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Experiencing Culture In College English Teaching

Posted on:2009-01-16Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J F LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360272463746Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
With social development and modernization, communication between different cultures and different districts becomes more and more prominent and frequent. Global interdependence, cultural diversity and change become prominent everywhere and raise an inescapable question: how to achieve success in intercultural communication? It is a problem that attracts people's attention and deserves to consider. Nowadays, developing learners'ICC (intercultural communicative competence) has been the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching. In order to develop learners'ICC, culture teaching is essential to be conducted in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).This research attempts to investigate the current situation of intercultural communicative competence among Chinese non-English major freshmen and their competence after one-year learning of Experiencing English Integrated Book. Try to explore the problems existing in TEFL and the strategies to conduct culture teaching based on Experiencing English Integrated Book.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the background information of the research, the research questions and its main idea.Chapter 2 demonstrates the definitions of language, culture and intercultural communication and their relationships. Language and culture are closely related to each other. On the one hand, language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. On the other hand, language is shaped by culture and reflects culture. Therefore culture teaching is indispensable to language teaching. In this chapter, culture teaching abroad and at home is also reviewed followed by the relationship analysis of cultural awareness and cultural teaching, and the definition of cultural experience.Chapter 3 is the present research and data analysis, the methodology is given in this part as well as the introduction of case material—Experiencing English Integrated Book. 70 non-English majors in Changchun University participated in the test which aimed at investigating their ICC. The results of the test show that the ICC of college students is very weak. Although their ICC has been improved after one-year learning of Experiencing English, there are still some problems. At the same time, the statistic analysis indicates that their verbal communicative competence surpasses their nonverbal communicative competence.Chapter 4 proposes some tentative suggestions based on Experiencing English and other considerations on culture teaching.Chapter 5 summarizes the whole study, its significance and limitations as well as suggestions for future research are all provided in this section.
Keywords/Search Tags:Case Study, Cultural Experience, Culture Teaching, Experiencing English
PDF Full Text Request
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