Analysis On Cultural Background Information’s Influence On Chinese Idiom Acquisition

Idiom acquisition is an important issue in the study of Chinese vocabulary acquisition and idiom learning has become a major problem for foreign students. In Chinese teaching profession, it has become the consensus of many teachers and students that people should understand the background information before learning about idioms. But strictly speaking, this way of teaching and learning is just a summary of experience, there is a short of experimental studies.The acquisition of idioms is the result of several factors working together. So the paper proposed another two factors that may affect the acquisition of idioms:the difficulty of idioms’constitutes and whether or not can man speculate the meaning of idioms. To observe the effect of these two factors on idioms combined with cultural background acquisition, firstly, this study selected26idioms with the cultural background of fairy tales, historical stories and poetry as the experimental objects. We select four subjects for the experiment. They were tested by one group idioms with the input of cultural background information and one group without the input of cultural background information, in order to see short-term memory and utilization of idioms, and the long-term memory and utilization of idioms. Then we analyzed the data of tests by using SPSS18.0. Secondly, combined with the analysis results, we interviewed the four subjects to get a more in-depth understanding of the acquisition process.Based on the data compiled, the result shows that:1. If we observe the three factors one by one, only the cultural background has a significant impact on idiom acquisition, while the effect on memory is greater than that on use.2. If we analyze the three factors comprehensively, in the case that Chinese characters or the meaning of idioms are difficult to understand, the acquisition of those idioms with cultural background information input is better than those without information input.3. The contents of cultural background also have an impact on idiom acquisition, including the content’s level and theme. According to the results of data analysis, the paper teaching made some suggestions on the teaching of idioms such as strengthening pragmatic teaching and paying attention to simplification and diversity in teaching process and so on.4There are significant differences between Chinese cultural circle and non-Chinese cultural circle learners in the quality of idiom acquisition. The impact of cultural background information on non-Chinese cultural circle learners is significantly greater than that on Chinese cultural circle learners. According the results of data analysis, the thesis made some suggestions on teaching idioms, such as strengthening the teaching of idioms and usage of idioms; simplifying contents and diversifying methods and so on.