Teaching Culture In Foreign Language Classes. Empirical Sur- Vey Of Intercultural Vocabulary Teaching In German Studies At Nanjing University

The purpose of this paper is to study culture-related teaching of unfamiliar words in foreign language class. Teaching foreign words is an important part of foreign language class. The importance of this paper is reflected in the following aspects: First, when researching cultural characteristic moments in foreign language class, single words already work as a starting point. If students know about cultural char-acteristics of the target language, they can understand this culture-specific in its context and develop their social capacity to act in different situations. Second, the cultural meaning of unfamiliar words can be explained with the help of specific teaching methods. Thirdly, cross-cultural vocabulary teaching as a fundamental part of language training in German language classes in China is useful and neces-sary in view of increasing globalization of society and intensification German-Chinese relations. Another reason for conducting this research at a Chinese univer-sity is the expansion of German studies in China since the early 1980s. Further-more, as a professional student of Nanjing University, I was able to collect first-hand data during this research at a Chinese university. Fourth, failing to teach the cultural meanings of words can lead to misunderstandings and communication problems.In order to understand the meaning of words in unfamiliar cultural context, stu-dents not only need to learn the language, but also the meaning of its cultural background. By the help of specific methods students can improve their sensitivity for their perception of meanings in unfamiliar contexts. On this basis, students can link unfamiliar words or concepts with a specific cultural context. Based on the question how foreign language teaching becomes for teaching culture, this paper analyses and summarizes the current classroom teaching practice of the German Department at Nanjing University. Core issue of this research is the question of which kind of culture-related vocabulary teaching is used by teachers in class and to what extend this can help students to understand foreign culture?To answer this question, with the help of overt participant observation, two differ-ent classes with two teachers were audio-visually recorded, fully transcribed and analysed. The focus is on the teaching methods by which the teachers explain cul-tural meanings of unfamiliar words. Therefore, this research only deals with the behaviour of the teachers, not the students’ behaviour and how students use new words, because it is beyond the scope of this paper.One purpose of this paper is to explain theoretical concepts. The cultural and lin-guistic concept that guides this research is defined and explained. Also the role of culture for human perception and their relationship to human perception are pre-sented in detail. With reference to the scientific approaches in Intercultural Ger-man Studies, linguistic and cultural studies, this paper sets out the concept of lan-guage and culture which is represented in intercultural language teaching and dis-plays existing misunderstandings. With the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" a theory from linguistics is presented, which is a further theoretical fundament of this paper. By going into detail about the function of language as well as defining the term "standardization" by Klaus-Peter Hansen, the interdependence between language and culture is discussed. Thus, the demand for a culture-sensitive vocabulary teaching is emphasized. Another purpose of this paper is to introduce and describe existing methodological suggestions to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching. So, first misunderstandings in dealing with culture and language are il-luminated and resulting problems for vocabulary teaching are described. By the help of specific teaching methods students can be sensitized for recognizing the foreign cultural meanings. The approaches by the Germanist Bernd-Dietrich Mul-ler are viewed as particularly useful for culture-related vocabulary teaching and, so, ten methods (by Bernd-Dietrich Miiller) are presented in detail. A third purpose is, on the basis of empirical data from the teaching practice, to win knowledge about the usage of culture-related vocabulary teaching methods in foreign language class for specific cases. In three steps this research was conducted:1) class recording with the help of overt participant observation,2) transcription of the recorded clas-ses and 3) data selection and analysis.The analysis of data from two classes which were recorded shows that on one hand the teachers use different methods to explain unfamiliar vocabulary and to a cer- tain degree teach culture. On the other hand specific cultural meaning behind the words remains to be explained. As this research deals with two specific cases, the result is not necessarily representative for the Nanjing University in particular and the German Studies in China in general. Therefore, this research raises no claim to generality and completeness. Rather, it provides an insight into the classroom situ-ation and gives an impression which kind of culture-related vocabulary teaching is used by teachers in foreign language class in two specific cases and to what extent it can help students to understand culture-specific meanings behind words. The result of this research is useful, because it shows a possible relationship between theory and practice. The interpretation process of this paper presents itself precise-ly, considers the theoretical part of this study, summarized and supplemented by the author’s own reflections.