A Comparison Of Learning Culture In Chinese And Canadian Primary Language Classroom

Culture is the knowledge acquired through society, but language is a knowledge system acquired through contacting with language environment developed from human being's special language ability, language is the organic component of culture.Every language is correspondent to certain culture, and is influenced or even restrained by that culture.In addition, language is the tool of forming thought and expressing thought, the sentence structure, discourse structure, and article structure of a language also reflect the mode and convention of thinking, so language is the carrier of culture. As the primary stage of education, language classroom teaching has been greatly developed both in practice and theory. It is undoubtedly that there exists inseparable relationship between language and culture. Nevertheless, since culture mores and beliefs relate not just to social behaviors and interests but affect assumptions about ways of learning and teaching. The process of teaching and learning a language reveals how the culture influences the thought and activities in language classroom, so there is a necessity to study the language classroom. In light of this, the present study is designed to address the language classroom culture by comparing the relatively comprehensive aspects of language classrooms. And the findings are helpful to understand cultural differences in the classroom and ease the conflicts caused by culture.This paper begins with the brief introduction of the importance and research methods of the study. Chapterâ… introduces relevant concepts, and the theoretical basis of this study. It emphasize on the relationship between language and culture, as well as the relationship between some elements of language classroom and culture. Chapterâ…¡describes the method and the subjects of the research, the subjects were two classes of fifth-grade elementary school students of China and Canada respectively. Chapterâ…¢introduces the results of the survey of learning styles questionnaire.Through the survey of learning style questionnaire, we can see the preference of learning styles of Chinese and Canadian, and then analyze the culture differences in accordance with the conclusions drawn from the results.Chapter IV finds out the differences of the language teaching materials and the actual language classroom between the two countries by comparing the language teaching materials and observing on the video of their mother-tongue classes. The study finds that Chinese students and Canadian students have some differences in learning styles, the main learning styles of Chinese students is auditory-based, but the main learning styles of Canadian students is visual-based. The differences in learning styles are caused by their different ways of thinking and the ways of processing information. By comparing the language teaching materials used by students in their respective mother-tongue, we can see that, Chinese language textbook has more historic articles and classics, the textbook attaches great importance on the grammar and basic knowledge, the exercises after the texts also stress the solid foundation for basic knowledge; the articles in Canadian language textbook are relatively new, there are many interesting stories that children interested, the exercises after the texts are helpful for enlightening the students, and the forms of practices are divers along with the answer, students can do self-test according to their own learning level. In the language classroom, Chinese teacher is strict to students.The contents of language teaching, the requirements of students'learning progress, and the assignment of the exercises are very uniform, students almost has no challenge to the knowledge teacher taught. They habitually accept what the teacher taught. In Canada language classroom, the atmosphere is relaxing. The teacher has a general unified arrangement of learning progress of all the students, but she also makes small changes according to the different learning level of students.Students usually express their different opinions.All the differences reflected from language teaching materials and the language classrooms are caused by their different attitudes toward time, different values, and different ways of thinking. In a word, it is due to culture differences.Chapter V summarizes the suggestions to our language classroom from the results of the study with the angle of language teaching materials, teachers, and the way of language test respectively. In the classroom, teacher should regard the students as the subjectivity of learning, understand the needs of students, and increase the interaction and communication with them. They also should assign learning tasks according to different learning characteristics of different students.The content of language teaching materials should be as rich as possible, and close to the lives of students. The exercises after texts should focus on cultivating the abilities of students.The forms of language testing can be diversified, and can take interpersonal communication skills as the main content of the test to evaluate the language level and abilities of students comprehensively. Chapter VI makes a conclusion and sets out the practical significance of this study.