A Study Of Chinese Cultural Aphasia In New Standard College English Integrated Course

For a long time, the culture instruction of English teaching in China only emphasizes the culture of the target language and ignores our native culture. Because of the inadequacy in knowledge of Chinese culture, many college students fail to accomplish intercultural communication. According to Professor Cong Cong, this phenomenon is called “ Chinese Cultural Aphasia”. Some researches have shown that one of the reasons for this phenomenon is our college English teaching material. In China, material is a knowledge carrier of teaching activity. In our college English teaching material, there is usually a large amount of western cultural background knowledge, which surely benefits students’ acquisition of English and understanding of western culture. However, the absence of Chinese culture in college English teaching results in students’ incompetence in expressing Chinese culture in English and thereby hinders the development of their intercultural communicative competence.Consequently, via analyzing students’ ability of expressing Chinese culture in English and cultural components in college English teaching material, this paper is intended to explore the negative impact on college students’ intercultural communicative competence caused by the inadequacy of Chinese cultural contents involved in college English teaching material. Based on the textbook evaluation theory and culture teaching theory, a research using the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is conducted. It proposes to address the following questions:(1)what is the students’ ability of expressing Chinese culture in English?(2)what is the overall picture of the cultural contents and Chinese cultural contents in New Standard College English Integrated Course?(3)what are the students’ perceptions on the cultural contents in the text and integrating Chinese culture into foreign language teaching?To find the key to these questions, first, a test aimed at investigating the college students’ ability of expressing Chinese culture in English is designed for 100 non-English majors on the third-year study in a university. Then the author chooses New Standard College English Integrated Course as subject to summarize the cultural contents involved in it on the basis of Byram’s criteria for textbook evaluation. At last, a questionnaire survey and an interview are made to know the students’ opinion about the text book and integrating Chinese culture into language teaching material.The main results of the research are presented as follows: firstly, Chinese cultural aphasia does exist in college students. Secondly, the result of analyzing the textbook suggests that although almost every aspect of culture is included in this set of textbooks, Chinese cultural contents are in very low proportion. Students’ grasp of the material culture is much better than that of abstract culture. Thirdly, the analyses of questionnaire and interview demonstrate that students have shown positive attitudes toward adding Chinese culture into college English teaching material. Last but not least, the author finds that most students think it would be helpful to improve their intercultural communicative competence if increasing the Chinese cultural components in college English textbooks.According to the text and data analysis, the author puts forward the importance and necessity of increasing Chinese culture in English teaching material.Finally, the results and research limitations of this research are discussed and suggestions are put forward.