On The Development Of Cultural Creativity In EFL Teaching

Language and culture are intertwined and language is an inseparable part of culture. Language, as the carrier of a culture, is influenced and shaped by culture; it reflects culture and plays a very important role in it. Because of different cultural backgrounds, misunderstandings often arise among people who speak different languages even there are not any grammatical mistakes in their conversation, thus intercultural communication failure occurs. With the development of economic globalization, intercultural communication is greatly increasing. More and more foreign language educators have realized that we should attach importance to culture in our foreign language teaching and a new term "culture teaching" is introduced.Although culture teaching is not a new topic in the field of EFL teaching, its practice still remains a problem. In the educational system of China, foreign language teachers put their hearts and efforts into the vocabulary building, reading ability and writing skill of language, which is only a part of the three major components of the curriculum (language, literature, and culture). Culture, however, remains the weakest component due to its uneven treatment in textbooks and to the teachers' lack of familiarity with the culture itself and with the techniques needed to reach it. Instructors focus largely on linguistic objectives and cultivation of linguistic competence, believing that culture learning will be a byproduct of such instruction. As a result, the students who have passed examination, such as CET4, with high score are still deficient in actual intercultural communication. Therefore, if the instructors teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, they are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the students attaches the wrong meaning.In this thesis we first introduce the conception, goal and significance of culture teaching, and its development both at home and abroad. The objective for EFL teaching in China is discussed, with communicative competence questioned and a broad new concept is introduced—cultural creativity. Then we talk about the development of cultural creativity from the following aspects: learning to know independently; an understanding of foreign culture, from being knowledgeable to being flexible and open to new experiences; process of cultural interaction; development of a creative power for change. At last, we mention the implications of cultural creativity for EFL curriculum reform, such as implication for the contradiction between knowledge and ability; implication for the relationship between teacher and learner; implication for the conflict between content and process.In order to have good knowledge and understanding of the actual condition of the EFL teaching in China, the communication competence and cultural creativity of the students, the author carries out a research on the college students, in which 233 English learners in Shandong University at Weihai are involved in. The experiment implies their IS on cultural integration which is expected to improve, the connection of linguistic competence and intercultural communication competence, and the cultural creativity that they want to enhance in language learning.Through the thesis we mainly emphasize the two-sided cultural interaction in EFL teaching, through which EFL learners acquire internal change and creative power for change, the foundation of cultural creativity. This concept is liable to lead us to regard culture as combination of knowledge, behavior and meaning, to consider EFL culture teaching comprehensively, from such aspects as content and process, teaching and learning, etc.