fcruntl in lir;iurr.I Part l: Before watching You are going to watch a movie abaut Ferris, a high school student who took one last day off before graduating.lt also portrays how he cleverly spent it and how it eventually changed his friends' and his own life in the end.Now guess the meaning of the wordgphrases below, using the context as a clue.
When his sister broke his favarite ashtray, he went berserk.This is my father's daWpgnumber.You could call him in his office by dialing this number.
The dowotewn area ls always busy because there are a lot of shops and offices there.1.What was the relationship between Lewis Castleton, the writer of "Heart I'Jeeds Home", and Erin? 2. Why did Erin often point to uuords in books randomly?F igure 3. While-viewing ltems of Worksheet for Next Stop llonderland If the subtities in the first language are not showrt, the items usually in clude comprehension questions only, as illustrated in the excerpt of worksheet for the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Olf inFigure 4' Part ll: While Watching At home 1.Why did Ferris cail Cameron that morning?
2. What were the tips given by Ferris's father over the phone?r Take a .Wrap a .Make r Geta At school 3. What did the school's nurse tell Sloane?l,igure 4. While-viewing Items of Worksheetlor Ferris Bueller's Day Off Each item consists of a brief description of the scene to refer to (written rrr italics) and one or more questions to be answered.The description of the ,;ccne assisis the learners to direct their atteniion to a particular spot in the rrrovie which is related to the question(s) being asked.For instance, the label rl' 'in the restaurant' above item number 1 in the worksheet for Next Stop ll'rtnderland prompts the students to become more alert when they see the :;cene of a restaurant on the screen and know immediately what specific in-Irrrmation to look for, i.e. the English translation of menawarkan tumpangan loll'er a ride) and kalau hilarzg, ya sudah (Lost is lost).Such an item is in-It:r16[s6 to increase their vocabulary size by encouraging them to match the lrrdonesian subtitles with what the film character utters in English.
The comprehension questions are written in similar fashion--questions 1'r'cceded by a clue of the scene-unless the questions need to be answered b.y grasping the ideas andlbr inferring the answers from the entire movie.In tlrc latier case, the ciescripiion of ihe scene is occasionaiiy not requireci.
In spite of the slight difference in the content of questions forthe films with and without subtitles, they are presented in approximatel;, the sarne r.vly.The following describe the complete activities to be done during the vicwing stage, First, allow the students one minute or two for a quick review ol lhe scenes and the questions written in the worksheet, so thal they have an itlt:a o1'the scenes to watch in the entire movie and can focus their attention on llre information to seek.Next, play the movie, and after each scene mentiorrcd in the worksheel pause for l5 to 60 seconds, depending on the length on his head of the required answer.During this pause, have them supply a correct, brief answer.Occasionally, after viewing a scene once the students still find it quite difficult to recognize the words spoke,n by the characters or understand their exchange, and request a repetition of that particular scene.In dealing rvith such a situafion, I should ernphasize that this exercise aims at enabling and guiding them to comprehend and construct meaning from utterances in the target language, rather than testing their listening ability.As a conse- qu"n.e. they deserve a second chance to vierv the scene in order to promote better comprehension.
I have mentioned earlier in this paper that due to time constraint a par- ticular film has to be presented in two sessions, and this split turns out to be an advantageous point in the lesson rather than otherwise as it caters for an opportunity of stimulating the learners' imaginative capability.I al1vays fin- istr tne first session by stopping the tape or the disc when the story in the movie seemingly gets bleak and unpromising, then have the learners predict how the story will end.To illustrate, I press the 'stop' button of the video player in the following scenes: t Ferris Bueller's Da-v Of!. after Cameron Fry crashes his father's car out of the garage and severely damages it.o A Walk in the Clouds: after Victoria Aragon turns the bedroom light on and Paul Sutton watches the light from a distance in the vineyard.
" Chocolat: after Anouk accidentally drops the container made of clay, and begs for an apology from Vianne, agreeing to leave.o Musie Box: after Ann Talbot discovers the old pictures hidden in the mu- sic box.
