Intermediate Oral Chinese As A Foreign Language Classroom Culture Teaching And Research

The oral class is one of important special skills classes in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. In the middle stage, students have more and more opportunities to get in touch with language materials from social scenarios in real world, suggesting a transition of teaching emphasis from language-guided to a balance between the language and the culture. Existing studies of cultural factors mainly focus on cultural content selection and arrangement in textbooks, with limited work being done for teachers and textbooks they choose in class. In this study, the authors investigate two major factors (i.e. textbooks and teachers) that have most significant impacts on the learning effect, applying the theory of cross-cultural communication, the theory of teaching chinese as a foreign language and teaching methodology,the theory of cognitive linguistics. The investigation has been carried out by a series of activities such as teaching observation and questionary design. And based on the analysis of the investigation results, a solution is proposed.The analysis consists of four aspects:textbooks, teachers, the study of students and the class teaching. Major problems found in the cultural teaching include:There exists an imbalance between cultural content and language in current textbooks. Most scenarios are outdated, lacking authenticity and practicability. The compilation is constrained by the traditional pattern, in which case take-home exercises are not targeted; Teachers pay less attention to cultural factors in textbooks, leading to an inappropriate use of textbooks without considering real living scene; Although cultural backgrounds and Chinese language levels vary among students, learning effects are generally not good and current classroom environments cannot meet their needs of cultural study; Teachers' teaching methods are too monotonous to arouse students' enthusiasm. And the education condition cannot satisfy the middle-level oral teaching sufficiently. All the problems mentioned above are caused by four reasons. First, the selection of materials in textbooks is not closely related to students' everyday life, lacking the study of the commonness of the human culture and timeliness. Second, teachers have limited understanding of the middle-level oral class and their teachings are constrained by textbooks. They need self-improvement as well. Third, students lack proper methods for oral study and the real living scene. Fourth, the school does not provide good education conditions according to the requirement of the oral class.We propose several strategies to solve these problems. On one hand, the selection of the cultural content should begin with the needs of students, which means the selected content should be closely related to students' everyday life and should be presented as vivid and real pictures. The text background needs to be weakened, while the timeliness of the content needs to be improved. On the other hand, the compilation of the cultural content should be appropriate to students' studying stage, highlighting the diversity of scenes. It also needs to combine the text and the practice, weakening the text content. Further, teachers should have an in-depth understanding of textbooks and hold teaching important points. They need use a variety of teaching methods and design vivid scenes to help students understand cultural factors involved in textbooks. And at the same time, they need pay attention to the commonness of the culture and the difference among students, so they can improve the acceptance of cultural factors of students.