A Study Of English Majors' Ability To Express Chinese Culture In English

Since the 1950s, the trend of the research in foreign language learning has been shifted from the exploration of developing sole linguistic skills of students to the cultivation of their cross-cultural communicative competence. Nowadays, culture has been regarded as an inseparable part of foreign language teaching and learning. It is necessary for students to obtain such a competence through y culture teaching and learning. Research on the ways to motivate students to appropriate language use and effective cross-cultural communication constitutes an important inquiry in current foreign language teaching. Teaching a foreign language by using its culture is a vehicle for presenting the language. It helps to cultivate students' cross-cultural communicative competence. However, foreign language teaching and learning should not simply provide students with opportunities to learn and know about the target culture, which is one of the objectives for foreign language education. Expressiveness of home culture in English, as a requisite of transmitting one's home culture forms an essential part of cross-culture communicative competence. To some extent, lack of such a competence may lead to breakdown in cross-culture communication.Both quantitative method and qualitative method were used in this study. The aim of the present study is to undertake an investigation into English majors' expressiveness of Chinese culture in English and to provide some insightful suggestions for the current culture teaching of both Chinese and Western cultures in foreign language education. This study chooses English majors as the research subjects and their expressiveness of Chinese culture in English as the research topic. Specifically, the first place, the study aimed to get an overall picture of the English majors' ability to present Chinese culture in English. Second, it attempted to know the teachers and students' perceptions on ability to express home culture in English and the current home culture teaching in EFL. Third, it attempted to find out the problems lie in English majors' ability to present Chinese culture in English and give some feasible suggestions.The results of the study reveal that the students are unqualified in expressing Chinese culture in English. Students do not have abundant and profound knowledge of Chinese culture, which impedes their accurate and free explanation of Chinese culture. English majors are not well equipped with English versions of vocabularies and expressions of Chinese culture, which results from the fact that students are not exposed to adequate Chinese culture in English. The teachers lack of home culture expertise. The study also shows that teachers and students have a positive attitude toward ability to express Chinese culture in English and transmission of Chinese culture. They hold a strong belief that it is necessary to transmit Chinese culture to foreigners in cross-cultural communication and to develop the students' ability to present Chinese culture in English in EFL teaching and learning.These reasons for the problems are analyzed as follows. The current culture teaching in EFL in Chinese colleges and universities lays its stress more on western culture rather than on Chinese culture. Sometimes it is hard for teachers and students to obtain enough Chinese cultural knowledge and information expressed in English, and sometimes it is even harder for them to find background knowledge about some English vocabularies and expressions, which is one of the reasons that caused the unbalanced input of both Chinese and Western cultures. It neglects the development of students' holistic cross-cultural communicative competence. In addition, few activities which can motivate and involve students in real cross-cultural communication are used in class or outside class. Also in textbooks, curriculum development and testing there is no sufficient consideration to develop students' ability to present Chinese culture in English. So adjustment and improvement should be made on textbooks, curriculum and testing respectively to help students to arrive at a good command of expressiveness of Chinese culture in English. Needless to say, there are limitations concerning the study. All the subjects are from Shandong Province and the size of the sample is relatively small. Besides, the questionnaire is self-designed, which needs further evaluation. However, it is assumed that the study can provide a truthful description of English majors' ability of expressing Chinese culture. It helps to arouse the sensitivity of Chinese language educators, information suppliers, teachers and students and to improve students' ability of expressing Chinese culture in English.