英语本科毕业论文谈英语教学中导入文化背景知识的必要性.doc

本科毕业论文谈英语教学中导入文化背景知识的必要性学生姓名： 学生学号： 200310206001 院（系）： 外国语学院 年级专业： 2003级英语本科1班 指导教师： 二七年六月On the Necessity of Leading Cultural Background Knowledge in English TeachingDeng Xiaofeng Under the Supervision ofTan Jie School of Foreign Languages and CulturesPanzhihua UniversityJune 2007ContentsAbstractKey Words摘要关键词Introduction1.The Important Role of Cultural Background Knowledge in English Teaching2A. Being Helpful to English Reading2B. Being Able to Improve the Ability of Communication3C. Arousing the Studying Interest of Students5.The Contents of English Cultural Teaching8A. Custom and Social Politeness of English Culture8B. The Cultural Connotation of Vocabulary8C. The Situation of the Society9D. The Non-Verbal Expression9. Classroom-Teaching Cultural Background Knowledge9A. Comprehending the Deep Meaning of Words Through Texts9B. Making Use of Scene Communications10C. Making Use of Exercises After Class11. Some Existing Problems and the Solutions12A.The Limitation of Aquiring Background Information12B.Being Lack of Good English Atmosphere13C. Having No Enough Chances to Experience13D. The Factors of Teachers14Conclusion16Acknowledgements17Bibliography18AbstractLanguage is a part of culture and affects culture. Some sociologists think that language is the foundation of culture. Seeing from another aspect, language is affected by culture. In a word, language and culture affect each other; if someone would like to comprehend a language, he must know of culture of that language first, at the same time, if he wants to comprehend culture, learning the language is the first step. For learning a foreign language, persons should not only master pronunciation, grammars, vocabulary and idioms, but also know how to use the language to express their thoughts, habits, and action. In fact, learning language and knowing culture can not be separated. The basic goal of foreign language teaching is to enhance and develop cross-cultural communicative ability of students. Therefore, bringing cultural background knowledge bases on a goal that is to improve cross-cultural communicative ability of students. To achieve this goal, cultural teaching in foreign language education should contain two duties: introducing cultural knowledge and developing cross-cultural communicative ability. This article elaborates emphatically the importance of cultural teaching in English teaching and gives a set of classroom-teaching methods for the purpose of enhancing the cross-cultural consciousness of students. And it introduces some methods to improve the cross-cultural consciousness and the sensitivity of students in English teaching, and the methods to improve the cross-cultural communicative ability from different channels. At the same time, this article discusses some existing problems and the counter solutions in the process of English cultural teaching.Key WordsEnglish cultural teaching; cultural background; cross-cultural communicative ability摘要语言是文化的一部分，并对文化起着重要作用。有些社会学家认为，语言是文化的基石；从另一方面看，语言又受文化的影响，反映文化。语言与文化互相影响，互相作用；理解语言必须了解文化，理解文化必须理解语言。学习一种外语不仅要掌握语音，语法，词汇和习语，而且还要了解他们如何用他们的语言来反映他们社会的思想，习惯，行为；要懂得他们的“心灵之语言”，即了解他们社会的文化。实际上，学习语言与了解语言所反映的文化是分不开的。外语教学的根本目的是培养具有跨文化交际能力的高素质人才，因而外语教学中文化传授应以提高学生的跨文化交际能力为目标。为实现这一目的，外语教学中的文化传授必须涉及到两个层次的任务：即传授文化知识和培养跨文化交际能力。本文重点论述了文化教学在英语教学中的重要性，提出了一套旨在培养学生跨文化意识的课堂教学策略。通过对学生跨文化交际意识的现状调查重点阐述在英语教学中进行文化教学，培养学生跨文化交际意识的内容、方法和途径。探讨怎样在英语教学中，从不同的层面来培养学生的跨文化意识和敏感性，提高其跨文化交际能力。同时，也总结出在文化传授的过程中，存在的一些问题以及相应的解决办法。关键词英语文化教学; 文化背景; 跨文化交际能力Introduction The modern foreign language teaching emphasizes enhancing cross-cultural communicative ability of students. Culture refers to a collection of material and spiritual civilization that are created by a nation. As for English teaching, it includes the history, the geography, the local condition, social customs, the life styles, the literature and arts, the religious philosophy, the idea of value of English-speaking countries. It is admitted that the traditional English teaching plays an important role in English knowledge education and the basic language skills training. However, the communicative ability of students has not developed actually. It is common that many students have good grammars, rich vocabulary, and can speak perfect English, but in fact, they often fail in communicating with foreigners. Therefore, how to enhance the sensitivity of students between Chinese and foreign language and how to enhance their cross-cultural communicative ability are worth of thinking over by the English educators.The Important Role of Cultural Background Knowledge in English TeachingWhat should be taught in English