The Investigation Into The Phenomenon Of "Aphasia Of Chinese Culture" Among Non-English Majors In China

With the development of the theories of linguistics, language teaching is becoming more and more mature, from teaching the language itself to teaching the culture related to it. Language teaching, at first, is guided by Chomsky's theories and mainly concerns with the teaching of language itself, with the teaching of , if any, a little culture related which is mostly about literature, history and geography and so on. At that time Grammar-Translation Method, the most dominant one, is also closely connected with the language teaching theories at that time. In the end of 1960s and the beginning of 1970s, more and more consideration is given to culture teaching in language teaching with the development of socio-linguistics whose concern is not only the factors inside the language but also the factors outside of the language since language cannot exist without any relation with the society in which it is spoken. Since then, the social factors of language are recognized and considered in language teaching, hence Communicative Method and more attention and research in the culture teaching which experiences three stages: explicit culture teaching in which the big C culture is taught and emphasized, implicit culture teaching in which the small c is stressed and comprehensive culture teaching in which both explicit culture and implicit culture are taught out of more and more reasons and experience. From the illustration of the history of culture teaching it is detected that the culture in culture teaching is not without problems although culture teaching has been much improved and pushed forward. The most serious problem rests on the range of culture in culture teaching which only covers the target culture, leaving the teaching of home culture expressed in English in a state of negligence. Culture teaching, if without the teaching of home culture in English, cannot be regarded as complete and mature for the reason that cross-cultural communication is a reciprocal activity necessitating the two-way exchanges of cultures and that the absence of teaching Chinese culture in English will definitely result in the inequality in cross-cultural communication and disadvantages in terms of the spread of Chinese culture in the world. Not only is the culture in culture teaching questioned, but also Hymes'communicative competence is challenged which, as the theoretical basis for culture teaching in language teaching, cannot avoid being imperfect. Communicative competence, since it is offered, has been under constant improvement and adjustment. However, the notion of communicative competence is only centered on assuring the communication is successful, neglecting one of the most basic principles of communication, that is, the equality of communication. Therefore, in the notion of communicative competence, the competence guaranteeing the equality of communication should also be included as one of the requisites for not only successful but also equal communication. Meanwhile, in practice, non-English majors do not do so good a job in maintaining the successful and equal communication, as is shown in the phenomenon of students'aphasia of Chinese culture which refers to the fact that students cannot express Chinese culture in English appropriately. This hampers not only their communicative competence but also the spreading and conserving of Chinese culture. Consequently, an investigation is conducted in this paper to check whether phenomenon does exist and to find the extent of students'aphasia of Chinese culture, the reasons of its existence and the possible and feasible solutions to the problem. To make the investigation more scientific and revealing, 150 students, 60 teachers and 10 foreign teachers from different kinds of schools are chosen as the subjects of this investigation. The results are as the following: (1) the phenomenon does exist among non-English majors and the extent of their aphasia of Chinese culture is severe and worrying; (2) the possible reasons may include students'poor mastery of the knowledge of Chinese culture, the textbooks containing too little information about Chinese culture in English, the curriculum which is not so proper, the testing neglecting the check of students'ability of expressing Chinese culture in English,the syllabus which does not state clearly the necessity of enhancing students'expressiveness of Chinese culture and the unsystematic information sources of Chinese culture expressed in English. With those reasons as the clue, the possible solutions are offered including the reforms in textbooks, testing and syllabus and the...