Ameican Popular Culture (exercises)14.doc

American Popular Culture (Exercises) 1. What is culture? What Is Culture? (Spot Dictation) What is culture? Is it the clothes we ________, or the languages we _________? Is it the ________ we eat, or the _________ we dont? Is it the way we ________, or the art we __________? Is it where we live, or the ways we play? Culture is all of these things and more. Beyond _________, dances and dialects. It is?the very scaffolding of our psyches. How we _________, what we ____________, how we ____________ to others, and who we think we are all _________ on the culture around us. What is popular culture? (Reading Comprehension) We spend our lives immersed in popular culture. There’s no escaping it. Like hydrogen atoms and common-cold viruses, pop culture is everywhere. You absorb it at home watching television, listening to the stereo, or reading a magazine or newspaper; passing billboards or listening to the radio on the street; chatting over coffee at work or having a burger with friends; going out to movies and dance clubs, health spas, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls and sports arenas; even noticing the graffiti that glares out at you on building facades and highway overpasses. In fact, unless you’re isolated in a mountain cave, you can hardly avoid the influence of popular culture. Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines shape your ideas ad behavior; like family, friends, and school, pop culture is part of your learning environment, supplying ready-made images, ideas, and patterns of behavior that you draw from, consciously or unconsciously, as you live your daily life. Exactly how you learn and just what you learn may not be all that certain, but it is undeniable that popular culture is one of your most powerful teachers. What do we mean by popular culture? The term may at first seem contradictory. Popular, in its broadest sense, means “of the people,” while we often associate culture with refinement and intellectual superiority, “the best which