Stereotype In Intercultural Communication And The Implications For College English Teaching In China

Foreign language learning is a process of culture learning. One of the most important purposes is to cultivate learners'intercultural communication competence in EFL. As a component of intercultural communication, cultural stereotype is a complicated form of categorization and generalization that mentally organizes people's experiences and guides people's behavior towards another group of people. The process of stereotyping is one of the major ways to generalize cultural differences and provides an available approach for language learners to get familiar with the other nations'cultures. While on the other hand, if the extreme form of cultural stereotype-prejudice is shaped, it will affect the efficiency of intercultural communication competence in the opposite way.In other to enable people to have a more comprehensive understanding of cultural stereotypes, the thesis reviewed the definitions, formation, characteristics, main studies of stereotype. Based on the related theories of cultural stereotypes, the thesis used qualitative and quantitative methods to study the role of cultural stereotype in the process of college English teaching. The author selected the subjects from non-English majors in Qingdao Technological University, freshmen and juniors respectively, using writing and questionnaire to explore the relationship between cultural stereotypes and English teaching in order to verify the author's hypotheses that cultural stereotypes exist in the minds of English learners and they can vary with the development of their age and English levels. The students were, under no restrictions, required to write as many sentences in Chinese as possible describing their perceptions and impressions respectively of Chinese, British and Americans. Then the first ten adjectives with the highest frequencies in the produced sentences were selected for questionnaire and analysis.The results of the research show that in the English learning process, there exists cultural stereotypes and it corresponds to their levels of English. The relationship between cultural stereotype and college teaching is:the objective cultural stereotypes will be able to promote English learning and enhance students' intercultural communication competence. At the same time, foreign language teaching is one of the major ways that the students gain cultural stereotypes. To dealing with the relationship between the two is an approach to improve the college English teaching and learning.This study has theoretical and practical significance. The study makes a conclusion related to the role and impact of cultural stereotype in the process of foreign language teaching. It is of great importance to be aware the stereotypes the students holding in the process of college of English teaching. The results of the study can be used as ways and means of English teaching to enhance learning efficiency and intercultural communication competence.