Study on Associations between Reading and Culture

1、论阅读与文化的联系study on associations between reading and culturecontentsabstract.1key words . . . 1chapter 1 introduction.2chapter2 reading comprehension.32.1 reading comprehension32.1.1 the linguistic elements42.1.2 the non-linguistic elements.4a. topic familiarity.5b. context.5c. language6d. language af

2、fects thought.7e. acculturation.82.2 summary.9chapter 3 present study. . . .9chapter 4 reading and background knowledge. . .11 4.1 background knowledge and reading comprehension . . 114.2 causes of students lack of background knowledge. . .124.3 ways to develop background knowledge. . .12 4.3.1 disc

3、ussion. . . .134.3.2 pictures. . . .134.3.3 role-playing. . . . 134.3.4 prior reading. . . .144.4 summary. . . .14chapter 5 implications for the efl reading class. . .14chapter 6 conclusion . . . .18 references. . . .19study on associations between reading and culture摘 要：语言与文化相互依存，相互融合。不同的民族有着不同的社会文

4、化背景，学习一种语言必须了解这种语言所承载的文化。事实证明，文化背景知识的缺乏往往会导致英语学习中的文化的干扰，尤其在阅读方面。本文就文化因素对阅读的影响，说明了文化教学在英语阅读中的必要性,以及相关的启示。最终，本文目的在于为了提高中国英语学习者的阅读能力，作为教师要着手处理学生在语言中的机械化阅读和学生在阅读中所面临的困难。关键词：英语阅读；文化背景知识；语言与文化;abstract：language and culture are interdependent and blend well with each other. different nations have different

5、 cultural background knowledge. it is necessary to learn the culture which connects with the language. facts show that the lack of cultural background knowledge often leads to culture shock in english learning. beginning with the relation between reading and culture, the article focuses on the effec

6、t of culture on reading, shows the necessity of culture teaching in english and provides the inspiration for english teaching. finally, the paper suggests that in order to help chinese students improve their reading ability; teachers should deal with both universal mechanisms of the reading process

7、in any language and the unique difficulties in chinese students experience. key words: english reading cultural background knowledge language and culture study on associations between reading and culturechapter 1 introductionwe all know what reading is like since most literate people depend upon it

8、for both information and leisure. whatever kind of reading one encounters, all types share one feature reading is purposeful. people may intend to extract information, develop interests, find fun or achieve any other purpose by means of reading. therefore, one must comprehend while reading. however,

9、 what should a reader comprehend while reading? stanovich (1991:423) mentions that research studies have indicated that “word recognition is a fundamental component of reading comprehension”. nuttall (1982) suggests that the identification of sentence meaning is also crucial to comprehending a passa

10、ge because when a sentence is not understood although the vocabulary is known, it is often because it is too long and difficult to unravel synoptically .pollatsek and rayner (1989) hold the view that comprehension at the discourse level such as anaphoric inferences. causal inferences and elaborative

11、 inferences. gebhard (1996:197) point out that “reading is not done in a vacuum. it is done within a social context. the “social context ”mentioned here refers to the background knowledge people usually talk about .in other words, background knowledge play an indispensable role in reading comprehens

12、ion .up to now, it might be concluded that reading comprehension consists of word recognition. identification of sentence meaning, mapping of the main idea in discourse and the grasp of background knowledge.every human society has a culture. people who grow up in the same nation can be said to share

13、 a national culture. then, what is culture? probably the most classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th-century english anthropologist edward burnett taylor in the first paragraph of his primitive culture (1871):“culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral

14、s, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”this concept of culture served anthropologists well for some 50 years. with the increasing maturity of anthropological science, further reflections upon the nature of their subject matter and concepts led t

15、o a multiplication and diversification of definitions of culture. in culture: a critical review of concepts and definitions (1952), u.s. anthropologists a.l. kroeber and clyde kluckhohn cited 164 definitions of culture, ranging from “learned behavior” to “ideas in the mind”, “a logical construct”, “

16、a statistical fiction”, “a psychic defense mechanism” and so on. the definition or the conception of culture that is preferred by kroeber and kluckhohn and also by a great many other anthropologists is that culture is an abstraction or, more specifically, “an abstraction from behavior”.although one

17、can find a variety of definitions, many have agreed on three basic traits that are common to all. these traits are: culture is shared; cultural components are interrelated and culture is learned. it shall be assumed that culture is the total way of life of a nation, their approaches to life and thei

