Culture Assessment Session

It was difficult for me to sum up Dr. louis's biography to give the readers of my summary a brief excerpt of his career. At first I would like to point out some of this great modest man's experiences and posts. From Georgetown University, he got his PhD in linguistics and Japanese language, from Villanova University, he got his MA in philosophy and from Georgetown University, he got MS in psycholinguistics and his BA in Japanese language.This great man has held alot of posts in different universities.
Experiences
University of Delaware/ professor (1967 -1985)
UD writing center / director (1967-1985)
UD ELI / Director / founder (1972-1985)
University of Hawaii / professor (1966-1968)
Sophia university(Tokyo) / professor (1964-present)
Summers and Sabbatical Leaves
Georgetown University / professor (1963-1964)
University of Rome -La Sapienza-Italy / professor ( 2002-present)
Related Experience
Consultant, Delaware Department of Education for testing 2nd languages
Chairman, TOEFL Committee of Examiners
Consultant , E.I. Dupont de Nemours & co., Inc (Legal Department)
President, Board of Directors , Mary Campbell Center
( Residence for persons with severe and multiple disabilities)
On our arrival , we were welcomed warmly by this great and his attendants. There was a group of American teachers who deal with different subjects that are taught in English.
We got mixed in order to get the chance of cross culture. From Dr. louis's point of view , English is an incredible language and the schools' role is to motivate learners to learn.To teach English as a second language requires giving an overall idea about culture. As we know, culture is cosidered a vessel of different ideas like values, morals, belief, knowledge, family, race...........etc.It is the glue that combines the whole society and it can also covers different concepts . If we want to give a meaning to " family", some will define it as father, mother, sister, brother, the dog and may be the fish whereas the others will say that "family" is the whole society.
One of the greatest features of this lecture was putting a criteria for culture as follows;
Cultures of Doing Cultures of Being
(1)-Time/ Task Oriented Person oriented
(2)-Earned status Ascribed/ Inherited Status
(3)-Flexible roles Fixed roles
(4)-Nuclear family Extended family
(5)-Change, Movement, Progress Stability, Harmony and Tradition
(6)-Monochronic Orientation Polychronic Orientation
If we looked at time/ task oriented and person oriented, we would find out that in some cultures people focus on what the person does, whereas others would focus on what the person is. In some cultures , they don't pay attention to the past , they are just present/ future oriented while in other cultures they should look to the past to learn from their mistakes ,so the past is meant to be directive to their present.
It is clear that culture can either be of "Doing" or "Being", so our task is toknow which one we are from.

Presented by ,
Dr. Louis A. Arena PhD
Linguistics Department
University of Delaware
Summarized by/ lamiaa kamal