Relationship between civilization, culture and language. How can this affect us as future teachers?

This essay has the objective to show you how are Civilization, Culture and Language related and how can this affect us as future English teachers.

First of all, I am going to give some definitions about each topic and then I am going to make the relationship between those themes.

Civilization it is an organized culture in its social, political and economical area. In this way, civilization includes the social development of a country. All those definitions or characteristics tell us that civilization it is a "complex society" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization). This means that each society has its own beliefs and manners that show us how are they.

When people talk about Culture, they automatically tend to relate this concept with civilization. Sometimes the word Culture is used as a synonym of Civilization, but it is important to say that those words are related but they have not the same meaning, so they are not synonyms.
I can say that Culture is the life style of a group of people and this include all their costumes, manners, knowledge, behavior, beliefs and language.

When I think about Language, I always relate it with the way of communication that everybody uses. Language includes all the "visual, auditory and tactile symbols" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language). Each person has his/her own way to communicate, especially if he or she is incapacitated. For example, if someone is deaf, he or she will use a different way to communicate, such as “the signal language”.

After all those definitions, and thinking about the relationship between Civilization and Language, I would like to say that the social development of a country that we can find in a civilization really affects the language, because if we do not have any development, how can we have a good use of the language?

About the relationship that exists between Culture and Language, I want to say that the cultural development of a group of people involves language development. For example, if I live in very poor conditions and I have not had opportunities to study, probably I will have a really poor vocabulary and use of the language, so it will be really difficult to create any relationship with different people, because you will not know how to say something. This happens because people from poor places have a different use of the language than people from rich places. This means that the development of a group of people affects all the sociocultural relationships and obviously affects the language development. When I think about Language, I immediately relate it with the cultural identity of a country. In summary culture is expressed by language.

If think about all those aspects, but related with teaching, especially with English classes, I can see that all those things really affect teaching, because English, is a language, and in this case, it is a foreign language for us. So I wonder, what would happen if you want to teach English but to poor people? I think that it would be difficult, because they are involved in an unprivileged environment, so their cultural and economical development it is not good, and probably they will not have money to buy some things that could be necessary to study.

As I said before, cultural development affects language development that involves sociocultural relationships. We as future teachers, we should pay attention to those aspects, because obviously this affects language development, and I think that this should not be an impediment to learn a second language, and in this case, English.

Another important aspect is that human being is a social person who is always learning by imitating other people; they imitate their manners and everything that is in their environment so we should be careful in this aspect because if someone has bad manners this will not be useful for the rest of the people.

In summary, I want to say that civilization it is not the same as culture, but civilization it is an organized culture; that is why both themes are really related. As they are related, they can really affect language development. I can also say that in poor conditions it is really difficult to teach something if you do not have enough tools to teach, you should look for them, in order to make a good job, teaching English.

Final essay: Outline

The topic for my essay will be "Relationship between civilization, culture and language".

1. Introduction: definitions of civilization, culture and language.

2. How does civilization affect language?

3. How does culture affect language?

4. How can this affect us as future English teachers?

5. Conclusion.

Modern times, the story of a winner

Modern times it is a movie that took place in 1936 and tells the story of a man who worked in a factory. There he had to tighten some screws; it was a relly stressed work. One day he suffered a nervous breakdown, and for that reason he was dismissed. Then Chaplin had to look for a new job, but it was really a hard work. While he was looking for it, he suffered a lot of bad things, for example he was send to prison but it was an unjustified action because he did not do any crime or something like that. One day he met a beautiful and orphan girl that had not had anything. She did not have home and money, and she also had been separated from her family some days ago. When they met each other it was a really strange and unexpected situation because she had stolen a piece of bread, but when the police arrived he said that he had stolen that bread, so it was an heroic action. Then they started a life together, it was difficult because none of them had nothing, so they started looking some strategies to have their things. Also they found a little house for them. One day, Charles found a work, and everything change until the factory close, and he is sent to prison again. When he go out of prison, he knew that the girl, have found a work, and she started looking for a job to him. This is how the story goes.

I think that this movie shows us very clearly the social conditions in that period of time. Also I feel that the characters made a really good work in that movie, because they explain everything only with movements and signs, and they do it very clearly. In this movie, there is something that I really liked it, and it was the use of humour, because this makes a funny movie that keeps the attention of the spectator.

About the movie in general, I can say that it is a really good, clear, funny and beautiful movie.

So, if you want to see a realistic movie that includes a lot of humour, you should see “Modern times” by Charles Chaplin.

Queen Anne (1665-1714)

Queen Anne was born on 6 February 1665, London. Her father was James, Duke of York. She grow up with her aunt and grandmother, in France. Anne and her sister Mary, were Protestant, but on the other hand her father was Catholic. In 1683 she got married to Prince George of Denmark.
In 1685, her father became King. When her father died, Mary, Anne sister´s took the throne. Some years later she died, and finally Anne became Queen.

This is only an introductory paragraph to my presentation.

Queen Elizabeth, a lonely woman.

Elizabeth: The golden age, is a movie that talks about Elizabeth I, the England´s Queen and her reign. This movie shows all the political, religious and problems between Spain and England, and also their power.

Elizabeth, became Queen after the death of her half-sister Mary I in 1558.

When Elizabeth I became Queen of England, some people told her that she should get married in order to have offspring in the throne. She was not interested on that because at that time there was a really chauvinist, and she always preferred to live alone. Finally, she accepted that advice, so she started receiving all her suitors such as the French Duc D'Anjou and King Philip II of Spain, but she was not interested in them.

One day, Elizabeth I met a man named Dudley, and she fall in love with him. Elizabeth I and Dudley started meeting but in secret, because anybody could know that Elizabeth I, the Queen of England, was interested in a simple guy, such as Dudley, a pirate.



In my opinion this movie, shows in a very good way those facts, because when you see it, you can understand all the problems that involved Spain and England in 1585. I think that the director of the movie, Shekhar Kapur, made a really good but hard work when he produced that movie. The setting, the clothes that the characters wore, the landscapes, and principally the actors whom made a really good performance in the movie, all those things made an interesting, beautiful and dramatic movie.


I really enjoy watching Elizabeth : the golden age. I liked the dramatism that was very well represented by the actors, and also how they represent this story.


Just to conclude, I would like to recommend you this movie, because if you are interested in learning more about this period of time and all the problems that appeared there. That is why you can see Elizabeth: the golden age, to understand what happen with Spain and England, and the war between them.


See this movie, because you will not get sorry.

The stonehenge

The first time that I saw The Stonehenge, immediatly I thought about "Isla de pascua and The Moais", because both are very similar. Both are stones which are located "in the middle of the Earth".

At BBC news, I could see a video about the secret of the Stonehenge. This video tells us about what the stonehenge is? and which myths does it have.

When I saw this video I could see that it is like a magic place where you can rest a lot. Archaeologists have said that maybe this place was used to heal ill people. This is a myth, but it will be probably more than a myth, because there are some evidences, such as bodies which where found near to The Stonehenge.

It is really important to mention that, The Stonehenge was nominated in the New seven wonders of the world.

What is civilization?

A Civilization it is related with the urban culture of a country.

When people talk about civilization, they tend to relate it with culture, maybe it is because a civilization includes people, beliefs, social organization, language, manners, development, and everything that is related with the culture of a country.

Another explanation for civilization it refers to the culture of a complex society. This means that every society has their own beliefs and manners. Here we can say that, civilization and culture are related with literature, art and religion.

It is important to say that civilization is like an organization where it is very important its people, society, urban culture organization.

In conclusion, civilization is a human culture that includes costumes.