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【Abstract】: This paper discusses awareness of culture difference in English teaching in China, it claims that awareness of culture difference cannot be ignored in English. Firstly, it describes the situation of English teaching in China, points out that the result of English teaching in China cannot meet the needs of the students in social communication and gives the reason for the defect. Secondly, it expounds the relationship between language and culture and indicates that culture and language cannot be separated. Thirdly, it narrates the influence of culture difference to language. Lastly, it suggests that culture teaching should be an inseparable part of language teaching, English teachers should have awareness to the difference between China and the English speaking countries and pay more attention to the impact of culture difference to the students' learning in order to improve the students intercultural communication competence.
【Key Words】: culture deference; awareness; language; English Teaching
【中圖分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128(2010)06-0007-03
In the 21st century, with the rapid development of high technology and social economy, and because of China's reform and open up policy, the world is becoming smaller and communication between people from all over the world is becoming easier, people of different cultural backgrounds contact with each other much more frequently than before. So, in China, English learning and teaching are more emphasized and people are fully aware that English is important for personal success in education and in their careers and development. English learning is playing a significant role in everyone's educational program. For this reason, a great deal of effort has been made in order to teach and learn English well.
I. The Defect in English Teaching in China
At present, English is an important course for primary school pupils and high school students, and it is also a compulsory course for college and university students in China. That is to say, English learning penetrates into all the procedures of a person's education. The proficiency of English impacts on learners' graduation, promotion, and future career. But in reality, how effective are the teaching and learning English?
In reality, it is the case that after the students have studied English in primary and high school for almost ten years, though some of them can get high scores in National College Entrance Examination, but most of them cannot use English for communication; and during their study in colleges or universities, though most of them can pass the National College English Test, they also cannot become good English communicators; even after some of them pass TOEFL, GRE, IELTS, and go abroad for further study, they can hardly communicate well with the people in English speaking countries.
What is the reason for this? The most important reason is that, Nowadays, in primary and high schools education, although the syllabus and the method of foreign language teaching are improved a lot, in English teaching, for the purpose of improving the scores of all levels of examination, teachers still lay particular stress on sound, vocabulary and grammar. The class is often trained in pure language skills and inflexible sentence patterns. Teachers, the center of the classroom, exhaustedly explain words, texts and grammars throughout the class. Students are passive to what and how to learn. That is to say, in the process of teaching and learning, the linguistic forms and language knowledge are emphasized and the culture difference between China and countries of target language is ignored, thus the learners' communicative competence can not be improved. In universities and colleges, English teaching, especially for the non-English majors, though the teaching materials and the textbooks are changed eventually, the most English classes are also based on the Grammar-Translation Approach, which is characterized by an intensive study on the text, inputting certain forms of language and students' repeated drills to form correct language habits. The limited class time is stuffed with so many language points that the presentation of culture background of learning material is always put aside. Consequently, students are just busy in dealing with the examination and cannot understand exactly what they learnt is meant and implied in different cultural contexts.
From what is described above, we can see that, in China, the current situation of English teaching cannot meet the social needs of intercultural communication. For English learners, no matter in what stage, the teaching and learning process, the syllabus, the textbooks, the supplementary materials and the teachers all put particular stress on developing students' linguistic competence, which includes listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities, while little attention is paid to the introduction of difference between Chinese culture and the culture of the target language speaking countries, the competence for using the language in different social cultures is neglected. In result, good English language learners can not become good English communicators.
