It was nice to have the class winding down at the end of the semester with culture project presentations. It gave me a chance to glimpse into the richness of several different cultures of the world. These projects not only illustrated specific cultural points, but also showed me a little bit about the person who presented--where his or her interests lie and what they found fascinating. I think a part of understanding culture deals with personal experience and although we weren't sitting in a foreign country learning about its culture, these presentations did give us students the opportunity and freedom to choose something that we were willing to spend time on without leaving the classroom.
I thought the presentations touched upon a variety of cultures, giving me a chance to kind of compare and contrast the cultures. It was interesting to learn about Bhangra and the Punjabi music industry, the social importance of hookah in Turkey, different foods and India's Dalits.
It was surprising to see that some students actually mentioned things from their past presentations. For example, the Korean group had mentioned the Korean Wave a few times before during our presentation on Korean beauty. I don't really know if anyone remembered, but if they did then they could have thought "oh hey, I have a vague understanding of this." I feel that it was built up to that point. Although we were all studying very different target languages, we already had some knowledge of whatever culture was being presented about because of past presentations and class discussions. Incorporating previously made points and observations brought the class full circle. It also called for audience participation. In a way, the students who paid attention were able to make those connections to things that we had all collectively talked about in the class before.
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