Influence of Culture Factors in English Teaching

1、文化因素對英語教學的影響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 purpo

2、se 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.12in

3、fluence of culture factors in english teachinginfluence 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 diff

4、erences 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 inc

5、orporate 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

6、 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; cult

7、ure teaching 摘 要：語言是文化的基石，沒有語言，文化就無法存在。從另一方面看，文化影響著語言，語言表現并反映著文化。雖然應用于交際時的語言沒有錯誤，但由于文化的差異，誤解也就隨之產生。所以想要學好一門語言，不僅要掌握它的發(fā)音，語法，詞匯，還要學會了解它的文化。今天，在中國，英語教學中的文化教育已日益重要。英語教學中對文化教育的研究主要包括三個方面，為什么教，教什么，以及如何教。這篇論文主要概括了文化的定義，文化與語言的關系，文化教學的內容，目標及方法，進一步說明英語學習者的最終的目標就是通過文化教學實現語言習得。關鍵字：文化；語言；文化教學i. introduction when

8、 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 fa

9、ctors. 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

10、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 “l(fā)anguage mind”. learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture. culture is a complica

11、ted 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, o

12、r 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 an

13、d 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

14、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 understan

15、d 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 “l(fā)ife of a population”, that is, customs, traditions, and social organizations.

16、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

17、 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 soci

18、al 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 t

19、otal 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 propo

20、sition 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 con

21、cept 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 teach

22、ing 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 cultu

23、re. 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 cu

24、ltures 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, e

25、tc. 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

26、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 c

27、ross-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 influenci

28、ng 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，

29、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 th

30、e 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 knowle

31、dge. 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

32、 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 al

33、so 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 c

34、ompliment 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 gen

35、erally 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 sh

36、ow 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 woul

37、d 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

38、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 unu

39、sual. 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 sayi

40、ngs 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

41、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 i

42、dioms, 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 elo

43、quence. 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 t

44、hat 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 of

45、ten 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 ar

46、e 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 pronunciat

47、ion, 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 “l(fā)anguage of the mind”. learning a language, in fac

48、t, 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 applicat

49、ion of language to real life, because our teaching materials attach importance to language forms but ignore the social meanings of language forms and language application in reality. we can see the following dialogues in many textbooks:a: whats your name?b: my name is li hong.a: how old are you?b: i

50、m twenty.a: where do you come from?b: i come from nanjing.a: where are you going?b: im going to the library.a: are you writing a letter to your parents?b: yes, i am.a: how often do you write to your parents?b: about once a week. all the above dialogues are roughly the combination of chinese thinking

51、 and english form. although such forms are correct, they are not appropriate. except for hospitals, immigration offices and such places, its unimaginable for someone to ask a string of questions like:” whats your name?” “how old are you?” “where do you come from?” the natural reaction of english-spe

52、aking people to the greetings like: “where are you going?” would mostly likely be “why do you ask?” or “its none of your business.” questions like “are you writing to your parents?” would be though to intrude on ones privacy. our teaching material seldom pays attention to differences between culture

53、s, so our students are usually ignorant of the factors of culture and they can only mechanically copy what they have learned.so in language teaching, we should not only pass on knowledge of language and train learners competence of utilizing language, but also enhance teaching of relative cultural b

54、ackground knowledge.1. listeningin teaching of aural comprehension, we find many students complain that much time has been used in listening, but little achievement has been acquired. in order to improve competence of listening comprehension, some students specially buy tape recorders for listening

55、and spend quite a few hours every day on it, but once they meet new materials, still, they fail to understand. what is the reason? on the one hand, maybe some students english is very poor and they havent grasped enough vocabularies, clear grammar or correct pronunciation, or maybe the material is r

56、ather difficult, etc. on the other hand, an important reason is that they are unfamiliar with cultural background of the usa and england. aural comprehension, which is closely related to the knowledge of american and british culture, politics and economy, in fact, is an examination of ones comprehen

57、sive competence which includes ones english level, range of knowledge, competence of analysis and imaginative power.maybe we have this experience: when we are listening to something familiar to us, no matter what is concerned, usually we are easy to understand. even if there are some new words in the material, we are able to guess their meanings according to its context. however, when we encounter some unfamiliar material or something closely related to cultural background, we may feel rather difficult. even if the material is easy, we on