英语毕业论文A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class

英语毕业论文A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class 英语毕业论文A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class 中学英语文化教学浅析 A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class Contents Abstract„„„„„..„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„...1 Key words„„„„„„„„...„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„.1 I. Introduction„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„.„„„„„..„...2 II. Research Background„„...„„„„„„„„„„„„.„„.„.2 1. Research situations in foreign countries„„„„„„„„„„„„„2 2. Research situation in China„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„3 III. The Relationship between Language and Culture„„„.„„„„4 1. The definitions of culture and language„„„.„„„„„„„..„...„.4 2. The relationship between culture and language„„„„„..„...„„...„4 3. The relationship between culture and English teaching„„„„„.....„„4 IV. Problems of This Research„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„.„.5 1. Misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication„„„„„„„.„„.5 2. Mistakes in intercultural translation„„„„„„„„„.„„„.„.„.5 V. Teaching Culture„„„„„„„„„„„„„.„„„„„.„„......6 1. The contents of cross-cultural communication„„.„„„„„„.„ ..„.6 2. The objectives of teaching culture„„„„.„„„„„„„„„„„..7 3. The principles of teaching culture„„„„.„„„„..„„„..„„..„7 4. Methods of teaching culture„„„„.„„„„„„„„„„„„„..9 VI. Conclusion„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„..................„„„.12 References„„„„......„„„...„„„„„„„„„„„„„„.... .„13 A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class Abstract: “Culture consists of all the shared products of human society” Robertson:1981 . This means not only such material things as cities, organizations and schools, but also non-material things such as ideas, customs, family patterns and language. Language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. Without language, they maintain, culture would not be possible. On the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture; it reflects culture. In the broad sense, language is the symbolic representation of a people, and it comprises their historical and cultural backgrounds as well as their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking. Learning and teaching 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 speaker of that language see it. Learning a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the culture introduction during the learning of English. Especially, in our middle school English class, we should teach the students more culture of English-speaking countries. Key words: English culture; teaching; middle school 摘 要:罗伯逊曾在1981年提出，文化包含了人类所有的财富。这就意味 着它不仅包含诸如城市、机构、学校等物质上的东西，还有例如观点、风俗、家 庭组成模式、语言等意识领域的事物。语言是文化的一个重要组成部分，并且在 文化中扮演十分重要的角色。如果没有语言，文化也是不可能存在下去的。另一 方面，语言受文化的影响，它是文化的一个侧面反映。从广义上来讲，语言只是 一个民族象征性的代表，组成了他们的文化和历史背景以及人们的生活方式和思 维方式。因此，学好一门外语不仅仅是掌握它的语音、语法、词汇和习语，同时 还要学会以讲该母语的人一样看世界。学习语言和学习文化是密不可分的。因此， 我们提倡在我们学习英语时要注意文化的导入，尤其在我们中学英语课堂上，我 们应该尝试教授学生更多的英美文化。 关键词:英语文化; 教学; 中学 I. Introduction Nowadays, more and more people in China learn English. However, misunderstanding and wrongly usage is ubiquitous. No matter what angle we should think about, nobody wants to make mistakes when they make a speech or write an essay. Even though there are many causes in it, in my opinion, the biggest problem is culture. Culture gaps between the source language and the target language have always turned out to be a hard obstacle for English learner. The teaching of culture is a important part of foreign language teaching. This makes it necessary to explore the teaching of culture in the middle school English classroom. It will be demonstrated that teaching a foreign language in middle school is not just to give a homily on syntactic structures or learning new vocabulary and expressions, but mainly incorporates, or should incorporate some cultural elements, which are relative with language itself. Specifically, some consideration will be given to the relationship between culture and middle school foreign language teaching and principles of teaching culture. Furthermore, an attempt will be made to incorporate culture into the classroom by means of considering some techniques and methods currently used. The main idea of the paper is that effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency. And apart from enhancing and enriching communicative competence, cultural competence can also lead to students’ understanding and respect toward different culture. No linguistics text can exist out of a certain cultural context, here defined as the way a text is related to cultural elements in the source culture. Even when all linguistic symbols can be semantically referred to a system of different linguistic symbols, the relationships of the text to the source culture can never be reproduced by the relations between the target text and the target culture. In a sense, cultural clashes are inevitable. Cultural divergence will often challenge the English learners, especially the students of middle school. In order to make them excellent foreign language learners, we should make them do well in the cross-cultural communication. II. Research Background 1. Research situations in foreign countries Culture in language learning is the fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background , ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. Neubert: 1 In foreign language education, the importance of teaching foreign culture has been widely recognized. However, there are diverse proposition and arguments about the pedagogical treatment of culture. How to teach culture in foreign language education is a problem faced by language educators all over the world. The problem is not a simple pedagogical one. It is very complicated since the answer relies on our understanding of the relations between home culture and foreign culture, the relations between language and culture, and the role of foreign language education in a given cultural and political context. The teaching of culture is not akin to the transmission of information regarding the people of the target community or country―even though knowledge about let alone experience of the “target group” is an important ingredient Robertson:118 . It would be nothing short of ludicrous to assert that culture is merely a repository of facts and experiences to which one can have recourse, if need be. Furthermore, what Kramsch seems to state is that to learn a foreign language is not merely to learn how to communicate but also to discover how much the target language allows learners to manipulate grammatical forms, sounds, meanings and culture. 