Research On The Culture-Based Approach To College English Teaching (CET)

College English Curriculum Requirements(2007) points out:"College English is not only a language course that provides basic knowledge about English, but also a capacity enhancement course that helps students to broaden their horizons and learn about different cultures in the world. It not only serves as an instrument, but also has humanistic values."So how to cultivate students'intercultural communicative competence, broaden their cultural horizon and carry out language and culture teaching at the same time in the course have become the exploring issues for all the English teachers and educators in our country. Language is a system of symbols that can be studied analytically, enjoying the properties of duality, arbitrariness and productivity as well as diverse variations over time, in physical space and social needs; Culture is a complicated social phenomenon, so understanding of it varies greatly from different perspectives. Culture is dynamic, learned through accumulation and enriched by one generation after another.Language is not only a part of culture but also the carrier of culture transmission. Both of them are intrinsically related to and mutually influenced each other. Language teaching and culture teaching supplement each other. Culture teaching is unavoidable in language teaching activities. What and how to teach culture in foreign language education is more complicated problem since the solution relies on our understanding of the relationship between language and culture, the role of foreign language education in a given culture, and the relationship between one's home culture and foreign culture.Influenced by teaching ideas, tradition, purposes, course books and course orientation, the present CET also focuses on the understanding of grammar and language points. Some culture knowledge is introduced into the course only as the background. Language and culture teaching haven't organically combined. As a result, culture elements are seriously lack.By the analysis of the properties of language and culture and the existing culture teaching theories and the present situation of College English course, this thesis puts forwards a culture-based CET (College English Teaching) idea, which is a college English teaching activity based on culture. The purpose is on the basis of oriental-western culture to acquire the English linguistic knowledge, and further to cultivate the students'social culture and intercultural communicative competence, enable the students to develop and highlight their comprehensive ability by the means of mingle of language and culture, and obtain both knowledge of them. From the perspective of theory and practice, the thesis carries out an in-depth discussion on the purpose, reasons and approaches of the culture-based attitude of college English teaching renovation, and also analyses its feasibility, the significance and practical function. Finally the thesis raises a culture-based college English teaching renovation plan for educational institutions to consider when they set out to plan language policies as well as put them into practice.