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Teaching American Culture Through American Novel

Teaching American culture through American literature has been discussed a lot since 2000, and it has been hypothesized that literature is the suitable contents for teaching culture. According to this hypothesis, this article demonstrates my experience of teaching American culture to undergraduate students, attempting to share it with the teachers who are interested in using American novel. This study includes selection of textbook, choosing crucial issues in American culture, teaching methods, and an analysis of students' responses. As an introduction, the first section focuses on the discussion of teaching culture through literature. The second section illuminates how an American novel, Holes, is a suitable text for teaching American culture. The textbook contains critical issues in American culture, such as immigration, racism, and gender, as well as lots of other cultural issues. This section also explores an auxiliary textbook and bibliography. The third section investigates an effective way of teaching American culture. It includes recognizing cultural issues in Holes, sharing indirect experiences of American culture through audiovisual aids and students' participation and activities through presentation and discussion in small groups in classes. The fourth section shows students' responses to teaching American culture through Holes and the analysis of those responses. The last section suggests using another novel as second textbook and assignments of experiencing American culture for a better class.