Cultural and Linguistic Diversity
Cultural and linguistic diversity is critical for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)1 preservice teachers. Culture has been defined in many ways (Robinson, 1985; Smith, Paige, & Steglitz, 1998; Snow, 1996). It can refer to (a) observable activities and items, such as art, drama, pop music, and mass media entertainment, (b) distinctive groups and societies, such as adolescents and the French and their culture, and (c) intangibles, such as beliefs, values, rules, roles, and so on (Díaz-Rico & Weed, 2010). For a teacher to be familiar with a culture requires familiarity with learners’ experiences as well as the typical beliefs of a culture (Kim, 2005). In this paper, we adopt a view of culture as fluid and dynamic, as something that changes over time as new ideas and practices spread to different groups and subgroups (Street, 2005).
Language is an integral part of being human (Denham & Lobeck, 2013), and the primary means of interaction between people (Bonvillain, 2013). Linguistic abilities are diverse, depending on the speakers’ language learning or acquisition stages. Since language proficiency refers to “the ability to use a language effectively and appropriately throughout the range of social, personal, school, and work situations required for daily living in a given society,” in both oral and written form (Peregoy & Boyle, 2008, p. 34), appropriate and necessary language skills vary substantially across different situations. We must attend carefully to culture and language, as well as readers’ knowledge of these two critical components, when helping others to develop skills in both one’s first language (L1) and second language (L2).