Perceptions Of Culture In College English Teaching And Learning: An Attitude Survey In Chinese EFL Context

Since the 1950s, the trend of research in foreign language teaching has been shifted from the exploration of developing sole linguistic skills of students to the cultivation of their intercultural communicative competence. Culture has now been considered as an inseparable part of foreign language teaching and learning and it is necessary for students to obtain such a competence by teaching of culture in the curriculum. The role of culture in English as a Foreign Language Teaching has received considerable attention in the past twenty years both at home and abroad. The study of it has become an important aspect of applied linguistics. Great achievements have been made in theory concerning culture teaching and learning in the past twenty years. However, in spite of the theoretical achievement, culture teaching practice in Chinese College English course remains limited.The present study investigates Chinese College English teachers' and students' views on cultural dimension in their College English teaching and learning. Forty teachers and two hundred and eighty-five students from the colleges and universities in Hangzhou responded to two questionnaires respectively, some of whom participated the following-up interviews. Respondents clearly felt the important role of culture in their English teaching and learning. Most teachers included culture in their classroom more randomly than other aspects of their teaching. As for the elements of the culture, there was a tendency for them to prefer culture of broad definition to that of narrow one. Furthermore, most of the participants are likely to use the textbooks of multi-culture content. Last but not least, nearly all of them recognized the importance of learning to express Chinese culture in English in College English education and adding such kinds of materials in their College English textbooks.