| Body | The activity below embraces the degree to which language and culture are intertwined and uses their inextricability to catalyze learners. As such, an overarching Intercultural learning objective is listed, and the sub learning targets are highlighted as well. It was created for novice learners but could easily be adapted to other proficiency levels.
Learning Targets: Student will be able to:
- Use rehearsed behaviors when shopping in a familiar type of store.
- Produce and understand common bartering phrases and sequences.
- Select the proper formulae to use to get the best price and interpret vendors’ offers.
- Explain decision making and the extent to which they engage in bartering.
- Articulate the extent to which the vendor was willing to negotiate.
Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal
Materials: A video of people bartering in the target language, or a video about bartering in the target language; items to create a storefront in the classroom
Procedure:
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Observe
How will your students see culture and communication in action?
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- Direct students to watch a video about bartering. This Spanish video is a great example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKiw7S2D9No).
- As they watch, have students take notes on the steps involved in bartering.
- Have students watch again and take notes on the emotions expressed in each step. Do people seem happy, upset, or something else?
- If necessary, have the students watch a third time and take notes on vocabulary/sentence structures that they don’t understand. Then, make sure they work in pairs to predict what the phrases might mean. This step is helpful in building more robust schemata.
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Analyze
What do you need your students to notice? How will you help them focus on what is salient? |
- Discuss the students’ observations and questions. Make sure to point out what is salient like how to form questions, what acceptable prices might be to offer up in bartering, and any other cultural nuances that you know that might be helpful to students (Are there ways to soften requests? Are the requests typically speaker-oriented or hearer-oriented? When are grounders/explanations used to justify prices? Why do you think they are used?)
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Extend
How will students apply what they have learned?
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- Set up a storefront or market place in your classroom. Assign half of the students to be vendors and half to be clients. Provide vendors with an appropriate starting price for the items you are selling.
- Allow students to practice bartering for goods. After 1-2 minutes, have clients rotate to new vendors. As they engage, have them take notes on the final price that was settled on. Repeat five times and then swap roles.
- Reconvene as a class. Discuss what the best prices offered were. Identify strategies used to get those prices (e.g., explanations/grounders, speaker orientation, or mitigated/softened requests).
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Reflect
What will students do to reflect on what they have learned?
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- Ask learners to write a journal in which they compare and contrast cultural practices related to bartering in the L1 and the L2. They could begin by drawing a Venn Diagram and then supplementing the diagram with written reflection regarding the extent to which using certain bartering strategies (e.g., explanations/grounders, speaker orientation, or mitigated/softened requests) impact a hearer’s willingness to barter. They should also reflect on the degree to which they employed those strategies in class and why (e.g., Did they choose not to use softened requests for a reason they can articulate, or was it because they weren’t comfortable forming softened requests?)
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