On The Construction Of Cultural Context In Foreign Language Teaching

The 21st century is literally an era of intercultural cooperation and intercultural communication. Thus, it is hardly strange that the present commonly accepted goal in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) in China is communicative competence and many feel it natural to regard intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as the ultimate goal. However, the current college English teaching for English majors (in the survey) still focuses on the cultivation of four fundamental language skills while neglecting the development of learners'(inter)cultural communicative competence. Thus learners'communication and intercultural communication in particular are often confronted with a number of communicative obstacles, which make us realize the urgency and necessity of developing learners'ICC. But how shall we cultivate learners'ICC? The thesis attempts to search for methods of learners'development of ICC on the basis of language, culture and context and find out that cultural context construction can guide and improve the current FLT.The thesis concerns the analysis of current situation of cultural context construction in terms of the above six variables in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. These six variables are the setting, the teacher, the learner, the instructional method, the instructional material and the assessment. The thesis also concerns their corresponding problems by means of questionnaires and interviews implemented in three universities. It is for the purpose of obtaining enlightenment to figure out practical approaches.The results and implications obtained from the questionnaires are also presented in the above six variables of cultural context.The results present the current situation of cultural context in the following: the undesirably equipped setting (classroom) of a large size; the teachers'skill-oriented goal in FLT and their limited exposure to the target culture and the training concerning culture; learners'insufficient direct experiences…the didactic instructional approach; the skill-based syllabus with quite few exercises concerning culture; the isolated and fragmentary cultural notes; the assessment excluding culture.It is implied that for a better constructed cultural context in FLT, the classroom be better armed with some teaching facilities and it be of a smaller size. Teachers and learners should view the increasingly improved formal classroom as a venue for FLT. Teachers are hoped to shift their traditional skill-oriented goal to (inter)communication-oriented one. Teachers are necessarily provided with some training programs concerning culture in order to know the ways to construct cultural context better, and some roles including an organizer, a participant and an intercultural facilitator are greatly required when teachers construct cultural context. Learners'autonomy is promoted for their self-construction of cultural context. Both teachers and learners are strongly needed to be provided with more chances to contact with the target culture. With respect to the instructional methods, the author points out that the teaching improvement can be embodied by constructing context of propositional culture, context of communicative culture and context of patterns of thought, on the basis of the classification of culture: propositional culture,...