Most of the students knew from the start that Elton John was a musician and
thepercentage increased in both groups.In the case of David Beckham there are no
comments to be made. Everybody knowsDavid Beckham.If at the beginning there was
some hesitation about the famous author of the HarryPotter books by the second
questioning everybody could identify her as a writer in bothgroups. The initial
hesitation shows that the Harry Potter books are not as popularamong the young
generation as they used to be ten years ago. Of course there are stillmany who read
them.120
As far as the identity of the actress Emma Thompson is concerned the change in
thegroup is obvious. The percentage of the good answers has increased in the
control groupas well though.The TV chef Jamie Oliver was practically unknown among
students. The change in thegroup is again obvious. The majority of the group knows
now who Jamie Oliver iswhile the members of the control group are still in the dark
as far as his identity isconcerned.121
The next group of questions (12, 13, 14, 15 ) were designed to elicit
student�sknowledge of some aspects of social behaviour and belief in the target
languagecommunities.As far as social behaviour is concerned the results are as
follows:While most students of the group considered at first that leaving right
after dinnercannot be well mannered in the US, by the second questioning many have
changed theiropinions and gave the right answer. In the US you are not considered
rude or impolite ifyou leave right after dinner. In our community it would be a
very rude thing to dothough.122
There is a slight change in the control group as well although more of them have
giventhe right answer at first than from the group.At the second questioning more
members of the group knew that the right thing to sayin the above situation was:
�I�m sorry.� The percentages in the control group do notshow much change.Concerning
values and beliefs we have the following results:123
Most students seem to have understood that the British value compromise, although
thegroup shows better progress here than the control group.The question whether
they thought that seeing a black cat was lucky in Britain waschosen especially
because of the fact that in the student�s first culture superstition saysthat a
black cat crossing your way is an extremely unlucky sign, while in Britain asimilar
thing would be considered lucky. It was interesting to see here that although
wehave talked about superstitions in the group, there were still people in the end
who didnot give the right answer to this question.124
It is interesting to see that the percentage of good answers in the control group
hasimproved the second time to reach the original data of the group.Question 16 was
an open ended question. Students had to name three differencesbetween their culture
and British culture. The question did not only intend to test factualknowledge
about differences between the two cultures mentioned but it also wanted
toinvestigate whether the insight into the phenomenon of culture shows any changes
thesecond time.The first diagram shows the number of answers given by the students
of the groups atboth questionings. If we take a closer look we can find that while
the first time only125
53% of the group managed to find three differences, the second time 93% of them
gavethree answers.In the control group the number of people who gave at least one
answer grew but therewere fewer to give three answers the second time.The group
managed to come up with the following answers at the first and secondtimes:126
It is clearly visible that the range of the differences mentioned the second time
is muchwider. While at first everyone seemed to stick to the difference in
tradition and thestereotype of the British as a tea loving nation the second time
their insight has grown.They were able to identify aspects like behaviour,
gestures, habits. This clearly talksabout the fact that the students got a somewhat
deeper insight in what culture actually isabout.The control group shows a certain
kind of randomness in their choices. At the firstquestioning some of them showed a
surprisingly good insight. Much of this seems tohave vanished though by the second
questionin
