Influence of Culture Factors in English Teaching.doc

文化因素对英语教学的影响The Influence of CultureFactors in English TeachingContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. Introduction. .2II. The Relationship between Language and Culture2 1. Different definitions of culture.2 2. The relationship between language and culture.3III. The Purpose of Culture Teaching.41. The purpose of culture teaching.42. The content of culture teaching.4IV. The Problem and Solving of Culture Teaching. 6 1. Listening. 7 2. Vocabulary. 83. Reading. 84. Writing. 95. Translation. 9 V. The Objective of Culture Teaching.10VI. The Strategies of Culture Teaching.10VII. Conclusion.12References.12Influence of Culture Factors in English TeachingAbstract: Language is the keystone of culture. Without language, culture would not be possible. On the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture, it reflects culture. Because of cultural differences misunderstandings may arise, although the language used in communication may be faultless. So learning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciations, grammars and vocabularies. It means learning to understand their culture. Today in China, it is important to incorporate culture teaching in English teaching. The research of culture teaching in English language teaching mainly refers to three aspects, the necessity to teach, what to teach and how to teach. This article reviews briefly the definitions of culture and introduces the relation between culture and language. It also states the content of culture teaching and the objectives of culture teaching and the strategies of culture teaching. It further expounds that the final objective is to achieve the language acquisition of English-learners through culture teaching.Key words: culture; language; culture teaching 摘 要：语言是文化的基石，没有语言，文化就无法存在。从另一方面看，文化影响着语言，语言表现并反映着文化。虽然应用于交际时的语言没有错误，但由于文化的差异，误解也就随之产生。所以想要学好一门语言，不仅要掌握它的发音，语法，词汇，还要学会了解它的文化。今天，在中国，英语教学中的文化教育已日益重要。英语教学中对文化教育的研究主要包括三个方面，为什么教，教什么，以及如何教。这篇论文主要概括了文化的定义，文化与语言的关系，文化教学的内容，目标及方法，进一步说明英语学习者的最终的目标就是通过文化教学实现语言习得。关键字：文化；语言；文化教学I. Introduction When we talking about English teaching, most of people will think about those basic language teaching. Namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing, but ignore the culture factors. People those who have the ability of the basic language and communication still make some mistakes caused by culture factors. So，culture teaching should gain more attention of education field. The teaching of culture is an indispensable parts of foreign language teaching. Learning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and language function. It means learning to see the world as native speakers of that language does; learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of their society; learning to understand their “language mind”. Learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture. Culture is a complicated social phenomenon. It exists everywhere; it covers everything and it is involved in all the aspects of social life. Thus, it is considered as the sum of all the achievement got from the social and spiritual life. Generally speaking, culture can be divided into two parts: one is Formal Culture, or Knowledge Culture. It includes all the accomplishments in social and physical science and highly reflects humans material and moral civilization. The other is Common Culture, or say Communicative Culture. It has a serious of different features in daily life, such as customs, ceremonies, manners and holidays, etc. In addition, peoples actions or speeches all directly or indirectly reflect their self-cultivation.Since the 1990s, cultural studies have been discussed more frequently, and there is regained interest and understanding in English language teaching and research. Our English language curriculum has especially accepted culture teaching as one of the objectives in language teaching.II. The Relationship between Language and Culture1. Different Definitions of CultureWhats “culture”? It is estimated that over 200 definitions have been proposed. H .Ned Seelye puts forward an understand of culture on two levels: one is culture with a big “C” which includes literature, arts, music, architecture philosophy and achievement of science and technology; the other is culture with a little “c” which refers to “life of a population”, that is, customs, traditions, and social organizations. This means culture includes not only such material things as arts, music, and architecture, but also non-material things such as customs, traditions. Putting it simply, culture refers to the entire way of life of a society, “the way of a people”.The definition of culture consists broad sense meaning and narrow sense meaning. The broad sense defines culture as “the features of human beings”. But the narrow sense defines culture as “a life style of human community”. In fact, the narrow sense meaning is more apt to culture teaching. According to the narrow sense meaning, culture is a kind of social heritage, which people have created for a long time. Language and culture have intimate relations, that is, every kind of language has its own deep cultural connotation and every language is the image of a certain kind of culture.Liu Runqing and Deng Yanchang in their book define culture as the total pattern of beliefs, customs, institutions objects and techniques that characterize the life of a human community. 2. The Relationship between Language and CultureIn foreign language education, the important of teaching foreign culture has been widely recognized. However, there are diverse proposition and argument about the pedagogical treatment of culture. How to teach culture in foreign language education is the answer that relies on our understanding of the relations between home culture and foreign culture, the relations between language and culture.In the past, people have a wrong concept that learning language is just master its pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and language function, but ignore its culture factors which can cause misunderstanding. Just like Politzer said that if we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning.Language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. Language and culture are inseparable. Without language, culture would not be possible.Many linguists explore the relation between language and culture. Nida hold the view that “every language form we use has carries meanings that are not in the same sense because it is associated with culture and culture is more extensive than language.Language is a vehicle of culture transmission. Different language may reflect different cultures; different cultures entail different language expression. Idioms, proverbs and metaphors in different language derived from different origins, also demonstrate cultural differences. Different language may have different idioms owing to different living