A Study Of Cultural Awareness In College English Reading Comprehension

Languages do not exist in isolation. They are rooted in the societies that use them and are affected by social elements, especially by culture. Some sociologists hold the view that language is the foundation of culture; while, at the same time, culture can affect language. Language is the mirror of a society. From language, we can observe their historical and cultural background of a society. What's more, we can find out their attitude towards life, their way of thinking and living. In a word, language and culture interact upon each other. When learning a foreign language, we will not only learn their pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, but also learn their culture. Foreign language reading comprehension is, in fact, a cross-cultural communication, and students' familiarity with the target culture is the premise of successful EFL reading comprehension. In the process of foreign Language reading comprehension, readers' task is not just to acquire knowledge, but more importantly, to communicate cross-culturally with the writer and to learn their knowledge as well as their culture.Recently, more and more English teachers and learners have realized the importance of culture in the learning and teaching of foreign Languages; however, English learners still pay more attention to language itself and neglect the cultural knowledge of the text. Without cultural background knowledge, English learners will sometimes find it hard to understand a text. Or even though they get to know what is written in the text at last, the amount of time they spent is far more larger than those who already have the required cultural knowledge. This phenomenon can be explained as a result of English learners' ignorance of the social cultural implications and backgrounds of the English language. For the purpose of improving the teaching of reading comprehension and students' reading ability, and making students aware that cultural knowledge plays a vital role in text comprehension, this thesis first analyzes the relationship between language and culture.Then from the perspective of schema theory, this thesis illustrates the importance of cultural factors in reading comprehension. Next the thesis illustrates in detail, from the perspective of the relationship between language and culture, the effects of cultural differences on EFL reading comprehension in terms of vocabulary, sentences and texts, and points out that cultural differences can affect every aspect of comprehension. Following all these discussions, a test on students'cultural knowledge and a reading comprehension test are carried out. According to the results of these two tests, a conclusion is drawn safely that cultural knowledge, to some extent, affects our English learners reading comprehension.