18、r ways of behaving, particularly living and thinking. a society, in fact, is an extremely complicated cultural system and various cultures are the bases on which different human societies survive and progress. since comprehension could be perceived to be essential component in reading, it is of peda

19、gogical interest to study different factors of reading comprehension. to date a very popular research area is the effect of background knowledge on l2 reading comprehension. the 1980s witnessed numerous publications concerning the effect of back ground knowledge on l2 reading comprehension. carrell

20、(1983a, 1983b) conducted a series of research projects concerning the effect of background knowledge using a group of native speakers of english and a group to advanced learners of english as a second language. lee (1986) did a partial replication of carrells study using a group of l1 english studen

21、ts studying spanish. another study of the similar kind was carried out by johnson and yarbrough (1988) using a group of brazilian efl readers.however, although these studies have greatly advanced our knowledge in this field, they are far from comprehension and a lot more needs to be explored. on the

22、 one hand ,we have not reached an unanimous agreement on the role of background knowledge in l2 reading comprehension as different studies generate different results(carrell,1983b)on the other hand, there has been relatively less research using chinese efl readers as subjects ,whose native language

23、is a writing system that is far different from western language such as english and french ,hence it might be of some significance to conduct a research into the effect of background knowledge on chinese efl reading comprehension. starting from this point, the present study intends to examine five a

24、spects:(1) context, familiarity and language have independent effects upon chinese readers efl reading comprehension.(2) there is an interactive effect between familiarity, language and context.(3) proficient chinese efl readers differ from poor chinese efl readers in manipulating reading strategies

25、.(4) interactive reading strategies can make up for deficient contexts.(5) the effect of native language is greater on poor chinese efl than on proficient chinese efl readers.chapter2 reading comprehensionsmith describes reading as a creative and constructive activity of making sense of written lang

26、uage rather than a matter of mechanically extracting sound from print.it is mentioned in understanding reading that reading activity has “ four distinctive and fundamental characteristics it is purposeful ,selective, anticipatory and base on comprehension. consequently, it is appropriate to regard c

27、omprehension as the goal of the whole reading process and it is imperative to examine the nature of reading process so as to acquire a more profound and through understanding of reading comprehension.2.1 reading comprehensionit is unanimously agreed among linguists and researchers that the crux in u

28、ncovering the actual reading process is to discover how people comprehend when they read, as comprehension is the goal of the reading, there seems little doubt that a focus on the information being communicated by the texts has more potential for interest. however, despite the high acclaim comprehen

29、sion has received ,the definition of comprehension of print in the case of reading-to what we already had in our heads .in smiths definition of comprehension ,the visual information of print is referred to as general reading martial that can act as an exterior stimulus which spurs the process of com

30、prehending. with regard to the topic undergraduate students encounter in their study and daily life.as is known to all, a reading passage is a big chuck of language, which leads to the logical conclusion that it is not practical to grasp both the gist and details of the passage at one time. the read

31、ing process contains a series of stages, including word recognition, the identification of sentence meanings, and the mapping of the main idea. with these two points in mind, it may be speculated that comprehension also occurs at several levels.in order to divide reading comprehension into several l

32、evels, a preliminary step is to figure out what factors are that influence reading comprehension .needless to say, the linguistic(culture) elements in a reading passage absolutely demand understanding .however ,as many literatures cite , one non-linguistic factors ,which is regard as “background kno

33、wledge”, also plays a key role in understanding a reading passage .as a carrell points out ,research on reading comprehension among native speakers of english has shown that the ability to understanding texts is based not only the readers linguistic knowledge , but also on his or her general knowled

34、ge of the world and the extent to which that knowledge is activated during the mental process of reading .2.1.1 the linguistic elements from the perspective of linguistics, a reading passage can be divided into different levels of text units, including the word, the sentence and the discourse. compr

35、ehension, as a consequence, takes place at these corresponding levels.2.1.2 the non-linguistic elementsgebhard states that “reading is not done in a vacuum. it is done within a social context”.the “social content” mentioned here refers to the background knowledge people talk about. to comprehend wri

36、tten language, readers rely on their ability to recognize words phrases and sentences, as well as to utilize their background knowledge related to the content of what they are reading .these two processes interact as we read, resulting in some degree of comprehension . in practice, a large amount of

37、 research has been carried out to test whether the lack of background knowledge can affect comprehension. the results prove in unanimity that when readers have the background knowledge assumed by the writer, comprehension is high and correct inferences are made .if they do not have the background kn