environments, social conventions and literature tradition, etc. thus, language learners cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs. On the whole, the relation between language and culture determines the important of culture teaching. The relation of language to culture is that of part to whole. Language reflects culture and be influenced and shaped by culture.III. The Purpose and Content of Culture Teaching 1. The Purpose of Culture TeachingThe modern society accelerates the circulation of material and cultural products. It brings all the nations into a global village and it makes cross-cultural communication an indispensable part in all nations life. However, the cultural differences are the barriers in cross-cultural communication. So the world is concerned on how to remove the barriers in cross-cultural communication. Language and culture are closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. In learning language knowledge, to acquaint oneself with the knowledge of culture is the key point. One can hardly learn a language well without knowing the cultural pattern and rules of the target language. It is necessary to incorporate culture into the English classroom，In order to foster the students abilities in cross-cultural communication.2. The Content of Culture TeachingThe content of culture teaching is usually included two aspects, culture knowledge and culture understanding. Lacking either of them, learners of different cultural levels may misunderstand the meaning and produce some pragmatic errors. And, it is culture awareness that links the two aspects. The former is to acquire cultural information of target language, the latter, to know and accept the other culture, to behave appropriately in the other cultural environment with its cultural knowledge. It makes learners to be aware of their understanding and knowledge of cultural differences to discuss problems they meet during their learning and finally to improve cross-cultural communication competence.1) ComplimentsThe compliment is used widely in various kind of American society and plays a very important role. People can encourage the action, which suit their mind through praising and complimenting. In American school, teacher always encourage students by praise in the process of teaching. For example:You know something well, Tom. You did a good job/ well done, everyone.They can also use them to appease the degree of criticism, for example, they use the form like this: (compliment +but/though +criticism) . For example, On the whole, the play was a great success but the ending still left something to be desired.Two colleagues or friends who havent met for a long time may use compliment instead of greeting when they met. For example, “hi, Mary, havent seen you for a long time, you look so good, and you are losing weight.” 2) Praise There are many differences between Americans and Chinese in replying to compliments. Americans tend to accept the compliment while Chinese generally murmur some reply about not being worthy of the praise. To English-speaking people, praise is to be accepted, generally with a remark like “Thank you.” It is assumed that the compliment is sincere, that the praise is for some not unworthy achievement or thing. Therefore, there should be no show of false humility, no pretended modesty. To Chinese, however, the customary reply to a compliment would be to claim that one is not worthy of the praise, that what one has done is hardly enough, or that success was more a matter of luck or some other circumstances. Acceptance of a compliment would imply conceit or lack of manners. 3) GreetingFirst let me tell you a short conversation. An American studying in China had an appointment at noon. As he was getting on his bicycle a Chinese friend passed by and ask him, “chi le ma?” This of course is a common Chinese greeting around meal time and the American merely nodded with a smile, waved goodbye and went off. He realized that his friends remark was nothing more than a Chinese way of saying hello or hi. If the greeting had been put literally into English “Have you eaten yet?” or “Have you had your lunch?” it would have sounded rather unusual. To Americans the greeting might mean this “I havent either. Come on, lets go together and get something to eat. ” Or “If you havent, I was just going to invite you to my place.” In other words, it could indicate an invitation to a meal. 4) Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings Idioms, proverbs and sayings are an important part of the language and culture of a society. They are often hard to understand, especially idioms, and harder to use correctly. However, their proper use in a language is often a mark of a persons command of the language. Proverbs and short saying of folk wisdom of well-known facts truths expressed success in a way that makes them easy to remember. Because the sayings are so pithy, they have universal appeal. Student love to pick up proverbs and the use of one or two in the original language is often a minor triumph for beginning foreign language learners. With English idioms, even the same words may have different meanings. So it is important to help students understand the English culture is not monolithic. Proverbs and saying carry cultural connotation and meanings, too. One Chinese proverb goes “silence is gold” meaning that silence is better or useful than eloquence. On the other hand, English proverb says “squeaking wheel get oil” which means if you are quiet, you cannot receive anything. As we have seen earlier, silence has different connotation in the U.S. and China. So many culture differences influenced students to study English. An analysis shows that some are obvious errors which can be put right fairly easily while those that have to do with values, beliefs and concepts require a great deal of work over a period of time. Whatever the case may be, the respondents feedback has confirmed the belief that mistakes from culture differences are often worse than linguistic ones and tend to create ill feeling between native speakers and Chinese speakers of English. Wolfson points out, “In interacting with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity. IV. The Problem and Solving of Culture TeachingCultures differ from one another. Each culture is unique. Learning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciation, grammar, words, and idioms. It means learning also to see the world as native speakers of that language see it, learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behaviors of their society, learning to understand their “language of the mind”. Learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture.However, it has been given not enough care in our teaching for a long time. Although many students have acquired four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing according to the demand of four traditional syllabus, they often make mistakes in applicatio