Cross-cultural Communication And Spoken English Teaching

Chinese learners are always puzzled with such a fact that when they are communicating with foreign people, they cannot get correct reaction although their vocabulary and grammar are used very well. The reason is that they are not quite familiar with foreign culture. Chinese learners tend to express their ideas on the base of their own Chinese culture. When they are communicating in English, they often think of their own culture. Also because of lacking in English circumstances, Chinese learners' speech is sometimes not so suitable, and therefore lots of communicative misunderstandings appeared. Thus Chinese learners will sometimes fail in cross-cultural communication.This paper is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is about the necessity of teaching foreign culture in English learning. The second chapter is about the cultural differences between China and the West. Just because of these cultural differences, Chinese learners tent to fail in cross-cultural communication. The third chapter is about the reasons of cross-cultural communicative failure and the last chapter is about five ways to improve cross-cultural communication in teaching spoken English. In the end, we draw a conclusion that we should connect our teaching spoken English with improving cross-cultural communicative competence. By reading this paper, our Chinese learners will realize that they will have more confidence to communicate with foreign people so long as they have enough both English and cross-cultural knowledge. Only in this way, our English teaching is practical and fits in with the needs of the society.