They should write their predictions briefly (usually not more than 5 sen- tences) on the answer sheet.To do so, they invariably exercise their imagina- tive power to figure out what e.yents will be likely to occur ahead at the end of the movie based on the existing clues.It is definitely an interesting ex- perience for me to find how remotely different one prediction from another can be.Ii even takes me by surprise to learn that some of my students' pre' dictions often resemble the unexpected twist in the movie's ending '  This activity involving imagination closes the first session.In the next listening session (usually the following week), I play the rest of the tape/disc and have them continue answering the rest of the items.

Postviewing
Upon completing the while-viewing activities, they piroceed to the post- viewing ones.By this time they have already seen the end of the movie and can verify the written result of their prediction against the actual ending.De- spite differences that may come up between these two, all of the students' work must be appreciated.The exact or approximate match between what the learners have guessed and what actually occurs in the movie does not matter much.It is the process of arriving at the predicted ending which should be acknowledged.
After reviewing the results of the prediction briefly, the learners are en- gaged in the next postviewing activity, namely, examining the diversity across cultures, which could be done in two alternatives.One way to accomplish this is to have the learners identifr how the target eulture in the film differs significantly from their own culture.The inclusion of their home culture is essential as the awareness that they are members of a certain culture assists them in recognizing the "values, expectations, behaviors, traditions, c:ustoms, rituals, forms of gteeting, cultural signs, and identity symbols" (Straub, 1999) in their surroundings.Such awareness can lead them to inter- pret the same aspects of other cultures more objectively.To facilitate the students' attempt to contrast the cultures, I usually devise a table that can help them spot the distinct aspects of both.Figure 5 is an example of such an itcm taken from the worksheet for Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Part lll; After Watching
You have seen some activities or events that reflect the American culture in the movie, and they are quite different in lndonesia.ln the left column, Iist these typicaily American activities or events.ln the right column, write the equal ones in lndonesia.This item is designed to allow the learners to contrast the American cul- ture-where all the acts and events in the movie take place-and the Indonesian culture in which they have lived and been raised.The results indicate that most of them can accurately describe how dissimilar the two ctlltures view parent-children relationship, teacher-students relationship, friendship, and other social issues.
Another method of examining diversity across cultures is making use of the cultural issues depicted in the films.If the film happens to be rich of cross-cultural materials to dig up, such as A Walk in the Clouds where the Mexican culture encounters the American one, i construct an item that di- rects the learners to delve into the distinct manners in which two cultures treat the same issue in the movie (Figure 6).
Part lll: After watching Paulwho came from Maligne (lllinois) had difficulties in adjusting to the life of the Anagons who were of Mexican origin and lived in Napa (California).List a few things which Paul viewed differently from the Arragons.and therefore caused cross-cu ltu ral m i s u n d erstand i n g.
Kusumarasdyat i, lncorporating Culture 67 F'igure 6. Postviewing Item of the Worksheet for.4l(alk in the Clouds Schroeder (2004) points out the great linguistic diversity thar exists in the U.S.A. and results from the influence of different cultures there.This serves as a reminder that cultural diversity is existent not only between one country and another, but within a single country as weil.EFL learners need to have knowledge on this to prevent misperception that the English nativespeakers live in a community who shares a uniform culture in different parts of one particular country.
It is strongly recommended ttrat this activity of contrasting be followed by an assenion from the teacher that cultures simply differ and none is supe- rior to the others.This is especially vital as some leamers may tend to hold an inaccurate opinion that their own culture is "right" and "full of polite- rtcss", whereas the others are "wrong" and "full of unacceptable values".l'hey should be made aware that diversity among cultures must be highly valued and respected, and such appreciation and unprejudiced attitude are cxtremely beneficial when they are learning a foreign language as language is inseparable from the culture where it is spoken.
Figure l.Previewing ltems of Worksheet for Next Stop l(onderland

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Previewing Items of Worksheet fqr Ferris Bueller,s Day Of| expression did Kevin use to asK his friend to speak with lower voice?ln the aquarium 3. Frank asked Allen to e B. COMPREHENSION the fish.