How to Integrate Culture Background Knowledge into English Teaching at Chinese High School 1 Introduction
【 Abstract 】 Language is a social communication tool, and has the inseparable relationship with the social culture. In recent years, with the acceleration of reform and opening up, foreign exchanges become more frequent, and cross-cultural communication in every nation become the indispensable part of life. But cultural differences are cross-cultural communication barriers, which has become a common problem facing the world. Therefore, culture plays a very important role in English teaching, which is widely acknowledged by English teaching circle. Meanwhile, “culture awareness” is prescribed in the New English Curriculum Standard. The object of foreign language teaching has broken free from the conventional listening, speaking, reading and writing. The demand for cultural information in language learning has been raised. Cultural background knowledge can, to a great extent, hold up the improvement of English teaching and become a noticeable problem. Presentation of cultural background is the proposed solution to the problem. This paper discusses how to present cultural background information and expose learners to it in the need of English teaching at Chinese High school so as to help learners grasp the crux of the language and develop their ability to communicate in English. This is shown as the best way to improve English teaching and learning.
【 Key Words 】 language teaching; culture background knowledge; culture teaching; English teaching
中国中学英语教学中如何融入文化背景教学
【摘 要】 语言是社会交际工具，与社会文化的关系密不可分。近年来，随着改革开放步伐的加快，对外交往日益频繁，国与国之间的交流也越来越广泛，跨文化交际成为每个民族生活中不可缺少的部分，然而文化差异是跨文化交际的障碍，已成为整个世界共同面临的问题。因此，文化在英语教学中具有极其重要的作用，这一观点已经得到了英语界的广泛的认可。但是，学生文化背景知识的匮乏在很大程度上妨碍了英语教学，成为外语教学 中一个严重的问题。新的《英语课程标准》提出了文化意识的培养，外语教学的目的已从传统的听、说、读、写中脱离出来。外语教学中，使学生熟悉所学语言国家的历史、文化传统和风俗习惯等对拓宽教学内容，开阔学生眼界，使所学知识转化为交际能力，有着不可估量的作用。教师应注重向学生介绍文化背景知识，探索如何在外语课堂上有效地融入文化教学，从而帮助学生克服母语的干扰，养成用英语思维的习惯，更快地掌握语言，这是提高英语教学质量的最佳途径。
【关键词】 文化背景；语言教学；文化教学；英语教学
The linguist Robert Lado defines the goal of learning a foreign language as “the ability to use it, understanding its meanings and connotations in terms of the target language and culture, and the ability to understand the speech and writing of natives of the target culture in terms of their great ideas and achievement” (Lado, 1964: 25)[1](p90) The teaching of a foreign language inevitably involves the teaching of foreign culture.
With China’s open-up policy and entry in WTO, how to lay a solid foundation for cultivating learners intercultural communicative competence in high-school education becomes an important objective in teaching English as a Foreign Language. For the first time “culture awareness” is prescribed in the New English Curriculum Standard. Culture instruction may be new to most middle-school English teacher in an examination-oriented environment in China’s EFL context. But the research and practice of intercultural communication still have a long way to go before they reach satisfactory results.
This paper, therefore, aims to present what most actual practices in the classroom are need to be clarified before anything can be done to improve future practices, when the new English Curriculum Standard is to be carried out in elementary education.
There are three major parts in the paper: firstly, it is the literature review, which consist of the relation of culture and teaching and current situation of English Teaching in China. Secondly, the extent to how to present cultural background information and expose learners to it in the need of English teaching so as to help learners grasp the crux of the language and develop their ability to communicate in English, followed by the introduction of some of such techniques. Finally the model of classroom practices was proposed by the teaching culture.
2 Culture teaching and language teaching
2.1 Definition of the culture
Definitions of culture range from broader ones
