浅谈初中英语中的文化教学(1)(5)
2014-11-26 02:14
导读：What leads to the existence of such a serious situation? It is necessary for us to probe into the causes. A fact is that the culture awareness is so weak during language learning and teaching that bot
What leads to the existence of such a serious situation? It is necessary for us to probe into the causes.
A fact is that the culture awareness is so weak during language learning and teaching that both the students and the teachers consider culture education as a subsidiary part of language study, paying little attention to it. What’s more, even some teachers do not have enough culture information to provide the students, let alone guiding them to complete successful communication.
The old evaluation systems weaken the cultivation of students’ culture ability greatly. It is unfortunate that, although we know it is unwise, facing the pressure of the exams in which there are items testing students’ grammatical knowledge, reading ability and set phrases, to save time, lots of teachers focus on words, linguistic points, idioms and grammatical structure in order to enhance students’ basic linguistic competence.
From 1949 to the beginning of 1980s, the grammar translation method had been playing an important part in foreign language teaching, inclining to overemphasize phonetics, grammar and vocabulary but to ignore the differences of cultures. This kind of teaching method influences the culture education very much. As a result, the relationship of the culture ability and other linguistic skills is not in balance.
Another problem is the textbook. Some out-of-date textbooks, which are responsible for the pattern drills of English seldom used in everyday conversations, are still used.
From the discussion, we can realize that to promote the culture education of junior English demands the solution of those problems above, which will be discussed in Chapter Four.
3.2.2 Requirements of culture education in teaching
The aim of the English Teaching Syllabus currently in effect in China stresses the basic skills of listening, speaking, writing and translating, while the most important goal of English teaching should be to foster the ability of communication. As the total curriculum goals structure shows, along with language skills, language knowledge, language learning tactics and emotional attitude, cultural awareness has become an integrated and basic component of the comprehensive language application ability. The syllabus also adopts the international standards of the different acquirement levels of culture, consisting of Level One to Level Nine.
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As the specific aim of the syllabus regulated, culture teaching in junior high school shall accommodate the following contents:
(i). Cultural factors that interfere with verbal communications. It includes the standard functions of hails, greetings, thanks, apologies, farewells, phone calls, requests, and invitations; choice of topics; taboos; euphemisms; social conversations and etiquettes.
(ii). Expressions in nonverbal communications, such as gestures, body motions, costumes, and varying attitudes towards time and space.
(iii). Cultural connotations of words like the demonstrative category, affective meaning and associative meaning of words, and the application of the idioms, proverbs and usages which embody cultural backgrounds.
