8论文三稿

存档编号赣南师范学院学士学位论文On the Application of Culture Teaching in Senior SchoolEnglish Teaching教学学院外国语学院届别2015届专业英语学号110402155姓名姚凤指导教师寇静完成日期2015年5月Contents内容摘要 (ⅰ)关键词 (ⅰ)Abstract (ⅱ)Key words (ⅱ)Introduction (1)ChapterⅠLiterary Review (3)1.1Language and Culture (3)1.2Language Teaching and Culture Teaching (4)1.3The Theoretical Basis and Practice Foundation of Culture Teaching (5)ChapterⅡCurrent Situation&Subsistent Problems (7)ChapterⅢThe Strategies of Culture Teaching in Senior High English Class (9)3.1Cultural Knowledge Introduction of Words (9)3.2Cultural Knowledge Introduction of Idioms (10)3.3Introduction of Oral Communication Culture (11)3.4Introduction of History and Literary Quotation.................................,,.12 3.5Introduction of Non-linguistic Knowledge.. (13)ChapterⅣSpecific Approaches (14)Conclusion (16)Bibliography (17)内容摘要：近年来，外语教学界已逐渐达成共识：高中英语教学的最终目标是培养能够在跨文化交流过程中进行外语交流的新型人才，这一点已经被写进《普通高中英语课程标准》（实验稿）。

