中国中学英语教学中如何融入文化背景教学(1)(3)
2015-12-06 02:12
导读：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 w
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.
（科教作文网http://zw.ΝsΕAc.com发布）
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.
