Implications Of Cultural Value Comparison For English Teaching

Culture is inseparable to language. English language teaching should not only cultivate students'linguistic competence, but also cultural competence. Cultural comparison is an effective strategy of cultural teaching in English language teaching. Cultural values are the core part of culture, and value comparison is an important aspect of cultural comparison. Therefore, comparative research on cultural values is important in English language teaching. In the past thirty years, commercial and cultural communications between China and the western countries are more and more frequent, and Chinese cultural values have changed to some extent. Therefore, the author conducts a survey among Chinese and American university students, aiming to find out their cultural value changes to direct English teaching.The survey is a quantitative one with a questionnaire revised from Professor Hofstede's latest VSM08 instrument. Comparative analysis is based on the theory of Hofstede's five cultural value dimensions:power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long/short term orientation. After statistics analysis of the data, three conclusions are drawn. First, cultural values of Chinese and American university students are similar on power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long term orientation, while on individualism/collectivism dimension, they are still significantly different. Second, compared with the older generations, contemporary university students prefer an equal human relationship; they try to avoid uncertainty as much as possible; the level of masculinity on their part tends to be higher; they tend to be short term when they are making plans. As to the individualism/collectivism dimension, although Chinese students tend to be more individualist, they still hold collectivism as their mainstream idea. Third, in the background of globalization, cultural exchange and integration is a development trend. By means of cultural exchange and emulation, each culture can overcome its own weak points by learning from others'strong points, which is not only helpful to cultural development, but also can help to create a more splendid civilization. In English language teaching, teachers should pay much attention to cultural teaching to help cultivate students'cultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competence.