On The Strategies Of Teaching From The Cultural Interferences In Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication refers to communication between people from different cultures. It is a new interdisciplinary subject, which was born in America in the 1960's. It pays close attention to cultural differences ranging from lexical level to pragmatic failure, nonverbal communication, rituals and customs, beliefs, and values. As we know, the diverse cultural differences between countries can't be avoided, because of cultural differences, misunderstandings may arise, which will surely lead to unsatisfactory communication, although the language use in communication may be faultless.Hu Wenzhong, the domestic representative of this field, began to introduce the foreign studies on intercultural communication into China in the 1980s. Since then many Chinese teachers and scholars have been working in this field and have tried to apply the findings in their research to TELF. More and more teachers lose interest in the traditional teaching methods and show concerns about the communicative approach.However, as a result of the examination-oriented influence, in the past and even at present, most teachers still adopt grammar-translation method or aural-oral method in English classroom teaching. Though many teachers show great interest in the communicative approach, they usually adopt new teaching method blindly with no clear idea about its theoretical basis. Naturally there are times when they fail and throw it away quickly. Thus most teachers still put their attention mainly on the development of students' linguistic competence instead of students' cultural awareness and sociocultural competence, which results in the lack of cultural background knowledge of the foreign language or unawareness of the differences between the native culture and the target culture. As a result, although the students have received several years of formal English education and had good grades in school, they still learn "mute and dumb oral English" or commit cultural errors by producing "Chinglish"(Chinese English). They still have difficulties communicating freely and properly because their own culture often interferences their understanding to English-speakers.In order to minimize cultural interferences in the intercultural communication, the author sets out to find and to improve the following three problems:1. What are the main reflections of cultural interferences?2. What are the sources of cultural interferences?3. What can teachers do in English classroom teaching to help develop students' cultural awareness and minimize the cultural interferences when they communicate with English speakers?By exploring the three problems, the author aims at helping people more clearly understand cultural interference resulting from cultural differences and realize the importance of culture teaching, so that people can gain more intercultural awareness and cultural conflicts and misunderstanding may be overcome and successful intercultural communication reached, and thus promote language learning and applying.This dissertation can be divided into seven chapters:Chapter one serves as an introduction, which gives a general account of the purpose of this dissertation, the background theory of culture teaching and the layout of this dissertation.Chapter two focuses on the theoretical achievements about culture study from both abroad and home.Chapter three defines culture, language and communication and examines the relationship between culture and communication, language and culture. It points out that language teaching is closely connected with culture teaching and culture affects communication.Chapter four focuses on the analysis of cultural interference which is mainly reflected in verbal communication, non-verbal communication, language and social norms.Chapter five explores the manifestation and sources of cultural interference in intercultural communication. Cultural interference occurs because people from different culture have different world views, value orientation beliefs, way of thinking, religious and ethics, historical and geographical environments.Chapter six serves as the core of this dissertation. It first describes the currentsituation of culture teaching in English classroom in China, then it lays great emphasis the necessity of inputting cultural knowledge into English teaching, namely, culture teaching should be integrated with language teaching so as to develop students' intercultural communication competence, lastly some effective and useful strategies and techniques are introduced with an aim to enhance cultural communicationChapter seven is a conclusion. It summarizes the main contents of this dissertation, points out the implications and limitations, and gives directions for future research.