Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with. Their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning”. [2](p1)
This definition includes not only patterns of behavior but also patterns of thought, artifacts, and the culturally transmitted skills and techniques used to make the artifacts.
Culture was defined as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. [3](p21) Therefore, culture can include everything from rites of passage to concepts of the soul.
2.2 Language and culture
Languages are generally accepted words and rules drawn from speech. Language is the carrier of culture and culture is the content of language. There is no language without culture content. Social linguistics show that language is a system of structure rules and culture-specific behavior rules that humans use to interact with one another. Knowing a language is known not only the grammar, vocabulary and discourse patterns but also the cultural rules of using those components so as to use appropriate language in a particular context.
It is quite true that nothing more clearly distinguishes one culture from another than its language. For example, a major linguistic difference between Americans and Chinese lies in the use of direct and indirect language. Most Americans learn to say “yes” and “no” as a means of expressing their individual views.
However, the Chinese usually use “yes” and “no” to express respect for the feeling of others. [4](P23)
In a word, the development of culture can undoubtedly promote that of language, and in the meantime, the up-growth and enrichment of language is the necessary preconditions to the improvement of the whole culture. It is for the especially close relationship between language and culture. Language is regarded as the carrier of culture, the mirror to reflect the national culture.
2.3 Relation between culture teaching and language teaching
Culture and language are closely related. A language can never be learned in a cultural vacuum. Language learning and culture learning are not separable. “It is the same with culture teaching and language teaching. Traditional teaching in foreign language education has limited the teaching of culture transmission of information about the people of the target country and about their general attitudes and worldviews.” (Claire Kramsch, 2000)[5](p3) In traditional teaching, though students master the pronunciation, grammars, vocabularies and quite a lot of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating skills, they still can not be said to fully understand and master English. English as a foreign language is the unity of English language and culture. English teaching is essentially a process of cross-culture communication. One purpose of English teaching is to develop learners’ awareness of cultural differences reflected in languages. The teacher must help learners to realize that thoughts and views of different nationalities and different types of societies about nature and human society are quite different. So it is evidently wrong to interpret things in foreign language in the same way as in mother tongue. To the same extent, the achievement of English teaching goal relies on students’ cultural awareness. Therefore, it is of great importance to take for cultural background knowledge as one of the contents in the whole process of English teaching so as to help learners to have a good command of necessary cultural knowledge and to develop basic culture-learning ability.
2.4 Current situation of English teaching in China
China boasts the world’s biggest population of English learners. The English language course has been one of the most important compulsory subjects in China’s high school for many years. In western countries, language theorists and language teachers have tried a lot to integrate culture teaching into language teaching for almost a century. Since the introduction of culture teaching started in the early 1980s, great achievements have been made in research during the past twenty years. [6](p15)
“As far as we know, there are a lot of essays about cultural differences and its teaching, such as The question of Culture, EFL teaching in non-speaking countries by Cem and Margeret Alptekin, English as Cultural Action by Luke Prodromon, Culture Teaching and Foreign Language Teaching by Gu Qianan, Culture Differences and Foreign Language Teaching by Hu Wenzhong and American Cross-cultural communication Research by Jia Yuxin.”[7](p17)
However, there does exist a big discrepancy between theoretical researches and actual teaching practice. And it is also true that weaknesses still remain in our English teaching system.
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