2. Research situation in China In early 1980s, Mr. Xu Guozhang gave a speech titled The Cultural Connotation of Words and English Teaching. It indicats that the foreign language teaching field starts to show its attention on the relationships between culture and foreign language. After that, some articles on culture and foreign language teaching are published. In 1988, Mr. Hu Wenzhong published his essay collections Cross- Cultural Communication and English Study. It collected some essays on the comparison study on English and Chinese culture. In 1989, Deng Yanchang and liu Runqing edited Language and Culture---the Comparison between English and Chinese Culture. The work made a comparison between the different vocabulary, idioms, culture and body languages of the two languages. The common ground of the research work is that foreign language teaching should foster the students’ abilities of cross-cultural communication. Culture is an indispensable part of foreign language teaching. In 2001, for the first time in history, the fostering of students’ awareness of culture was listed as one of the goals in the English Teaching Curriculum Standards. III. The Relationship between Language and Culture 1. The definitions of culture and language 1 There are more than 250 definitions concerning culture. There are various ways of its classification. The first important anthropological definition of culture is presented by Sir Edward Tylor. He defines culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” Edward Tylor: 1871 . Tylor’s definition has continually been the basis of most modern anthropological conceptions of culture. 2 It has always been difficult for linguists and philologists to give a concise definition of language. Although there has been an enormous amount of research in language in the past, no authoritative answer has been given to “what is language?” Here is a sample definition of “language” proposed by de Saussure 1916 . He said, language is a system whose parts can and must be considered in their synchronic solidarity. 2. The relationship between culture and language Almost all cultures seem to have certain notion or things. Language mirrors culture. Culture can be described as a blueprint that guides the behavior of people in a community. Language and culture are not separable. Language is a part of culture and it is influenced and shaped by culture. Just as Sapir said, language is a guide to a social reality. Foreign language learning in some respects involves learning a foreign culture. It is readily understood and admitted that one can not learn a foreign language well unless one knows something of the country where the language is used and the people who speak it. It also has been acknowledged since the middle 1960s’ that in addition to linguistic competence, some other issues concerned with the communicative competence. Among these issues are cultural concerns, such as the awareness of cultural difference between the people of the target language and the learner group, cross-cultural understanding or feeling comfortable with another person” Robertson 1985: 289 3. The relationship between culture and English teaching Language is part of culture. The Chinese language is part of the Chinese culture and English is part of the English culture. There is no culture that has no language as its part. Language and culture are not separable. Human knowledge and experience are described and stored in language. Customs, habits and behavioral patterns can be described and analyzed in language. Social institutions, value systems, beliefs, world views can be described, analyzed and evaluated in language. In short, language can represent every aspect of culture. Language is the mirror of culture. The close relationship between language and culture has been shown by the fact that culture is transmitted from one generation to the next through language for the coming generation to learn. While children learn their native language, they also learn their native culture and are eventually accepted as members of their culture. Language learning and culture learning are not separable Wang Zhenya:21 . In short, language and culture are closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. To teach a foreign language implies to teach the culture in which it is spoken. A language can never be taught in a cultural vacuum. Based on the research achievements home and abroad, people came to a common ground that foreign language teaching should focus on cultivating the students’ abilities of cross-cultural communication and their awareness of culture.. In cross-cultural communication, people are required with not only the knowledge of phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, language function, but also the understanding of the culture carried in target language. If not, misunderstanding caused by cultural barriers may occur. So it’s important to cultivate the students’ sensitivity over the target language in middle school English classroom. IV. Problems of This Research Misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication In cross-cultural communication, language learners always make mistakes, not only in grammar, pronunciation, words and expressions but also in culture. And culture factors always are the main reason in cross-cultural communication. And it can be divided into four forms: social language is unbefitting culture pattern is unacceptable different attitudes conflict with each other different expressions make them incomprehensibility