II. The Relationship between Language and Culture
For many years, the relationship between language and culture has been one of the popular topics in the field of foreign language teaching. Some answers to this question are implied in the definitions of language and culture given by scholars. For example, language is defined like this: “Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways.”[1]And the famous social linguistics Joseph Greenberg also summarizes his view of language as “Language is the prerequisite for the accumulation and transmission of other cultural traits. Such fundamental aspects of human society as organized political life, legal systems, religion and science are inconceivable without that most basic and human of tools, a linguistic system of communication.”[2]For culture, it has been defined in many ways. For the purpose of understand the relationship between language and culture, this definition of culture should be paid attention to: “We define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notion of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving”.[3]
From what the scholars define above, we can summarize the relationship between language and culture can be explained as some scholars conclude: Firstly, language is a part of culture: “Language is not only a necessary condition for culture, it is itself a part of culture. It, like other shared behavioral norms, is acquired by the individual as a member of a particular social group through a complex process of learning. Like other aspects of human culture, it characteristically varies from group to group and undergoes significant modification in the course of its transmission through time within the same society.”[4]Culture is the knowledge acquired through society, while language is a set of knowledge system that is acquired by man's special linguistic competence through the stimuli of socio-linguistic context. Thus, language is a part of culture. Secondly, language is the carrier of culture: Language is the tool for man's thinking and the tool for man's forming and expressing thoughts. So man's thinking process and results are embodied in words and other language structures. Words are the most obvious tool for carrying cultural information and reflecting socio-cultural life. In addition to some basic words, every language has its cultural-loaded words that carry particular cultural information. Some special members such as idioms, allusions and proverbs have quite intimate relation with a nation's culture. To some degree, sentence structure, utterance and discourse structure also reflect the nation's way of thinking. So language is definitely the carrier of culture. Thirdly, Culture is the foundation of language: According to British linguist Lyons, the language system is restricted by two structures. One is substructure: our common biological features and the world's original structure, which made language tends to be identical. The other is superstructure: the different cultural structures of different nations, which lead to various differences in the forms of different languages. Each language corresponds with a particular culture. Its language structure, communication patterns, rhetoric rules, etc. are influenced or ever restricted to a large degree by its superstructure-culture. So culture is the foundation of language.
In a word, it has well been documented that language itself is a cultural phenomenon, a part of culture, and in the meantime, it is the carrier of culture. Culture and not be separated from language.
III. Influence of Cultural Differences to Languages
“Social scientists tell us that cultures differ from one another, that each culture is unique. As cultures are diverse, so languages are diverse. It is only natural then that with different in cultures and different in languages, difficulties often arise in communicating between cultures and across cultures. Understanding is not always easy.[5]
Chinese culture belongs to the oriental culture while the English-speaking countries are the occidental. As the two cultures arecreated and developed by different nations, exist in different geography environment and have different history, the people from them have different values, different ways of thinking and different ways of expressing their idea. As a result, there is a large distance between these two cultures, which in turn leads to numerous differences in the form, interior system and pragmatic conditions of the two languages. Take people's competence in making speech acts for example, as Jia Yuxin says, ”The language rules used by different society, even different groups or language communities in a same society are different, every society or groups has its special laws of language behaviors such as greetings, apologies, gratitude, congratulations, invitation and compliment. Even in the same situation, same social function, the speech acts of language behavior are totally different as well as the strategy used“[6]Here is an example about thedifference in cultural conventions. We know, ”Convention is a traditional way of social behavior that is considered to be appropriate or polite by most people in a culture. Convention tends to be both language specific and culture specific, and thus would be expected to have formal or functional equivalences across languages as well as cultures. Conventions in a language are mainly routine formulas and idiomatic expressions.“[7] It is polite and natural to complete an offer or invitation and response in a single act ('yes' or 'no' response), in English culture but it is also polite in Chinese to handle it by a series of acts. So, for a Chinese, when an offer or invitation is made once, he/she would refuse; when made again, he/she refuse again; and made again, he/she would accept or refuse at last. In English culture, the dialogue would be like this: A: Would you like to come to diner this Saturday? B: Oh, thank you. I'd like to very much. In Chinese culture, the dialogue would be: A: 請你周六到我家吃晚饭,好吗?B: 不必了,别这么客气。A:你可一定要来呀。B: 那好吧,恭敬不如从命。That means Chinese take pride in modesty and Americans in straightforwardness. That modesty has left many Chinese hungry at an American table, for Chinese politeness calls for three refusals before one accepts an offer, and the American hosts take a ”no“ to mean ”no“, whether it is the first, second, or third time. For accepting a complement, In English culture, it is a good manner for a person to happily accept a complement. But it is not only polite but also a virtue in Chinese culture to response a complement by saying modestly,“哪里,哪里,不好”. Here is an example: A young Chinese woman who was in the US was complimented for the lovely dress that she was wearing. When someone said, “It is so beautiful!” She was very pleased to hear that but she looked some what embarrassed. She replied in typical Chinese way, “Oh, it's just an ordinary dress that I bought in China, it is not too beautiful.” If the girl is an American, the answer should be, “Oh, thank you very much, I am so glad you like it”. The difference in answering a complement lies in the different patterns of expressing the ideas. Chinese culture tends to indirect way of speaking while English culture tends to the indirect way.
From the above examples we can see that differences in culture lead to differences in language use. Cultural differences have great impact on languages. Language is a form of human cultural behavior. Language helps us understand not only one another but also culture, for it is a reflection of culture. If one is to use a language well, one must know the culture of the people who use the language.
