People are social beings. They like to get together and do things. Learn to participate in as many social activities as possible and to talk about them.

Beginning Learners:

Learn the names for different community social events that take place regularly, such as a dance, community picnic, open-air market (if one day a week, it is an event, as well as a place), weddings, funeral, women’s group, fair, art or craft fair, rodeo. Learn the names for things people are doing at these events.

Suggested Activities:

Activity 1: Use pictures or drawings and the Listen and Do technique to learn more words

Activity 2: Learn Useful Phrases and Conversational Exchanges to use at the different Social Events.

Intermediate Learners:

Activity 1: Ask a LH to describe a community event, and record the account of what you did together. This is a Shared Experience, if you attended it together. That makes it easier for you to understand. If you don’t have an opportunity to attend with your LH, you can still ask him or her to describe what typically happens at such an event. Ask questions about any words you don’t know. Your goal at Intermediate Stage is to be able to understand connected speech – that is not just sentences, but paragraphs – about something that happened or which often happens. You will have lots of questions about why things happen, but you may not be able to understand the answers at this stage – but it is the next stage in your language learning journey.

Advanced Learners:

At this stage you can ask people to answer the questions you have about these events – how they feel about them, what they do for the community or for families. You can do Ethnographic Interviews about these topics. Or just get people to talk about them and ask a few questions about things you are most interested in. At this stage you can ask some of the questions in the cultural guide directly, but most often you need to read between the lines.