A Study Of Cultural Connotations Of Words In College English Text Teaching

It is generally accepted that vocabulary is the basic element of language and an important carrier of culture.The cultural connotations of words play an important role in a language.Different social backgrounds and national cultures have a great effect on the cultural connotations of words.English teaching should combine language with culture and identify the cultural function of words.However, Chinese students are accustomed to the conceptual meaning of English words and pay little attention to the cultural connotations of words.Therefore,they have little understanding of cultural background knowledge of target language.When they are reading a text,they may fail to understand the cultural connotations of words and they may misunderstand the text with cultural connotations of words. Therefore,at the lexical level of language,it is necessary to teach cultural connotations of words to students,to strengthen their cultural awareness of English words and to improve their understanding of texts.In China,Professor Xu Guozhang first put forward the categories of cultural loaded words as well as the conception of.cultural connotations of words.Cultural loaded words refer to words and word equivalents with certain cultural meanings in addition to their conceptual meanings.Word equivalents include a set of phrases and idioms.English words discussed in this paper are cultural loaded words which embody the cultural natures of a language.Костомаров&Верещагин,Russian sociolinguists classify words into two categories:the one without counterparts in other languages and the one with counterparts in other languages.Professor Zhou Guohui, holds that words can be classified into four categories:(1)words with no counterparts in other languages; (2)words with superficial counterparts in other languages but actually not;(3)words with more than one counterparts in other languages;(4)words with same or similar denotative meanings but quite different connotative meanings in other languages.According to the classification by Russian sociolinguists,Костомаров&Верещагин,the researcher combines these two kinds of classifications together and divides words into four categories for comparison:(1)overlapping words;(2)paralleling words;(3) vacant words;and(4)semantic dislocating words.The researcher compares and analyzes these four categories of words using the way of contrastive analysis and gives the exemplifications of teaching cultural connotations of words. An experimental research is conducted to testify:(1)whether teaching cultural connotations of words to non-English majoring students through contrastive analysis is an effective way to develop the students' intercultural communicative awareness;the hypothesis proposed in this thesis is that teaching cultural connotations of Words through contrastive analysis may strengthen the students' intercultural communicative awareness after the experiment;(2)whether teaching cultural connotations of words to non-English majoring students through contrastive analysis is an effective way to promote understanding of texts;the hypothesis is that understanding of texts with cultural connotations of words by the experimental group may differ significantly from the control group;(3)whether teaching cultural connotations of words to non-English majoring students through contrastive analysis can facilitate the improvement of understanding of texts to a significant extent;the hypothesis is that the competence of English language learners' understanding of texts may be improved to a significant extent after experiment.The researcher conducts this experiment for two months.A pretest is designed to test to what extent the subjects in the two groups can apprehend the cultural connotations of words,and to test the impact of these words on the understanding of texts.After the treatment,a posttest is implemented with the same method to testify questions and the hypotheses of the study.A questionnaire is designed to learn their attitudes towards the learning and teaching of cultural connotations of words.The researcher collects and analyzes the data.The results of the experiment indicates that the teaching of the cultural connotations of words has an effect on the subjects in the experimental group.At the beginning of the experiment,the Subjects are accustomed to comprehend the words from the conceptual meaning or to associate the meaning with their native cultural background.And they misunderstand the text since they misunderstand the cultural connotations of words.After the treatment, the subjects inthe experiment group have the cultural awareness of the words,and begin to pay attention to these words.They also come to know the importance of these words and find a way to understand the cultural connotations of words.Consequently,their comprehending of these words and understanding of texts have been improved.Another finding is that much misunderstanding of texts results from the transfer of source cultural implication.In addition,students hold a positive attitude towards the learning and teaching of the cultural connotations of words.