Mistakes in intercultural translation The western linguist, Saussure made contribution to this theory. He put forward that linguistics had diachronic and synchronic. Also, intercultural translation has diachronic and synchronic. It has huge cultural gaps between East and West. They have their own words and expressions to describe their ideas. Of course, there must be mistakes in communication besides translators in translation. Here, there are two obvious mistakes: cultural disposition Hawkes, a professor in Cambridge, translated “Amitabba a mi tuo fo ” into ‘god bless my son’ when he translated Dream of the Red Chamber. The result will lead to culture in confusion. cultural default Cultural default is defined as absence of relevant cultural background knowledge shared by the translators themselves and their intended readers. V. Teaching Culture In the past decade or so, developments in this academic area have been extremely rapid, especially from the Chinese point of view. It is encouraging to observe that what this thesis first proposed in the early 1990s has now become a widely discussed and well published topic and enjoys such excellent company-Hu Wenzhong, Deng Yanchang, Jose Lambert, Wolfram Wilss, Itamar Eeven-Zohar, Gideon Toury, Hans Vermeer ,Chirstiance Nord and many more. 1. The contents of cross-cultural communication Teaching culture is consisted of culture knowledge and rules of communication. Culture knowledge includes politics, economics, literature, art, history, geography, philosophy and some idioms, proverbs, which can show the culture elements of English speaking countries. Whereas the rules of communication includes introduction, greeting, invitation making apologies ,making thanks, callings, shopping, dating, seeing doctors, making suggestions etc. Besides what are mentioned, we should learn other forms of English cultural backgrounds, including body language, closing, making a speech, sense of cherishing time etc. Some linguists prefer that during the direct communication of people, 30% information is transmitted by language meanwhile 70% of it is conveyed buy non language methods. Wang Zhenya:25 . Culture teaching studies in China do not have a long history, but since China has been an open country to the outside world, more and more English teacher and learners are on the way of seeking the methods of mastering the culture of west. Nowadays, different life styles form different cultures all over the world. If we want to master a second language, it is not only a linguistic activity, but a cultural communication in substance. And we pay attention to culture more than others. 2. The objectives of teaching culture Generally, foreign language teaching should foster the students’ awareness of culture and their ability of cross-cultural communication. From the foreign language teachers’ point of view, Tomalin and Stempleski illustrated as follows, 1 To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviors. 2 To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social classes, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave. 3 To help students to become awareness of conventional behaviors in common situations in the target culture. 4 To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language. 5 To help students to develop the abilities to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence. 6 To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture. 7 To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people Lv Lianghuan:188 . The new English Curriculum Standards describes the development of culture consciousness in eight levels. It can be generally concluded as two parts, the first is to master the knowledge of the target language culture and foster the students’ abilities of using the cultural knowledge of the target language in real communication situation. What’s more, the teaching of foreign culture should also focus on students’ cultural creativity. Creativity is a power to create new things. It’s a human capacity developed by learning Chen Shen:230 . Chinese students should learn how to solve Chinese problems in learning from foreign culture and we should encourage them to learn from the interaction between home culture and foreign culture. 3. The principles of teaching culture Classroom teaching is the main approach for the students to learn the English culture, so it is important to incorporate culture into the English classroom. Then what principles should be followed while incorporating culture? Based on the middle school students’ real situation and the characteristics of English culture, the following principles should be followed. 1 Teaching culture systematically The students’ culture knowledge structure is limited if the teacher just incorporate culture knowledge according to the need of teaching content. When the teachers make a one-term or one-year teaching plan for English language knowledge teaching, they should also make a general plan for English culture teaching. The teachers are required to teach culture in the whole teaching process. Special introduction to some topics can be made, such as “body languages in English communication” and “different meanings of terms with colors in English and Chinese”. 2 Teaching culture step by step Teach culture in different phases. It refers to the incorporating of culture should give consideration to the learners’ age and their abilities of cognition. On the beginning level, the students can have a general understanding of the difference between the English culture and Chinese culture. The culture knowledge taught can be those closely-related with students’ daily life or those that can arouse the students’ interest in English learning. On the higher level of English learning, the students are encouraged to broaden their sight-field to improve their sensitivity over the difference between Chinese and English culture. 