然而，共识的形成并不意味着问题的解决。

如果学生缺乏英语国家的文化知识，培养具有跨文化交际能力的学生这一教学目标就会成为空谈。

但是，由于长期以来中考、高考成为中国选拔人才的主要方式，外语教学以传授语言知识，培养学生应试能力为主，导致中国英语教学中文化教学能力缺失和文化教学意识薄弱。

本文对文化与语言的定义、二者之间的关系以及两者的重要性进行了阐释，也对语言教学与文化教学的相互关系及当今文化教学的现状及存在的问题进行了说明。

此外，本文还就文化教学的改进策略和实施的具体方法提了几点建议。

最后，本文作了简要总结。

对文化教学中存在的问题有了清醒的认识并逐步进行改进，中国的英语文化教学将会取得巨大的进步。

关键词：高中英语；课堂教学；文化教学；策略；具体方法Abstract:In recent years,a common sense has been reached in foreign language teaching circles:the ultimate aim of foreign language teaching is to cultivate new talents who can communicate in foreign language in the process of cross-cultural communication.This has been written into the Standards of ordinary senior high school English curriculum(experiment draft).Nevertheless,the reach of consensus never equals to a solution.It is impossible to form the communicative competence if students don’t know any culture knowledge of the English speaking countries. However,as a result of the high school and university entrance exams’being China’s major way of select talents for a long time,foreign language teaching in China mainly teaches language knowledge and cares much about students’abilities to take exams, which leads to Chinese foreign language teaching’s lack of culture teaching ability and awareness.After making an introduction about the main contents,this paper illustrates the definition,relevance and significance of language and culture.Then, this paper elucidates language teaching and culture teaching from several respects and discusses about the current situation and subsistent problems on culture teaching in senior high school.Next,this paper offers some possible strategies and specific approaches of culture teaching.In the end,this paper makes a brief conclusion.After realizing the problem clearly and changing progressively in teaching strategies, English culture teaching in China would make great progress.Key words:high school English;classroom teaching;culture teaching;strategies; specific approachesIntroductionStandards of ordinary senior high school English curriculum(experiment draft) pointed out that the senior high school English curriculum should emphasize the further development of students’comprehensive ability of using language.Based on that,senior school English teachers should focus on improving students’ability to obtain information,process information,analyze and solve problems in English, especially their ability of thinking and expressing in English so that they would form cross-cultural awareness and competence.Besides,students’international fields of vision will get further expansion and their spirit of patriotism and national sense of mission will also be enhanced.What’s more,the formation of sound emotion,attitude and value will lay a good foundation for students’future development and lifelong learning.Deng Yanchang and Liu Runqing in their language and culture pointed out that “culture”is the general mode of a community about its unique faith,custom,system, objectives and nguage and culture influence each other.Culture helps to understand language while language contributes to interpret culture.Students may grasp the nature and connotations of English only when they know something about western cultural background.Then it would be possible for them to process intercultural communication more accurately.However,in traditional English teaching,teachers tend to focus on training students’ability for examination,while ignoring the importance of passing on cultural background knowledge to students, which leads to the consequence that many students are unable to communicate with the language appropriately in different occasions even though they have mastered enough knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar.In the context of new curriculum reform,it is quite obvious that English teachers should not continue to spend too much time in teaching language knowledge in isolation and neglect cultural knowledge,but should take different ways to fully tap the resources in teaching materials and gradually infiltrate culture knowledge to students in class in case that students can experience the culture of western countries,improve their cognitive level,broaden their international vision,stimulate their interest in learning English culture as well as develop their intercultural skills.ChapterⅠLiterary ReviewAt the request of the new English curriculum,the reform in English teaching in senior high school seems to be imperative.However,without knowing the concept of language,culture,language teaching and culture teaching,any related reform would be blind and fruitless.And that is to say,to achieve the target of new curriculum reform,the internal relationship between language and culture,language teaching and culture teaching should be made clear primarily to insure the directionality,pertinence and intentionality of the reform.Otherwise,the reform would be turned out to be a waste of time and energy.1.1Language and CultureThe definition of language varies for the difference of time,research method and outlook of the world.At present,with the development of anthropology,linguistics and cultural linguistics,a general consensus has been reached:Language is a social and cultural phenomenon,a tool people used for thinking and communicating to each nguage refers to the“natural language”used by human being which is the combination of sound and meaning.The paper employs the definition of language in Modern Foreign Language Teaching written by Shu Dingfang:From the viewpoint of its structural features,language is a symbol system,a hierarchy system which consists of morphemes,phrases,sentences,chapters,etc;from the viewpoint of its function, language is a tool of thinking and communication(Shu Dingfang，2008).For the concept of culture,it is a very familiar and most widely used term,but lacks of clear and strict definition.Here,c onsidering the actual situation in high school English teaching,this paper adopts the definition of culture in the Interpretation Standard of English Curriculum to facilitate the research and that is in the teaching of English:culture is a country or a nation’s history,geography, traditions and customs,literature and art,code of conduct,thinking style and concept of value,etc(Chen Lin，2002).The relationship between language and culture was decided by their definitions: Language and culture are intertwined and language is an integral part of culture.Language is the carrier of culture,it reflects and influences the development of culture. If there’s no language,then culture is nguage is the prerequisite for the formation and development of nguage is the window through which another world is shown.Misunderstandings often arise among people who speak different languages even if there are no grammatical mistakes in their conversation.In short,language belongs to culture and it’s the most special part of culture while culture has influenced and shaped language.Since the definition and relevance of language and culture are clear,it is hard to ignore their significance.It is often said that human beings and animals were distinguished by language for there