38、owledge, they distort meaning as they attempt to adjust the writers intent to their own knowledge of the world.since background knowledge exerts such great influence on a persons understanding of reading materials, it is reasonable to illustrate. it is an all-round manner.a. topic familiarity as one

39、 of the fundamental components of background knowledge, topic familiarity is increasingly viewed as one of the criteria determinants of performance in reading .if the topic of a text is sufficiently familiar to readers ,they are capable of initiating sufficient existing background knowledge in their

40、 mind to deploy appropriate skills and state enabling them to understand the text .otherwise, the content might be so unfamiliar to the readers that none of the questions set can be answered with recourse to the readers that none of the questions set can be answered with recoups to the readers backg

41、round knowledge .consequently the communication between the readers and the text will totally break down without any bit of comprehension .thus, from the readers view, a familiar topic facilitate comprehension because the existing background knowledge about the topic can facilitate comprehension, wh

42、ile an unfamiliar topic will do nothing but hinder comprehension.b. contextthe context under discussion in this section is slightly different from the social context .this “context” in essence refers to any knowledge that the text is about a particular content area .things like a little ,a blurb or

43、a graph may all provide a clue as to what topic the text is going to focus on . in contrast, social context is more general as it concerns only the knowledge in the general content area of the text.e.g. suppose the reader is going to read a text entitled “how to deposit money in a bank”. at a glance

44、 of the title, the reader will naturally recall all his experiences in a bank, such as :depositing money ,withdrawing money ,issuing credit cards and applying for loans .all these experiences, from a linguistic perspective ,are regard as the knowledge in the general content area of the text and prov

45、ide the reader with social context so as to facilitate his understanding about this particular text. meanwhile, the title narrows the readers focus down to the particular procedure of depositing money among the many transactions which go on in the bank, in this sense , the title serves as knowledge

46、of what a particular content area the text is about .therefore , the title can be looked on as offering “context” or “local context”, if we want to differentiate it from “social context”. although these two kinds of context differ fundamentally owing to their receptive focuses, they both play a faci

47、litative role in comprehension .therefore, the “local context” in this section is also inseparable component of background knowledge.c. language language is the most effective tool for people to communicate with each other. it is a set of symbols and rules for combining those symbols that are used a

48、nd understood by a large community of people (samovar, 122). language is closely associated with the culture and culture influences language by way of symbols and rules as well as peoples perceptions of the universe. since languages differ from culture to culture, many misunderstandings are related

49、to it. when you study another language, you will soon discover that not only the symbols and sounds, but also the rules for using them are different. these differences can directly result in misunderstandings in peoples intercultural communication.as everyone knows, a word may have different meaning

50、s. to one person, the word grass might mean something in front of the house that is green. but to another person, grass may mean something that is rolled in paper and smoked. all people, drawing on their backgrounds, decide what a word means. when people have similar experiences, they share similar

51、meanings. while in intercultural communication, people often have different experiences, which bring many difficulties for people to communicate with each other, and greatly add the possibility of causing misunderstandings.if you want to communicate in another language, only knowing the words is not

52、 enough. you should pay attention to the rules for using these words, too. the word order and structure of sentences are also quite different in different languages. in filipino, the normal word order for simple sentences is that the subject follows the predicate. but in english it is the reverse. s

53、o the english sentence “the man laughed” would be “laughed the man” in filipino. in english, the subject is followed by a verb then an object, but in japanese, the object and then the verb follow the subject. so in english people might say, “i ate snake,” while in japanese, people might say: “i snak

54、e ate”. if you cannot grasp the rules well in intercultural communication, the results will be terrible.more than a communicating tool, language is the wisdom of those who speak it. it reflects a cultures life style, ways of thinking, and different patterns of interacting.the reason why language sho

55、uld also be included as a component of back ground knowledge is that whether or not the text is composed in the readers native language may influence the readers understanding of the text. there have been a lot of experiments , the results of which show that a text written in the readers native lang

56、uage brings about better understanding than the same text composed in the readers foreign language .this result is not surprising at all as it is in accordance with the supposition of the general public .however ,there is also a large amount of research which indicates that there are cases in which

57、a text written in the readers foreign language is better understood than the version in the readers native language. for instance roller conducted an experiment among a group of a-level students to see the effect of language(chinese) and their l2(english) in their english reading comprehension.according to the result the student can