Cultural Stereotypes And College English Teaching In China

Foreign language learning is a process of culture learning(Hu Wenzhong, 1997:89).One of the most important purposes in TEFL is to cultivate learners' intercultural communicative competence.Cultural factors have great influence on English teaching,which have attracted more and more scholars' attentions.Cultural stereotype is just an essential part but it is usually neglected in the English teaching process.Culture stereotype is a complex form of categorization that mentally organizes our experiences and guides our behavior towards a particular group of people.Cultural stereotype is a major way to generalize cultural differences and provides an available approach for language learners to know other countries' cultures.In order to enable people to have a more comprehensive understanding of cultural stereotypes,the study made a qualitative analysis firstly,that is,a survey of the definition of cultural stereotypes,formation,characteristics,classification and the main theories and its intercultural communication as well as its impact on college English teaching.Based on previous studies,the author made an empirical research of cultural stereotype and its influence on English teaching in China.The author selected 60 students from non-English majors from Jilin University as subjects,using a questionnaire survey and writing to explore the relationship between cultural stereotypes and English teaching in order to verify the author's hypothesis that is cultural stereotypes exist in the minds of English learners and students have different levels of cultural stereotypes.The results of the study show that:In the English learning process,there is the existence of cultural stereotypes in students' minds,and it corresponds to their levels of English.In according with such a situation,the author raised solutions that teachers should make students understand cultural stereotypes clearly and guide them to set up and correct cultural stereotypes continuously in process of college English teaching. Only in this way,cultural stereotype can play an active role in the English teaching and learning and students can develop their communicative competence efficiently.