are many commons between human beings and animals in terms of biology.Human beings have created culture via language and greater progress has also been made through culture innovation.Therefore,English teaching should not only be language teaching,but also should expand the horizons of students so that they can understand the culture and social customs of English speaking countries.1.2Language Teaching and Culture TeachingWhen things comes to foreign language teaching,people are always being used to think of four main contents:pronunciation,grammar,vocabulary,rhetoric as well as five basic skills training:listening,speaking,reading,writing and translation.The traditional language teaching model with pure nature of foreign language teaching is teaching students in accordance with the"4+5"contents.Over the past few decades, China’s foreign language teaching is following a main line which is basically around the language knowledge teaching:lexical analysis,grammar explanations and sentence circle.As for the non-verbal cross-cultural factors,they had not been attached great importance.However,on account of the relevance of language and culture,to achieve the final objective of high school English teaching,the traditional language teaching is far enough.Language is the material form of thought.It carries the cultural information and reflects the characteristics of thought bore in a nation.People using language under the influences and restrictions of the local culture.Also,people’s vocal form subjectsto the influences and restrictions of social circumstance that language relies for existence.Such restrictions include the society itself,the customs of a community, ways of life and behavior,social values,ways of thinking,religious beliefs,national psychology and personality,etc.Helping students to improve the sensitivity of culture knowledge when learning a language can cultivate their motivations and interest to understand the culture of other nations,thus providing the basic foundation for learning a foreign language.1.3The Theoretical Basis and Practice Foundation of Culture TeachingCombining language with culture,putting language in cultural background, teaching culture knowledge of target language country consciously while teaching the language itself,all those cognitions practices started in the initial stage of the1970s. And after the1970s,some language scholars raised an objection towards Chomsky’s theory.In their description,they focused more on the function and social intercourse of what language means.In a word,the theory derived new language teaching concepts and methods,namely,communicative language teaching CTL,also called the notional functional approach.The characteristic of CLT is emphasizing more on the communicative function of language when paying attention to language structure, The increase of new language schools as well as the wide adoption of communicative language teaching provided a theoretical and practical foundation for the unity of language and culture in teaching.At the world level,the1970s internationally is an era when the national exchanges and conflicts surged at the same time,especially in Europe.The European Community proposed“cultural and educational cooperation”in order to be“interdependent”,even the country which uses and develops new language teaching rules would be given prior consideration.Thus,foreign language teaching had been referred to an unprecedented position,and the main purpose of learning a foreign language had became communication,while communication itself is a kind of social behavior.Therefore,people can not make it without cultural background knowledge when teaching the language.Given the above theories and cognitions,in the past twenty years,culture began quietly entered into foreign language teaching in the classroom when the language focus transferred from itsstructure and form to its function and content,when foreign language teaching turned traditional teaching that centered in vocabulary and grammar into the new one whose center is to cultivate communicative ability and objective.ChapterⅡCurrent Situation&Subsistent Problems In China,student’s common problem is that they can not appropriately communicate with others in authentic English though they are able to apply vocabulary and grammatical knowledge to write sentences correctly as well as read English materials accurately and quickly.The main reason for this problem is that English teaching emphasized on language knowledge teaching but ignored the language skills and despised culture education.Such teaching model results in students’lacking of English national culture knowledge,which directly affects their communicative ability.Although the foreign language teaching field has already begun to pay attention to culture,the studies discussing teaching methods at the angle of culture teaching in senior high school English classroom teaching are still far too few.Major problems contributing to such an awkward current situation can be summed up as the following points:First of all,teachers’lacking of culture teaching awareness and culture teaching ability can not be overlooked.It can not be denied that English teachers have improved their professional skills and competence in varying degrees with the constant development of teacher education theories as well as English teaching theories.However,under the influence of a series of historical reasons and the restrictions of the former teaching thoughts,teaching contents,teaching methods and teaching conditions,the current teachers’cultural strength are generally weak though they majored in English.Therefore,they often pay much attention to the language form but teach minor amounts of cultural knowledge and ignore the cultivation of the students’cross-cultural consciousness.Many of them would suffer from their own limited ability even if they want to change the status quo,let alone they will get powerless because of lacking of time and the conditions.Secondly,students’pragmatic competence is relative feeble.With the gradual deepening of communication between Chinese and western society,a growing number of students learned some knowledge of foreigners’daily life and customsthrough the Internet,television and other bined with the current textbooks used in middle school,in which western social culture was introduced, students get more understandings of western society and culture.However,it is far less than enough compared to the high school English teaching object.Students’cultural knowledge is too scattered and lacks for systematicness and pertinence,which leads to their inaccuracy,inappropriateness and poor cultural understanding when using the language.Thirdly,the selection and introduction of cultural content in the teaching material are unscientific and lack of gradation.The cultural information in the teaching material should be arranged in order,following a sequence of starting from easy to difficult,from the cultural knowledge to the cultural values and ways of thinking according to the students’actual language level and mental competence.However,in China’s