The Role of Transcultural Factors in English Teaching

1、跨文化因素在英语教学中的作用the role of transcultural factors in english teaching摘要: 不同的民族有着不同的社会文化背景, 学习一种外语必须了解这种语言所承载的文化. 本文从语言和文化的关系入手, 说明外语教学中文化导入的必要性.同时语言和文化密不可分的关系决定了当前的英语教学不仅是知识的传授, 而且更应包括文化知识的传播和对学生跨文化能力的培养. 因此本文将探讨怎样培养学生的文化意识和跨文化交际能力.关键词: 文化导入; 文化导入的方法和内容;文化教学; 文化意识; 跨文化交际能力;交际策略abstract: different nati

2、ons have different social culture backgrounds. when learning a foreign language, we must learn the culture that this language carries. therefore, this paper is designed to deal with the relationship between language and culture, and express the necessity of culture introduction in foreign language t

3、eaching. at the same time, the inseparable relationship between language and culture decides the present english teaching not only means the impartment of linguistic knowledge but also the transmission of cultural knowledge, and the cultivation of students communicative competence. so this paper is

4、to discuss how to make students aware of cultural awareness and develop their intercultural communicative competence.key words:culture introduction; the contents and approaches of culture introduction; culture teaching; culture awareness; intercultural communicative competence; communicative strateg

5、iesi introduction language is an inseparable part of culture, and it is also a carrier of culture. language can reflect the characteristics of one nation. it not only includes one nations history and cultural background, but also indicates the lifestyle and thinking pattern of people. so learning a

6、foreign language requires that we should master the necessary linguistic knowledge and skills. beside that, we should also have a better understanding of the foreign culture that a language carries in order to overcome the difficulties in intercultural communication and successfully communicate with

7、 foreigners. as the american linguist chomsky points out “language teaching is equal to culture teaching.”(1963). culture teaching is defined as the development of students intercultural communicative competence in teaching activities, which guides the students to obtain abundant intercultural knowl

8、edge and develop the students abilities in intercultural communication, understanding, comparison and cooperation. the aim of culture teaching in english teaching is to accumulate the culture knowledge about english speaking countries and develop intercultural communicative awareness and competence.

9、 in foreign language teaching, cultural disturbance is widely considered to be one of the toughest problems, and some people even think it is much more horrible than misunderstanding (wu guohua, 1990). generally speaking, the present teaching methods pay more attention to the form of language itself

10、 and less attention to the culture introduction and the development of intercultural awareness. the present english teaching mainly adopts the approaches “listening and speaking, grammar and translation.” the students repeatedly practice a certain linguistic structure to achieve the goal of masterin

11、g language under that learning formula. so teachers emphasize more on language phenomenon and ignore the importance of culture knowledge and the carrier function of language. that is why the modern english pays special attention to the development of students communicative competence, and it is also

12、 required that teachers properly introduce some relevant knowledge in their teaching process. ii the key problems in english teaching and learning the mistakes the students make in communication are always caused by the lack of culture awareness. the process of learning a language is the process of

13、realizing one culture. brown (1987) thinks that there are many reasons for language learners who fail to learn english well, but the main reason is that they cannot integrate culture learning with language learning properly. here are three aspects for this situation in general.firstly, the social cu

14、ltural factors are not taken seriously in the field of foreign language teaching all the time. the reason is that the development of foreign language teaching is restricted by the development of theoretical linguistics. no matter what traditional linguistics and structural linguistics are, both of t

15、hem think the object of language study is language itself (hu chundong, 1996). consequently, teachers do not always put the importance of linguistic knowledge and culture knowledge into an equal position in their teaching process. secondly, the students are over dependent on their teachers, they get

16、 used to accepting the formula of passive learning. the present teaching-centered examination pattern gives students less time to read books about the culture knowledge of english and american countries. on the contrary, much more time goes to reciting new words and doing more exercises.thirdly, the

17、 english textbooks have been influenced by the home and abroad climate, most of the textbooks are about small stories, dialogues and soon, sometimes including some prose and poetry. although the subject matter is various, the content is single. the teaching materials the students touch are not diver

18、sified, and the textbooks mainly describe the hero among the workers and farmers. the students are learning english, but their thinking patterns still belong to chinese thinking pattern, and language and culture are separated by human themselves.iii the significance of culture introduction, backgrou

19、nd knowledge and transcultural communicative teaching we all communicate with others all the time. no matter how well we think we understand each other, communication is hard. “culture” is often at the root of communication challenges. our culture influences how we approach problems, and how we part

