Cultivation Of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence In Police Oral English Teaching

Our traditional viewpoint for foreign language learning is that we can master a foreign language as long as we know its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. From the end of 80's of the 20th century, this viewpoint has changed a lot. More and more people realize that only we integrate the knowledge of linguistic and culture can we communicate smoothly, and the way of police English learning is just like this. With the open—door policy of our nation's politics, economy and culture, the international communication and contacts have spread out in an all-around way, and the contacts between China and the world are closer and opener than ever before. More and more foreigners come to China for tourism, business and residence, so the policemen will have much more contacts with foreigners; on the other hand, the development of economy brings a chain reaction, and the world criminal rates still stay high at the same time. And the criminal offences also incline to high technology and intelligence along with internationalization, which lead to higher requests to police English learning. If the police only grasp the knowledge from the textbooks, they may master certain language knowledge, but they cannot accurately utilize that kind of knowledge because they will lack social intercourse ability to deal with the affairs with the foreigners. Usually they can get a good mark in the written exam but fail in the speaking test. So if the police want to have a good communication with foreigners without language errors, they should know some cultural characteristics of foreign country and understand their special customs. Only in this way, can the police officers improve their English comprehensive ability, particularly their listening and speaking ability.So it becomes especially important to cultivate police's cross-cultural communicative competence. "To be bilingual, one must be bicultural." The linguistic communication cannot be properly spread out without its cultural background. Language is a part of culture in a larger sense, in the meantime it is the body of culture. And language and culture are inseparable. When we learn a language we must pay attention to cultural difference. In police's oral English teaching, cultural factors and language teaching must be combined together, for in some situations, the meaning of linguistic sign would be vague without understanding the cultural backgrounds. Thus help the police master the implicit outlook on life and value which hides behind the language and find out the essence from the familiar language phenomenon. In order to know the cross-cultural communicative competence of the police, we have done a survey on police's social cultural knowledge and their practical ability in Weifang Police Training Base. The result indicates that culture learning is on the increase in current foreign language education. Yet, the average level of cultural knowledge is moderate. There are two problems related to cultural learning: first, teachers pay more attention to transmission of knowledge but they neglect the students'interaction. Second, students need systematic training in cultural knowledge and approaches of culture learning.Thus, this thesis will address two questions: what's the current situation of cultural awareness teaching and learning in police's oral English classrooms? How can we improve culture teaching and learning in oral English classes? To answer these two questions, some data were gathered by tests from classroom, and finally pedagogical implications were made as to how to promote cultural integration in oral English classes.To ensure the police better performance in learning English, the teachers should choose authentic materials which are fit for the working and living aim for the police, develop the police's cultural awareness and cultural empathy, adopt efficient ways to improve the police's oral English and some proper student-centered activities leading to culture-oriented learning, such as role-play and group work, oral reports, oral translation, and story telling etc. Hopefully, this study will cast light on the police oral English teaching.