A Study Of Chinese Culture Aphasia In College English Teaching

As the result of the current context of globalization, the English education in Chinashould be aimed at enhancing students’ intercultural communication ability. However, theeducation of English language in many colleges cares more about the target languageculture teaching, while neglecting the ability to express Chinese culture fluently in English.Therefore, many college students become one-side communicators who passively offer orgain information of the opposition but incapable to introduce or output Chinese cultureactively and effectively. This is called the phenomenon of "Chinese Cultural Aphasia".After the concept of "Chinese Cultural Aphasia" was definite by Cong Cong in2000,many scholars of language education have carried out theoretic or practical investigationson this theme, such as cultural teaching in English education, localization of Englisheducation, cross-culture communication in English teaching. However, the former studiesare lack of entirety and systematicness. Former research mainly paid attention on testingcollege students’ capabilities of translating single vocabularies of Chinese culture, butignored investigating into their exact internal grasp of Chinese cultural knowledge andexpressing in English spontaneously. Whether Chinese culture was embodied in Englishteaching class was always the key point of early studies, however, it is more important tostudy the proportion of Chinese culture in out-class learning, the attitude of collegestudents toward the Chinese culture teaching as well as their expectation of improvement.According to multiculturalism theory, cross-cultural communication theory and so on,the author takes efforts to making quantitative and qualitative research in the form of testand interview. For test, the research subject are210students from Hebei University ofScience and Technology which include64English majors and146non-English majors.The test aims at presenting comprehensive temporary condition of the college students’mastering Chinese culture and translating Chinese culture into English language. Forinterview,100students who participant in are randomly selected. The interview aims atinvestigating the reasons leading to the phenomenon of "Chinese Culture Aphasia" as wellas the attitude they hold and their expectation of improvement.The results demonstrate that the tested students master Chinese culture well, but havea lot of difficulties in translating knowledge of Chinese culture into English languageespecially expressing relatively longer. In the following interview, the students list thereasons leading to the phenomenon of "Chinese Culture Aphasia" which include the cause of themselves, teachers’ behavior in class, textbooks and examinations. But all the studentshave enough expectation and confidence of improving this situation. To deal with theproblems existing in the Chinese cultural education of college English teaching nowadays,the author claims joining Chinese culture knowledge into college English teaching. Inaddition, the author proposes solutions such as using effective teaching methods,arranging varieties of out-class activities and designing targeted tests.