IV. Importance of Awareness of Culture Different
“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 way in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of their society, learning to understand their 'language of the mind'. Learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture.”[8]
As an English teacher, one should have strong awareness of cultural difference. Without the consciousness of cultural differences, English teaching in China will not efficiently make the students communicate well in real English context. They are bound to misunderstand, or make a funny mistake, or even confront culture shock.
Culture has such a rich connotation that it covers all the material and spiritual wealth by human being, definitely including language. Language is a carrier, deposit and reflector of culture. Thus, students' shortage of cultural backgrounds concerned will prevent them from understanding of the language. For example, in listening comprehension teaching, most teachers pay close attention to phonology, vocabulary and sentence structures, ignoring another essential factor, cultural differences. It is called cultural obstacle, which is an important factor hindering students' normal performances in listening and their improvement of listening skill. When the learner are listening to a passage about the writing style and theme of works of a writer, if they don't know the cultural background of the country the writer lives in, perhaps they cannot understand the passage. And it is same in reading comprehension teaching. The obstacle to reading comprehension is not language itself, but is to what extent the readers appreciate the cultural backgrounds of the English-speaking countries. Sometimes, even when students know the meaning of all the words and sentences in a passage, they cannot understand correctly the meaning of the passage. So, lacking necessary cultural backgrounds has a direct impact on comprehension, remembrance and retelling of a passage. The key to reading comprehension lies in using the relevant backgrounds to fill the gaps resulting from the discontinuous data in an attempt to join together the scattered scenes into a whole affair. It is a fact indeed that students search out their native cultural knowledge to fill the gaps, but usually fail, that is, they have no way to draw up the logical relationship from the context. It prevents students from a proper understanding. They sometime misunderstand the material because of inferring information based on their own culture.
Since the cultural difference has such a significant impact on language, it is very important for the teachers to let the students aware of the cultural differences.
In conclusion, in order to improve the learners' intercultural communicative competence, English teaching should not only emphasize on improving learners' skills of using language itself, but also cultural difference between China and target language countries. Learners should have a good command of knowledge of different cultures and should fully understand the cultural differences to guarantee an effective intercultural communication.
References
[1] Language and Culture, Claire Kramsch, 上海外語教育出版社,2003,P3
[2] Selected Readings in Intercultural Communication, 杜瑞清,田德新,李本现编,西安交通大学出版社,P49
[3] Communication Between Cultures, Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, Lisa A. Stefani, 外语教学与研究出版社,汤姆森学习出版社,2000.8,P36
【Key Words】: culture deference; awareness; language; English Teaching
【中圖分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128(2010)06-0007-03
In the 21st century, with the rapid development of high technology and social economy, and because of China's reform and open up policy, the world is becoming smaller and communication between people from all over the world is becoming easier, people of different cultural backgrounds contact with each other much more frequently than before. So, in China, English learning and teaching are more emphasized and people are fully aware that English is important for personal success in education and in their careers and development. English learning is playing a significant role in everyone's educational program. For this reason, a great deal of effort has been made in order to teach and learn English well.
I. The Defect in English Teaching in China
At present, English is an important course for primary school pupils and high school students, and it is also a compulsory course for college and university students in China. That is to say, English learning penetrates into all the procedures of a person's education. The proficiency of English impacts on learners' graduation, promotion, and future career. But in reality, how effective are the teaching and learning English?
In reality, it is the case that after the students have studied English in primary and high school for almost ten years, though some of them can get high scores in National College Entrance Examination, but most of them cannot use English for communication; and during their study in colleges or universities, though most of them can pass the National College English Test, they also cannot become good English communicators; even after some of them pass TOEFL, GRE, IELTS, and go abroad for further study, they can hardly communicate well with the people in English speaking countries.
What is the reason for this? The most important reason is that, Nowadays, in primary and high schools education, although the syllabus and the method of foreign language teaching are improved a lot, in English teaching, for the purpose of improving the scores of all levels of examination, teachers still lay particular stress on sound, vocabulary and grammar. The class is often trained in pure language skills and inflexible sentence patterns. Teachers, the center of the classroom, exhaustedly explain words, texts and grammars throughout the class. Students are passive to what and how to learn. That is to say, in the process of teaching and learning, the linguistic forms and language knowledge are emphasized and the culture difference between China and countries of target language is ignored, thus the learners' communicative competence can not be improved. In universities and colleges, English teaching, especially for the non-English majors, though the teaching materials and the textbooks are changed eventually, the most English classes are also based on the Grammar-Translation Approach, which is characterized by an intensive study on the text, inputting certain forms of language and students' repeated drills to form correct language habits. The limited class time is stuffed with so many language points that the presentation of culture background of learning material is always put aside. Consequently, students are just busy in dealing with the examination and cannot understand exactly what they learnt is meant and implied in different cultural contexts.
