On The Abililv Ot Expressing Chinese Culture In English By Majors Of Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Since the1980s, cultural factors in language teaching have been gradually valuedand generally recognized in the English language teaching world. Integrating targetculture into the target language learning has become a popular teaching approach andhelped Chinese learners comprehend the culture of the English-speaking countries whilelearning English language remarkably. However, the learners' native culture is ignoredin culture teaching, which leads to their incompetence of expressing Chinese culture inEnglish and consequently hampers the improvement of their interculturalcommunication competence. Since cross-cultural communication is bi-directional innature, culture teaching should take into account target culture as well as native culture.Therefore, it is necessary that both Western culture and Chinese culture are paidattention to in English teaching and learning.The majors in teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) are expected to betrained as teachers or talents engaged in intercultural communication with a deepfoundation in Chinese language and culture as well as proficiency in English. Aninvestigation of how capable they are when expressing Chinese culture in English mayfurther emphasize the necessity of this pedagogical focus. A survey was made to100TCFL majors in Hubei University of Technology on the ability of expressing Chineseculture in English with instruments of a test paper and questionnaires. Besides, aninvestigation was also made into the English teaching materials and the materialsrelated to Chinese culture. Both quantitative method and qualitative method areemployed with a test paper and two questionnaires in the thesis to study and analyze theTCFL majors' ability to express Chinese culture in English. The findings are as follows:the TCFL majors' English expressive capability of Chinese culture is low and it hasnothing to do with their attitude to Chinese culture; it is concluded that the teachingstatus quo of TCFL major, the deficiency of consciousness of accumulating Englishexpressiveness of Chinese culture along with lack of English materials for Chineseculture lead to their poor ability. In addition, on the basis of the conclusions, the thesiswill give some suggestions concerning the curriculum, the students themselves, andteaching materials for the improvement of students' capability of expressing Chineseculture in English and consequently for the enhancement of their interculturalcommunication ability.