3 ? Integrate other subjects in culture teaching The integration of school curriculums is one feature of the curriculum reforms in many countries. English can be combined with other subjects. While choosing the content for culture teaching, teachers may combine the similar contents in other subject into his/her lessons, such as the content of world history and world geography. Such being the case, the students would be more interested in the teaching content. The integration of the different subjects helps students to learn well. 4 ? The principle of serving for communication Culture teaching must be compared with the dynamic aspects of culture. As Lessard-Clouston notes, students will indeed need to develop knowledge of and about the L2 or FL culture, but this receptive aspect of cultural competence is not sufficient. Learners will also need to master some skills in culturally appropriate communication and behavior for the target culture. Cultural awareness is necessary if students are to develop an understanding of the dynamic nature of the target culture, as well as their own culture. The chief objective for English learning is to carry through cross-cultural communication. People with different cultural background may misunderstand each other because of the conflict between different cultures. To avoid such conflict, students need to master certain amount of cultural knowledge and apply it in according to the practical need of communication. 5 Use diverse measures to incorporate culture. The development of modern teaching technology makes our teaching more colorful. Teachers may provide the channels for culture learning from the aspects of vision, listening and feeling. To meet students’ different learning styles, real objects, videos, CDs, television, Internet, magazines, literature works, photos and songs can be used as teaching materials. 4. Methods of teaching culture in middle schools The research has been undertaken within the “Examination Guidelines for Research Degrees in Creative Works” of Victoria University, and thus combines creative practice in teaching culture. Even in China nowadays, we spend a lot of time and energy on the researches of teaching culture of the westerners. After a brief researching and two months teaching practice in middle school, I obtain several ways of teaching culture in middle schools. 1 Incorporating culture by classroom teaching Before venturing into unfamiliar ones, learners must first become conversant with what it means to be part of a culture, their own culture. By exploring their own culture, i.e., by discussing the values, expectations, traditions, customs they unconsciously take part in, they are ready to reflect upon the values, expectations, and traditions of others. Depending on the age and level of the learners, this task can take many forms. For example, young beginners or intermediate students should be given the opportunity to enjoy certain activities that are part of their own tradition, such as national sports, social festivities, or songs, before setting about exploring those of the target culture. Here, we will only be concerned with the latter. Beginning foreign language students want to feel, touch, smell, and see the foreign peoples and not just hear their language At any rate, the foreign language classroom should become a ‘cultural island’ Neubert:55 , where the accent will be on ‘cultural experience’ rather than ‘cultural awareness’. From the first day, teachers are expected to bring in the class posters, pictures, maps, and other realia in order to help students develop ‘a mental image’ of the target culture. According to Peck , an effective and stimulating activity is to send students on “cultural errands” ―to supermarkets and department stores―and have them write down the names of imported goods. Moreover, teachers can also invite guest speakers, who will talk about their experiences of the foreign country. Through exposure to the foreign civilization, students inescapably draw some comparisons between the home and target culture. Yet, according to Peck, a more useful way to provide cultural information is by dint of cultural clusters, which are a series of culture capsules. Seelye provides such capsules, such as a narrative on the etiquette during a family meal. With this narrative as a springboard for discussion and experimentation, students can practice how to eat, learn how, and to what extent, and the members of the target culture appreciate a meal with friends, and so forth. Students must not lose sight of the fact that not all members of the target community think and behave in the same way. 2 Making good use of textbooks No one can deny that textbooks are the main sources of teaching English in middle schools, through which the connotation of English culture can be shown directly. Therefore, language teachers should not only focus on the language knowledge, but also on the cultural elements which can be introduced freely and interestingly. Take JEFC Book 2 for example, numerous cultural knowledge were mentioned including the Thanksgivings Day, Christmas, Fathers’ Day and the way of celebrating birthday, giving birthday gifts, accepting the birthday gifts. In the textbook, the invention of computer, the development of industry, spacecraft and manmade satellites are also mentioned about. In religious aspect, they talked about the origination of Christianity and Jesus Christ, while different kinds of music, rock music, jazz music, country music, pop music were introduced to the students. Therefore, the language teachers should make full use of the textbook to introduce the cultural knowledge to the English class, in order to make the students clear that learning a language is not only focusing on the grammar, words, but also the culture . Sometimes knowing “how to say” and “not to say” are more important than “what to say”. For English teachers in China, the most practical and effective way of teaching English culture is to use the teaching materials in their hand creatively, such as the textbook and reading material. Well-designed lessons can help the students learn about the English culture more easily and interesting. Teachers with their own teaching style can incorporate culture into their class in many different approaches. 