From what is described above, we can see that, in China, the current situation of English teaching cannot meet the social needs of intercultural communication. For English learners, no matter in what stage, the teaching and learning process, the syllabus, the textbooks, the supplementary materials and the teachers all put particular stress on developing students' linguistic competence, which includes listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities, while little attention is paid to the introduction of difference between Chinese culture and the culture of the target language speaking countries, the competence for using the language in different social cultures is neglected. In result, good English language learners can not become good English communicators.
II. The Relationship between Language and Culture
For many years, the relationship between language and culture has been one of the popular topics in the field of foreign language teaching. Some answers to this question are implied in the definitions of language and culture given by scholars. For example, language is defined like this: “Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways.”[1]And the famous social linguistics Joseph Greenberg also summarizes his view of language as “Language is the prerequisite for the accumulation and transmission of other cultural traits. Such fundamental aspects of human society as organized political life, legal systems, religion and science are inconceivable without that most basic and human of tools, a linguistic system of communication.”[2]For culture, it has been defined in many ways. For the purpose of understand the relationship between language and culture, this definition of culture should be paid attention to: “We define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notion of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving”.[3]
From what the scholars define above, we can summarize the relationship between language and culture can be explained as some scholars conclude: Firstly, language is a part of culture: “Language is not only a necessary condition for culture, it is itself a part of culture. It, like other shared behavioral norms, is acquired by the individual as a member of a particular social group through a complex process of learning. Like other aspects of human culture, it characteristically varies from group to group and undergoes significant modification in the course of its transmission through time within the same society.”[4]Culture is the knowledge acquired through society, while language is a set of knowledge system that is acquired by man's special linguistic competence through the stimuli of socio-linguistic context. Thus, language is a part of culture. Secondly, language is the carrier of culture: Language is the tool for man's thinking and the tool for man's forming and expressing thoughts. So man's thinking process and results are embodied in words and other language structures. Words are the most obvious tool for carrying cultural information and reflecting socio-cultural life. In addition to some basic words, every language has its cultural-loaded words that carry particular cultural information. Some special members such as idioms, allusions and proverbs have quite intimate relation with a nation's culture. To some degree, sentence structure, utterance and discourse structure also reflect the nation's way of thinking. So language is definitely the carrier of culture. Thirdly, Culture is the foundation of language: According to British linguist Lyons, the language system is restricted by two structures. One is substructure: our common biological features and the world's original structure, which made language tends to be identical. The other is superstructure: the different cultural structures of different nations, which lead to various differences in the forms of different languages. Each language corresponds with a particular culture. Its language structure, communication patterns, rhetoric rules, etc. are influenced or ever restricted to a large degree by its superstructure-culture. So culture is the foundation of language.
In a word, it has well been documented that language itself is a cultural phenomenon, a part of culture, and in the meantime, it is the carrier of culture. Culture and not be separated from language.
