A Study Of Teaching Culture-loaded Words In English Language Teaching In Chinese Secondary Schools

As a communicative symbol, language is closely related with its culture. Brown oncesaid: "Language, the means for communication among members of a culture, is the mostvisible and available expression of that culture, cultural patterns, customs and way of life(Brown, 1994:170)". However, in traditional English teaching, much attention is paid toknowledge, such as vocabulary, phrases, grammatical rules, while the cultural background ofthe language is ignored. As a result, students cannot communicate well with the nativespeakers. With economic globalization, the appearance of the "global village" and the closecontact between countries, intercultural communication has become an integrated part ofpeople's life. More and more attention is paid to develop the intercultural competence ofstudents in secondary schools. The teachers not only need to improve the language skills ofstudents, but also to cultivate their ability of the cross-cultural communication. The Criteria ofEnglish Course for National Elementary Education issued in 2001 presented cultureawareness and viewed it as a guarantee to use languages properly. The Criteria also describedthe aims which students of different levels should obtain and presented the matter aboutunderstanding culture and hoped students would treat foreign and Chinese culturesobjectively through fostering awareness of culture. Exposed to cultures of English-speakingcountries, students can know and use English much better and develop capabilities ofinter-cultural communications.As the smallest unit of language, culture-loaded words and expressions are loaded withspecific national cultural information and can best reflect cultural differences betweendifferent nations. Many words are loaded with culture except for some core words. The sameword can have different culture meanings for people in different countries, such as pumpkins,they can make Americans think about Thanksgiving Day or Halloween. However, Chinesepeople don't have such thoughts.The purpose of teaching language is to improve the students' ability to bettercommunicate in English. Thus, to teach a language is to teach another culture, and to learn alanguage is to learn another culture. The importance of integrating these two aspects into theclassroom language teaching has been discussed in different journals, which has really exertedgreat influence on the ELT. However, for different reasons in practice teaching, little attentionhas been paid to the cultural connotation of the words. In this connection this paper, sets outto give a clear definition of language and culture, points out the necessity to implement theteaching of culture into vocabulary teaching, and further explores methods of teachingculture-loaded words in the hope of finding the way to cultivate students' cultural awarenessand communicative competence, along with students' linguistic competence.