Introducing cultural education and cultivating cultural awareness
2. Language, culture and foreign language teaching
The question of whether cultural education should be introduced into English teaching dates back to the 1980s It has attracted the attention of my country's language teaching community in the early 1990s, with its focus on foreign language teaching and the relationship between culture and language. Intercultural communication, as a new interdisciplinary research field developed in the middle of the last century, has penetrated into foreign language teaching and prompted people to realize that learning foreign languages ??must be combined with culture, and only focusing on the form of the language without paying attention to the connotation of the language is not enough. Not good at foreign languages. In this new situation, it is necessary for us to re-understand language, culture and foreign language teaching.
Language and culture are closely related. Language reflects the culture of a nation and is also affected by culture. English teaching is language teaching, and of course it is inseparable from cultural education. Hymes believes that it is not enough to just learn a certain language, you must also learn how to use that language, that is, you must master the ability to use that language for communication. Therefore, successful foreign language teaching must not only cultivate pure language ability, that is, the ability to create some sentences with correct meaning and grammatical rules, but also enable students to have knowledge of the rules of social use of language and be able to use them, that is, to have the ability to speak. Awareness of appropriateness, or sociocultural competence. The fundamental purpose of foreign language teaching is to achieve cross-cultural communication and to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds. Merely being able to use a grammatically correct foreign language is not enough to deal well with foreigners. The ability to listen, speak, read and write is an important foundation for cross-cultural communication, but it is far from the whole problem. When communicating with people with different cultural backgrounds, "how to say" and "what not to say" are sometimes more important than "what to say".
Comprehensively improving the efficiency and quality of foreign language teaching and cultivating students' comprehensive English application ability are an urgent task for Chinese higher education across the century. In order to adapt to this new situation, we need to realize that foreign language teaching is an important part of cross-cultural education, regard language as an integral whole that is inseparable from culture and society, and implement it in the teaching syllabus, curriculum design, textbook preparation, and classroom teaching. , language testing and the second classroom of foreign language are fully reflected.
3. The content of cross-cultural education
The real purpose of cross-cultural education is to help us become more sensitive to cultural differences and accept foreign cultures on the basis of mutual understanding and mutual respect. , and at the same time understand our own culture from a new perspective to achieve the survival of multiculturalism. Through cross-cultural education, students can be cultivated to have a positive understanding of different cultures, so as to have a deep grasp of the connotation of language.
Regarding the cultural content involved in language teaching, Hu Wenzhong and Gao Yihong proposed five aspects in the book "Foreign Language Teaching and Culture" and outlined a framework for cultural teaching. The author believes that the content of cross-cultural education can be summarized into the following three aspects:
(1) Regarding worldview and values. In terms of worldview, just from the perspective of the relationship between man and nature, Eastern and Western cultures have completely different views. Western culture believes that humans should dominate nature, and nature is the object of human conquest. Correspondingly, Eastern culture believes that there is a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Human beings do not transform nature, but adapt to it. Values ??are difficult to grasp as an abstract concept, but they can be expressed through verbal or non-verbal behavioral patterns. In the process of cross-cultural communication, people often deepen their understanding of cross-cultural communication by understanding the values ??hidden in the depths of culture.
(2) Cultural characteristics of speech acts. Language reflects certain cultural traces or cultural factors in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc., and is specifically divided into words without equivalents, words with background meanings, words with cultural and emotional colors, idioms and allusions, famous aphorisms, polite expressions, etc. The cultural characteristics of speech codes can help language learners mediate language conflicts and oppositions caused by cultural differences. Practice has proven that oral transmission of values ??through proverbs, aphorisms, etc. is one of the best ways to learn about a certain culture.
(3) Non-verbal communication. Nonverbal behavior, like verbal behavior, is given different meanings depending on culture. In social activities, non-verbal communication can play a role that language cannot play on many different occasions and can help determine the authenticity and accuracy of information. Non-verbal communication used to be regarded as synonymous with body language. In fact, its scope far exceeds simple body language. From eye contact, facial expressions, tactile habits, smell and attitude, appearance and behavior to space concepts and time use, they all fall into the category of non-verbal communication. The unique function of non-verbal behavior in communication is self-evident.
In view of the fact that English teaching in our country is a kind of international common language teaching rather than general second language teaching or foreign language teaching, people not only need to use English as the medium to communicate with native English speakers, but also with native English speakers. When communicating with non-native English speakers, they must not only be exposed to their native English culture (English-based cultures), but also be exposed to applied English cultures (English-usi~cultures) native or foreign languages). Such an English application environment determines that our cross-cultural education must focus on the cultivation of communicative skills rather than the simple accumulation of cultural knowledge. At the same time, it cannot be limited to a few native English speakers. national culture.
In the past few years, there was a widespread one-sided view in the foreign language community, that is, Chinese was considered to be a distraction to learning foreign languages. In fact, the mother tongue has both disturbing and helpful effects. The mother tongue culture can be both a resistance and a driving force to foreign culture. The huge contrast between Chinese language and culture and English language and culture makes the comparison of the two languages ??and cultures have complementary cognitive effects. Only by deeply understanding and mastering one's own culture can we put existing knowledge into play, find out the differences between the English language culture and other target language community cultures, and our own culture, judge and understand these cultural differences from multiple perspectives, and thus cultivate cultural awareness. , to achieve effective cross-cultural communication. From this perspective, cross-cultural education is of great significance for promoting one's own culture and taking the strengths of others to make up for one's own shortcomings.
IV. Methods of cross-cultural education
The Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education clearly pointed out in the newly promulgated "Teaching Requirements for College English Courses" in 2007 that when designing college English courses, Give full consideration to cultivating students' cultural quality and imparting international cultural knowledge. In order to implement this spirit, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press and Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press have revised several series of textbooks such as "New Edition of College English", "New Horizons College English", "New Edition of College English", etc., in terms of language Input, text selection, and exercise design all reflect the characteristics of the curriculum culture. "College English compiled by Juan Xin" (Second Edition) clearly points out in the preface that while allowing students to understand the culture of English-speaking countries, they must also cultivate their ability to express and spread their own culture. The texts selected in "College English New Edition? Comprehensive Course" are of various genres, including not only narrative and descriptive articles, but also exposition and expository articles. With the improvement of language proficiency, the text selection transitions from surface culture to middle culture (institutional culture) and deep culture (conceptual culture). For example, Civil Right ~ Heroes; Security in Volume 3; and even more so in Volume 4. Directly touching on the subject of TheMulticulturalSociety.
As the organizers and implementers of college English teaching, English teachers should become intermediaries and interpreters of different cultures in the teaching activities of the above textbooks. In the teaching process at each stage, we strive to attract students in novel and varied forms, improve students' sensitivity to culture through cultural comparisons in a timely manner, cultivate cultural awareness, and enable learners to consciously grasp the concepts that permeate the language. Cultural phenomena actively and consciously enter the thinking and cognitive mode of the target language, making classroom teaching as close to the real situation as possible and becoming a real and meaningful language practice activity.