Cultivation Of Intercultural Awareness In CET

With the rapid development of economy and technology, intercultural communication between China and the outside world will become more and more prominent, which may raise an inescapable question for College English Teaching(CET): how to foster the pragmatic competence and development of English learners so that they can meet the challenges of the 21st century. It is a problem that has drawn people's attention for a long time. The research of the relationship between language and culture has become an important topic in the circle of foreign language learners since late 1980s in China. Later on, intercultural awareness has been drawing foreign language educators'interest since its importance was recognized twenty years ago. However, compared with the prosperity of theoretical researches, the practice of intercultural awareness seems quite disappointing. First, due to the negative influence of traditional foreign language teaching, the cultivation of students'intercultural awareness hasn't been put into practice yet in many universities. Even though some attempts have been made, the practice of intercultural awareness in foreign language departments in Chinese universities seems to be in an unsystematic state, which directly brings negative effects on students'development of personal ability. The aim of this paper is to try to call attention to the importance and necessity of cultivation of students'intercultural awareness in College English Teaching and attempt to give a tentative scheme for the cultivation of intercultural awareness. The first chapter examines the importance of intercultural awareness in CET so that we can be fully aware of the critical importance of intercultural awareness in CET.Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are aimed at discovering the necessity of cultivation of intercultural awareness in CET from two perspectives. First, we will explore the intimate relationship between culture, language and communication with the emphasis being laid upon cultural interference in language learning so that we can find that culture can not be separated from language learning. Second, we will make a general survey of negative influence of traditional language teaching and the requirement of CET at this stage in China.Chapter 4 makes a deep investigation upon the current situation of cultivation of intercultural awareness in CET by means of questionnaires. 600 randomly selected students from Shandong Agricultural University (SDAU), Taishan Medical College (TSMC) and Taishan University (TSU) serve as samples to conduct this research. Through the research, we hope to find out to what extent college students hold intercultural awareness and what kind of attitude they may have towards culture learning.In Chapter 5, some operational techniques will be suggested for cultivation of students'intercultural awareness. On the basis of Developmental Model of Intercultural Awareness, the author provides some commandments for improvement, and then gives the general principles and methods for cultivation of intercultural awareness.