Studies On Culture Introduction Into College English Teaching Bases On The Whorf Hypothesis

With the fast development of society and economy, persons withintercultural communicative competence are greatly demanded. Possessing thiskind of ability becomes the primary goal of foreign language learners. Therefore,cultivating learners’ communicative competence is the utmost goal of foreignlanguage teaching. Teachers should teach learners the knowledge of thelanguage and the usage of the language in real communications. In order toreach the goal of cultivating learners’ communicative competence, it isnecessary to introduce culture into College English teaching process.Language has close relationship with culture. Language can’t be isolatedfrom culture. Language is a very important part of culture, as well as the carrierof it. Language is greatly influenced and restricted by its culture. The intimatelink between language and culture decides the relationship between languageteaching and culture teaching. The utmost goal of language teaching isintercultural communication, so culture teaching plays a very important role inthe language teaching process.Although most of the researchers have realized the necessity of cultureteaching in language teaching, the content and approaches of cultureintroduction are still in exploring. On the basis of the Whorf hypothesis, thisstudy did a series of experimental research to explore the relationship betweenlanguage and culture. The hypothesis consists of two parts, linguisticdeterminism and linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism refers to the notion that learning a language changes the way a person thinks. Linguistic relativityrefers to the claim that speakers of different languages are said to think indifferent ways. Therefore, in order to communicate smoothly with the foreignersin cross-cultural context, the learners should not only master the knowledge ofthe language, but also the cultural knowledge of that language. On the basis ofsuch a notion, the aims of this thesis are to prove the necessity of cultureintroduction, to decide the content of culture introduction, and to chooseapproaches of culture introduction in College English teaching.A questionnaire was designed mainly on three aspects: the recognition ofthe subjects on culture introduction in English teaching, the necessity of cultureintroduction and the content and approaches of culture introduction. And aculture test paper was given to have case studies among90non-English majorcollege students. After the investigation, the90students were divided into twogroups: Group One was introduced to cultural knowledge in language teaching,and Group Two was taught in the traditional way. After14weeks’ teaching, bothof them were tested culturally. With the analysis of the questionnaire and culturetest, the necessity was further proved that culture introduction should beintegrated in College English teaching. After the experimental research, thisstudy decided the content of culture introduction, such as culture related tovocabulary, culture related to social conventions, and culture related to values.Several available approaches are offered in five aspects: creating authenticcommunicative environment, strengthening culture comparison, introducingculture into language tests, introducing culture with the help of Internet andencouraging autonomic learning of students.At the end of the thesis, some limitations are provided and the conclusionis made that culture introduction is really important and there is a lot to be donein how to introduce culture into College English teaching.