teaching? There are different kinds of answers depending on different people. Traditional grammar- translation method holds that vocabulary, grammars and even sentence patterns should be taught in English teaching, which results in the cramming teaching of grammar and vocabulary, and the rote memorization of sentence patterns. These advocators take it for granted that once students grasp most of them, they will be a great master in English. But they neglect a factor: although it can equip students with a solid linguistic knowledge, it may produce a batch of students who are incapable of responding to the actual situation. Knowing certain knowledge about western cultural background, students can master the true thoughts and inner ideas of English language more quickly and correctly, therefore they can study and use English correctly to improve the efficiency of learning. A. Being Helpful to English Reading.English reading ability is a kind of comprehensive ability, there are many kinds of styles of English articles, although they know meaning of each word and have no difficulty with the structures of sentences in the process of reading, if they have no cultural background information about the article, then it is hard to understand the true meaning of the article. For example, there is a simple dialogue between zhangJuan and David from an English textbook. ZhangJuan:-Are you English?David:-No, Im not.ZhangJuan:-But you speak English.David: -That's correct.ZhangJuan:-Where are you from then? Canada? David:-No, I'm from Britain.ZhangJuan:-But I thought you said you weren't English. David:-Right, I'm British, but I'm not English. ZhangJuan:-What are you then?David:-I'm Scottish, I'm from Scotland.ZhangJuan:-Where's that?  David:-It's to the north of England, It's part of Britain. ZhangJuan:-Have you got a map to show me? I'm puzzled.   In this dialogue, why does ZhangJuan feel puzzled? Because ZhangJuan is lack of the cultural background knowledge about England and Britain. Usually England stands for Britain, but strictly speaking, England refers to the people of England, because England is just a part of Britain, though England has broad land, large population, it can not stand for Scotland, Wales and Ireland whose people are also not willing to be named England people but being happy to accept Scottish, as for British, they can accept it, this is why David says: “I am British, but I am not English. I am Scottish.” in this dialogue, if students grasp this cultural background knowledge, it is very easy to comprehend this dialogue. At this time introducing cultural background knowledge is very important and it is not necessary to explain words and grammar which are very simple. Therefore, leading cultural background knowledge is helpful to English reading.B. Being Able to Improve the Ability of CommunicationDifferent countries have their own habits and customs; there are many different habits and customs between English-speaking countries and China. Thus if English learners want to communicate with the foreigners effectively and correctly in daily life, they should understand the cultural background knowledge of western nations as comprehensively as possible, especially something that is different from Chinese culture, for example, western persons respect of privacy of others( generally they do not inquire of private things, the age, the income, the housing and marriage of other persons) When saying hello, they do not ask something that they have already known, for example, if a person is reading, they will never ask like this“ Are you reading?”. At the same time, they do not ask others if they have had meals (unless they want to ask others to have a meal); when receiving praise, they will show thanks. There is a dialogue of “mainly revision” in an old English teaching material：-Would you like another piece of bean curd?-Yes, please. It's delicious. Did you cook it yourself? -Yes, of course. It's very easy. I'll teach you if you like. -How about some more beef? There's plenty more.  -Well, just a little, please. -Let me give you some more chicken. And have another pancake.  -They're better when they are hot. -No, thanks. I'd had enough.  -What about you, Bob? A bowl of soup? -I'm full; thank you.