3 The different connotation of words in different culture Do words or terms in one language have the same meaning when translated into another language? Can we rely on our dictionaries to give us the proper English for a Chinese term, or the proper Chinese for an English word? These questions themselves might be surprising some people; after all ,a book is 一本书and tiger is 虎,总司令is commander-in-chief and 哲 学is philosophy. But are the answers to these questions always yes? Are the meanings of equivalent words exactly the same in both languages? Consider the following: Does 知识分子have the same meaning as intellectual? They are different. There are important differences in what 知识分子 and intellectual mean in their respective cultures. In China, the term generally includes college teachers, college students, and such people as medical doctors, engineers, interpreters, people who have had a college education, and middle school teachers. In many Chinese rural areas , even middle school students are considered as 知识分子. In the U.S. and Europe, however, intellectuals would include only people of high academic status such as college professors, but not ordinary college students. 4 Cultural problem solving Cultural problem solving is yet another way to provide cultural information. In this case, learners are presented with some information but they are on the horns of a dilemma, so to speak. For example, in analyzing a TV conversation or reading a narrative on marriage ceremonies, they are expected to assess manners and customs, or appropriate or inappropriate behavior, and to employ various problem-solving techniques―in short, to develop a kind of “cultural strategic competence”. We can set a scene: students are in a restaurant and are expected to order a meal. In this way, learners are given the opportunity to step into the shoes of a member of the target culture. Indisputably, conventional behavior in common situations is a subject with which students should acquaint themselves. For instance, in the USA or the United Kingdom, it is uncommon for a student who is late for class to knock on the door and apologize to the teacher. Rather, this behavior is most likely to be frowned upon and have the opposite effect, even though it is common behavior in Chinese classroom. Besides, there are significant differences across cultures regarding the ways in which the teacher is addressed; when a student is supposed to raise her hand; what topics are considered taboo or “off the mark”; how much students are allowed in achieving learner autonomy. Alongside linguistic knowledge, students should also familiarize themselves with various forms of non-verbal communication what are typical in the target culture, such as gesture and facial expressions. More specifically, learners should be aware of the fact that such seemingly universal signals as gestures and facial expressions―as well as emotions―are actually cultural phenomena, and may as often as not lead to miscommunication and wrong assumptions. The following are some examples of appropriate gestures: The teacher hands out twelve pictures showing gestures and then invites the students to discuss and answer some questions. Which gestures are different from those in the home culture? Which of the gestures shown would be used in different situations or even avoided in the home culture? Another activity would be to invite learners to role-play emotions: The teacher writes a list of several words indicating emotions happiness, fear, anger, joy, pain, guilt, sadness and then asks the students to use facial expressions and gestures to express these emotions. Then follows a discussion on the different ways in which people from different cultures express emotions as well as interpret gestures. As Straub briefly puts it, “by understanding how cultures and subcultures or co-cultures use these signs to communicate, we can discover a person’s social status, group membership, and approachability”. VI. Conclusion Cultural factors necessitate decision-making on English teaching. However, it is not emphasized as it should be which an obstacle of our English learning and teaching is. In order to cultivate the personnel with high quality of cross-cultural competence, cultural difference between speech communities should not be exaggerated. Comparative studies on cultures do shed light on teaching culture in middle school, but the study of culture can never cover all the aspects of language acquisition. By way of conclusion, we should reiterate the main premise of the present study, the teaching of culture should become the main part of middle school English instruction. In order to avoid this misunderstanding and foster empathy and understanding, teachers should “present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language” Chen Shen:54 . And this will be achieved only if cultural awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalized subject within the foreign language curriculum, which is, when culture “inhabits” the classroom and under girds every language activity. According to Chen Shen, language teachers ought to receive both experiential and academic training, with the aim of becoming “mediators in culture teaching”. At any rate, culture teaching should aim to foster “empathy with the cultural norms of the target language community” and “an increased awareness of one’s own ‘cultural logic” in relation to others’. On a practical note, culture teaching should allow learners to increase their values, attitudes, and beliefs. More specifically, the teaching of culture in middle school English class should make learners aware of speech acts, connotations, etiquette, that is, appropriate or inappropriate behavior, as well as provide them with the opportunity to act out being a member of the target culture. References: 1. Neubert, Edward Tylor & Gregory, An Integration of Cultures [M]. America: The Kent State University Press, 1992 2. Robertson, Translating by Factors [J].State University of New York Press, 1981 3. 陈申.《外语教育中的文化教学》[M].北京:，1999 . 邓炎昌等.《语言与文化》[M].北京:1989 5. 吕良环.《外语课程与教学论》[M].浙江:浙江教育出版社，2003 6. 王振亚.《语言与文化》[M].北京:1999 A Brief Study of Teaching Culture in Middle School English Class 第 1 页 共 13 页