Towards A Macro-model Of Culture Teaching In Foreign Language Education

It was in the early 1980s that Chinese scholars and educators recognized theimportance of culture teaching in foreign language education. And since then cultureteaching has become an extensively debated issue in the field. In the past twenty years,great theoretical achievements have been attained concerning culture teaching andlearning. But the sad fact is that these achievements have not been effectively put intopractice as they should be.This thesis will explore the implicit and explicit factors that have contributed tothe current disagreeable situation of culture teaching in China. And then efforts willbe made towards a macro model of teaching cultural knowledge in English languagecourses.The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter One will provide a briefintroduction to the need of culture teaching in China and a brief review of the historyof culture teaching both abroad and at home. Chapter Two will focus on a discussionof the pedagogical values of culture teaching by looking at three inter-woven relations:culture teaching and language teaching, culture teaching and language learning, and,culture teaching and language use. It will be crucially important at this point todiscuss the cognitive, affective and social factors involved in the process of learners'adapting themselves to the target culture, and such discussions will constitute ChapterThree. Starting from the above theoretical reviews, Chapter Four will be devoted to ananalysis of the current situation of culture teaching, which is key to an understandingof the proposed model. Based on the above discussions and analyses, a macro-modelwill be proposed for culture teaching in China, clarifying the interrelationships amongculture teaching goals, teachers'role, culture teaching contents, culture teachingmethods and culture teaching evaluation. The concluding chapter will serve as anevaluation of the theoretical discussion and the development of ideas towards themacro-model.