Culture Consciousness in English Teaching
ABSTRACT
Language and culture are closely related with each other. College English learning is in fact cultural learning. In order to learn a foreign language well, one has to understand the target language culture, especially the differences between our native culture and target language culture. Therefore, college English teaching is not just training in such basic skills as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Most important of all is to conduct cultural teaching so as to enable students to understand the target language cultural background and enhance their cross-cultural awareness. Developing college students’ cross-cultural awareness will help them to have a better mastery and use of English and realize that learning English is also learning culture at the same time. Only in this way can they master the language in the real sense. With the economic and social development, the communication between China and the outside world is increasingly frequent. People have more opportunities to contact foreign cultures. Culture teaching is playing an important role in college English teaching. The study focuses on the cultivation of college students’ cultural awareness in college English teaching and aims at explaining how to effectively promote the target culture learning in a non-native context like China through adopting various ways of cultivating college students’ cultural awareness.
Keywords：culture cultural consciousness culture teaching
ABSTRACT I
摘 要 II
1 Introduction 1
2 The Relationship between Language and Culture 2
2.1 Language-and-Culture 2
2.2 Language to Learn Culture 2
2.3 Language to Participate in the Cultural Experience 3
3 English Teaching and Culture Awareness of the Classroom 5
3.1 Schools and Classrooms as Communicative Environment 5
3.2 Culture Consciousness and English teaching 6
4 Current Situation of English Teaching in China 7
4.1 Current situation 7
4.2 Culture teaching in China 7
5 Suggestions for Cultivating Cultural Consciousness 10
5.1 Education Policy and Curriculum Adjustment 10
5.2 Syllabus Design 10
5.3 Cultural Consciousness Cultivation at Curricular Stage 11
5.4 What to teach 11
6 Conclusion 13
References 14
Acknowledgements 15