-What a delicious supper! Next time you must come to us.Here students are requested to have a general understanding about the table manners and some differences between China and western countries about asking other people to have a meal. The Chinese treats, they always like to increase wine or food for their guests again and again because they always worry whether their guests are full or not .The western persons, especially the Americans, when there is a party, the male master or the hostess usually gives the guests food or wine only once, if they want more, they will not pretend or they will be hungry or thirsty. When hosts give a guest a glass of wine, please remember: drink a little but not drink all. Masters hope that guests do it by themselves, do not be cautious, and eat any as long as they like. If they really dislike some vegetables, they may say to the hosts that they are not used to this dish honestly, but politely, and they will eat up the food in their plate, drink up the wine in their glass. If a guest want to communicate with English when having a meal, he has to know the different habits between China and western countries otherwise he will be hungry or he will be very awkward.When persons communicate with foreigners, they can not translate their dialogues word by word. If they do this, maybe it will result in a joke because of some differences. For example, when an English person says that it rains cats and dogs outside, if the Chinese person does not know this proverb and the difference of cultures, he may feel very confused. Therefore, their communication fails. C. Arousing the Studying Interests of Students In the process of English teaching, introducing cultural background knowledge may give students a way to enter the palace of western culture, they can understand western cultural thoughts, feel the strange style of foreign land, taste the different custom of western society and know many things that they have never known, then day by day, they will find it is interesting to learn cultural background knowledge. For example, in teaching "Abraham Lincoln", teachers can introduce the struggle experiences of Lincoln from a common person to American president, the purpose is to make students feel the eternal charm of a great personality; In the process of teaching "Computers", teachers may introduce the world-shaking change that is brought by the computer technology and the modern communicative technology, as well as the fast development of America. In the new teaching material "Olympic games", teachers may explain some information about the Olympic Games and the development history of athletics which aim is to arouse the interest of students. For example, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" (冬天来了，春天还会远吗？) As soon as learners see “if”, then the grammar relations of two sentences become very clear. However Chinese is different from English, “打得赢就打，打不赢就走，还怕没办法?” The famous saying of Chairman Mao which looks like a combination that is built by some verbs, and there are no connection words in this short sentence, but because of the whole meaning, the sentence is very natural. This is because that English pays much attention to the right shape and Chinese emphasize the right meaning, westerners pay much attention to logos and logical thinking, and Chinese emphasize changeable idea and agility. Teachers make students understand this kind of cultural difference of thinking habits which affects the language expression, the result is that it is helpful to the students to learn English grammars and reduce some faults about Chinese English, at the same time, learning these can make English expressive ability of students better than before. There are 160 students who have studied English for about eight years, and have basic knowledge of English and understand some differences between Chinese and English. But how does their cross-cultural consciousness of communication? How do teachers carry on cultural teaching? And what things should they teach? Then there is a research about cultural consciousness of these students: Consciousness of cultureABCDE1、In the process of learning English，is it necessary to learn English culture?A、Yes, very necessary  B、Yes, necessary  C、Yes, but not too much  D. Not necessary E、Sorry, I do not know101060602525556060 2、In the course of studying English, which kind of culture do you care for? A、Sorry, I never care for   B、English proverb C、English literatureD、English films    E、English songs10102020202090902020 3、How do you deal with practice of language ability and learning English cultural knowledge? A, Care for language ability only B、Care for cultural knowledge only  C、The two are important both   D. Cultural knowledge is not important than language ability   E. Cultural knowledge is more important than ability of language 303000161611011044 4、My main method of learning cultural knowledge is: A、I do not know   B、depending on learning in spare time  C、dislike, never learn D、learn from te