Cultral Introduction And Development Of Communicative Competence

With the increase of exchange between China and Western countries resulting from the reform and opening up program, people have come to find that due to the lack of profound knowledge of the Western culture, "cultural shock "or "cultural conflict" often arises when Chinese people communicate with Westerners The thesis is concerned with the contribution and incorporation of the teaching of culture into the foreign language classroom. More specifically, some consideration will be given to the why and how of teaching culture. It will be demonstrated that teaching a foreign language is not tantamount to giving a homily on syntactic structures or learning new vocabulary and expressions, but mainly incorporates, or should incorporate, some cultural elements, which are intertwined with language itself. Furthermore, an attempt will be made to incorporate culture into the classroom by means of considering some techniques and methods currently used. The main premise of the paper is that effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency and that, apart from enhancing and enriching communicative competence, intercultural competence can also lead to empathy and respect toward different cultures as well as promote objectivity and cultural perspicacity.