A Study Of Native Culture In Cross-cultural Communication

Culture teaching has been drawing foreign language educators'interests since its importance in foreign language education was recognized in the 1980s. Great achievements have been made concerning it. However the practice of culture teaching in foreign language departments in Chinese universities and colleges is not without problems. Perhaps the most serious problem lies in that the current culture teaching over-emphasizes the target culture, giving little attention to or even neglecting our home culture.It is indisputable that more emphasis should be laid on the target culture learning, which is necessary for foreign language learners. However, on the other hand, if the target culture is taught as the whole part of culture teaching in foreign language teaching (FLT), culture teaching is incomplete. Culture teaching without home culture teaching can not be regarded as a mature one, for cross-cultural communication is a reciprocal activity which necessitates the two-way exchanges of culture. Only by transmitting our Chinese culture to the west can we realize the real cross-cultural communication rather than one way communication.However, in the current culture teaching and learning, it seems that students are incompetent in expressing Chinese culture in English. When they talk with foreigners about our home culture, they can not explain it clearly and freely. It leads to unbalanced development of students'communicative competence and inequality in cross-cultural communication. An investigation is conducted in this paper among English majors, which intends to confirm the existence of this phenomenon, that is, students are incompetent in expressing Chinese culture in English. Meanwhile, it is aimed to find the reasons accounting for it and offer some practicable solutions.The results of this investigation show that the subjects are less capable to express Chinese culture in English. Although they hold a strong belief that it is necessary to transmit Chinese culture to foreigners in cross-cultural communication and they have strong desires to learn the expressions of Chinese culture in English, they find it difficult to express Chinese culture in English clearly. There are many reasons explaining the phenomenon. First, students do not have abundant and profound knowledge of Chinese culture, which hinders them from explaining Chinese culture accurately and freely. Second, information sources of Chinese culture in English are unsystematic. It is difficult for them to find appropriate and standard English versions of Chinese culture. What's more, the textbooks contain little information about Chinese culture in English, the curriculum is not so scientific, the testing neglect the check of students'ability of expressing Chinese culture in English, and the syllabus does not state clearly the necessity of enhancing students'ability to express Chinese culture in English. Based on the reasons, some solutions are offered, including the reforms in textbooks, testing and syllabus and so on.