the role of inhibition , extroversion in raising cultural awareness at kindergarten level , a case study

النوع : Mémoire

This study deals with two main topics in language acquisition and education: characterizing the students’ personalities and acquiring cultural knowledge and awareness. The researcher relates the children’s personalities and other influencing factors to achieving cultural awareness. This study, qualitative in approach, takes place in two chosen Makassed schools. In the first school, the focus is mainly on three kindergarten classes. In the second school, the focus is on four kindergarten classes. One of the first three kindergarten classes is the main class, where the teacher is the researcher herself. The other classes are taught by other preschool English teachers. Throughout the study, extending over a period of one academic year, the teacher/researcher assesses such issues as the teacher’s strategies used in class, the students’ behavior in class and parents’ attitudes towards their children at home. Different questionnaires are distributed to teachers after an observation period that lasted for five months in order to find out what types the children’s personalities are and to what extent the influence of other factors in altering their behavior and personalities is. Then the researcher, who has visited all these classes, tells them a story in order to assess the children’s reactions to it. Through the drawings of the children for this story, the researcher draws primary conclusions about their personalities and their understanding of culture. This is done in order to find out which type of personality achieves cultural awareness. The results of this study show that extroverted children are superior to introverted ones in acquiring the culture. Whereas inhibited children are late developers as compared to extroverts at the kindergarten level.