2.4.1 Teacher’s attitudes towards culture teaching and English teaching
A language teacher plays a leading role in language education. The teacher is the mediator of a foreign culture, and the catalyst of educational change. So teachers’ cultural competence is of great importance in culture teaching in foreign language education. They must get acquainted with the target culture as well as constantly update the knowledge about language teaching.
Nowadays, the traditional Grammar-Translation Method still enjoys popularity among teachers. This method aims at teaching learners to read and translate the written language with a good command of traditional grammar. It’s obvious that the method emphasizes grammatical accuracy, neglecting the importance of the spoken language, not to mention learners’ cultural competence.
Today most teachers have been informed over and over again of the important of culture teaching. However, their belief, in face of difficulties putting theory into practice, may be weakened. It will really be a problem if teachers themselves have not enough knowledge about the target language culture. And it is one of the major factors that hinder culture teaching in China.
2.4.2 Students’ attitudes towards culture teaching and English teaching
English testing should provide an objective and scientific means for the evaluation of the course and the learners’ language proficiency. On one hand, it should help to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the course itself in achieving the desired teaching and learning objectives. On the other hand, it must help to reveal the areas and extent of the students’ strengths and weaknesses, which in turn may help identify problems existing in the relevant high-school English curriculum. But as a matter of fact, the present English testing system fails to provide a good feedback of the actual ability of students’ concerning cultural competence and appropriate language use. English tests conducted in high-school now usually cover the area of vocabulary, language structure, listening, reading and writing. The test is still on measuring the students’ linguistic competence, but ignores the socio-cultural ability of them.
3 The importance of culture teaching in English teaching
“Culture learning helps eliminate communication barriers, prevent us from communication conflicts, develop our field of vision and promote our cultural communication. (Lin Dajin, 1996).” [8](p12) To learn a foreign language and its relative culture will help the students to know the world and themselves from different points of view. Foreign language learning is a spirit adventure, a development of modes of thought, a reorganization of values and a remold of personality structure. In the process of introducing foreign cultures and reorganizing our own culture, culture plays an especially important role.
Learning western culture is not to learn some words by heart, but to learn the thought and values that control one’s acts. Without this knowledge, one cannot really master a foreign language. Only Armed with this knowledge, can Chinese students hope to meet and talk with foreigners in English not only grammatically accurate but also socially acceptable?
3.1 Improving English reading
English reading ability is one kind of comprehensive ability. There are so many English article literature styles including the certain background knowledge. Some reading, although has not bumped into a new word in the reading process, and does not have the grammar barrier, but it is difficult for the students to know the meaning of the whole reading passage, especially when the students lack of the certain knowledge of the cultural context. [9](p31)
For example, there are such several speeches in a reading material：“Why don't you go to church?” asked the minister. The nonchurch goer said, “Well, I'll tell you. The first time I went to church they threw water in my face, and the second time they tied me to a woman I've had to keep ever since.” “Yes,” said the minister, “and the next time you go they'll throw dirt on you.”[10](p2) For understanding of this reading material, the student must know: 1) “The first time I went to church they threw water in my face” means when parents hug the newborn baby to the church for baptism, pastor threw water in the child’s face; 2) “the second time they tied me to a woman I've had to keep ever since.” means they held the wedding ceremony in the church. This article refers to the situation when a westerner dies, pastor finally prays and pulls up the earth to the coffin to carry on burying again. If the reader is not familiar with the religion cultural knowledge in the British and American country, he or she can cause the understanding of being blocked, let alone appreciates humor.
Another example is the dialogue- -lesson Britain and Ireland in Senior Student Book I Unit 22(SEFC):
转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
共8页: 上一页 [1] [2] 3 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] 下一页
网摘收藏:
当前位置:
载入中...
-> 在百度中搜索：
-> 在Google中搜索：