20、icipate in groups and in communities. when we participate in groups we are often surprised at different patterns of behavior. as people from different cultural groups take on the exciting challenges of working together, cultural values sometimes conflict. we can misunderstand each other, and react i

21、n ways that can hinder what are otherwise promising partnerships. oftentimes, we arent aware that culture is acting upon us. sometimes, we are not even aware that we have cultural values or assumptions that are different from others! so the importance of culture introduction and background knowledge

22、 is highlighted. we should make aware of culture awareness. “ we can not learn english well if we only pay attention to the form of a language not to its connotation.” (hu wenzhong, 1998). language itself is a kind of phenomenon, it is a carrier of culture as well as an important part of culture, an

23、d so language and culture are closely related. as american linguist spair has put it in his language “ language has an environment, it can not exist without culture and tradition that the society has inherited.” the inseparable relationship between language and culture becomes obvious when people fr

24、om different cultures communicate with each other. the mastery of one language can be obtained only under the circumstance of knowing the special background behind the language. chinese people and people from english speaking countries live in different backgrounds, and they have different attitudes

25、 toward the following aspects, such as customs, religious beliefs, thinking patterns and moral concepts and so on. language reflects the objective world, so the difference between chinese culture connotation and western culture connotation must cause the difference of semantics, sentence meaning, as

26、sociative meaning and so on. take the idioms of culture for example, the meaning of idiom always comes from the native history allusion, and it is widely accepted by the whole society. if we want to describe someone as a person who is stubborn and not easy to change his mind, we use the expression “

27、犟得象斗牛” in chinese, whereas “ as stubborn as a mule” in english. “ meet ones waterloo” means fail completely (waterloo is a city in the middle of belgium, where napoleons troop was defeated in 1815). if you have no knowledge about this, you will have no idea about what this idiom is talking about, be

28、cause there is a historical story behind “meet ones waterloo”. therefore, we will inevitably meet the culture barrier and even cause culture shock. so it is very necessary for the teachers to introduce the essential background information behind the text, because the background knowledge can deeply

29、explain its language. if the teachers could successfully guide the students to master the background knowledge, there would be no difficulties for students in intercultural communication, and the students can be excellent in learning a foreign language under the circumstances of training the proper

30、culture awareness. that is why teachers stress on the importance of culture introduction and background knowledge step by step in their teaching practice. language is inseparable from culture while culture is dependent on language. english teaching is language teaching; of course, it is closely rela

31、ted to culture teaching. that is why the importance of transcultural communicative teaching is emphasized on teaching culture. 3.1 cultural difference is a carrier of transcultural communicationthe course of modernization quickens the circulation of spiritual and material products, which brings each

32、 nation into a common village. transcultural communication has become a necessary part of every nation in the world. however, cultural difference is barrier of transcultural communication, so overcoming the difficulties in communication has become a common problem that the whole world is facing.3.2

33、transcultural teaching is a crucial factor in successful intercultural communication developing communicative competence is a final goal of english teaching. language competence is the base of communication competence, but the possession of language competence does not mean the possession of communi

34、cation competence. more and more people have achieved a consensus on this point. communication competence should contain the following five aspects, listening, speaking, reading, writing and social ability (the ability to communicate with people from different backgrounds). however, teachers always

35、pay more attention to the outside form and grammatical structure of english in the teaching process, and ignore the social environment of english, especially the culture differences. that is why the students fail to know what to say in different discourses. so it is necessary to introduce transcultu

36、ral communicative teaching. iv the content of culture introduction 4.1 what is culture?culture can be defined as a special lifestyle, which has special meanings and value in the daily life (chen shen, 1996). the teacher should make the exact definition of culture clear to the students so that they h

37、ave a better understanding of what culture is, which can be very helpful to both learning and teaching.4.2 knowledge culture and communication culturethe chinese linguist zhang zhanyi (1983) divides culture background knowledge into two kinds: knowledge culture and communication culture. knowledge c

38、ulture refers to the knowledge of politics, economics, education, religion, law and so on. communication culture refers to these languages and non-linguistic factors that affect the proper circulation of information when people from two culture backgrounds are communicating. for instance, if you hav

39、e no idea about the specific meaning of “ 爱人”, it can be interpreted as lover ( which is equal to mistress) when communicating with english speakers. take “ lost dog” for another example, it can be translated as a dog that has lost its master, and this kind of translation obviously indicates a derog

