Cross Cultural Perspective and Character Education in The Television Commercial Breaks

Abstract

As individuals who are involved in the English education, the students of English Department should be consciously aware that they acquire the English culture as they learn and acquire the language. This might bring to some extents that there are a lot of similarities and differences regarding the cross cultural understanding. Many exposures might help in introducing and reinforcing these concepts of cross culture view. The inputs are presented through books, classroom lessons, movies, daily interactions and many other media that can facilitate the students’ acquisition of the English cultures which are acceptable in Indonesia societies. Besides those possible media, some of the television commercial breaks nowadays contains moral message which can be analyzed in the cultural perspective. The adequate and appropriate values of the cross cultural understandings in the television commercial breaks might be treated as a form of character education since the role of television is already undoubtedly effective in ‘influencing’ the audience. This paper tries to discuss some character building points which can be reflected in a few television commercial breaks and be understood as containing cross cultural perspectives between English and Indonesian. The result might be considered as a reference for the makers of commercial breaks that their work of art could be contributive for building the character of the people. As for educators, especially English teachers, there should be an endless effort in finding and creating any possible ways to help building the good character of their students.