A Probe Into Integrating Chinese Culture Into College English Teaching

It has been commonly recognized in foreign language education that "the cultural lead-in" of the target language should be emphasized.Most of the teaching materials adopted by college English teaching(CET) are authentic original English materials, and the highlight in culture teaching is western customs and culture.This method of integrating the target language and culture has made outstanding achievement and can help students get some knowledge about western culture and broaden their cultural horizon.However,the achievement is mainly reflected by the target culture teaching. In fact,the students can not express Chinese culture in appropriate English,which causes the phenomenon of "Chinese culture aphasia" in intercultural communication. This phenomenon is undoubtedly due to emphasizing too much of the target culture while ignoring the input of the Chinese culture.Since intercultural communication is a kind of two-way activity and this feature determines that the emphasis should not be laid on the teaching of the target culture only but the native culture should also be included in culture teaching.English learning should not learn the target culture only but understand native culture better and then introduce Chinese culture to foreigners by using English.Otherwise,it will certainly bring about obstacles in communication, let alone the realization of effective intercultural communication.Based on the survey on current Chinese culture teaching in college English,and college students' expressiveness of Chinese culture in English(ECCE),the author tries to explore the problems existing in college English teaching and the strategies on how to realize the integration of western culture and Chinese culture in college English teaching.This thesis can be divided into six chapters.Chapter One introduces the background of the study,necessity of integrating Chinese culture with CET,the research questions,research significance and the general structure.Chapter Two is an extensive literature review of language and culture,language teaching and culture teaching and intercultural communication.Chapter Three investigates and gives an account of the situation on Chinese culture teaching in college English,and points out the defects.Chapter Four 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 ECCE.The results of the test show that the ECCE of some college students has been greatly improved after three-term learning of Experiencing English by integrating Chinese culture.Chapter Five proposes some tentative suggestions based on Experiencing English and other considerations on integrating Chinese culture with CET.Chapter Six gives a summary of the whole thesis,points out the limitations of the thesis and recommends further study.