New York State Learning Standards for Languages Other Than English


Standard 2: Cultural Understanding

Students will develop cross-cultural skills and understandings.


Modern Languages:

Key Idea 1

Effective communication involves meanings that go beyond words and require an understanding of perceptions, gestures, folklore, and family and community dynamics. All of these elements can affect whether and how well a message is received.

Performance Indicators (Benchmarks)

Checkpoint A Students:

  • use some key cultural traits of the societies in which the target language is spoken.

Checkpoint B Students:

  • exhibit more comprehensive knowledge of cultural traits and patterns
  • draw comparisons between societies
  • recognize that there are important linguistic and cultural variations among groups that speak the same target language
  • understand how words, body language, rituals, and social interactions influence communication.

Checkpoint C Students:

  • demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of cultural nuances in a target language culture
  • model how spoken language, body language, and social interaction influence communication
  • use appropriate registers
  • write in the target language in a manner that articulates similarities and differences in cultural behaviors.

Latin:

Key Idea 1

Latin acquisition provides the cultural context for learning about the ancient world and its people. From this basis students can compare and contrast antiquity and the present and thoughtfully contemplate the future.

Performance Indicators (Benchmarks)

Checkpoint A Students:

  • demonstrate knowledge of some aspects of Greco-Roman culture and selected facts of daily life, myths, history, and architecture
  • recognize manifestations of antiquity in the modern world.

Checkpoint B Students:

  • demonstrate increased knowledge of Greco-Roman myths and legends, daily life and history, art, and architecture, and of their influence on later civilizations
  • read culturally authentic passages of Latin adapted from Latin authors
  • apply knowledge of Latin literature, authors, and techniques of style to world literary traditions.

Checkpoint C Students:

  • use adapted reading from Latin prose and poetry to broaden knowledge about Greco-Roman civilization and its influence on subsequent civilizations
  • make comparisons of Latin literary style with those of world literary traditions.

American Sign Language:

Key Idea 1

Key cultural traits exist within the Deaf culture, and cultural patterns are learned through the use of American Sign Language.

Performance Indicators (Benchmarks)

Checkpoint A Students:

  • use key cultural traits that exist in settings where American Sign Language is used
  • become aware of cultural patterns, learned through the use of American Sign Language, that characterize the Deaf culture.

Checkpoint B Students:

  • demonstrate more comprehensive knowledge of the Deaf culture
  • draw comparisons about different societies both within the Deaf culture and other cultures
  • recognize important linguistic and cultural variations among different groups within the culture and in the various states and Canadian provinces where American Sign Language is used.

Checkpoint C Students:

  • produce behaviors that are consistent with the Deaf culture
  • reflect a wide variety of different contexts within the Deaf culture.

Native American Languages:

Key Idea 1

Culture is transmitted and preserved through knowledge about the lives of Native American people and the sharing of their cultural ideology.

Performance Indicators (Benchmarks)

Checkpoint A Students:

  • demonstrate an awareness of Native culture
  • recognize the names of cultural items and their uses
  • understand the history and cultural symbols of the people
  • demonstrate knowledge about the clan system.

Checkpoint B Students:

  • demonstrate increased knowledge of Native culture through their myths and legends, art and architecture, and literature and government
  • recognize how Native cultural ideas exist within modern America.

Checkpoint C Students:

  • demonstrate a through knowledge of the Native culture
  • distinguish between various subgroups
  • relate their knowledge and understanding of the culture to other Native American groups.