cultural teaching material there is no such a specific project,the amount of information carried by it is very limited and the comments and implications of cultural information are too scattered,which never formed a system.In addition,the teaching content is severely lack of gradation.Hierarchy is one of the traits of culture teaching.Although culture and language can not be separated,no one can say it is only in the senior that culture can be talked about,people can never break away from its periodical characteristic.Thus it is improper to instill too much cultural knowledge to students just as soon as they contact with foreign language.All in all,as the improvement of language skills becomes increasingly important,the proportion of culture teaching should also increase progressively.Finally,the test questions were designed in a way of stereotype.Traditional evaluation mainly reflects on the target which excessively emphasizes on discipline knowledge while ignores the humanity,which makes examination the exclusive form of evaluation,paying attention to the quiz of pure language knowledge structure.In fact,Chinese people still evaluate high school English teaching mainly through test performance.Therefore,such test system misleads the English teaching in a long term.ChapterⅢThe Strategies of Culture Teaching in Senior HighEnglish ClassWith the development of economic integration and the advancement of science and technology,the connection among countries around the world is getting more and more frequent.The prosperity of a country and the revitalization of a nation is more closely linked to the cultivation of communicative talents.In other words,whether the cultivation of new talents is success or not is not merely an education problem any more,but a problem concerned with the international competitiveness of a country then with its survival.Therefore,all walks of life should value the problem highly. Here,c ombining the relevance between language and culture with the significance of culture teaching,based on the actual situation of China’s foreign language teaching, to achieve the goal of English teaching,several possible strategies can be concluded as follows:3.1Cultural Knowledge Introduction of WordsV ocabulary,as the basic component of language,contains ample culture messages. Thus it is necessary to infiltrate cultural knowledge of words through vocabulary teaching during English class so as to enable the students to fully comprehend the meaning of words,which refers to the literal meaning as well as the implied or additional meaning.Students should not only master the literal meaning of the vocabulary,but also should understand the implied or additional aspects while learning a foreign language.Many of the English words came from mythology, allusions,fables and legends.If a teacher properly introduces the cultural knowledge of related words in class,it would certainly stimulate students’learning interest on the one hand and imperceptibly enhance their understanding and memory of the words on the other hand to obtain a good vocabulary learning effect.What deserves special attention is that there isn’t an one-one correspondence between English vocabulary and Chinese words.Plenty of examples can be cited to prove it.Firstly,white in English means having the same color with milk,salt or snow,while translated into Chinese means“白的，白色的”,but there is no corresponding word in English using“white”while“白色，白色的”used in Chinese.For instance,“白熊”was commonly translated into“polar bear”,“白搭”into“all in vain or a waste of time and energy”,“白痴”into“idiot”.Similarly,westerners often get confused of what“白”means in“红白喜事”.Secondly,red-letter day(memorial day,happy day)in English ordinarily refers to Christmas or other important days.In China,“red”contains auspicious meaning.Apart from this,it also symbolizes revolution and socialist in modern times.In English,red sometimes means a dangerous state or making people angry,such as“red flag”(annoying things).If in Business English“in the red”means“losses,liabilities”.Finally,The peacock in the culture of China is a sign of fortune.People think the tail of peacock is an advantageous and prosperous thing.In English,the meaning of peacock is usually derogatory,including pride, showing off,being very pleased with oneself,such as in the phrase“as proud as a peacock”.A lot of English collocations are conventional,so people can not simply apply the Chinese collocation to the English ones even though they may similar in meaning.Just like Chinese“红茶”in English is not a red tea,but black tea.Since words in different cultural backgrounds have their particular meaning,teachers’consciously teaching the relevant cultural background knowledge while teaching vocabulary could improve students’understanding of the connotation of vocabulary.3.2Cultural Knowledge Introduction of IdiomsIdiom,as the crystallization of language development,contains intense cultural characteristic.Teaching idiom enables students to learn culture while they are learning language itself.What’s more,they can also see the close relationship between language and culture from a large amount of language material so as to enhance their understanding of culture differences and then improve their communicative competence.The ample idioms in English and Chinese give expressions to the respective culture traits of the two languages.For example,“小菜一碟”in Chinese means it is quite easy to do something,English speakers would express the same meaning with the phrase”a piece of cake”.Also,Chinese people would use“七上八下”to show their uneasiness while English speakers would say they“have butterflies in their stomach”to express the same meaning.As for such cases,apart from explaining the idioms during the class,teachers can guide students to collect some materials after class and to make some comparative analysis.Lots of idioms in English derived from allusion.If one knows little about the origins of phrases,it would be hard for him to understand some items well.For example,the sentence“He can be relied on,he eats no fish and plays the game.”may seems very simple because there are no new words.However,if it was translated directly,it would be pointless and illogical.Once the cultural meaning of the two phrases“eat no fish”and“play the game”are learned,things would get extremely easy.