Author：秦能明
【摘要】There is a natural relationship between culture and language. Language reflects how the people of a nation form the unique way of life and the way of thinking. Therefore, English teaching necessarily involves cultural education as well. This paper analyzes the influence of social culture in English teaching and tries to set up a principle of teaching English culture.
【关键词】 language culture English teaching cultural influence
1. The relationship between language and culture
Culture is closely related with language. The specific culture of each nation is reflected in a variety of ways; however, there is no other thing that shows as much content of a nation's specific life style as its language. From the perspective of language and social culture, language may be regarded as a special phenomenon of social culture. The development of language also keeps a close pace with the cultural and social advancement of a nation. For example, the social changes and progress of thinking are constantly enriching the lexicon of the language. Therefore, to investigate into the social and cultural aspect and to nurture the cultural competence of language learners are two important topics of English teaching. In a sense, the learning of a second language is the understanding of a second culture. It is a process of conflicting, communicating, interacting and re-constructing. An English teacher is a bridge between the target language culture and the language learners. To the learner, the process of learning a second language is also the process of knowing the specific traditions of the people speaking that language.
2. English learning means cultural learning
Whenever talking about English learning, many people may recall the training of the four basic skills of listening, speaking reading and writing. In their teaching practices, the activities of many teachers are also limited by this methodology. Sure, teaching these basic skills is necessary because the purpose of learning a language is to use it. However, the problem is that although a lot of students have learned the fundamentals of these skills according to these traditional methods, they are still showing an obvious tendency of making mistakes of various kinds. As a result, the process of learning English not only means the training of these fundamental skills but also includes the familiarity with the social and cultural conventions of the English-speaking countries. Only in this way can learners have a good command of the English language, otherwise errors may easily arise.
The violation of cultural traditions often results in misunderstandings, which is shown by a great deal of examples. For instance, an American visitor may be quite at a loss when they are asked such questions as "How old are you?" and "How much do you earn each week?" in China. For many Chinese, they do not know the concept of personal privacy such as one's age, income, political tendency and religious belief. They communicate with the foreigners in their specific way that has been nurtured in the Chinese environment. This is the very reason why they cannot command the English communication effectively in many circumstances.
Another very interesting example is concerned with daily greetings. Many Chinese are accustomed with such greetings as "Have you had your meal?". We Chinese people all know this sentence does not contain much serious meaning because it is only a way of greeting somebody. However, when a foreign visitor is opposed to this greeting, they do not consider this as a greeting; instead, they take it as a serious invitation.
This cultural difference in many cases may lead to embarrassment and misunderstanding. For example, many foreigners think that the Chinese people are impolite in answering phone calls. They think that Chinese people are two abrupt when ending the phone conversation by addressing "Okay, so much for that" rather than saying "Good-bye" or "See you". In this way, they often feel the impatience at the other end of the line. All these examples directly or indirectly results from the cultural conflict between the English countries and China. Culture embraces too much content. To learn a language well always means to grasp the essence of the culture, otherwise, one will not be able to learn a language effectively
3. Cultural input in English teaching
In China, cultural teaching has long been neglected in English classroom interactions. Traditional English teaching only emphasizes "pure language competence" and aims at teaching students to produce sentences that are "grammatically correct and rhetorically effective". What they neglect is being "culturally acceptable". Pure language competence practically does not exist because it is not enough to guide learners to communicate suitably in real communicative environment. As a result, successful English teaching must make students know how to apply social and cultural customs practically. It is only when learners grasped the historical, traditional, conventional ideas of the target language can they use the language correctly and effectively. In English teaching, teachers should pay attention to the following several aspects in order to achieve this:
First of all, the cultural awareness should be clarified in all the processes of English teaching which includes classroom interaction, methodological designing and testing. In classroom activities, teachers should work out effective ways of guiding his or her students to imitate the specific ways of thinking. Thinking is closely related with language. So during learning English, learners should forget the way of communication that has been formed under the cultural environment of their mother tongue. Teachers should emphasize more upon the cultural implications of the lexicon, the idiom and communicative style as well. For example, in teaching students the phrase "afternoon tea", teachers should led students know the specific traditions related to this term in order to avoid the cultural conflict.
In the second place, teachers should help students collect and accumulate English cultural knowledge in a variety of ways. Cultural knowledge not only exists in textbooks, they exist in a large amount of resources as well. Magazine, newspapers, television programs, literary works, ---- all these materials contains much nutrition of a nation's culture. To get access to these materials is a very effective way of understanding the way of life and way of thinking of the people speaking the target language.
Thirdly, teachers should train their students the special ability of observing and understanding the English culture. Of course, in doing so, the most convenient way is to clarify the difference of the target language culture and the native language culture. The acquisition of a language is not an isolated and pure command of linguistic rules. In truth, language competence also includes cultural competence. It is only when learners have fully grasped the essence of the target language culture (though it is a hard and time-consuming process) can they use the target language freely and correctly.
Fourthly, to create a genuine second language environment is also very important thing in learning the target language culture effectively and directly. Thanks to the development of IT technologies, we have been able to get access to a variety of original language materials through the Internet as well as many other resources. Today, students can learner English in their own preferable ways. For example, they can watch English movies as well as English TV programs. In the meanwhile, the prosperity of cross-national tourism and communication also provides learners abundant opportunities of communicating with foreigners. Therefore, there has been much convenience for learners to learn the target language culture through genuine communicative activities.
4. Conclusion
As a complicated social phenomenon, language entails too much cultural information. To a large extent, language as a social code is significantly influenced by the specific traditions and conventions of a nation. Cultural influence nowadays has become the key concept in second language teaching and learning. Without the concept of cultural learning, one cannot be expected to have a full command of the norms and customs that are particular in influencing the behavior of the natives. As a result, English learners should beware of the cultural aspects of the target language to avoid communicative mistakes of various kinds. It is as well the responsibility of English teachers to remind his or her students the in-depth understanding of English culture at large.