文化意识与语言教学Cultural Awareness and Language Teaching 第2页
1 Introduction
With the development of the communications between people from different cultural backgrounds, more and more scholars or laymen have realized the importance of cross-cultural communication. How to cultivate English language learners’ cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicating competence has being warmly discussed in China’s foreign language teaching world. Changes have been seen in the newest edition of syllabus for both English major and non-English major, for the first time, stating clearly the close relationship between culture and language, and the importance to cultivate language learners’ cultural awareness. Unavoidably these changes would have great influence on the traditional way of language teaching. For English majors who are on the advance position of cross-cultural communication, they are supposed to experience the new teaching methods and prepare themselves to be a cross-cultural communicator in the future. Though abundant essays on cultural and/or cross-cultural communication have been published, many of them focus on introducing western theory, and less of them have directed to learner-centered topics such as what china’s foreign language learners’ current learning situation is, or if they have not done well with it, what the possible causes that influence their cultural learning are. This paper may have a try on the above mentioned topic.
2 Culture Review
2.1 The Definition of Culture
The word “culture” originates from German word kulture, which means bringing soil under cultivation, and later is associated with the fostering of people’s body and spirit, especially the cultivation of art, moral ability and talent. English anthropologist Tylor explains “culture” in his book Primitive Culture, “Culture is inevasible and complicated, including knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, ability, and habit learned in society” (Tylor. 1981: 35). Later, American anthropologist Bais points out that each society has unique culture that is different from other society. At present, people generally understand the concept according to “capitalized letter Culture” and “small letter culture” (Byram. 1994). The former includes art, literature, politic and so on, while the latter includes behavioral patterns and lifestyles of common people. Once a person is born in a culture, he would possibly die into the culture since he is living there. But for the first time, historically, the 20th century regards identity as something people create for themselves, and people have, in fact, a choice of culture to live in. Young people in 21th century are not only aware of this, but also are frequent users of the opportunity to choose between different cultures.
2.2 The Relationship between Culture and Language
Language ability is a kind of special skill gained during the human being evolution. Of course it also needs language environment. Social linguistics Goodenough, W.H. believes that language is a kind of social cultural phenomenon, and the relevant researches should be done from the perspective of the relationship between culture and language in his book. He argues that毕业论文
http://www.youerw.com/culture during the process of learning and using. Without knowing its culture, a foreign language can not be comprehended and used correctly (Goodenough, W.H. 1981).
2.3 Cultural and Cross-cultural Awareness
Cultural awareness in language learning is the ability to be aware of cultural relativity following reading, writing, listening and speaking. As Claire kramsch points out…
If…language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the very core of language teaching, cultural awareness must then be viewed as enabling language proficiency… (Claire kramsch. 1993: 23).
Language itself is defined by culture. Language competent cannot be achieved without a good understanding of culture that shapes it, especially in foreign language learning. It is not only therefore essential to have cultural awareness, but also have cross-cultural awareness, such as the understanding of the relationship between target culture and native culture.
2.4 Culture Teaching and Language Teaching
The interrelationship between culture teaching and language teaching has been explored in depth by Michael Byram. The basis of Byram’s position is that it views language as a cultural phenomenon, embodying the values and meanings particular to a specific society, referring to the traditions and artifacts of that society and signaling its people’s sense of themselves—their cultural identity: “to teach foreign culture is to introduce learners to new competences and to allow them to reflect upon their own culture and cultural competence (Michael Byram. 1989: 143).” It is assumed by others that language could somehow stand alone and be taught as a value-free symbolic system. But the social nature of language works oppositely when separating it from its original culture, especially when appearing in overseas contexts, where the learners’ contact with the culture is largely confined to the foreign language classroom.
Traditional foreign language teaching does not pay much attention to cultural factor. It focuses mainly on the vocabulary and structure of the language. But plenty of facts prove that language is not only a symbol, a system, which put forward by pure linguistic theory scholar, but also a social practice. Therefore successful foreign language teaching must help the student master the knowledge of culture rules, in addition to use them in particular situation. Every nation has its unique culture pattern and language is the carrier of culture. For instance, Asians emphasize the importance of orderly society whereas Americans emphasize the importance of personal freedom and individual rights. For effective and appropriate communication, learners must be familiar with the differences in the foreign culture which they are learning and take according language behaviors.
3 The Study of a Survey
Survey date: 25/04/2006
Survey instrument: interview and questionnaire.
Subjects: English majors of Huai Hai Institute of Technology, including freshmen, juniors, and seniors. 30 students are interviewed, 98 students (30 interviewed students and another 68 English majors) participate in questionnaire. All the 98 copies of questionnaire are valid.
The objective of this survey is to investigate:
1) Students’ attitudes towards cultural learning
2) Current situation of students’ information input.
3.1 The Analysis of Interviews
Thirty English majors are interviewed and are invited to answer only one question: what is a competent language learner like in your eyes? The responses tend to fall into three categories:
① Twenty five interviewees think that he or she is good at English listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities, especially at speaking and listening;
② Ten of them think he or she is familiar with foreign culture and is a successful cross-cultural communicator.
③ Five of them think a good command of native language is necessary.
In order to describe more directly, the results of interviews are put into a table (Table.1).
Table1. Results of the Interview
Positive attitudes Percentage
Language proficiency learning(reading, writing, speaking and listening) 83.33％ (25/30)
Accumulation of culture 33.33％ (10/30)
Mother tongue proficiency 16.67％ ( 5/30)
These students’ responses reveal the following information:
Firstly, these students still see the four basic skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) as their main study objective. 毕业论文http://www.youerw.com/According to this interview, most interviewees have realized the importance of language proficiency in language learning, but the point is why only one third of the interviewees have realized the importance and necessity of cultural and communicative competence since which are discussed so warmly in present language teaching world? Do they hold a negative view on it or do they just have not yet obtained the awareness consciously?
3.2 The Analysis of a Questionnaire
The English learning questionnaire consists of nine closed-ended questions (see Appendix), For instance, “you have the interest and passion in English and language learning”, and the answers falls into four types:
1. Strongly Agree (SA) 2. Agree (A) 3. Disagree (D) 4. Strongly Disagree (SD)
According to the research content, the analysis of questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first five are put in Table 2 and the rest four questions are put in Table 4.
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