A Study On The Learning Of English Culturally-loaded Words By Non-English Major Students

The English language contains numerous culturally-loaded words, which play a significant role in intercultural communication. The present thesis is a tentative study among 120 second-year non-English-major students and 20 College English teachers in Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai, which aims at examining the current learning of English culturally-loaded words and probing for the underlying causes through an integrated approach of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative research involves statistical analyses conducted with statistics software such as SPSS and Excel on the results of a written test on English culturally-loaded words as well as the outcome of questionnaires for both students and teachers, and the qualitative research analyzes the answers to the open-ended questions in questionnaires.It is revealed by the research that although the majority of students hold a positive impression about the cultural introduction in English teaching, their knowledge about English culturally-loaded words is alarmingly inadequate, which can be attributed to a whole range of factors. The inadequacy of contents related to culturally-loaded words in College English textbooks, to begin with, and the absence of specific requirements concerning the learning of English culturally-loaded words in teaching syllabus, school exams and national examinations both give rise to the current situation, which is exacerbated by a learning deficiency both in and outside class due to the lack of students'awareness on culturally-loaded words and of instruction on culturally-loaded words on the teachers'part. The shortage of reference books on English culturally-loaded words is also responsible. In short, both non-English-major students and College English teachers should make more effort in the learning/teaching process to help students gain a better understanding of English culturally-loaded words, while improvements should be made correspondingly to textbooks, reference books, teaching syllabus and the evaluation system.