Teaching Culture in EFL: Considerations in Course Development

This paper contends that EFL students ought to study concepts of culture and alternative viewpoints rather than conventional cultural information. In order to cultivate transferable skills for appreciating and adapting to ‘other’cultures in work and travel, the most effective strategy is to develop awareness of the location of culture.This paper looks at theories behind development of a course at a Japanese university,including some definitions of culture and conventions of its location.It questions some of these via viewpoints on the relationship between culture and language. Some examples are presented from the course.The conclusion is that EFL students of pre-and intermediate levels can be challenged to explore cultural theories and apply them to both accustomed and new experiences. This in turn may go some way towards avoiding perpetuation of cultural myths and stereotypes.course developmentcultureEFLmusicsemiotic

Lyrics of Place in L2 Cultural Studies

This working paper documents theory and practice behind the ongoing developmentof an L2 elective lecture course, ‘Culture Through Music and Song’, at aJapanese university. After a brief overview of the course and its rationale therefollows a discussion of common theories on the study of culture and their implications,for pedagogy in general and for this course in particular. Issues arisingover the first five years of the course are discussed, along with efforts made sofar to address these issues. With these in mind, the conclusion outlines someideas for future research and development. The course-leader (the author) hasarrived at ‘lyrics of place’as a rich core material in a flexible, scaleable, multisensorysyllabus designed for a student population that is highly varied. Thesevariations arise both year-on-year and within each intake, in terms of motivation,interests, prior knowledge, and L2 and scholastic abilities. Observation andstudent feedback are key features in the continued refinement of this course.cultureEFLJapansongsgeograph

Identification of seven new prostate cancer susceptibility loci through a genome-wide association study

Prostate cancer (PrCa) is the most frequently diagnosed male cancer in developed countries. To identify common PrCa susceptibility alleles, we have previously conducted a genome-wide association study in which 541, 129 SNPs were genotyped in 1,854 PrCa cases with clinically detected disease and 1,894 controls. We have now evaluated promising associations in a second stage, in which we genotyped 43,671 SNPs in 3,650 PrCa cases and 3,940 controls, and a third stage, involving an additional 16,229 cases and 14,821 controls from 21 studies. In addition to previously identified loci, we identified a further seven new prostate cancer susceptibility loci on chromosomes 2, 4, 8, 11, and 22 (P=1.6×10−8 to P=2.7×10−33)