第1个回答 2009-12-12
Abstract: Language and culture are closed related to each other. Cultural acquisition in foreign language teaching in our country is a weak point comparing with language acquisition. The difference between Chinese culture and English culture requires both the teacher and the students to be aware of culture conflicts existing in the two languages. It’s an urgent task for teachers to cope with the problems of the culture acquisition in foreign language teaching.
Key words: Language; culture; acquisition; awareness
Ⅰ.Introduction
Nowadays, cross-cultural communication has aroused more and more attention. A successful inter-cultural communication not only requires excellent foreign language competence, but also requires people to be familiar with the differences between or among cultures, and use that knowledge flexibly in proper ways in communication.
Since culture and language has a so inseparable relationship, foreign language teachers in China nowadays are well aware that language learning cannot be separated from culture learning. They start to deal with intercultural communication in teaching and have undergone significant progress in the past two decades. A lot of excellent work has been done. On raising cultural awareness and pragmatic insights, there are at least three benefits: Firstly, it can help the students to be flexible and proper in real cross-cultural communication; secondly, the study of both culture and language can arose students’ activity and make the learning of language more appealing, and then, the efficiency of learning language is improved; thirdly, if language teaching can improve both language skills and cross-cultural communication competence, the importance of language teaching will be paid more attention to by society, and meanwhile, the input of teaching will be raised.
This essay tries to discuss the relationship between language and culture and offer some practical ways of how to deal with cultural element in foreign language teaching.
Ⅱ.Language and culture
Language is the carrier of culture. It is a part of culture and plays a very important role in culture. Without language, culture would not be possible. On the one hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture, on the other hand, language is the symbolic representation of a people, and it comprises their historical and cultural backgrounds as well as their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking. Language shapes perception and language determines culture. Culture patterns, customs and ways of life are expressed in language.
For instance, the English word wife can be expressed with the following Chinese words: 老婆(informal)，媳妇(informal)，妻子(common)，爱人(common)，太太(formal)，夫人(formal). It is difficult for one to find out the exact equivalents, though there are some other more words for wife in English. It is also hard to establish exact equivalent words between too different languages. Even the words with corresponding denotation may vary in connotation. Both happy and gay mean 快乐. No one in China will suspect a “快乐”man to be a person who practices homosexuality while gay makes people think so in the western countries. In this case, culture plays an extremely significant role in language learning. So the acquisition of a second or foreign language is also the acquisition of a second or foreign culture.
Ⅲ.Techniques for teaching culture
1. Culture mistakes in culture acquisition
It is always the case that the students have a perfect knowledge of vocabulary, grammar. But when they communicate with native speakers they may find themselves embarrassed even misunderstood because of making some culture mistakes. One of the typical mistakes is that the students often ask personal questions such as, “How old are you?” “Are you married?” “How many children do you have?” It is natural and customary in Chinese culture to talk about age, family matters, money, etc. But it would be unacceptable in western culture. They’re considered too personal if not taboo, could be annoying and may lead to misunderstanding or ill feelings. Culture mistakes can be categorized as follows:
(1) Sociolinguistically inappropriate: ways of greeting and addressing people.
(2) Culturally unacceptable: the use of self-deprecation strategies in expressing modesty. Chinese often deny compliments when other people praise them.
(3) Conflict of different value systems invasion of privacy. Chinese like to show friendship and intimacy by inquiring other people’s privacy.
(4) Over-simplification or over-generalization: Chinese students have stereotyped misconcepts about other societies.
These cultural mistakes can’t be neglected because the native speakers can tolerate the pronunciation or grammar errors rather than cultural mistakes. The causes of these cultural mistakes are due to the speakers’ lack of cultural knowledge. This can be seen from two aspects. Subjectively, the teachers, influenced by traditional teaching approach put much stress on vocabulary, grammar and writing without realizing the much less or no cultural knowledge input. Objectively, traditional text materials were in principle arranged for the competence of Grammar-presentation. So most of the textbooks available are grammar-centered, making little account to cultural context.
2. Techniques for Training Students’ Cultural Awareness
In order to develop the students’ communicative competence and increase their cultural awareness, the measures taken as follows:
(1) introduce culture by the way of lexicon
Culture is the rich soil for lexicon since words carry cultural information. The core words of each nation generally share common properties. However, with the development of social communities, there produced cultural connotations in words and phrases, figures, idioms and many other linguistic phenomena gradually on account of different ways of life in each nation.
There are many words in English with related denotations to Chinese ones, but with different connotations from Chinese ones. Different cultural environments may produce different connotations of the words with same denotations. Here are some instances of a “dog”. To Chinese people, “dog” is a word with negative meaning since people are quite contemptuous of a dog while it is a favourite pet in Western people’s mind since people like raising dogs and regard them as their good friends. In this case, a “running dog” is a very tiresome animal which is often compared to a person who is blindly faithful to his master in Chinese culture. Whereas in some other phrases or idioms in English, one can be sure that “dog” is a favouriable word: “a lucky dog”, “Every dog has his day”.
(2) Culture Aside
The teacher plays an important role in dealing with culture. Most students are living and studying in a monolingual and non-cultural community. It is difficult for them to make comparisons or contrasts between the two different cultures. Classroom is a significant place with limited time for students to learn English as well as something about culture. The teacher can be a go-between and a carrier of the two kinds of culture. He should try his best to create an environment in and outside the classroom so as to make his students suitable to it. For instance, when asking students to make a dialogue, the teacher should point out where and when the words may be used constantly. He acts as a role to address aside so that the students can acquire the cultural awareness.
(3) Making good use of mass media
Nowadays, mass media plays an important part in people’s daily life. The distance and space seem shortened with the development of science and technology. English, as a main communication means in the world, is widely spread. Students can get much more information of English now than ever. They should have easier access to visual aids such as films and videotapes. From which they can observe and notice some cultural features appeared in the films and videotapes with help of teachers. Students should be equipped with powerful portable radios to listen to the programs made by VOA, BBC, etc. Students are able to gain much knowledge about English culture by these authentic materials.
(4) Making good use of native speakers of English
There are more and more native speakers of English coming to China to teach, to study, to have tours and to trade. It is quite useful for learners to get in touch with native speakers if they want to learn to use English very well, because a native speaker often remains an authentic situation all the time. In the face-to-face contacts with native speakers, the students may learn much about verbal expressions of English-speaking people as well as non-verbal communication method, such as gestures, facial expressions, etc.
Ⅳ. Conclusion
In language teaching, we must aware that language and culture are intertwined and that it is not possible to teach language without culture or to teach culture without linguistic knowledge, we must lay emphasis on the introduction of culture in language teaching. Only in this way can we improve student’s linguistic skills and communicative competence. In this way can we achieve the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching and meet the demands of the new era.本回答被网友采纳