“Eat no fish”comes from an illusion:it was in the time when the Queen Elizabeth was on the throne,Jesus Christians refused to obey the custom of the Roman Catholic to eat fish on Friday so as to show their loyalty to the Queen.While the“play the game”has the similar meaning with“play fair”which commonly meanings“impartial”“aboveboard”“straightforward”,etc.For another example, Chinese are fond of cat,they would sometimes describe women as meek and lovely as cat or they would call people who are fond of food“greedy cat”to show intimacy, while in English,cat is usually used to indicate women with sinister motivation.Also, owl in Chinese implies ominous things while English speakers would say“be wise like an owl”to show the wisdom of people.All these idioms are as difficult to understand as to apply properly.Teachers should act as a guider to help students to appreciate them slowly while reading.If there is something they don't understand,it is allowable to consult a dictionary.As long as they can persist,students will be able to comprehend idioms accurately and use them properly sooner or later.3.3Introduction of oral communication cultureCommunicative culture mainly refers to the topic chosen by people and the way people communicate when they talk to each other.Westerners would simply say hello or talk about weather or something that does not involve in personal privacy when they meet each other.However,Chinese people are used to probe into other people’s privacy to show regard,questions like“What did you do”or”Where did yougo”would make westerners feel uneasy.When receiving praise or congratulations, Chinese people would say“哪里哪里(simply means“no,no”)”or something like“I didn’t do well”to show modesty,while English speakers may say“Thank you”without hesitation.Also,Chinese would call others by adding their profession to their family names such as“刘老师”,“张秘书”,which could not directly translated into “Teacher Liu”“Secretary Zhang”.There were quite a few words like professor,doctor, mayor and judge can be put before the family names to serve the same function. What’s more,Chinese people would call the ones who are of the same generation as “大哥”,“大姐”,“小弟”,“小妹”.As for those who are of the age of their parents, people would use“uncle”,“aunt”as a polite appellation,which would be quite confusing to English speakers,because only to those with intimacy would they call as “uncle”or”aunt”.English speakers would add family names after“Mr.”“Mrs.”“Miss”to call people they knew.When it comes to strangers,they would use“Sir”or “Madam”directly.There are numerous analogous examples which reveal the difference of communicative culture between Chinese and English.Hence,it would be extremely imperative for English teachers to penetrate these cultural knowledge into the teaching process to help the students to understand culture diversity in order that their communicative competence will be improved.Of course,they must improve their cultural literacy before doing that.3.4Introduction of History and Literary QuotationIn the textbook of senior students,there are not only language knowledge but also abundant culture knowledge.Teachers should properly explain some historical allusions and literary quotations occurred in the textbook for these stories are the essence of the relevant culture and nation.It is impossible for one to learn a language well without knowing its culture.When it refers to the speech of Martin Luther King named I Had a Dream,it would be decent to recommend some background information about The Black Emancipation as well as the social context of America in the period of the1960s.By doing so,students will benefit a lot.They would learn language knowledge as well as culture knowledge and understand some language phenomena better.As for the allusions,if the origins were meticulously told,it wouldbe simple for students to comprehend,such as the phrases“meet one’s Waterloo”deriving from The Battle of Waterloo in which Napoleon encountered crushing defeat, means someone had failed.In addition,“Pandora’s box”and“the heel of Achilles”came from Greek and Roman myth,the former means the source of all hardship and misfortune,the later means fatal weakness.Still,“Garden of Eden”from Bible indicates some place where people live a prosperous and contented life;“red tape”implies bureaucracy;“green thumb”signifies excellent horticulture skills.All of them has an allusive backdrop.Teachers are supposed to introduce such historical allusions while teaching so as to make students understand the teaching material better.3.5Introduction of Non-linguistic KnowledgeNon-linguistic knowledge including gesture,posture,costume,expression in one’s eyes,physical distance,touch,volume,etc.Take the text Unit4Body Language in senior high school textbook(PEP edition)as an example.In this text,it mentions that Japanese bow to greet when they meet for the first time;British people usually keep a certain distance with others and avoid body contact with strangers;people in Spain, Italian or South American will stand extremely close to others and very possibly have body contact with each other.When teaching this text,teachers can use the thumb and forefinger to form a circle and unbend the other three fingers to make a gesture.Then, ask the students what the gesture means(answer:In America it means OK.In Japan it is the sign for money).After that,the teacher can make another expression—clench his teeth and tell the students that he is an Arabian,then ask students whether they know what it conveys(in Arabia,the expression means detestation).Having English class in this way can certainly raise students’learning interest and activate the classroom atmosphere.What is more important is that their culture awareness would be improved unconsciously.ChapterⅣSpecific approachesAfter so many strategies have been introduced,it would be helpful to provide some specific approaches for English teachers which are easily to apply.Possible ones are as follows:First of all,it would be advisable to require students to read as many English books and magazines as possible.Extensively reading is conducive to enrich one’s knowledge and foster one’s intercultural communicative awareness and ability.It is wise to conduct students to accumulate materials about culture background,social customs and social relationship while reading.Students will build up their culture awareness and cross-cultural ability gradually and naturally through the long-term accumulation.Secondly,it would be rewarding for English teachers to make full use of intuitional teaching aid like pictures,PowerPoint,movies,televisions,etc.Students will be deeply impressed by the body language of the characters through watching movies,TV or VCD because of the direct observation.It will surely bring better learning effects comparing with the infusion of pure theoretical knowledge.Also, teachers can make full use of pictures,books,exhibitions,ancient cultural relics, newspapers,magazines,postage stamps,postcards,etc.Introducing abstract cultural knowledge through such sample items will help students to intuitively understand culture differences and improve their learning interest.Thirdly,it will be a considerable way to implement culture teaching by organizing various activities such as theme party,games,discussions.Theme party like Christmas party,Halloween party can be held by adding some competitive games. The games should focus on comparing the differences between western festivals and Chinese festivals.Before the game,divide students into several groups and ask them to make a list of the different points between Christmas and Chinese Spring Festival, Halloween and Chinese Ghost Festival.The more the better.The group that gets the most points will win the game and get some rewards.In the process of playing the game,students’learning motivations will be cultivated to the uttermost by the。