III. Influence of Cultural Differences to Languages
“Social scientists tell us that cultures differ from one another, that each culture is unique. As cultures are diverse, so languages are diverse. It is only natural then that with different in cultures and different in languages, difficulties often arise in communicating between cultures and across cultures. Understanding is not always easy.[5]
Chinese culture belongs to the oriental culture while the English-speaking countries are the occidental. As the two cultures arecreated and developed by different nations, exist in different geography environment and have different history, the people from them have different values, different ways of thinking and different ways of expressing their idea. As a result, there is a large distance between these two cultures, which in turn leads to numerous differences in the form, interior system and pragmatic conditions of the two languages. Take people's competence in making speech acts for example, as Jia Yuxin says, ”The language rules used by different society, even different groups or language communities in a same society are different, every society or groups has its special laws of language behaviors such as greetings, apologies, gratitude, congratulations, invitation and compliment. Even in the same situation, same social function, the speech acts of language behavior are totally different as well as the strategy used“[6]Here is an example about thedifference in cultural conventions. We know, ”Convention is a traditional way of social behavior that is considered to be appropriate or polite by most people in a culture. Convention tends to be both language specific and culture specific, and thus would be expected to have formal or functional equivalences across languages as well as cultures. Conventions in a language are mainly routine formulas and idiomatic expressions.“[7] It is polite and natural to complete an offer or invitation and response in a single act ('yes' or 'no' response), in English culture but it is also polite in Chinese to handle it by a series of acts. So, for a Chinese, when an offer or invitation is made once, he/she would refuse; when made again, he/she refuse again; and made again, he/she would accept or refuse at last. In English culture, the dialogue would be like this: A: Would you like to come to diner this Saturday? B: Oh, thank you. I'd like to very much. In Chinese culture, the dialogue would be: A: 請你周六到我家吃晚饭,好吗?B: 不必了,别这么客气。A:你可一定要来呀。B: 那好吧,恭敬不如从命。That means Chinese take pride in modesty and Americans in straightforwardness. That modesty has left many Chinese hungry at an American table, for Chinese politeness calls for three refusals before one accepts an offer, and the American hosts take a ”no“ to mean ”no“, whether it is the first, second, or third time. For accepting a complement, In English culture, it is a good manner for a person to happily accept a complement. But it is not only polite but also a virtue in Chinese culture to response a complement by saying modestly,“哪里,哪里,不好”. Here is an example: A young Chinese woman who was in the US was complimented for the lovely dress that she was wearing. When someone said, “It is so beautiful!” She was very pleased to hear that but she looked some what embarrassed. She replied in typical Chinese way, “Oh, it's just an ordinary dress that I bought in China, it is not too beautiful.” If the girl is an American, the answer should be, “Oh, thank you very much, I am so glad you like it”. The difference in answering a complement lies in the different patterns of expressing the ideas. Chinese culture tends to indirect way of speaking while English culture tends to the indirect way.
From the above examples we can see that differences in culture lead to differences in language use. Cultural differences have great impact on languages. Language is a form of human cultural behavior. Language helps us understand not only one another but also culture, for it is a reflection of culture. If one is to use a language well, one must know the culture of the people who use the language.
IV. Importance of Awareness of Culture Different
“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 way in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of their society, learning to understand their 'language of the mind'. Learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture.”[8]
As an English teacher, one should have strong awareness of cultural difference. Without the consciousness of cultural differences, English teaching in China will not efficiently make the students communicate well in real English context. They are bound to misunderstand, or make a funny mistake, or even confront culture shock.
Culture has such a rich connotation that it covers all the material and spiritual wealth by human being, definitely including language. Language is a carrier, deposit and reflector of culture. Thus, students' shortage of cultural backgrounds concerned will prevent them from understanding of the language. For example, in listening comprehension teaching, most teachers pay close attention to phonology, vocabulary and sentence structures, ignoring another essential factor, cultural differences. It is called cultural obstacle, which is an important factor hindering students' normal performances in listening and their improvement of listening skill. When the learner are listening to a passage about the writing style and theme of works of a writer, if they don't know the cultural background of the country the writer lives in, perhaps they cannot understand the passage. And it is same in reading comprehension teaching. The obstacle to reading comprehension is not language itself, but is to what extent the readers appreciate the cultural backgrounds of the English-speaking countries. Sometimes, even when students know the meaning of all the words and sentences in a passage, they cannot understand correctly the meaning of the passage. So, lacking necessary cultural backgrounds has a direct impact on comprehension, remembrance and retelling of a passage. The key to reading comprehension lies in using the relevant backgrounds to fill the gaps resulting from the discontinuous data in an attempt to join together the scattered scenes into a whole affair. It is a fact indeed that students search out their native cultural knowledge to fill the gaps, but usually fail, that is, they have no way to draw up the logical relationship from the context. It prevents students from a proper understanding. They sometime misunderstand the material because of inferring information based on their own culture.
Since the cultural difference has such a significant impact on language, it is very important for the teachers to let the students aware of the cultural differences.
In conclusion, in order to improve the learners' intercultural communicative competence, English teaching should not only emphasize on improving learners' skills of using language itself, but also cultural difference between China and target language countries. Learners should have a good command of knowledge of different cultures and should fully understand the cultural differences to guarantee an effective intercultural communication.
References
[1] Language and Culture, Claire Kramsch, 上海外語教育出版社,2003,P3
[2] Selected Readings in Intercultural Communication, 杜瑞清,田德新,李本现编,西安交通大学出版社,P49
[3] Communication Between Cultures, Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, Lisa A. Stefani, 外语教学与研究出版社,汤姆森学习出版社,2000.8,P36