A Cultural Comparison Between English And Chinese Words And Its Implications In Vocabulary Teaching Of College English

Language is the vehicle of culture as well as a means of communication. It is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. Without language, culture would not be possible. On the other hard, language is influenced and shaped by culture. It reflects culture. Words, as the core of language, is the most basically element of language. Since language and culture are inseparable, words and culture are also inseparable. In fact, words, as the most active and elastic element of language, has the largest culturally loading capacity. It is the foremost channel by which the specific material surrounding, social institutions and spiritual beliefs are affected.Vocabulary teaching has long held the attentions of teachers and scholars abroad as well as in China. With the development of college English reform, more and more have been done researches are done and college English teachers are using more new teaching methodologies. Since 1980s a new branch of learning-intercultural communication begins to flourish in China,many scholars begin to study language from a cultural perspective. Although many scholars regard vocabulary is influenced by culture in many sides, in the part how culture difference influences vocabulary, and how integrate cultureteaching with vocabulary teaching, few have been found in this field research. This dissertation attempts to make a cultural comparison between English and Chinese words and phrases and explore its implications in vocabulary teaching of college English.This dissertation comprises six chapters.Chapter One Introduction. It first interprets the relationship between culture and vocabulary, and the importance of cultural factors in language communication. And then gives a brief account of the current state of college English teaching. Nowadays, in vocabulary teaching of college English, words are often separately taught, ignoring the relationship between vocabulary and culture. In fact, vocabulary and culture are inseparable.Chapter Two Word meaning, context and culture. The chapter introduces the definition of culture and context theory, then analyzes the relationship between word meaning and culture, word meaning and context, culture and context. The author regards that core of context theory is: word meaning is determined by the context in which it occurs. And culture, in a sense, is the broadest context. This makes the basis for the cultural comparison between English and Chinese words and phrases.Chapter Three Factors affecting cultural difference between English and Chinese. The chapter explores several factors affecting cultural differences between English and Chinese. There are enormous cultural distinctions between English and Chinese cultures in world view, pattern of thought, historical background, political system, geography, customs and habits, and value orientation, etc. These cultural differences exert deep influences over the word meaning.Chapter Four A contrastive study between English and Chinese words from the cultural perspective. This chapter classifies the word with cultural loads into five types: equivalent words, overlapping words, semi-vacant words, vacant words and conflicting words. This chapter classifies the word in another language, but they bear little resemblance to each other in their everyday cultural context. There are still other words with the same denotative meaning, but have quite different, even conflicting associative meanings, connotative meanings and symbolic meanings.Chapter Five A cultural approach to college English vocabulary teaching. Thechapter concentrates on the implications of culture differences for vocabulary teaching of college English. Culture failures in the understanding of words often appear among college students because of culture differences. This chapter first explores common cultural failures among college students and then the importance of cultural awareness. On the basis of this, the chapter puts forward the three language views that should be held in vocabulary teaching, that is, the v...