40、atory sense, because the dog is an animal which is despised by human beings in china. but the dog is a faithful animal of humankind and is a symbol of loyalty in westerners eyes; it is a complimentary sense when the dog is compared to a human being. for example, “you lucky dog” means you are a reall

41、y lucky guy. the comments of words can cause great deviation to the understanding and communication, so it is required that when the teachers explain the usage of words, they should illustrate the different culture connotation of words. meanwhile, the students are not only required to know the liter

42、al meaning of the words, but also their derogatory sense and complimentary sense. that is the meaning of combining the rich connotation of culture.4.3 the introduction of knowledge culture and communication culturesince culture can be divided as knowledge culture and communication culture, so englis

43、h teachers should never give up the accumulation of the knowledge culture as well as the introduction of communication culture. the introduction of communication culture should start from various aspects of our daily life. so the teacher should mainly tell the differences of language forms and custo

44、ms between english and chinese.i will give you an example to show the differences of communication culture. the overseas students in america say that the americans are not reliable on their words, because the overseas students are waiting for a long time and fail to have dinner with american friends

45、 when they are invited. someone investigates this kind of phenomenon and finds out that the overseas students do not seem to understand the speaking rules in american english. when they hear from an american that we must get together soon, the overseas students will treat it as formal invitation. as

46、 a matter of fact, it is a polite formula. the social linguists make a special analysis on this topic: what is the difference between polite formula and oral invitation in the usage? the result is that the formal invitation is much more concrete than the polite formula. generally speaking, the forma

47、l invitation necessarily includes time and place. for instance, “come over for dinner next saturday night” is an intentional invitation.culture introduction should give preference to knowledge culture; the culture introduction should be based on raising the students culture awareness so that student

48、s can understand the westerners value concept and the way they are thinking. for example, a story quoted from a college textbook. one day, a lady suddenly received a box with a button and a note on its surface, the message says “you will get 50.000 dollars as a reward if you press this button, but s

49、omebody will die somewhere in the world. as a result, the lady presses the button without any hesitation.” from this story, the students can learn something about selfishness, money centered and value preference of the westerners. if the teachers just explain the surface meaning of this story, the s

50、tudents cannot understand the culture behind the story, then they fail to understand this text. so the teacher cannot only stop the surface of linguistic symbols, they also should impart the deep culture under the linguistic symbolism. only in this way, can the realization of western culture be tran

51、smitted from culture knowledge to culture awareness.we should make aware of culture awareness; we should convey the language knowledge and culture knowledge in english teaching. the advantage of doing this is that culture knowledge deepens the students understanding of the target language, so it is

52、much easier to understand and master the connotation of one culture. language teaching and culture teaching can be carried together while introducing phonetics, vocabularies, grammar and so on. for example, “freeze” basically means “iced”, for a person can own his gun in american society, an oversea

53、s student can be killed because he cannot understand an american oral expression “freeze” (stand, not move), “freeze” is well known and everyday wording in america, he will not sacrifice his life if he has some information about this. here is another example, when teaching the word “ professional”,

54、we tell the students “he is a professional and she is a professional”. the associative meaning could be totally different: he is perhaps a boxer and she is likely a prostitute, it is caused by english and american culture.apart from culture connotation that language itself carries. the customs of we

55、stern countries, peoples lifestyles, religious beliefs and thinking patterns all have profound culture background and meaning. therefore, culture background knowledge can be appropriately introduced to the students in english teaching. for instance, those people whose age are above the middle aged m

56、an can be called “ the elder” for the sake of respect in china. in western culture on the contrary, “the elder” means the decline of ones life, that is why westerners avoid it as taboo, and they do not refuse to obey the elder. a guider once told a story like this, on a trip, this guider saw an old

57、american lady difficultly climbing mountain, and then he rushed to support her, but was refused by the old lady. how could such a thing happen? because american is a society where the public cannot universally respect the old people. the old has developed a habit of being independent, that is why al

58、l the old people like being called “senior citizens”.we also make a conclusion on the differences between english culture and american culture in the daily communication, which is very helpful to develop the students communicative competence. four words are concluded as taboos when chinese people ta

59、lk to english speakers for the first time, “i, warm, where, meal.” “i” means income. “w” means weight, “a” means age, “r” means religion, “m” means marriage in the second word. the seven questions are not allowed to ask from above, such as income, weight, age, religious belief, marriage, where he goes, what he eats. only in this way, can the students have a better understanding of the taboos in the