Research On Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language From The Perspective Of Culture

Along with the process of globalization and the development of the worldwide multi-cultures, to promote their own language and disseminate their national culture has become a common value orientation for the language education in all countries. Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (here after TCFL) is the most efficient way to promote the internationalization of the Chinese language and to disseminate excellent Chinese culture. TCFL emphasizes that the understanding and use of language should be taken as its premise and the rich and varied Chinese cultural resources should be integrated to adapt to the needs of foreign learners, to create opportunities of Chinese language learning and cultural understanding for the students of different cultural backgrounds, to promote the diffusion of language and culture, to promote the understanding and cooperation among nations, and to realize the diversified development of the language and culture.The Chinese language contains a wealth of cultural information which has a great influence on the Chinese acquisition of foreign students. With a long history, Chinese culture has a reasonable kernel and can provide excellent cultural resources for the world today. What's more, to promote Chinese culture can help to build an international image and enhance the cultural soft power of China. Therefore, culture should be included in the teaching system of TCFL to make the teaching reflect the characteristics of the combination of language and culture. However, in the current practice of TCFL, language teaching has always being adopted as a single teaching model, which often causes cultural barriers for the foreign students in their Chinese language learning process and thus leads to their lack of understanding and acceptance of Chinese culture. According to these factors, in the current context of the coexistence of opportunities and challenges of culture, internationalization, TCFL should organically integrate the essence of Chinese culture into the current teaching system to reflect the characteristics of the combination of language and culture, and to build a teaching system for the course of TCFL through maintaining the necessary penetrating force of Chinese culture. This can not only contribute to enriching the theory of the course of TCFL to provide theoretical guidance for the teaching reform, and also offer practical support to the development strategy of national culture.The thesis consists of five parts as follows:Chapter One is the Introduction. It begins with the reasons why the present topic was chosen for this thesis and clarifies the necessity and research value of culture teaching in TCFL. In the part of relevant literature review, it briefly introduces the current situation of culture teaching in the language teaching at home and abroad and the references cited in the thesis. Lastly, several basic concepts of this thesis are clearly defined.Chapter Two is the Meaning of TCFL from the Cultural Perspective. Language and culture are in complete harmony; therefore, as an important carrier of Chinese culture, the understanding and the use of Chinese language is inseparable from its cultural support. In the context of globalization and the coexisting of multi-cultures, the promotion of Chinese culture can not only help to enhance the understanding of the international community to China, but also help to safeguard the interests of the national culture, promote the diversified development of world cultures, and break cultural hegemony and cultural separatism.Chapter Three is the History of TCFL from the Cultural Perspective. From the very beginning of the career of TCFL in1950, this chapter divides the60-year-long development process of TCFL into two major stages:"Spontaneously Participating" and "Consciously Arguing". From the early1950s to the late1970s, out of the natural connection with the language, culture spontaneously entered into the content of TCFL, but the awareness of teaching culture has not yet been awakened. Since the1980s, with the rise of foreign language teaching theories and the "cultural craze" in domestic academic circles, the discussion on the cultural teaching of Chinese as a foreign language has been carried out rapidly, and intense controversy over the position, purpose, content, and principles of TCFL has also been conducted.Chapter Four is the Dilemma of TCFL from the Cultural Perspective. Through in-depth study of the status of TCFL, this chapter reveals the problems that exist in the teaching practice of the cultural teaching of Chinese as a foreign language:cultural teaching purposes being narrow and abstract, no agreement about the cultural teaching content, cultural teaching methods being simple and rough, cultural teaching evaluations being one-sided and closed, and the lack of teachers'cultural teaching competence and so on.Chapter Five is the Strategies of TCFL from the Cultural Perspective. Along with the thinking path of the past---present---future, the teaching system of TCFL under its current situation is put forward, i.e. to disseminate Chinese culture on the basis of training Chinese language ability as its goals, to take value, pertinence, objectivity and diversity as its selection criteria, and to focus on such important aspect as the core value of universal significance, the culture influencing the understanding and the use of a language, China's basic national conditions and culture with Chinese characteristics. What's more, it suggests that building the cultural content of TCFL should be implemented around the theme, experience as well as activities, and that a variety of teaching models such as experiential teaching model, interactive teaching model and comparative teaching model should be adopted in the practice of TCFL so as to achieve cultural understanding and harmony.