A Study On Cultural Experience Teaching And Changes Of Cultural Stereotypes Among English Major Undergraduates

Stereotype is the oversimple categorization to an individual, a group and an event. It is a fixed cognition which connects with conceptions and exaggerates facts (Allport, 1954). Stereotype is one of the aspects which influences effective intercultural communication. It helps people understand different cultures, at the same time, because of its"overgeneralization", it sets up a barrier which hinders communication among people from different cultures. This is the"Paradox"of Intercultural Communication. In order to improve intercultural communicative communication, it's necessary to have a correct attitude to stereotype, that is admitting the existence of stereotype, understanding the changes of stereotype, and realizing"Going across"and"Going beyond"cultures (Gao Yihong, 2002).This study applied the teaching concept of"Cultural Experience"(Moran, 2001) and conducted an experiment in a culture-content Reading Course within the period of a school term. The so-called"Cultural Experience"is the encounter with another way of life, be it first-hand through direct involvement with people of the other culture or indirectly through learning materials in the language classroom. The latter ran through the whole process of the experiment. These encounters elicit four kinds of culture learning, or culture knowings ---- knowing about, knowing how, knowing why, and knowing oneself.Fifty students who were in their second year learning in the English department of a university in Changchun were selected randomly as the subjects. The purpose of the study is to explore the pattern of stereotype change and the degree to which the combination of culture and language teaching can improve the establishment and breakthrough of students'stereotypes. And thus improve students'intercultural communicative competence in the end.This experiment is consisted of three parts, pre-test, experimental teaching and post-test. Students were asked to write compositions before and after the experimental teaching. The sub-systems of the Appraisal theory (Martin, 2000), attitude and engagement, were used in analyzing students'compositions. Through analysis, the basic law of stereotype changes was found, that is: the formation of stereotype, the strengthening of stereotype, the formation of new stereotype, in other words, the breakthrough of stereotype. The result of the experiment indicates that the combination of culture and language teaching can improve the establishment and breakthrough of students'stereotypes and improve their intercultural communicative competence eventually.This dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One is introduction. The previous research on intercultural communication and stereotypes are summarized and the purpose and necessity of the present research are presented. Chapter Two is literature review. Theories about stereotypes, stereotypes in intercultural communication, Cultural Experience teaching method and the Appraisal theory are introduced. Chapter Three puts forward the hypothesis of the present study, describes the methodology, the experiment. Chapter Four analyzes the data and discusses the result. Chapter Five summarizes the whole dissertation. The significance and the limitation of the research are also pointed out.