Cultural Interaction And A Case Study Of Culture Teaching For English Majors

With the development of cultural exchanges around the world, the influence of culture elements becomes more and more important in foreign language education. With the result that, due attention is paid on culture teaching by more and more scholars and researchers. A common sense is achieved that culture elements should be integrated into foreign language teaching to meet the need of intercultural communication in modern society. But it is still an unfathomed problem for us towards how to integrate culture teaching and foreign language teaching.In this thesis, the author first makes a brief review of culture teaching history of western countries and our country and finds that three tendencies towards culture teaching currently. One is considered that culture teaching is only the accumulation of cultural background knowledge, another is about simulation of social behavior of the target group people and some people stress that culture teaching is a way to remedy the culture conflicts in the process of intercultural communication. According to those tendencies, it indicates that the focus on culture teaching is mainly about target culture not the other one. Towards these existing problems on culture teaching, a novel and unique viewpoints is put forward by Claire Kramsch. As a famous linguist and language educationist, Kramsch stresses that there is no objective and neutral culture existing. The cultural phenomenon is too complicated to be categorized. For the existence of uniqueness of every member in the same culture community, the variations of subculture, and the complexity of culture, the cultural conflicts can not be avoided in the process of intercultural communication. In language teaching, teachers could find no way to solve cultural conflicts but they may be reconciled through the idea of double-directional interaction which is proposed by Kramsch. In this process, both the two sides contacting with each other may change with the other at the same time instead of submitting to the other as a result that understanding between the two sides also leads them to a more successful intercultural communication. The method of interaction of double-culture also improves the learners' creativity and ability of solving problems. In the light of Kramsch's perspective, the author emphasizes the importance of both home culture and target culture in culture teaching. She makes an investigation of current culture teaching and learning of local college and gives some suggestions based on the results of investigation and then designs her own teaching plan of intensive reading course for English majors, and has a check on her trial teaching after 18-week experimental period.With the result of two tests, the author find that her trial teaching really makes students have a great progress both on their language proficiency and intercultural competence. But this research is a totally new exploration for the author in her teaching experience so that there must be some flaws in the design of questionnaire and trial teaching practice.As to the amount of subjects in the survey, it is a bit smaller compared with that of other colleges in our province. But, a discussion of culture teaching still has to be continued and more researches and studies on culture teaching for English majors should be conducted in order to find out more effective and feasible method for improvement in this field.