3. 1 The objectives of English language teaching
Usually there are mainly two objectives in English language teaching. One is to help learners acquire and grasp some essential vocabulary and grammatical structure as a tool not only for reading English newspapers, magazines, academic books, but also for writing essays, papers and academic reports in English. That is to formulate a solid foundation of skills. Language and attitude required for further study work and leisure.
Another is to help learners remove their language obstacles, get to know another culture, enhance their communicative competence, improve their English knowledge and draw conscious attention to the similarities with and differences from the learners’ first language. That is to develop the ability to use English effectively for purposes of practical communication. Basically language teaching is related to bringing a target culture to learners, or 1anguage learning is related to learning about another culture and acquiring knowledge of a target culture and an ability to communicate with native speakers.
3. 2 The importance of culture teaching in English language teaching
Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that language. Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviours and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived differently by the members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order to make communication successful. Language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behaviour.
In many fields, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the cultural features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied. An English teacher or a second language teacher could help students understand socially appropriate communication, such as making requests that show respect. For example, “Hey you, come here” may be a linguistically correct request, but it is not a culturally appropriate way for a student to address a teacher. Students will master a language only when they learn both its linguistic and cultural norms.
To master a language means to master the voice, grammar, vocabulary and other basic elements, which are very important in English language teaching. In social life, language ability and pragmatic competence are complementary to each other, language ability is the basis of the communication skills, but having the language ability is not the same with having the communicative skills. Cultural knowledge is an extremely important aspect of communication skills. So in the English language teaching teacher should infuse appropriate and relevant cultural knowledge to students. So teacher should make culture teaching in English language teaching.
3. 3 The method of culture teaching in English language teaching
In order to improve the English language teaching effects, teachers should use some methods to teach culture in English language teaching.
3. 3. 1 Cultural introduction in vocabulary teaching
Vocabulary is the foundation in English learning. Some people think that the only way to learn vocabulary is to remember it firmly. However, to most students, a very difficult task in English learning is that they cannot remember English words well, or they forget them easily. Therefore, English teachers should not only tell students to remember words in accordance with the rules like association and phonetic symbols, but also introduce the cultural meaning of the vocabulary properly. As a great number of English words are from myths, allusions, fable and legends, it can make students interested in the vocabulary when introducing related cultural knowledge, so that students can not only appreciate culture, but also have deep impression and understanding to the vocabulary. Take “chaos” for example. This word means complete disorder or confusion, originated in the god of Chaos from ancient Greek myth. When explaining such a kind of words, myths can be told to students to enhance the memory of the words [6]. Besides, some common used phrases and idioms are also an important aspect in English learning, and they contain a large number of cultural background knowledge and reflect great culture differences, so it is hard to understand and properly use if there is little culture knowledge, such as “a doggie bag”. Actually, people in English speaking countries also have the habit of thrift, and they want to take left food from the restaurant home, due to face, they say that the food is packaged to take home for puppy.
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