Chinese Culture And Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

Over the past 20 years of opening to the outside world, China's economy has been growing rapidly. With the country's comprehensive national strength strengthened and international prestige on the rise, the world's enthusiasm for China and the language is on the rise as well. Chinese is a language with a history of several thousand years, and embodies incomparable expressive force and unique beauty. It is enjoying an international popularity around the world, bringing about unprecedented opportunities and challenges for teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL). To promote TCFL is of strategic significance to popularize the Chinese language and culture throughout the world. For those foreigners who have grasped their own native language and cultivated in themselves the whole set of native culture, learning Chinese is, in fact, a process of learning to adapt themselves to and accept Chinese culture. The realizing of cross-cultural communication means far more than learning a language, but mastering the culture it embodies. The paper discusses the interrelationship of language and culture, especially the culture infiltration of Chinese characters, grammar, lexis and rhetoric in TCFL. The paper also sheds some light on how to introduce culture elements in TCFL purposely, intentionally and methodically, and how to enhance teaching effect so as to help overcome the difficulties overseas students may come across as quickly as possible.