Cultural Factors in English Teaching and Learning.docx

1、Cultural Factors in English Teaching and LearningCultural Factors in English Teaching and LearningI. IntroductionNowadays, culture plays a very important role in the foreign language classroom. Because cultural differences may give rise to misunderstanding that exists in intercultural communication.

2、 So the teaching of culture in the English classroom has been becoming a heated topic and people pay more and more attention to the cultural studies and intercultural communication in recent years. Therefore, culture teaching is feasible in the foreign language classroom. It can help English learner

3、s raise the cultural awareness and develop the communicative competence. Many researchers and educators worldwide wrote articles to present their views on the importance of culture teaching and the principles and methods to carry out culture teaching. Most of English teachers have already recognized

4、 the impossibility of an English acquisition without the relevant cultural understanding. Both scholars and practitioners have reached a consensus that the inclusion of cultural teaching in English classroom should be a must. D. hymes, the well-known American sociolinguist, held that communicative c

5、ompetence should include not only linguistic competence, but also the full understanding and a good command of the sociocultural elements closely related to the language use. In the current understanding of the place of culture in second and foreign language pedagogy, the work of Michael Byram has p

6、layed a prominent role. In the late 1980s, Byram observed that culture represents “hidden” curriculum in second and foreign language teaching .He indicated that language teaching can rarely take place without implicitly teaching the culture of its speakers because language invariably refers to their

7、 knowledge and perceptions of the world, the concepts of culture and culture learning. Byram also pointed out that communicative competence involves “appropriate language use which, in part at least, is culture specific” (Byram 61). In practice, the importance of teaching foreign culture has been re

8、cognized a wealth of suggestions on classroom treatment of cultural aspects has been offered by Allen and Valette. Besides, American applied linguist G. Robinson put forward an important concept that through language and cultural teaching learners would gain “cultural versatility”. That is to say, t

9、hrough learning culture, learners would change internally. This view point is quite significant.In China, most scholars have widely considered the importance in foreign language teaching and learning. In the 1980s, Mr.Xu Guozhang published his Culturally-loaded Words and English Language Teaching, i

10、n which he indicated that in different languages, many words with equivalent surface meanings have different cultural connotations in fact owing to different cultural traditions, folk tales and values, etc. Hence fore, many other scholars like Deng Yanchang also attempted to explore how culture has

11、remarkable impact on the forms or use of the particular foreign language and devoted him to researches in this field. Reflections have been made on culture teaching since the late 1990s. The earliest reflection on the objective of culture teaching can be found in the book Foreign Language Teaching a

12、nd Culture written by Hu Wenzhong and GaoYihong (1997). They maintain that, to English major students, the objective of culture learning is more than a tool (English-grasping), more than being equipped with communicative skills to survive in modern society, and nothing like making themselves moderni

13、zation. Several years later, Gao Yihong extends their view in her doctoral dissertation Foreign Language Learning: “1+12” (2001), she claims that language and culture learning in the best case will generate creative energy and elevate personality.In order to communicate with foreigners correctly, la

14、nguage learners have to know the differences between Chinese and foreign cultures. So the process of learning foreign language is a process of learning its culture. Though many linguists and teachers, either abroad or domestic, have already realized the importance of culture learning, the problem is

15、 how to teach culture in the English classroom. Those theories of language and cultural teaching are not meaningful unless they are really applied to teaching practice. This paper aims to find out the importance role of culture in the English classroom and propose two tentative suggestions to the pr

16、oblems of cultural learning existing in the English classroom. .The Importance of Cultural Factors in English Teaching and LearningA. The Relationship between Language and CultureWhats culture? Culture is complex. The major institutions within the culture contain church, government, education, milit

17、ary, mass media, monetary systems, and so on. So to give a definition of culture is more difficult than to give an illustration of its influence. Culture refers to the patterns of customs, traditions, social habits, values, beliefs and the language of a society. Within each society people will find

18、a national culture. As culture is so inclusive, it permeates all mens behaviors. Because of international contacts, people in the world keep in frequent touch with each other. Intercultural communication occurs when a member of one culture produces a message for consumption by a member of another cu

19、lture. Because the different cultures misunderstanding and barriers often happen in the process of communication. We know language is a useful tool for people to communicate with each other. And it is a common feature to all cultures and that allows the members of the culture to communicate with one

20、 another. Culture contains every aspect of peoples life. The connection between them is so strong that it is hard to talk about single one without others. Language is influenced by culture. All cultures seem to believe that history is a kind of chart that guides its members into the future and it ge

21、ts passed on from generation to generation. However, the relationship between the two is more complex than the relationship of a part and the whole. On the one hand, language is the carrier and container of culture. Some social scientists even consider language as the keystone of culture. All the co

22、mponents of culture, such as beliefs, customs, institutions, objects, arts, and techniques, can be describes, analyzed, and evaluated by language. Peoples experience about them is stormed and transmitted by language as well. On the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture; it reflect

23、s culture. The two interacts, and the understanding of one requires the understanding of the other.1. Cultures Influence on Language.The influence of culture to language can be roughly explored in three major domains: lexicon, syntax and register.LexiconLexicon, or vocabulary, is the basic construct

24、ion element of a language and the mainstay of the existence of the vast language system. Both of them have universal characteristics, which make different languages able to express a large number of common concepts, and have national characteristics, which make a certain language possible to reflect

25、 some unique understanding of a certain culture. For this reason, the cultural difference is reflected most outstandingly and widely on the level of vocabulary. The most awkward situation in translation is that sometimes, these words, such as “brunch (breakfast lunch) and “motel” (motor hotel) in En

26、glish, but not in Chinese. On the contrary, there is “馒头”in Chinese, while English people have no idea what kind food of it is and it can only be translated into “steamed bread”. Cite an example, in Chinese, “blue” means “肃穆、美好”, but in English “blue” implies “depression, sorrow”, such as “in a blue

27、 mode”, “a blue outlook”. Moreover, some words seem to mean the same thing or the same concept superficially; however, what they in fact refer to are not or not totally the same .Each actually has its own culturally loaded meaning. One word may take more meaning than its “translation”, or there may

28、be some other subtle differences between them. Yet the conceptual difference is just a drop of water in the vast sea of the cultural differences demonstrated by word meaning. A great divergence is in the endless association meaning behind the words. So for students who are learning English, it is es

29、sential that know not only the conceptual meaning of words, but also the cultural information the words have with them, and otherwise serious misunderstanding can occur in cross-cultural communication.SyntaxEnglish is a language governed by strict rules and regulations. However, Chinese grammar is v

30、ery flexible .It has also been discovered that English adopts the branching sentence pattern, like trees with trunk, one or more branches and twists, while Chinese relies particularly on the temporal sequence and adopts the linear sentence pattern, like a flowing river without tributaries. There are

31、 also some other important differences. The linguistic contrast between these two languages has been related to the cultural traditions in English-speaking countries and China.RegisterMore differences will be known in language and culture, if the way language used in everyday life is examined. That

32、is what we will talk about the differences between languages at the level of register. The register evolves from the context. Therefore, the register produced in different cultural context will inevitably reflect different cultural characteristics. For example, the English and Chinese ways of greeti

33、ng, congratulations, etc, have differences in various degrees. In a word, cultures differ from each other and each culture is unique. As culture is diverse, language is diverse.2. Languages Influence on Culture.Language is an inseparable part of culture as well. “Language pre-eminently embodies the values and meanings of a culture, refers