中国中学英语教学中如何融入文化背景教学(1)(4)
2015-12-06 02:12
导读：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 catal
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.
（转载自科教范文网http://fw.nseac.com） 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?
