Culture Introduction In ELT For English Majors

Postgraduate Fang YongbinS~ervisor Professor Tang GaoyuanThe goal of foreign language teaching is to cultivate stodents communicative competence. Hymes, an American sociolinguist, coined this term in order to contrast a communicative 'view of language and Chomskv's theory of linguistic competence. In his view, a person who has come to possess communicative competence acquires both knowledge and ability to use language with respect to (1) grammatical accuracy (2) feasibility (3) (4) actual operation His theory bmadens the honzm of lan~ua~e teachinc. And it offers insight to linguists and educators who want to break the limits of analyzing language stricture in forej~n language teaching Later, W~idosori, Swain and Candle. Littlewood proposed different versions of catenorv which include the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill comrnurncative atm The theoretical foundation of these categories all entails both linguistic competence and socto-cultuml competence. Cht the one hand, judged ~wn linguistic structure, language is a system of symbols On the other hand, language is a tool of communication if its functions taken into consideration A person's socio-cultural knowledge restncts how he exploits his hn~ustic potential. it is hard to imagine that, a person can use a language accurateK m~ atiproprxatelv to communicate with people from that language community ~ihout enough socio-cuhin'al background knowledge relevant to the languageIn Cbit~, ELT is in d~ domain of foreign language teaching Influenced by the political policy as well as teaching approaches arid methods based on behaviorism and strueturalism, for a long ttme ELI put particulat stress on cultivating students' linguistic competence. that's, listening, speaking reading and wiiting skills vlnile neglectng the introduction of socio-cultural knowledge. As to English majors, they have already acquned the conmiumcative competence in native tongue and internalized native culture which is closely related to the language use Uxx~ such ccmditions, learners may what is embedded in the foreign language-English, due to diflitrerit communicative model aol content. And what they have acquired about native culture and language may cause negative transfer in learning English Meanwhile, as we all kruo~ with fne development of high tecbnolog~.' and ecoriomy, the global village has come into being People in tIns age should know how to communicate cross culture Therefore, culture introduction becomes an indispensable part in foreign languageiv7teaching and kaming,Generally speaking, communicative conlp~ence refers to the ~ility to use verbal and non-veibal behavic,r to accomplish communicative ann From the aspect of the interrelation and interaction bet~i culflne arid communication, this paper goes through the impact by culture on the components m communication process to explore the problem of culture introduction in ELT.There is a sea of definition of culture In brief, culture is the sum total of how people speak~ think and behave Language mirrors culture because ailture is chiefly encoded in and conveyed by language system. In the meanv~nile, social conventions as well as value are corxlinoned and moulded by culture. In communica±ki, the information exchange is a psycholo2ical process of encoding and decoding. Encoding refers to the process of organizing and constructing verbal mon-verbal symbols according to certain communication rules subject to socio-cultural convention by source. While decoding refers to the process of interpreting and organizing ~ incoming stimuli into meaningful whole by receiver So, symbol, source and receiver are all rooted in cultural reality. Words are building blocks of language T~ ccmtafive and c~x#ative meanings of a word may change with cultural backgro~. Non-verbal behavior such as body behaviot chi~oncmics and proxcmics as well as para]anguage, ma' contain obvious or implicit cultural phc~on~ No doubt, as long as the participants understand or sharethe socio-cultural informatio...