Integrating The Teaching Of Culture Into College English

With the rapid development of international cooperation, persons with intercultural communicative competence are greatly demanded nowadays. It has been gradually known that people who are only linguistic competent cannot make a successful communication with foreigners. Wolfson (1983) notes as follows:In integrating with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity. (Wolfson, 1983, cited in Hu, 1988: 11)Accordingly, with the development of Communicative Language Teaching, more and more researchers and teachers realize the importance of the teaching of culture in English, especially in college English teaching. In addition, non-English majors make up the majority of the English learners at college. Thus, this thesis focuses on the integration of culture into College English teaching.Though it has been widely accepted that the teaching of culture in College English is of significance, few achievements have been made in practice due to the lack of suitable syllabus, test system, teaching materials, etc. Therefore, in this paper, the writer is to concentrate on the problems as to why, what and how to introduce culture into College English.The writer conducted a research of students'socio-culture competence, and after offering the findings of the research and discussion, the writer put forward some suggestions as to what and how to teach culture.The thesis consists of the following chapters:Chapter One IntroductionThe writer makes a brief introduction to the motivation of writing this paper, as well as to the outline of the paper.Chapter Two Literature ReviewThis chapter falls into two parts. The first part commits itself to the relations of culture and language as well as the discussion of the importance of integrating culture into foreign language teaching.The second part lays out some of the major contemporary studies home and abroad concerning the teaching of culture in foreign language education with a full illustration of what should be further done.The chapter provides theoretical insights to help create a great understanding of the role of culture in language teaching.Chapter Three Research DesignIn this chapter, a test was carried out on students'socio-culture competence and their understanding of the teaching of culture. The writer describes the design of the test.Chapter Four Results and DiscussionsThis chapter shows that students'communicative competence is inferior to their linguistic competence through the analysis of the results of the tests, thus, it's necessary to teach culture. Furthermore, the test reflects that students'culture awareness is rising. It reveals the students'attitudes towards the present teaching of culture and what contents should be integrated into the teaching.Chapter Five Pedagogical Implications in College EnglishThis chapter falls into two parts. The first part chiefly explores the principles of the teaching of culture in College English classroom; what contents of culture to be taught; and some approaches or activities adopted in and out of class.The second part focuses on the new requirements for teachers in the teaching of culture.Chapter Six ConclusionBased on the above chapters, the last part offers the conclusion that culture instruction is really important and there is a lot to be done in how to integrate culture into College English teaching.